The Impossible Defence

The Impossible Defence

by | Jul 29, 2024 | Beating Tsundoku

David Allison, Fight Your Way Out (Pen & Sword, 2023)
Those familiar with the Burma theatre in World War II will undoubtedly be aware of the astonishing defence of Kohima, in spring 1944, where the Japanese invasion of northern India faltered and eventually broke. Less well known is the siege of Sangshak on the road to Kohima that saw a multinational force of British, Indian, and Gurkha troops fight an equally desperate battle against the Japanese but one that ended very differently. David Allison narrates that awful but inspiring story.
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Allison begins with the Japanese making themselves ready to cross the Chindwin river in a surprise offensive designed to knock the British out of India. He notes, however, that it was also a very finely balanced plan that relied on clockwork timing for success. While the Japanese crossed the river, a well trained but inexperienced brigade of Indian and Nepalese paratroopers and British troops under the command of Brigadier Hope-Thomson were practicing for war in the region of Sangshak. They hoped for some action but not the tsunami of Japanese infantry that smashed into them. The Brigade, minus one company that was almost annihilated, withdrew from beleaguered forward positions to concentrate on a hilltop at Sangshak village. The Japanese surrounded them, and an intense six-day siege ensued, with relentless frontal assaults supported by mortars and artillery wearing down the dogged defenders. Allison describes the terrible conditions on both sides, though his attention is mainly on the defenders. The Japanese finally grabbed a vital toehold, forcing Hope-Thomson, suffering from a nervous breakdown, relaying an order from Division for his men to break out and flee to Imphal. Allison makes it clear that this was the right decision. He describes the flight of several of the groups and the fate of those left behind – they were treated with an unexpected civility. The scandalous aspect of this engagement lay in the immediate aftermath, with accusations of cowardice levelled at the paratrooper brigade and Hope-Thomson unjustly demoted and returned to England. Allison sympathises with the Brigadier and clears up some of the other questions generated by the battle.
By rehabilitating the reputations of Hope-Thomson and the men who fought under him, Allison is pushing at something of an open door. The importance of Sangshak and the efforts of the defenders are well established, and the whiff of incompetence has been lifted from Hope-Thomson. Allison has, however, added an exclamation mark to the historical record while writing a gripping narrative of the siege; he assails the reader’s senses with the sights, sounds, and smells of a savage battle. Students of the Burma theatre will no doubt add Allison’s book to the growing bank of knowledge and understanding about this once forgotten campaign.

The Pearl of York

The Pearl of York

by | Jul 13, 2024 | Beating Tsundoku

Tony Morgan, Margaret Clitherow an Elizabethan Saint (Pen & Sword, 2022)
It might seem a bit odd that a Sixteenth century butcher’s wife could become one of the forty Catholic martyrs of England and Wales. But Margaret Clitherow was no ordinary woman; she was a person of resolute faith in a time of religious paranoia and persecution, and she paid the ultimate price for her devotion. In this book, Tony Morgan takes you into Elizabethan England and inside the provincial city of York to tell Clitherow’s extraordinary tale.
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Morgan structures most of his book in three layers. The first is at the national level, beginning in Henry VIII’s reign and the cleaving of the English church from Roman Catholicism. The political turbulence that produced ran through the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I then into the long reign of Elizabeth I. Morgan narrows his focus to a Tudor history of York, where the religious turmoil at the national level rippled through local politics. The third level of the story is that of Margaret Clitherow and her family, which was intertwined with city politics – her stepfather at the time of her death was the Mayor. Morgan slices those corresponding stories chronologically with the theme of religious oppression and persecution binding them. He draws them together into a single narrative with the culminating story of Margaret’s arrest, trial, and dreadful execution – she was pressed to death, in March 1586, for refusing to enter a plea to the court.
Margaret Clitherow deserves to have her story told by someone as steeped in local knowledge as Tony Morgan. He is particularly good at explaining the machinations of York politics and the dynamics of religious practice in the city. No matter how the reader views fanaticism and martyrdom, no one deserves Clitherow’s fate, and Morgan brings out the all too human emotional struggle she must have endured. On the wider level, Morgan explores many of the political, economic, and social themes of the Elizabethan period that still resonate. This is a dry read, though, with Morgan offering some commentary but rarely wandering too far from his sources, leaving unanswered some of the big questions that Clitherow’s story elicits. The tiered structure doesn’t help in that regard, with the chapters becoming somewhat repetitive until Morgan unifies the narratives upon Clitherow’s arrest. Nevertheless, students of Elizabethan and religious history, in particular, will enjoy Morgan’s book.