The battle of the tennis court is one of the most famous actions in the war against Japan. The vicious siege of Kohima in the spring and early summer of 1944 saw the embattled British and Indian garrison of that tiny village in the mountains of Assam (now Nagaland), northeastern India, fighting off wave upon wave of Japanese attacks. Over the course of two weeks, the men of the Assam Regiment, the 4th Royal West Kents, and more became legends of the British and Indian Army, as they fought over that famous pitch on one of the garden terraces of the local District Commissioner’s bungalow.
What is often missed from the story is the battle of Kohima that followed. There was a further six weeks of fighting in the hills and nearby villages around Kohima to clear the Japanese: emaciated, virtually cut-off, and outgunned, they withdrew, leaving behind thousands of dead and wounded. ‘…and the tennis court was finally cleared by the 2nd Dorsets with the help of tanks.’ So ends most accounts of the battle of the tennis court. There is a vital statistic that reflects something overlooked in that sentence. The 2nd Dorsets took over the tennis court area and fought to clear it for thirty-nine days. They suffered seventy-five men killed, and many more wounded in that period. Yet the 13th May 1944 saw the operation to clear it, Sergeant Gerry Waterhouse of 149th Regiment, Royal Armoured Corps, dropped his Grant tank onto the tennis court, and methodically blasted every Japanese bunker that had been identified. In just eighty minutes, Waterhouse and the 2nd Dorsets had cleared the area, reopened the road to Imphal in that area, for the cost of one dead, and four wounded.
Tanks are a frequently overlooked element of the Burma Campaign. 7th Armoured Brigade acted as a fire service attacking Japanese incursions and buying time for the 1,000-mile retreat in 1942. Alexander himself said ‘without 7th Armoured Brigade, we should not have got the Army out of Burma.’ Despite setbacks in 1943, the right lessons were learned, and at the Battle of the Admin Box, the British and Indian Army had their first victory, proving the Japanese were not the supermen they were thought to be. At the Admin Box, Imphal, and Kohima, the 25th Dragoons, 3nd Carabiniers, 149th RAC, and more had provided a vital service to the infantry. Using their guns to destroy Japanese bunkers at very close range, they saved lives and increased the pace at which the Japanese were defeated. The Japanese had no answer, still using 1930s anti-tank guns against 1940s tanks, or suicide attacks.
The reconquest of Burma in 1945 was to be an entirely different affair. We need to change our perception of the Burma Campaign to understand that all of the jungle warfare was a means to an end. Fourteenth Army’s commander Lieutenant-General Bill Slim always planned to break out of the jungle onto the central dry plain to use Allied superiorities. Before I wrote my first book Forgotten Armour: Tank Warfare in Burma, I knew there was a large and impressive battle to recapture Burma from Japan in 1945. Detail, however, was often missing. To me, the nature of those battles and their impressive nature were taken for granted, I never really understood why it was so remarkable. I strongly believe that this decisive battle is the greatest example of all-arms manoeuvre warfare in the Second World War.
After crossing the huge Irrawaddy River (three times wider than the Rhine) the battle began with a surprise charge 80 miles southeast to a key logistical hub that trapped the bulk of Japanese forces to the north. Once secure all-arms columns fanned out to destroy Japanese counterattacks before they could properly develop. This should be the stuff of legend in our collective memory of the Second World War. Had it been carried out by Monty, Patton, Rommel, or Zhukov, it would be as well-known as the Battle for France, Alamein, Kursk, or Overlord. Yet it is the most incredible battle that you’ve never heard of. The culmination of all-arms manoeuvre warfare in the Second World War; tanks, motorised infantry, self-propelled artillery and air support charging across the dusty dry belt of central Burma, striking the Japanese by surprise in unexpected places. Outnumbered and surrounded, 17th Indian Infantry Division and 255th Indian Tank Brigade annihilated their enemy in the battle that really finished the Japanese in Southeast Asia.
And that is my next book Thunder Run: Meiktila 1945.
Jack Bowsher is the author of Forgotten Armour: Tank Warfare in Burma, published by Chiselbury.
