By Audrey Dewjee
V-J Day on Saturday 15 August 2020 marked the 75th Anniversary of the ending of the Second World War.
On V-E Day, 8 May 1945, when people celebrated the end of the war in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, the war in the Far East was still raging. While most of Europe went wild with joy at the ending of so much death and suffering, those who had loved ones fighting in the deadly jungles of Burma or who were prisoners of war of the Japanese were still full of fear for their safety and well-being.
War in the Far East actually began in 1937 when Japan invaded China. Because Japan was an island nation it was without many of the resources it needed to wage war, such as oil, tin, rubber and bauxite. According to Wikipedia, Japan entered World War 2 “primarily to obtain raw materials, especially oil, from European (particularly Dutch) possessions in South East Asia which were weakly defended because of the war in Europe. Their plans involved an attack on Burma partly because of Burma’s own natural resources (which included some oil from fields around Yenangyaung, but also minerals such as cobalt and large surpluses of rice), but also to protect the flank of their main attack against Malaya and Singapore and provide a buffer zone to protect the territories they intended to occupy.”
Wikipedia continues, “An additional factor was the Burma Road completed in 1938, which linked Lashio, at the end of a railway from the port of Rangoon, with the Chinese province of Yunnan. This newly completed link was being used to move aid and munitions to the Chinese Nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-Shek which had been fighting the Japanese for several years. The Japanese naturally wished to cut this link.”
On 7 December 1941, the Japanese simultaneously attacked Malaya, the Philippines, Borneo and the US naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. The Far East then became another theatre of World War 2. The United States entered the war and China became one of the Allies.
The Crown Colonist, November 1942, praising “China – Our Ally.”
(© IWM IND 2332)
British “possessions” in the region were systematically attacked – Hong Kong on 18 December and Singapore in the following February. The invasions were successful and the Japanese quickly occupied these territories. British forces retreated or were captured, and before long the Japanese were threatening India, the “Jewel in the Crown” of the British Empire.
The Fourteenth Army under Lieutenant General William Slim was set the task of ridding North East India and Burma of the Japanese.
The fighting in Burma was some of the most brutal in the war, probably the most brutal. The terrain was certainly the most difficult that any soldiers in the British army ever had to overcome in any theatre of World War 2, and their Japanese adversaries, who believed in fighting to the death, had never yet been defeated in any of their campaigns.
Against these tremendous odds General Slim’s troops, assisted by Eastern Air Command, halted the enemy’s triumphant advance into India and then inflicted on him the greatest land defeat that the Imperial Army of Japan ever suffered.
I am not a military historian, so I cannot adequately detail the Burma campaign. I have listed a selection of book titles at the end of this article as well as links to various websites which have further information. My aim in this article is to honour those who achieved this magnificent result and to rescue from oblivion details of some of these soldiers and where they came from.
Men from the ends of the earth
Often referred to as the “Forgotten Army”, the Fourteenth was an incredibly multi-cultural, multi-racial force. As Dr. Robert Lyman, speaking on VJ Day 75: The Nation Remembers (BBC 1, 15 August, 2020) pointed out, its 606,000 men came from 20 countries and spoke 40 different languages. Only 10% of the troops were white British. The majority, 87% of the men, were from India and the remaining 3% came from East and West Africa.
The Fourteenth Army was made up of 13 Divisions – two British Divisions consisting of British personnel from the “mother country”; eight Indian Divisions consisting of about 70% Indian and Gurkha troops and 30% British; the 11th Division from East Africa and the 81st and 82nd Divisions from West Africa, all of which had British officers and a high proportion of British NCOs.
The 11th East African Division
The 11th East African Division was composed of troops from Kenya, Uganda, Nyasaland (now Malawi) Tanganyika (now Tanzania), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and from the former Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The Division set sail for India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in October 1943 and in the beginning of 1944 they were sent in to the Arakan in Burma.
