Naga Memories of Kohima: Aviü’s Story

I apologise for the paucity of posts recently. I have been nose down with several big projects and have just come up for air.

I have long wanted to tell the story on substack of Aviü.

One of the highlights of my writing career has been to interview Naga veterans of the battle of Kohima. One that I will never forget was Aviü (pronounced Ah-vee). She was the mother of a colleague of mine in the Kohima Educational Trust (the late Lily Das) and the aunt of the Naga writer and historian, Easterine Iralu. It was Easterine who first began capturing the memories of Naga veterans, including Aviü and who introduced me to many of them. Most of the memories garnered here came in the first instance from Easterine, but I sat with Aviü on several occasions as she described her war to me.

Aviü in Kohima in 1944

Aviü was the daughter of Apuo, who worked for Charles Pawsey, the Indian Government’s Deputy Commissioner (DC)in Kohima. She was nineteen in 1944. A Christian, she lived with her family in the Mission Compound on the slopes of Naga Hill, above Kohima Town, in a house surrounded by flowers and orchards. It was an idyllic childhood. orchards. It was an idyllic childhood. The previous year she had fallen in love with a young British Royal Engineer – Staff Sergeant Victor Hewitt –and was now carrying his child. The first signs of war had come in 1942, with the straggling and suffering humanity trundling up the road from Imphal on their way to safety after escaping the Japanese invasion of Burma. Many Nagas joined the Indian Army or supporting services, while others helped the British to extend and improve the Dimapur-Imphal road, and Aviü was no different. She worked as a supervisor of contracted labour on the road improvement programme overseen by the Royal Engineers, an activity that allowed her to see much of Victor Hewitt. He called her ‘Mari’, after the profusion of wild marigolds that covered the orchard floor. The war still seemed far off. 

But when March [1944] came, the situation was very different. News reached us that the Japanese were just days away from Kohima. Father, who was a Treasury Officer in the Deputy Commissioner’s office, had to leave quickly for Shillong carrying important documents and money … The traders at Kohima, who were largely Indian, had fled to Dimapur and beyond, having sold their shops or closing down their shutters when they could not sell. The local people escaped to the villages in the north, to Tsiesema, Rükhroma and other northern villages.

With the shops closed, there was no movement at all in the town’s streets. No people loitered around and the vegetable market was bereft of the sellers and thronging buyers. A few stray dogs were on the streets. Quite frequently, the army jeeps would come by and go back in a tearing hurry. Apart from that, there was no sign of life at all in Kohima. The few people who remained behind were surprised when they met their relatives or friends. Every family was in the process of either leaving or packing to leave Kohima. Vic was very worried for our safety. With Father away in Shillong he took charge of our family. On 30 March 1944, he took my younger sisters to Chieswema, seven miles from Kohima. They stayed there with an uncle of ours.

On the night of 2 April, Victor did not show up. I felt increasingly lonely to be in the house alone with my mother … There were so many rumours of the Japanese. Some of the men said they were short and ugly and some others said they were like us and would treat us well. But there were so many reports and it was difficult to decide what to believe. I hoped we would not fall into Japanese hands and be dealt with cruelly. The mental picture of the refugees who were fleeing the Japanese advance [in 1942] flashed into my mind. I prayed we would not be reduced to that.

That night, after dinner, everyone slept. My brother and his wife who lived on the other side of the house and my mother … were fast asleep. Vic failed to come and I was both anxious and fearful … After some time, the sirens wailed and we quickly ran to take shelter in the trenches. These were trenches that had been built in 1942 when the Japanese suddenly bombed Burma. The sirens were instantly followed by the sound of bursting grenades and the roar of big guns. I feared for Vic, where was he? Was he in the midst of those bursting shells? When the firing died down, we returned to the house and the others slept but I stayed awake. Then I heard my name being called and the sound of frantic knocking, ‘Aviü, open the door, do you hear the shots? They’re coming closer and closer, we are so frightened!’ It was our two neighbours, a boy called Jimmy and his younger brother. I let them in. My brother and his wife came and joined us too and we all sat huddled together, listening to the sounds of battle … We had never heard the sound of gunfire in such intensity before. Though we were well drilled at what to do if the sirens sounded, it was terrifying to be actually putting what we had learnt into practice. In the weeks before, we had grown used to gunshots in the distance or the shelling of places at a great distance from Kohima. Now, it seemed that those sounds had come closer, magnified and multiplied a hundred times. The boys said that their parents had forbidden them to leave the house till they returned to get them. But they were too frightened to stay on their own.

