Howard Woodcock - BBC Radio Interview With Jack Shaw, Part Two.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bill Ross of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Howard Woodcock and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Woodcock fully understands the site's terms and conditions.
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This is a transcript made from an audio recording of a BBC radio interview between Howard Woodcock and Jack Shaw.

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Continued from Part One:

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JS: At Kohima Ridge, you’re facing an army that’s undefeated, cock-a-hoop, taking all before it, and you were face to face with them.

HW: Yes, that was where the garrison held out long enough; brilliantly with the Royal West Kents, long enough for us to be flown out of India and flown up straight into battle to relieve the garrison, relieve the Siege of Kohima, and then fight the battle to take the ridge and the mountains on each side. Of course, all this was going on in Imphal as well, there were five Indian divisions down there, which had become surrounded, fighting very gallantly, and fighting the Japanese fifty miles further south. Theirs was a great battle too, the Battle of the Imphal Plains and the Battle of Kohima were the turning point.
So really, the big battle of Burma was won on Indian soil and we were at Kohima, which is a very Christian community. Today it is about eighty percent Christian. I went to the opening of the new cathedral, a Catholic cathedral on Kohima Ridge, only in 1991. They don’t want to belong to India. They hold it against us that we didn’t give them independence — very friendly towards the British.

JS: There’s a Baptist school there.

HW: There is a Baptist school and Baptist churches and they’re very Christian. We had this tremendous battle. It was a battle of attrition — we weren’t prepared to give ground, the Japanese weren’t prepared to give ground, and just fought to the death.

JS: A lot of hand to hand fighting.

HW: A lot of hand to hand fighting on Kohima Ridge itself.

JS: What about this tennis court?

HW: Well, the fulcrum of the whole battle was Kohima Ridge, which had been a military ridge with depots on it, and the high commissioner for the Nagaland had his bungalow there, and he had his tennis court there. The tennis court is still there. It’s now got raised concrete lines because it’s right in the middle of the cemetery and it’s right in the middle of where this fierce hand to hand fighting took place, day after day, week after week.

JS: So it took place on the tennis court.

HW: The tennis court was right in the middle of the battle. It now stands by the Cross of Sacrifice in the cemetery there, which has about one and a half thousand dead in it — our dead. It became quite famous in military history.

JS: Well, the casualties were horrific, now, I don’t know if you can remember as far back, or if it’s gone out of your mind, but, you’re in the minutes before the battle starts and you know you’re going to get a command to go over the top and have this hand to hand stuff, and you’re going to be firing your guns, what do you do in those silent minutes before you know you’re going to do something that you know might be the end of you?

HW: Well, we’re really talking about sharp end soldiering. When you’re involved in sharp end soldiering, you do go through some very fearful moments.

JS: Do you sing, or are you quiet?

HW: You don’t sing, you don’t even feel like talking. There’s always the odd wise-cracker who will raise spirits by saying something, but when the chips are really down, nobody’s talking. I think you may have seen on war documentaries occasionally, they show you a close-up of a face of somebody waiting to go over the top. You can see the fear in their eyes. I’ve experienced this because I used to, as an Artillery Officer — Artillery Troop Commander. I was never with my guns, I was always with a wireless set with a couple of signallers with the leading Companies of Infantry, because they took Artillery Officers with them to direct artillery fire — close-up artillery fire in the attack, either to knock out enemy positions that were causing trouble, or the worst, to fire smokescreens to help them get out in a hurry if they had to. My job wasn’t to get killed, but it was to get right up to the front so that I could see and do my job, so I used to go in with the infantry. We used to be waiting because we knew when the attack was going to start because the barrage would lift. Then they’d go straight in, hoping the Japanese would still have their heads down, which they never did. They were always waiting for us no matter how much shellfire they’d had. It was during those moments when one felt the fear. I used to look along the lines of the infantry guys and I could see the fear. They were all praying Jack. They were all praying that they would be spared.

JS: What, atheists as well?

HW: Everybody; I think everybody prayed. They must have prayed, whatever their religious beliefs really were. There was only one thing to do, it was to pray.

JS: So you prayed.