The 81st West African Division
The 81st Division was made up of troops from the Gold Coast (now Ghana), the Gambia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, some of whom had already been fighting the Italians in East Africa. It was sent to India in August 1943. One brigade was sent to help form the legendary Chindits, special operations units under Brigadier Wingate which carried out operations deep behind enemy lines. The rest were sent into the Arakan.
The 82nd West African Division
In 2013, Griff Rhys-Jones presented a wonderfully informative programme about the 82nd West African Division on BBC TV, which is still available on YouTube and I urge you to watch it. Griff’s father was a doctor with the Gold Coast Regiment which, along with the Nigerian Regiment, became part of the 82nd Division that arrived in India in January 1944. The video retraces the route the soldiers took while fighting their way into the Arakan in 1944 and it includes many interviews with African veterans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mPCDFHD3Fk
There is more information on the 82nd West African Division on this link: https://www.burmastar.org.uk/stories/82nd-west-african-division/
Some men in the African divisions remained in Burma for a year after the war ended, “mopping up” pockets of Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender.
The Indian Divisions
Many medals were awarded during the Burma Campaign. The following images are of three of the Indian soldiers who were awarded the Victoria Cross – the highest British award for gallantry. Gian Singh and Bhandari Ram survived the war; Naik Fazal Din’s VC was awarded posthumously.
Naik (Corporal) Gian Singh 
Sepoy (Private) Bhandari Ram 
Naik Fazal Din
It is unsurprising that there were so many Indian Divisions in the Fourteenth Army, given India’s proximity to the location of the fighting. It must be remembered that, at the time, these soldiers came from the old, undivided India, which is now separated into the three countries of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The men in these divisions came from many different Indian communities and regions and followed many different faiths and religions. Today, perhaps, people remember that Gurkhas and maybe Sikhs, and perhaps even that Muslims fought in World War 2, but the ethnic mix of the Indian army was much wider than that.
Before going to Burma, many of these divisions had already been fighting in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. To give but one example – the 5th Indian Division had already fought the Italians and Germans in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, Iraq and in the First Battle of El Alamein in the Western Desert of North Africa, before being shipped back to India to fight against the Japanese. The Division fought in Burma from December 1943 until the victory in 1945, taking part in fighting in Arakan and in the battles of Imphal and Kohima.
The British Divisions
Even in the two British Divisions there were men from diverse ethnic backgrounds. Sergeant Benjamin Macrae, the son of a Londoner and an African who had fought in the First World War, was awarded the Military Medal for his bravery in battle. Benjamin’s oral history about his service in the 2nd Infantry Division is available from the archives of the Imperial War Museum. https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80010403
York-born Charles Henry Cheong, known as Harry, had tried to join up early in the war, but he wasn’t accepted until after China became one of the Allies in 1941. Captain Harry Cheong’s bravery was subsequently “mentioned in dispatches.” When he tried to find employment after war ended, he found that his surname prevented him getting positions. He therefore changed his name in 1945 to Dewar and went on to have a successful teaching career, eventually becoming a headmaster. These are just two examples – no doubt there were others.
Sergeant Benjamin Macrae 
Captain Harry Cheong (later Dewar)
The Fourteenth’s courage, skill and tenacity on the ground was facilitated and sustained by air support which not only fought the Japanese but, crucially, dropped essential supplies of food, medicines and ammunition, which could not have reached the men in any other way because of the density of the jungle. Small planes, using improvised airstrips, also evacuated some of the most severely wounded to base hospitals in India.
The Fourteenth Army succeeded in its mission. It won major battles against much larger forces in Arakan and the two epic battles of Imphal and Kohima, and it drove the Japanese invaders out of Burma.
