The Indian Army in World War II

Rahul Singh remembers ‘The Forgotten War’

Troops of the 14/13 Frontier Force Rifles, part of the 20th Indian Division during the advance in Burma. (Photograph from collections of the Imperial War Museum).

On 8 May 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies, marking the end of World War II in the western theatre. In the East, the War lingered on a little longer but virtually ended with dropping of the devastating Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan’s Emperor Hirohito personally signed the unconditional surrender on 15 August 1945. The 75th anniversary of the end of the War was marked recently by celebrations and aerial flypasts in all countries which were part of the victorious Allied forces, including Russia.

But from India and Pakistan there was a deafening silence. Why? Because New Delhi – and presumably Islamabad as well – feels that this was a “colonial” conflict and therefore not worthy of any kind of official celebration. What utter nonsense and how disrespectful of the armed forces of the Indian sub-continent who fought so gallantly! At the peak of the War, 2.5 million troops from what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal were part of the British Indian Army, the largest force of volunteers ever assembled in history. They served in major battlefields, from North Africa, to Italy and the Far East. The 5th Indian Division, for instance, fought the Italians in Sudan, then the Germans in Libya, before moving to Iraq to protect the oil fields, was then moved to the Burma and Malaya front, finally going to Indonesia to disarm the Japanese there. 

Personnel from the Indian subcontinent received 4,000 gallantry awards and 31 Victory Crosses, the highest award given by the British for valour in action. This is an unsurpassed record of bravery that we should be proud of and not something to be hidden in embarrassment. 

In 1962, when I had just graduated from Cambridge University and was 22, an English college friend of mine, Charles Noon, and I decided to go overland by car to Egypt’s Port Said, from where I would take a ship to Bombay, and he carry on to Rhodesia, as it was then called, to take up a teaching assignment. Charles had purchased a tiny car, the iconic Morris Mini, for the two-month long journey, which took us through France, Monaco, mainland Italy, Sicily, Tunisia, Libya and then finally Egypt. We did everything on the cheap, staying at youth hostels and with friends, sometimes sleeping in the car, or on the beach. 

We traversed many of the War’s battlegrounds. In south Italy, in a town called Monte Cassino, an aged lady came up to me, pointing to my turban, jabbering excitedly in Italian. I got hold of a passerby who understood English and asked him what she was saying. He replied that during the War she had seen many soldiers with turbans like mine, which is why she was so excited to see another turbaned man. She wondered if I was also a soldier! Later, after some research I learnt that a pivotal battle of the War had taken place there, in which 240,000 Allied troops saw action, including the 4th Indian Division (which must have had a lot of Sikhs). It took four major assaults, with bitter fighting, to dislodge the well-entrenched Germans, on top of a hill, where there was a famous monastery (it was left in ruins). The eventual victory paved the way to Rome. 

In North Africa, we passed through El Alamein, where two famed adversaries, Erwin Rommel (nicknamed ‘The Desert Fox’) and Bernard Law (‘Monty’) Montgomery squared off in an epic encounter. Monty won a decisive victory. In fact, El Alamein and the battle of Stalingrad in Europe broke the back of the Germans. At El Alamein I visited the War Cemetery where 11,886 fallen soldiers from the Commonwealth are commemorated. There were hundreds of Indian names there, emphasising the vital part Indian troops played in that battle. The memory still brings tears to my eyes, almost six decades later. 

A maternal uncle of mine, Premindra Singh (‘Prem’) Bhagat, then a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Indian Engineers, was on a mine-clearing operation, an extremely hazardous task those days with no fancy gadgets, only the delicate poking of the sand with a bayonet to detect where a mine had been planted. His jeep was blown up, killing the other occupants and injuring him. But he carried on continuously for 96 hours. He was one of only two Indian officers ever to win the highly coveted Victoria Cross “for his cold courage”, as the citation said. He went on to become a Lieutenant General and should have been made army chief but, so was said, Indira Gandhi feared his immense popularity with the armed forces. 

Vital though the role of the Indian army was in the North African theatres it was in the East against the Japanese that it was decisive. After the fall of Singapore, the Japanese troops swept through Malaya and Burma and were knocking on India’s doors, with the intention of taking over the whole country (the only part of India they occupied were the Andamans). They were stopped at Kohima. There, on a tennis court and in the surrounding areas, some of the closest and bloodiest fighting of World War II took place. Over 7,000 men on both sides died in just 64 hours. After that the retreating Japanese forces suffered one defeat after another. The worst was at the Second Battle of Sittang River, where the 28th Japanese Army was annihilated. Of an initial force of 20,000 men, only 7,000 survived. The casualties on the British and Indian side? Just 95 men, making it one of the most lopsided victories of the War. 

Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Burma, had earlier been taunted that though Indians made good soldiers, they weren’t capable of leading. He decided to show that they could be outstanding officers as well. He chose three of them: Shankarrao Pandurang Patil Thorat, Lionel Protip (‘Bogey’) Sen, and Kodendara Subbaya Thimayya (they would go on to become among the most distinguished and respected Generals of Independent India, with Thimayya becoming India’s third Army Chief. Mountbatten put them in command of large army formations and they won key battles against the Japanese. Indians made not only top order soldiers but first class commanding officers as well. It is another matter that the Indian Army was largely reduced after the War, it was neglected and allowed to get run down, particularly under the Defence Ministership of Krishna Menon, leading to the 1962 humiliation against the Chinese.

However, the role of the Indian armed forces in World War II had been an outstanding one. It should have been celebrated, not seen as part of an embarrassing “colonial” conflict. Names like Bhagat, Thimayya, Sen, Thorat, along with those that contributed to key victories like El Alamein, Monte Cassino and Kohima, should be etched in words of gold, not covered with a shroud of anonymity, as the Indian government has done.