When You Go Home...

Lieutenant James W Ferrie RE and the building of the 2nd Division Memorial

I had the very good fortune a few weeks back to meet at the cemetery at Kohima Alisdair Ferrie, the son of the man who in 1944 had designed the memorial to the men of the British 2nd Infantry Division who had lifted the siege on 20 April 1944 and chased the Japanese from the tennis court on 13 May. Together with men of the 7th Indian Division, they defeated Sato’s 31st Division after one of the cruellest and most gruelling battles any Commonwealth army fought in the Second World War.

The stone monolith on which is inscribed the famous words ‘When you go home, tell them of us and say, for your tomorrow, we gave our today’ is probably one of the best known in the English language, but few know of its origins.

The words in fact came from a list of approved texts provided by the War Graves Commission, written by John Maxwell Edmonds at the end of the Great War. James Ferrie was a sapper with 506 Company Royal Engineers who had fought throughout the Kohima battle. He conceived of a memorial amongst the shattered tree trunks at the base of Garrison Hill, where the Traffic Control Point allows the road to bifurcate between the road that goes on to Imphal and that which turns into Kohima Town. The concept drawing is remarkably like the finished memorial, even after all these years.

James Ferrie’s concept drawing for the 2nd Division memorial

Edmond’s original wording had ‘their’ rather than ‘your’ in ‘For their tomorrow’ but in James Ferrie’s concept drawing the words were clearly written ‘For your tomorrow.’

It appears from early photographs that when the first tablet was inscribed on the monolith the words ‘For their tomorrow’ were inserted by the men of the Royal Engineers who did the engraving. This was later changed back in 1960 to what can be read today, and which was Ferrie’s original wording.

2nd Division memorial at Kohima (photo courtesy of Sampan Travel)

A fascinating explanation of this story can be found in the Times in 1976 (note the author of the letter in response to Rev Malcolm Kenworthy was Major General Jackie Smyth VC):

Alisdair told me that the idea for the memorial came from discussions between the officers of the 2nd Division and the padre to the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, F.J.L MacLauchlan MC. At one point towards the end of the battle for Kohima Lieutenant Ferrie was standing with a group of other officers on Aradura Spur, the monsoon rain tipping down and the Japanese still reluctant to acknowledge defeat, when an enemy mortar shell exploded among them. His Squadron OC , Major Langdon, a close friend, was killed outright, though his body shielded others from the blast. Jamie Ferrie penned these words in tribute to his friend:

It seems that in adjusting Edmond’s words, Jamie Ferrie wanted the inscription to refer directly to the dead of the 2nd Division, men whom he had known personally, like his friend Jimmy Langdon. To Jamie Ferrie it was for his (Ferries’) future and all those who followed that Langdon had given up his life. The inscription was, therefore, heartfelt and personal. Alisdair told me that the word changed from the Maxwell Edmonds original as the result of a discussion among the group of RE officers and Padre MacLaughlin. In my view the change of the wording from the impersonal ‘their’ to the much more intimate ‘your’ was absolutely the right thing to do, and gives to the Kohima epitaph much of the raw, emotive power it retains to this day.

It was on Aradura Spur, close to where Langdon had died and where the Japanese decided finally to withdraw from Kohima on 3 June 1944, that Ferrie saw a large stone monolith that had been erected in the past to a long forgotten Naga chieftain. The Nagas traditionally erect these in their villages to mark the passing of great men. Jimmy Langdon’s death prompted him to ask the local Nagas whether this stone could be used to form the heart of a new memorial to all those of the 2nd Division who, like Jimmy Langdon, had lost their lives in this awful battle. They agreed, and the Nagas moved it by muscle power to the site where it now stands at the base of the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery on Garrison Hill. Charlotte Carty has unearthed a letter written home by an officer in the 1st Bn Assam Regiment, Lieutenant David Lloyd-Jones, who describes the memorial and the process of bringing it to its present resting place:

Jamie Ferrie had been trained as an architect in Glasgow. He died in Singapore in 1993, where he had worked since before the war. His son, Alisdair, practises as an architect in Singapore still. Jamie was a talented caricaturist. In the jaws of the remarkable Padre MacLauchlan can be seen something of the spirit of the proud, victorious division to which he, Langdon and Ferrie were proud to belong. (Incidentally, his son, Donald, is a strong supporter of the Kohima Educational Trust).

Since first posting this, Alan Glanz has sent me an illuminating article in Dekho!, the old journal of the Burma Star Association, which in one of its 1994 volumes has the following account of the raising of the memorial, a story which involves Alan’s father.

Dekho! 1994