Second World War clashes named as 'Greatest British Battle'
By Jasper Copping7:52PM BST 20 Apr 2013
The two victories over the Japanese, which took place in the same region of north east India over the same period in 1944, were voted the winner of a contest run by the National Army Museum to identify “Britain’s Greatest Battle”.
Taken as a single victory, Imphal-Kohima was on a shortlist of five battles which topped a public poll and on Saturday, they were selected as the ultimate winner by an audience of more than 100 guests at a special event at the museum, in Chelsea, west London. Imphal-Kohima received almost half of all votes.
In second place was D-Day and Normandy, in 1944 (25 per cent), ahead of Waterloo, in 1815, (22 per cent), Rorke’s Drift, during the Zulu War in 1879 (three per cent), and Aliwal, during the First Sikh War in 1846 (two per cent).
At the event, each contender had their case made by a historian giving a 40 minute presentation. The audience, who had paid to attend the day, then voted in a secret ballot after all five presentations had been made.
The case for Imphal and Kohima was made by Dr Robert Lyman, an author and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
“I had thought that one of the bigger names like D-Day or Waterloo would win so I am delighted that Imphal-Kohima has won. You have got to judge the greatness of a battle by its politcal, cultural and social impact, as much as its military impact.
“Imphal and Kohima were really significant for a number of reasons, not least that they showed that the Japanese were not invincible and that that they could be beaten, and beaten well. The victories demonstrate this more than the US in the Pacific, where they were taking them on garrison by garrison.”
The contest aimed to gauge the battles in terms of their historical impact and the tactics employed.
The battles of Imphal and Kohima saw the British and Indian forces, under the overall command of Lieutenant-General William Slim, repel the Japanese invasion of India and helped turned the tide of the war in the Far East.
Some veterans of the battles and historians have felt the victories have since been overlooked, partly because the invasion of Europe, starting with D-Day, took place while they were still being fought.
The fight for Imphal went on longer than that for Kohima, lasting from March until July.
Kohima was smaller in scale, and shorter, from April to June - but the fighting was so intense it has been described as the Stalingrad of the East.
In one sector, only the width of the town’s tennis court separated the two sides. When on 18 April the relief forces of the British 2nd Division arrived, the defensive perimeter was reduced to a shell-shattered area only 350 metres square.
The Japanese, who fought alongside some Indian nationalists, eventually lost 53,000 dead and missing in the battles. The British forces sustained 12,500 casualties at Imphal while the fighting at Kohima cost them another 4,000 casualties.
There are several memorials to the British and Indian troops who fought in the area, including one with an inscription that has become famous as the ‘Kohima Epitaph’. It reads: “When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Your Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today’
After their defensive victory, the British went on to clear the Japanese from Burma.
The format for the contest - an online poll followed by a closed vote - was devised by the National Army Museum to avoid orchestrated bloc voting, reducing the risk that a battle could win simply thanks to an organised campaign by a specific part of the community or a national group.
A similar contest, held by the museum last year, to identify Britain’s “greatest foe”, saw a surge of online support for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, after it was featured on a Turkish website.
The Turkish leader topped the first poll, before the contest was eventually won, after the debate stage, by George Washington.
Imphal and Kohima came fifth in the online vote, which was topped by Waterloo.
All 20 battles on the original shortlist were from the period covered by the museum’s collection – going back to the origins of the professional army in the Civil War, which laid the foundations for the modern British Army.
The earliest battle on the list was from that conflict: the clash at Naseby, in 1645, in which the Royalists were defeated by the Parliamentarians’ disciplined New Model Army.
It was one of two that took place on British soil between two armies from this country. The other was Culloden (1746), which marked the end of the Jacobite rebellion.
As well as famous battles, the list includes some less well-known clashes, such as Megiddo in 1918, in modern-day Israel, where a British-led force decisively broke through the Ottoman front lines.
Not all the battles ended in victory. The list included the failed Gallipoli campaign (1915-1916), in which Britain and its allies tried to invade the Ottoman Empire.
Others are less conclusive, such as the Crimean clash of Balaklava (1854) – noted for the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade – and the Somme (1916).
The most recent engagement was Musa Qala, in Afghanistan, where, in 2006, a small garrison of British, Danish and Afghan troops withstood a lengthy Taliban siege.
Only land battles were considered, ruling out naval victories such as Trafalgar (1805) and air campaigns such as the Battle of Britain (1940).
The other battles on the list were: Blenheim (1704), during the War of the Spanish Succession; Plassey (1757) and Quebec (1759), both during the Seven Years War; Lexington (1775), during the American War of Independence; Salamanca (1802), during the Napoleonic Wars; El Alamein (1942) during the Second World War; Imjin River (1951), during the Korean War; Goose Green (1982), during the Falklands War.
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