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Fighting Through to Kohima: A Memoir of War in India and Burma
This author is extraordinarily lucky to be alive! All those who read this splendid Second World War memoir will doubtless come to the same view.
After joining up in 1939 with the Queen's Royal Regiment the Author was posted to the North West Frontier of India where he cut his teeth chasing Pathan tribesman bandit gangs for two years. This was exciting enough but only a taste of what was to come. The Japanese advance into Burma threatened India and along with many thousands of British and Colonial troops Lowry found himself fighting in the Arakan region. Conditions were appalling and the fighting was extremely bitter by any standards. His Battalion was cut off by the Japs for three weeks but refused to surrender yet even worse was to come as the Battalion was thrown into the thick of the action at Kohima which is rated as the most desperate defensive action for the campaign. In one week 173 members of this Battalion were lost. Lowry himself was seriously wounded when a Japanese officer dropped out of a tree onto him. All this is vividly described in this fascinating and inspiring book.
After joining up in 1939 with the Queen's Royal Regiment the Author was posted to the North West Frontier of India where he cut his teeth chasing Pathan tribesman bandit gangs for two years. This was exciting enough but only a taste of what was to come. The Japanese advance into Burma threatened India and along with many thousands of British and Colonial troops Lowry found himself fighting in the Arakan region. Conditions were appalling and the fighting was extremely bitter by any standards. His Battalion was cut off by the Japs for three weeks but refused to surrender yet even worse was to come as the Battalion was thrown into the thick of the action at Kohima which is rated as the most desperate defensive action for the campaign. In one week 173 members of this Battalion were lost. Lowry himself was seriously wounded when a Japanese officer dropped out of a tree onto him. All this is vividly described in this fascinating and inspiring book.
304 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 12, 2022
The India-Burma theater of World War II was of secondary importance to Allied strategic objectives, and the Americans were unenthusiastic about propping up Britain’s fading empire. Nevertheless, it was the scene of hard fighting under terrible conditions, intense heat during the day and chilling cold at night, since much of the fighting took place several thousand feet above sea level. Torrential monsoon rains fell for part of the year, with dry, parching heat the other months. Dysentery and malaria were widespread among the troops, who were also tormented by flies, mosquitoes, leeches and ticks. Fighting took place in trackless jungle cut by steep, nearly vertical ridges, with visibility often reduced to mere yards.
Michael Lowry was a rarity in that he was a regular officer, a graduate of Sandhurst who had been commissioned just before the outbreak of war. He entered the 1st Battalion of the Queen’s Royal Regiment and joined it in India. The regiment spent most of 1942 fighting in Waziristan, an area of northwest India which today is part of Pakistan and Afghanistan, against local tribesmen who were raiding and harassing British lines of communications. At the time there were concerns that either the Germans or the Russians might mount an invasion into India, though after the start of Barbarossa it became clear that neither of them had the troops or plans to do so. The fighting in Waziristan was brutal, as the tribesmen were expert at sniping and ambushes, and Lowry has an interesting discussion of what was involved in the bi-weekly pushes to open the roads for supplies, which involved posting the entire brigade along the route, with outposts constantly under fire from hidden tribesmen. The British finally resolved the issue in part by buying off the chieftains, and in part by a massive campaign of retaliation, destroying entire villages to discourage further attacks.
His battalion was moved across the country to the Arakan region, which is along the southwest coast of what is today Burma, where it was engaged in bitter fighting against Japanese forces. From his perspective as a company commander he knew little of the overall strategy, but in fact the Arakan offensive was a costly failure for the British and Indian troops, who were largely untrained for jungle warfare, and were thrown against well prepared Japanese troops who had developed defenses in depth. For Lowry it involved occasional attacks against well fortified positions on steep hills with almost zero visibility, resulting in a steady drip of dead and wounded among his men. Otherwise it meant sending out patrols and setting up ambushes while being constantly alert for infiltration attempts and coming under frequent artillery and mortar fire. His division was surrounded and cut off by the Japanese, but instead of trying to fight their way out they dug in and relied on air drops of supplies while they waited for reinforcements to break the encirclement and for their opponents to have to withdraw when they ran short of food and ammunition. Although the British and Indian troops were down to half rations, the air drops were sufficient for them to withstand the siege until the Japanese pulled back.
