The characters

Fergal Keane does such a great job with the characters in the story, introducing them as they emerge and then returning to them. Ursula Graham Bower, a formidable British woman who made her home in the Naga Hills (and also found her way onto the cover of TIME magazine on 01/01/1945) became ‘the first female guerilla commander in the history of British arms’ (53). As with Ursula, Charles Pawsey had this love and loyalty for the Naga people, with their welfare being ‘his life’s mission’ (34). 

(Slim) would wait for Mutaguchi to come to him. In fact he would do something even riskier. Once the enemy offensive had begun, the divisions facing them on the Chindwin would be ordered to withdraw, conforming to the stereotype of previous Briitsh retreats. The Japanese would follow, their line of communication getting steadily longer and more exposed, until Slim stood and faced them on the Imphal Plain. There he had ample supplies of food, an advantage in armour and artillery and, most important of all, two all-weather airfields. Slim knew there were generals in Delhi who were petrified at the risk he was taking. Suppose the Japanese advanced too quickly and outflanked the retreating divisions? The staged retreat might easily become a chaotic rout (157).

Although this overall strategy was key to Slim’s success, it didn’t develop as he planned because the Japanese focus turned to Kohima, with an army far bigger than what was expected. This is why the Jessami-Kharasom-Shangshak battles were so critical. Taken on their own, they were battles lost by the British and for decades history recorded them as such, but they slowed down the Japanese. In the bigger picture they contributed decisively to the overall victory. [NB: William Slim went on to become Governor-General of Australia].

After victory in Kohima, General Slim’s forces drove the Japanese all the way back to Rangoon. The smile is totally inappropriate. It is this journey that gives the book its title: Road of Bones.

The Nagas

[NB: There are other characters in the story which do not figure prominently in Keane’s narrative. Does he even mention any women? Well, the writings of Easterine Kire provide another perspective. In Mari (link here), she tells the story of her Auntie, living in a village near Kohima (which the Japanese occupied) during the horror — and the loves and lives which she lost along he way.]

The wider geopolitical swirlings are fascinating. There are the Mountbatten discussions with Churchill and Roosevelt. There is what is happening in China, with Chiang Kai-Shek. There is the turmoil in India, with Congress leaders in prison at the time — and Subhas Chandra Bose and his India National Army (INA) fighting with the Japanese in these battles, thinking that it was by standing with them that India’s freedom was most likely to be found.

And yet it would seem that the ones who gave so much are the ones who came out with so little. ‘The destabilising effect of war had left the Nagas tragically ill-prepared for the independence that was coming’ (410). The British abandoned them and, very soon, the Indians were to alienate them. 

Problems and instabilities have continued right through the years (our two sets of parents, with almost 70 years in India between them, were never able to visit the Naga Hills) — and even earlier in this very year, there has been a major incident…

‘The Battle of Kohima was a heroic victory for the British, British Indians and Nagas at the time, yet it also pointed the way to a fragmentation of the subcontinent that has never been repaired.’ (Glancey, 129). 

With his second-to-last paragraph (in a 444 page book!), Keane writes these words:

When Mountbatten promised that Britain would never forget her debt to the Nagas, he was not indulging in mere rhetoric. But the supreme commander was speaking in the bright glow of victory, when nobody could have imagined a civil war in the hills. It was an easy time to make promises. Once the war was over, Britain turned to the great project of national reconstruction, and the dismantling of the rest of her empire. Relations with India were governed by the principle of British interests first. Any attempt to interfere in the new nation’s handling of its domestic affairs would have been firmly rebuffed. At Kohima they had fought and won the last great battle of empire; but when it was all over, the victors found their strength sapped, their influence vastly diminished. The Nagas could plead forever, but the British had neither the power nor the political will to help them. Such is the story of empires and the small tribes caught in their fall (443).

The writing

Fergal Keane is such an elegant writer. Here are a sampling of some favourites:

‘Kohima was washed by the annual monsoon’ (35).

The terrain was ‘ribboned by rivers’ (75).

‘The British in Asia were widely caricatured as blimps and buffoons, selfish and self-satisfied, borne aloft on the suffering of millions of brown and yellow subjects’ (77).

‘A nation facing defeat always runs the risk of becoming captive to desperate adventures’ (115).

‘The eerie experience of travelling into clouds on the rollercoaster of the mountain roads’ (221).

‘The whisper to get ready ran like an electric current through the dozing men’ (236).

‘From now on, there would be no rest, only days and nights of screaming and death’ (253).

‘… it looked as if the sky was vomiting fire on them’ (286).

‘The war was a hell that followed him into peace’ (421).

‘Nothing is so far away as the home you might never see again’ (426).