John Masters in his book The Road Past Mandalay paid this fitting tribute to the “forgotten” army:
“Below the generals, below the staff….and above them all, were the soldiers. The theatre, and this campaign, gathered to itself like a whirlpool, men from the ends of the earth. There were English, Irish, Welsh and Scots, and in the RAF Newfoundlanders, Australians, Canadians, New Zealanders and South Africans. There were Chinese; there were tall slender Negroes from East Africa, and darker, more heavily built Negroes from West Africa, with the tribal slits slashed deeply into their cheeks – an infantry division of each. There were Chins, Kachins, Karens, and Burmans, mostly light brown, small-boned men in worn jungle green, doubly heroic because the Japanese held possession of their homes, often of their families too; and, until about now, how could they be sure which side was going to win?….Lastly, and in by far the greatest numbers, there were the men of the Indian Army, the largest volunteer army the world has ever known. There were men from every caste and race – Sikhs, Dogras, Pathans, Madrassis, Mahrattas, Rajputs, Assamese, Kumaonis, Punjabis, Garhwalis, Naga head-hunters – and, from Nepal, the Gurkhas in all their tribes and sub-tribes, of Limbu and Rai, Thakur and Chhetri, Magar and Gurung. These men wore turbans, and steel helmets, and slouch hats, and berets, and tank helmets and khaki shakos inherited from the eighteenth century. There were companies that averaged five feet one inch in height and companies that averaged six feet three inches. There were men as purple black as the West Africans, and men as pale and gold-wheat of skin as a lightly sun-tanned blonde. They worshipped God according to the rites of the Mahayana and Hinayana, of Sunni and of Shiah, of Rome and Canterbury and Geneva, of the Vedas and the sages and Mahabharatas, of the ten Gurus, of the secret shrines of the jungle. There were vegetarians and meat-eaters and fish-eaters, and men who had four wives, men who shared one wife with four brothers, and men who openly practised sodomy. There were men who had never seen snow and men who seldom saw anything else. And Brahmins and Untouchables, both with rifle and tommy gun. No one who saw the XIVth Army in action, above all, no one who saw its dead on the field of battle, the black and the white and the brown and the yellow lying together in their indistinguishable blood on the rich soil of Burma, can ever doubt that there is a brotherhood of man; or fail to cry:
What is Man, that he can give so much for war, so little for peace?”
WHEN YOU GO HOME, TELL THEM OF US AND SAY
FOR YOUR TOMORROW WE GAVE OUR TODAY
(Epitaph on the Kohima 2nd Division War Memorial)
Further information
Films:
A wonderful short film of interviews with African veterans of the war in Burma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWIHOIZVZtE
Film of the Victory Parade which took place in London on 8 June, 1946. Veterans of the 11th East Africa, 81st West Africa and 82nd West Africa Divisions are featured in it: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-victory-parade-1946-online
Books:
Fighting for Britain: African Soldiers in the Second World War, David Killingray with Martin Plaut, Boydell & Brewer, 2017: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighting-Britain-African-Soldiers-Second/dp/1847010474
Fighting with the Fourteenth Army in Burma, James Luto, Pen & Sword, 2013:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fighting-Fourteenth-Army-Burma-Summaries/dp/1783030313
Burma ’44: The Battle That Turned Britain’s War in the East, James Holland, Corgi, 2017: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burma-44-Battle-Turned-Britains/dp/B083WMY2R9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2555B4XE8GAHZ&dchild=1&keywords=burma+44+james+holland&qid=1600354766&sprefix=burma+%2744%2Caps%2C182&sr=8-1
Japan’s Last Bid for Victory, Robert Lyman, Pen and Sword, 2011: https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Japans-Last-Bid-for-Victory-Paperback/p/18662 [A paperback reissue of this book is due for publication on 30 October, 2020.]
14th Army at War, George Forty, Littlehampton Book Service, 1982: https://www.amazon.co.uk/14th-Army-War-George-Forty/dp/0711011613/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=14th+army+at+war&qid=1600355136&s=audible&sr=1-1
Articles:
https://memorialgates.org/history/ww2/campaigns/burma-india.html
https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/far-east-campaign
https://www.burmastar.org.uk/stories/how-admin-troops-backed-up-the-fighting-men/
The Battles of Imphal and Kohima: https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/battle-imphal
Burmese veterans: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-44582731
Nagaland’s unknown World War II heroes: https://rediscoveryproject.com/2017/06/16/nagaland-world-war-ii/