Towards dawn, the noises died down. The silence was eerie. The long night had accustomed us to the intermittent sound of rifle shots and exploding hand grenades, and we braced ourselves at every gunshot sound for more. With the sounds of gunfire completely subdued, we went outside the house to get a closer look at the valley below us. It was a strange sight. There were no jeeps or trucks in sight. The busy sub-area of Mission Compound, which used to be a hubbub of activity at all times, seemed to have suddenly dissolved. Not a soul was around. While we were watching this in amazement, Vic’s jeep tore up the road and he clambered down from the vehicle. ‘Marigold,’ he said, ‘Get ready quickly, there’s no time. I’m taking you and the whole family to Chieswema where you will be safe. You have to be there for a few days until this madness is over. Don’t worry, I’ll come and see you when I can. Come on, you have to get ready.’ I was numb and speechless. I was not prepared for this parting from Vic. Nor had the seriousness of the war fully dawned on me until the frightening experience of the night before. 

Gently leading me into the house, he began to pack a suitcase for me. He stuffed it with tinned food to last us for months, some of my clothes and toiletries, whatever he felt I might need while away from Kohima. But Mother refused to leave. No amount of persuasion would make her change her mind. ‘I cannot leave my parents behind. Don’t worry about me, God will take care of me. But you must all go and care for the younger ones as well.’ Mother’s aged parents had stubbornly refused to leave Kohima. So Mother was determined to stay and look after them. Vic spent a long time talking to my mother but she would not leave so he gave up trying. Five of us, my brother, his wife and a woman called Vikieü and her baby got into the jeep and Vic drove toward Chieswema. It was 3 April when we left Kohima. None of us ever thought that we would be away for more than a few days.

I think it never entered anyone’s head then, that Kohima would become a battlefield where so many British, Indian and Gurkha forces would fall. We had such faith in the British Government that we could not believe it could be defeated by any other nation. They had always protected us and our lands. So I did not think that Vic was in any great danger from the war … The whole morning Vic stayed with us, helping us to settle in and unpacking our things. It got later than he thought so he hurriedly got into the jeep and drove off, waving back to us. I stood and watched the jeep till it disappeared in the distance and all I could see was the trail of dust it left behind. We were safe now.

The next day, we went down to the main road and waited for Vic. We waited for a long time but there was no sign of his jeep. Out on the road opposite the village, we could see vehicles moving on the Kohima-Dimapur road. But as it got quite late, we gave up hope of him coming that day and we returned to the village. When we reached the wooden gate of the village, we heard the loud roar of guns and exploding grenades and bombs. Anxiously we looked toward Kohima. The village of Chieswema faced Kohima directly and from the high point where we stood we had a good view of the township. How shocked we were to see the whole of Kohima ablaze and covered with thick black smoke. We could not believe our eyes. The peaceful and charming little town which had been our home all these years was going up in smoke! Tears streaming down our faces, we stood there transfixed and sobbed aloud at the sight before us. Other thoughts crowded in. How was Mother? How was Vic? Was this the reason why he could not come today? Were they both alive? The thought that they might have been killed did not bear thinking about. We stood there for many minutes. It was dark when we made our way to the house, choked with our emotions and dazed from the sight of that beloved place burning and enveloped in black smoke.

We were not the only anxious ones. By night, the gaonburas and elders of the village were meeting to discuss what was to be done next. Chieswema was seven miles from Kohima; it would be just a matter of a few hours before the enemy was upon us. Seeing Kohima fall was a great shock for all, and showed the vulnerability of the British forces. Now the villagers of Chieswema were consulting among themselves about where they could go to seek refuge. So it was paradoxical that a village that had offered refuge to others should now be worrying about seeking refuge for itself after the bombing of Kohima. That night, many Indian sepoys and soldiers of the Assam Regiment came to shelter at the village. They were those who had escaped from Jessami and Kharasom. The villagers supplied them with food and provided guides to them, to lead them to the next village, Keruma, so they could join their unit at Dimapur.