The battalion then moved north and took part in the fighting for Kohima, often called the last great battle of the British empire. The Japanese had advanced from Burma with the goal of cutting off the American supply line to China, and then, if successful, of pushing deep into India to capture key cities and transportation hubs. Strategically, the attack made little sense. The Japanese were already at the end of a long and difficult supply line, and their plans depended on capturing enough British supplies to continue the advance. They succeeded in capturing most of Kohima from the southeast, which put them in possession of the high ground and, just as important, the main source of water for the defenders.
The British decided they needed to retake those hills, at whatever cost, and Lowry’s battalion attacked up a steep hill swept by fire from bunkers with overlapping fields of fire and supported by artillery and machine gun positions on other hills nearby. They eventually took the crest of the hill, though the Japanese still held strong positions only yards below them on the reverse slope. It took days to secure the hill, which was only accomplished by bringing up tanks to blast the bunkers with their 75mm guns only fifteen yards from where Lowry and his men were dug in. His battalion lost 40 percent of its manpower taking and holding the hill, along with most of its officers.
His account of the fighting is intense and dramatic, but it made me wonder about the overall strategy that had been employed, and I have added Fergal Keane’s book Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 to my reading list. Was it really necessary to launch frontal attacks against heavily defended positions? It might have been, because water was scarce, and holding the high ground meant the Japanese could interdict some of the British resupply efforts. And yet, perhaps a different approach, such as a flanking maneuver, could have accomplished the same thing with far fewer casualties. Or, since the Allies controlled the skies and had a huge advantage in artillery, perhaps they could have cut off the Japanese supply lines and waited until they were forced to withdraw. Fighting was also going on at Imphal to the south, which eventually pushed the Japanese back and would have forced them to withdraw from Kohima as well.
Lowry did not see the end of the fighting in Kohima himself. He had been battling recurring malaria for several years, and was eventually pulled out and sent to hospitals in the rear, where he remained through the end of the war. He would remain in the Army and was awarded the Military Cross in 1955 for his actions against communist rebels in Malaysia.
This is an interesting book, bringing to life a theater of the Second World War that is often overlooked. I would also recommend George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, an account from his perspective as a teenage infantryman in Burma during the last year of the war. Fraser was an accomplished writer and is most remembered for his Flashman series of comic novels.
Michael Lowry was a rarity in that he was a regular officer, a graduate of Sandhurst who had been commissioned just before the outbreak of war. He entered the 1st Battalion of the Queen’s Royal Regiment and joined it in India. The regiment spent most of 1942 fighting in Waziristan, an area of northwest India which today is part of Pakistan and Afghanistan, against local tribesmen who were raiding and harassing British lines of communications. At the time there were concerns that either the Germans or the Russians might mount an invasion into India, though after the start of Barbarossa it became clear that neither of them had the troops or plans to do so. The fighting in Waziristan was brutal, as the tribesmen were expert at sniping and ambushes, and Lowry has an interesting discussion of what was involved in the bi-weekly pushes to open the roads for supplies, which involved posting the entire brigade along the route, with outposts constantly under fire from hidden tribesmen. The British finally resolved the issue in part by buying off the chieftains, and in part by a massive campaign of retaliation, destroying entire villages to discourage further attacks.
His battalion was moved across the country to the Arakan region, which is along the southwest coast of what is today Burma, where it was engaged in bitter fighting against Japanese forces. From his perspective as a company commander he knew little of the overall strategy, but in fact the Arakan offensive was a costly failure for the British and Indian troops, who were largely untrained for jungle warfare, and were thrown against well prepared Japanese troops who had developed defenses in depth. For Lowry it involved occasional attacks against well fortified positions on steep hills with almost zero visibility, resulting in a steady drip of dead and wounded among his men. Otherwise it meant sending out patrols and setting up ambushes while being constantly alert for infiltration attempts and coming under frequent artillery and mortar fire. His division was surrounded and cut off by the Japanese, but instead of trying to fight their way out they dug in and relied on air drops of supplies while they waited for reinforcements to break the encirclement and for their opponents to have to withdraw when they ran short of food and ammunition. Although the British and Indian troops were down to half rations, the air drops were sufficient for them to withstand the siege until the Japanese pulled back.