HW: I prayed, I prayed very hard, but my mind had to be active. I was thinking about the battle, and being an artilleryman, I was thinking about what I was going to have to do, which was helpful. It was always helpful having responsibility. When you’ve got a lot of fear, having a lot of responsibility is very helpful. It gives you something to really grasp on to. I used to use some words that the king, George the Sixth had used at Christmas, 1939 or 40. I used to repeat these words to myself, in my head — just close my eyes and repeat them in those vital two or three minutes, or five minutes, or whatever it was before we were suddenly having to go in, and they were these well known words: “I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown,’ and he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That should be to you better than the light and safer than the known way.’” I would repeat that, just repeat it to myself, and the moment you go in, you go into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God, and you never think you’re the one who is going to be hit — you BELIEVE you’re going to come through it. And then of course, as soon as the balloon goes up, you’ve so much to do and think about, that the fear goes. When the chips are really down, you’ve got something to think about to do your job. You lose fear to a great degree; you feel anger and you become belligerent. I mean, I’m not a killer by any means, but you do become very belligerent. In my case, I used to get not pleasure, but I used to get satisfaction out of doing my job and seeing my shells landing on the enemy.

JS: And your colleagues, they were Ghurkhas, Indian Nagafolk, close colleagues, why are they sometimes called ‘The Forgotten Army’ Howard?

HW: Well, we were so far away and the media were concentrating, as they always do (and they still do) they were concentrating on what they thought would hit the headlines, and of course, quite rightly, although there were a quarter of a million British out in the Far East, the big battles were being fought in North Africa and Italy, and France. Just after Kohima, we heard the news that we’d landed on the Normandy beaches, I mean, that was tremendous news. And so, we weren’t really reported very much. The media never really got out to see us. There was very little material in terms of film on the battles out there. And so, we were called ‘The Forgotten Army’ and we’ve always called ourselves ‘The Forgotten Army’. I once mentioned this to the Queen Mother. She was at a parade, she came up and had a chat with me, and she said, “How is it that you people of the Burma Star Association, are such, even to this day, so close in comradeship and have so many reunions, more than the other armies?” I said, “Well ma’am, we were known as ‘The Forgotten Army’ and it pulled us closer together." She said, “You are wrong, you were not the forgotten army,” she said, “The King and I used to think about you every day.”

JS: You have a poem there Howard haven’t you, that was written by one lady who actually lived in Kohima, a Naga-lady, and she didn’t forget you either, would you like to read that?

HW: well this is a poem that can be applied to any one of the two and a half thousand war grave cemeteries and plots that there are in the world — and by the way, they do a wonderful job — the war grave commissioner — fantastic. And so, all this relates to Kohima, which was her township and she’s referring to those who released Kohima from the Japanese. It really applies to all those who lie in graves and there were two and a half million over this century (20th), British and Commonwealth, who gave their lives for freedom and peace. Two and a half million, so even though this refers to the Kohima Cemetery, it refers to all our dead wherever they lie and all our missing dead, who have no known grave. It really applies to everybody. The lady’s name was Istarin Kiri and she was born in 1960, after the battle. She was educated at the Baptist English School at Kohima, and it’s a beautiful poem. It’s called ‘In Grateful Dedication’:

Ours is the today, dearly ransomed in blood
That freely flowed yesterday
A sacrifice, the oldest tennis court
Was too poor to contain
Gallantly lay they their lives down
What price, what price a soul
For the fair Kohima
To her, old faithful dead
You can never, never die
While you live on in our hearts
And generation to generation
Repeats the story of your sacrifice
May the skies never close over you
May the rains woo you softly
The mountains be hushed before you
May you rest in eternal peace.

It’s a beautiful poem.

JS: It is indeed, we’ve had some beautiful poems today, and that was another one by a lady, but this is a Naga-lady. Now, you were wounded later weren’t you? You were mentioned in dispatches, how were you wounded?

HW: I was wounded after the Battle Of Kohima, down near Imphal. I was in an attack; the only time I ever went out with Indian Troops. My regiment was attached to an Indian division for a battle. I was normally with British troops, the Camerons, the Royal Scots, the Norfolks, the D.L.I.L., you name it. This time, I went out with Indian troops and I went out with the Sixth Battalion of the Mahratta Light Infantry as a Forward Observation Officer. Of course, it wasn’t bad news; I wanted to fight with them, but it was bad news in one way, that I was white and they were black, and the Japanese picked off anybody they could see who was white in the Indian Army. They were frequently led by British officers. So, my two signallers and I heavily rubbed KIWI boot polish into our faces, round our neck and our hands to try to make ourselves look black. It didn’t really work. I would have got wounded anyway. We got into a battle, a really close battle and I got shot up, I got a burst of machine gun fire. I was talking on the radio, in fact, I was too close to use my own guns, I was directing tank fire and putting tank shells through bunker slips. It was like playing darts, I was quite enjoying getting the bull’s eye. There was a burst of fire and there were bullets all over the place. I got hit by four bullets down the right thigh and my leg.

Continued in Part Three:

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