The next day was 5 April. The village was a flurry of activity. Quite early in the morning people had begun to kill their cattle. We bought some meat from them and cooked it. My brother and his in-laws were being given Naga haircuts when we went across to their house. The men had cropped their hair with a dao[1], straight across the back and sides, so that they would look like the other men of the village. Sam and the young men who had been to school wore their hair in the western fashion and this made them easy targets for the Japanese. They could be picked out and forced to work as spies.

One man was posted at the top of the village so they could tell if anyone was approaching. Suddenly the man shouted, ‘Many soldiers are coming this way, but they are not wearing British uniforms and helmets. They are marching towards our village!’ We were alerted in an instant. As we ran out to get more news, we found our brother with a Naga haircut and dressed in an old torn shirt. He had removed his trousers and around his waist was the black kilt worn by the village men. All his in-laws were dressed in the same manner. Sam was unusually fair and so ash had been rubbed on his neck where his fair skin was exposed. We sat outside among the villagers and waited for the approach of the Japanese. Everyone seemed too petrified to try to run away. Our neighbour, young Jimmy, couldn’t trace his parents and was still with us. While Sam’s brother-in-law was getting his hair cut, the guard shouted again that the soldiers were approaching the village very fast, ‘They’re coming up like ants, there are so many of them,’ he shouted again. The man cutting Sam’s brother-in-law’s hair was only halfway through his job when this second shout came. The barber hurriedly finished the job. With his unevenly cut hair, the man tried to blend in with the rest of the village menfolk.

The rest of us changed out of our western clothing and wore the old, faded woven waist-cloths of the Angamis hurriedly given to us by our relatives in the village. A woman came and smeared ash and charcoal on my face saying, ‘My dear, I have to disguise your fairness or else the Japanese will know that you are not a village-dweller.’ I looked around and saw that two other women were doing the same to my younger sisters. The coal stung my flesh but I gritted my teeth and waited for her to finish. Sitting among the sunburnt villagers, we stood out because our limbs were more fair than theirs. So, we rubbed coal and ash on the exposed parts of our legs and arms. We tried to sit unobtrusively among the others so that we would not draw the attention of the Japanese.

As the Japanese marched into the village, people stopped what they were doing and stood still. We were separated from my brother’s family. Jimmy sat with us with his hair half-cropped. As we sat thus, we saw the Japanese enter our house and begin to take away our belongings. First, they took our clothes out of the house, our nice dresses, shoes, coats and then they began to take our carefully stored rations. Tears stung at my eyes as I looked on and saw the soldiers taking away the coat which Vic had given me. But I was helpless, I dared not protest. I fought back my tears and tried to sit very still. They took Jimmy’s new coat which he had been given when he went to Tiddim to work with the civilian labourers for the British troops. Vic had stocked a good amount of tinned food for us when he brought us to the village. But now, those tins of food had fallen into Japanese hands. The soldiers laughed and talked loudly to one another as they walked off with their hands full of what they had plundered from us. We sat on, looking at one another, tears glistening in our eyes. Before they came, my cousin had had the foresight to hide my small suitcase in their garden and that was undiscovered. There was a little food in it, some clothes and toiletries.

In moments, the village of Chieswema was swarming with Japanese soldiers. They quickly set up their radios. Then some of them came to the village people and demanded chickens, eggs, water and rice. One of them waved and signalled to Jimmy to get up. Jimmy got up and went closer to him. The soldier ordered him to go into the house and fetch eggs. Jimmy smiled and made gestures with his hands to show that there were none. Then they pushed an earthen jar into his hands and told him to fetch water. Jimmy picked up the jar and in the next moment, he pretended to lose his grip on it and the jar fell to the ground and was smashed, all the water inside it pouring out onto the ground. The soldier was very angry with Jimmy. He slapped him roundly on his cheek. Poor Jimmy turned red from the insult but he had to swallow his pride as the soldiers were heavily armed and any retaliation might bring a bullet. These first encounters with the Japanese were unpleasant and it grew worse. We both feared and hated them.