The battalion then moved north and took part in the fighting for Kohima, often called the last great battle of the British empire. The Japanese had advanced from Burma with the goal of cutting off the American supply line to China, and then, if successful, of pushing deep into India to capture key cities and transportation hubs. Strategically, the attack made little sense. The Japanese were already at the end of a long and difficult supply line, and their plans depended on capturing enough British supplies to continue the advance. They succeeded in capturing most of Kohima from the southeast, which put them in possession of the high ground and, just as important, the main source of water for the defenders.
The British decided they needed to retake those hills, at whatever cost, and Lowry’s battalion attacked up a steep hill swept by fire from bunkers with overlapping fields of fire and supported by artillery and machine gun positions on other hills nearby. They eventually took the crest of the hill, though the Japanese still held strong positions only yards below them on the reverse slope. It took days to secure the hill, which was only accomplished by bringing up tanks to blast the bunkers with their 75mm guns only fifteen yards from where Lowry and his men were dug in. His battalion lost 40 percent of its manpower taking and holding the hill, along with most of its officers.
His account of the fighting is intense and dramatic, but it made me wonder about the overall strategy that had been employed, and I have added Fergal Keane’s book Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944 to my reading list. Was it really necessary to launch frontal attacks against heavily defended positions? It might have been, because water was scarce, and holding the high ground meant the Japanese could interdict some of the British resupply efforts. And yet, perhaps a different approach, such as a flanking maneuver, could have accomplished the same thing with far fewer casualties. Or, since the Allies controlled the skies and had a huge advantage in artillery, perhaps they could have cut off the Japanese supply lines and waited until they were forced to withdraw. Fighting was also going on at Imphal to the south, which eventually pushed the Japanese back and would have forced them to withdraw from Kohima as well.
Lowry did not see the end of the fighting in Kohima himself. He had been battling recurring malaria for several years, and was eventually pulled out and sent to hospitals in the rear, where he remained through the end of the war. He would remain in the Army and was awarded the Military Cross in 1955 for his actions against communist rebels in Malaysia.
This is an interesting book, bringing to life a theater of the Second World War that is often overlooked. I would also recommend George MacDonald Fraser’s Quartered Safe Out Here, an account from his perspective as a teenage infantryman in Burma during the last year of the war. Fraser was an accomplished writer and is most remembered for his Flashman series of comic novels.
March 14, 2018
This is a fantastic account of war in the Far East during the Second World War. Michael Lowry served in the Queen's Royal Regiment in the frontier of India, and later Burma. The author spent the outbreak of the war fighting bandits on the Indian border with Afghanistan, and then shifted into full-on-war with the Imperial Japanese Army in 1942. The book deals with his experiences in India and Burma, until a medical issue takes him out of the war. Lowry describes everything in detail, all the horror and humour of war that seem to go strangely hand in hand, as well as detailing the tactics and equipment used by the British and Indian troops. My only issue with the book is that I wish it could be longer (which is the opposite of my common complaints with books!)
April 17, 2019
This is a very good book that captures the feel of jungle warfare and well worth reading
August 1, 2014
A marvellously detailed account of warfare right at the cutting edge - prior to and through World War II - through the eyes of an officer whjo participated in operations against recalcitrant tribesmen in Waziristan, and then swung to the other edge of the spectrum, fighting Japanese in the dense forests of the Arakan and then in the hills of Kohima. Has lessons galore on how wars are fought and won for today's equipment-loaded 'techno-soldiers'...
July 18, 2016
Lowry kept a detailed diary and other records to write a very interesting book on his service in the British Army from the out break of WWII to when he was removed from combat for medical reasons late in the war.
He writes clearly about low intensity combat in the Indian frontier with Afghanistan, and combat against the IJA in India and Burma. He provides great insight into tactics, management of troops, relationships with fellow officers and duty and service. He is quite admirable.
He writes clearly about low intensity combat in the Indian frontier with Afghanistan, and combat against the IJA in India and Burma. He provides great insight into tactics, management of troops, relationships with fellow officers and duty and service. He is quite admirable.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews