What Japanese Soldiers Said After Facing the Gurkhas

“They come like the wind and leave like ghosts.” That chilling line, attributed to a Japanese infantry report from the Kohima sector, captures the fear inspired by Gurkha patrols during the Burma campaign. In April 1944, General Mutaguchi’s Fifteenth Army descended on Kohima in north-east India. Roughly 15,000 Japanese troops faced a defensive force of barely 2,500, including the Royal West Kents, Assam Rifles, and Gurkha reinforcements. Behind the ridge stood Dimapur, the supply base sustaining Britain’s war effort in northern Burma. If Kohima fell, the consequences could reach far beyond a remote hill town. The struggle became one of the most brutal close-quarters battles of the Second World War. Around Charles Pawsey’s bungalow and its tennis court, soldiers fought across distances sometimes no wider than the net. Gurkha patrols moved through the darkness with rifles and kukris, attacking positions in near silence. Later, Captain Clive Chettle’s company used pole charges to destroy Japanese bunkers and finally clear the tennis court on 13 May 1944. But the Gurkha reputation was forged across the wider Burma campaign. At Taungdaw in May 1945, Lachhiman Gurung continued firing left-handed after a grenade destroyed his right hand, holding his trench through a four-hour assault. At Snowdon East, Bhanbhagta Gurung crossed exposed ground and cleared successive Japanese positions, including a concrete machine-gun bunker. Both men received the Victoria Cross. This is the story of Kohima, the rebuilding of William Slim’s Fourteenth Army, and the Nepalese soldiers whose courage forced Imperial Japan to reconsider what British-led infantry could do in the jungle. If you value tense, evidence-led documentaries about overlooked battles, like the video and subscribe for more military history. 📚 Further context / historical background: British and Indian Army operational records; Victoria Cross citations; regimental histories; wartime reports and postwar accounts from the Burma campaign; National Army Museum material on Kohima and Imphal. #Gurkhas #BattleOfKohima #WWIIHistory