Many Nagas fled into the jungle to escape this oppression, and especially to avoid the chance of being caught up in the fighting. Aviü was one such, scrabbling to survive in the jungle until the end of April, in spite of the threat of man-eating tigers, starvation and the ever present danger of the Japanese, themselves desperate for food and prepared to take it from the jungle-dwelling refugees by force if necessary. On 17 April her small party received instructions to make their way to safety at Khonoma. It mean having to travel due south, over the ridge near the Japanese-held village of Merema and across Dzüdza river to Zubza. ‘The path we used was a small footpath which led towards the woods near Kohima,’ she recalled. 

It was a steep downhill climb in places. We had been walking for five miles when we had our first sight of British troops.[2] They were heavily armed, rifles readied for firing and they held grenades in their hands. They had stuck leaves in their helmets and on their clothes and we were frightened to see all of them looking very stern and hard-faced. But when they saw us they smiled and waved to us and waved us on. As for them, they walked silently in a long line toward Merema village and that was the last we saw of them. But the relief all of us felt at the sight of British uniforms was immense. It meant that the area had not wholly fallen into Japanese hands, that the British still held some areas in Kohima and beyond. Perhaps then, our loved ones were also safe somewhere.

The next morning they could see Garrison Hill in the distance, garlanded with parachutes and denuded of vegetation. Bullets whistled by and the ground shuddered with the reverberations caused by the relentless pounding of mortars and artillery. Aviü prayed for Vic and his friends to be safe especially when, walking along jungle paths, the refugees often came across wounded soldiers being carried on stretchers by our men. Those who could walk, did so, slowly stumbling along after their comrades, with the help of bamboo staffs. It broke our spirits to see the wounded soldiers … The wounded soldiers looked helpless and vulnerable, many of them not much older than us.

Moving slowly, the exhausted Nagas reached Jotsoma finally on 24 April. ‘Mother’s uncle was there, as well as another family from Kohima related to us,’ she recalled. ‘They welcomed us warmly and gave us chicken broth and hot rice to eat. How wonderful the food tasted, it was the best food we had eaten having fed on half rations or rice and herbs for many days. Jotsoma was full of British, Indian and Gurkha troops.’ Although the battle continued to rage on Kohima Ridge nearby, Aviü felt ‘wonderful to be in Jotsoma, far from the threat of the Japanese and in the vicinity of a well-armed and friendly army’. 

Her relief was to be short-lived, however. Some days after her party had managed to reach Jotsoma, Jimmy managed to make his way down to Dimapur, in search of Aviü’s father. ‘By evening he was back in the village,’ she recalled.

We spotted him immediately and we waved and called out to him. But he looked tired and sad. Strangely, he did not respond to our smiles and waving which was so uncharacteristic for Jimmy. In all the years I had known him, he had been a cheerful lad and in the ordeal we shared in the jungle, Jimmy had always kept our spirits up. I thought he was playing a joke on us. But he drew near and said heavily, ‘I have sad news … Vic was killed on the 18th by a sniper’s bullet’. My world collapsed around me at his words. I couldn’t react at first and Jimmy’s words echoed in my mind. Vic killed, on 18 April – the news slowly sank in – I wanted to scream – but a choked cry was all that came out of my throat. Then we were all in one another’s arms sobbing at this unbelievable loss … Oh God, how difficult to bear was this last blow. After all we’d been through, we had hoped to find each other again and be granted happiness. This was so unexpected, none of us could accept it. I think I finally fell asleep from exhaustion though I don’t remember sleeping at all. I lay in bed staring at the roof, the walls, my eyes filling with tears and my body feeling spent with all the crying I had done. The next morning we packed and left. I did not want to stay a day more at that place, which had first given so much relief and promise of happiness, only to snatch it away without any warning.

Victor Hewitt, KIA Kohima 18 April 1944

Sergeant Victor Hewitt lies there still, but not forgotten, on Garrison Hill.

Aviü in Milton Keynes in 2007

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[1] A fish-tailed native machete

[2] Almost certainly troops of 7th Worcesters making the journey between Zubza and Merema.