Road of Bones (86 page)

Ursula Graham Bower
: Graham Bower was a Roedean debutante who grew up in the fashionable London neighbourhood of Kensington and went to the Naga Hills as an amateur anthropologist in the late 1930s. One of the local tribes became convinced she was the reincarnation of an imprisoned priestess whom they worshipped as a goddess. Bower would become the first British woman to lead a guerrilla formation and was dubbed the ‘Naga Queen’ by the American press.

Havildar Sohevu Angami
: The havildar, roughly equivalent to sergeant, grew up in the village of Phek on the border of the Naga Hills and the state of Manipur. He was a hunter before he joined the Assam Regiment, the youngest formation in the Indian Army, shortly after the outbreak of war in the Far East. He fought in the battle of Jessami and at the deputy commissioner’s tennis court where British, Indian and Japanese troops were separated by just twenty yards. He was awarded the British Empire Medal for his courage at Kohima.

Lance Corporal John Harman:
Harman was the son of a millionaire and came to the army from an exclusive private school. However, he refused a commission on the grounds that he did not wish to be set above other men. Harman spent much of his childhood on Lundy Island off the Devon coast and was a lover of the natural world. He was a lance corporal in D company of the 4th Royal West Kents when he carried out the actions which earned him the Victoria Cross at Kohima.

Lieutenant General William Slim:
The commander of the 14th Army was the pre-eminent allied general in South-East Asia. A decorated veteran of the Great War he served in the Gurkha Rifles and was a general in the Indian Army at the outbreak of World War Two. Slim was given the task of building a new army that would be capable of carrying the war to the Japanese after a succession of humiliating defeats. The speed and strength of the Japanese advance into the Naga Hills caught him off guard.

Lieutenant General Montagu Stopford:
Stopford was born into a military family with roots in the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. On the outbreak of World War Two he commanded an infantry brigade with the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France. Stopford was appointed by Slim as overall commander of the Dimapur and Kohima area after the Japanese advance had already begun. He was characterised by one officer who observed him as ambitious, ruthless and extremely able.

Major General John Grover:
The commander of British 2nd Division reported to Stopford and commanded the forces responsible for driving the Japanese out of Kohima and opening the road to Imphal. Grover was born in India but sent to Britain as a boy to be educated. During the Great War he served in France and was wounded three times. His relationship with Stopford would deteriorate badly as the battle of Kohima escalated.

Colonel Hugh Upton Richards:
The commander of the Kohima garrison came to India after many years serving in West Africa. He was a veteran of the Somme and was wounded and taken prisoner during the Great War. He had initially hoped to serve in General Orde Wingate’s Chindits but found himself transferred to command the Kohima garrison only days before the Japanese attacked.

Lieutenant Colonel John Laverty:
The commander of the leading infantry unit at Kohima, 4th battalion, Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment, was a native of County Derry in Ireland. Laverty fought in Iraq during the suppression of the Kurdish insurgency in the 1930s and came to the West Kents after they had fought in North Africa. He was described as a ‘typically bloody-minded Irishman’ in one account of the siege of Kohima.

Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi:
The commander of the Japanese 15th Army first achieved prominence during the late 1930s as a commander in the Sino-Japanese conflict. He claimed to have been behind the 1937 ‘Marco Polo Bridge incident’ in which a Japanese provocation marked the escalation into all-out war in China. Mutaguchi yearned to play what he termed ‘a decisive’ role in the Far Eastern war and was the central figure behind the invasion of India by the 15th Army.

Lieutenant General Kotuku Sato:
Sato led the 31st Division into battle at Kohima and was an old political enemy of Mutaguchi. A veteran of fighting against the Soviet army in Mongolia Sato understood the importance of having secure supply lines for troops operating in remote territory. He would become infamous within the Imperial Japanese Army for his handling of the battle of Kohima.

Lieutenant Masao Hirakubo:
Hirakubo was the son of an accountant from Yokohama and was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army where he became a supply officer with the 58th Infantry Regiment. Although he set out believing in the war his experiences at
Kohima would alter his views forever. After the end of the war he would embark on an extraordinary journey to try and heal the psychological wounds of Kohima.

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First published in Great Britain by Harper
Press
in 2010

Copyright © Fergal Keane 2010

Fergal Keane asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

Maps by Hugh Bicheno

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