Battle of Kohima

In the spring of 1944 the Japanese army in Burma launched an offensive into India, aiming at the Allied bases around Imphal. A Japanese division crossed the jungle hills and in early April surrounded the small garrison at Kohima, the hill town commanding the road from Imphal to the railhead at Dimapur. For about two weeks the defenders held a shrinking perimeter on Garrison Hill, at one point facing the enemy across the district commissioner's tennis court. Relief arrived in mid April, but it took two more months of hard fighting to clear the ridges around the town. Starving and short of ammunition, the Japanese division withdrew, and the failed offensive became one of the heaviest defeats Japan's army suffered on land.

For decades Kohima was overshadowed in British memory by the war in Europe, a neglect the veterans of what they called the Forgotten Army felt keenly. In 2013 a National Army Museum poll named Imphal and Kohima together as Britain's greatest battle, which did much to raise its profile. Historians have since given more weight to the Indian troops who made up much of the force, and to the Naga people, who guided, carried supplies and gathered intelligence for the defenders and whose villages were caught in the fighting. The war cemetery on Garrison Hill and a trust supporting education in Nagaland keep up links between veterans' families and the town.