The l-Wallah's Story

THE SIEGE (211 pp.) -Arthur Campbell -Macmillan ($3).

In British army lingo of the Far East, "I-Wallah" means intelligence officer. He keeps the books of combat and, as far as possible, tries to make sense of the gruesome gibberish of war.

In Burma in March 1944, the British I-Wallahs were taken by surprise as the Japanese launched 100,000 men across the Chindwin River in what was to be the invasion of India. The 4th Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment had been in the Arakan along the India-Burma border, fighting its own war with the Japanese. They had just learned this costly trade and had the Japanese on the run when they were pulled out north by river boat and truck and dumped on the mountain village of Kohima, a collection of huts 5,000 ft. high in the jungle. Kohima was inconsiderable in the long, silent history of its mountains, except that it commanded the Imphal Road and the Ledo Railway, invasion highways. There the 4th Battalion of the Royal West Kents, Colonel John Laverty commanding, took position on April Fool's Day, 1944. They had four days to dig in. There were 500 of them, and for the next 16 days they held off the 31st Japanese Division, totaling some 15,000 men.

Time after time they were nearly overrun. The vast patience of British troops held them fast in their rain-filled holes. When relief troops of the British 2nd Division finally arrived, Colonel Laverty marched out with a ragged half of his battalion. Arthur Campbell, who was among the relieving troops, saw.the survivors' pride and misery, and resolved to write their story. Campbell (who won a Military Cross later for gallantry) has written one of the great stories of World War II, an account of unmatched hardship and bravery, ranking with Guadalcanal, Tarawa. Iwo Jima and Okinawa. At Kohima the British showed that, even outmatched 30 to 1, they could hold.

Author Campbell puts the story in the mouth of an unnamed, fictionalized I-Wallah, but even the chairbound reader will recognize that every accent has the authentic tone of a man who has seen combat and can still think about it. The commonplace names -John or Bobby or Tommy or Donald -come completely alive, showing men at their best. Dug in among the wild rhododendron bushes, outgunned, outnumbered and outmortared, the West Kents put on a memorable show: at the end it is clear that men can be pitiable even in their finest hour.

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