We Fought at Kohima: At Veteran's Account

By Raymond Stree and Robert Street

The Japanese advance through Thailand, Malaya and Burma appeared unstoppable and the fate of India looked utterly precarious.

The garrison of the Kohima outpost numbering some 1500 British and Indian Army soldiers faced over 13,000 fanatical and previously victorious Japanese troops. The following sixteen days marked the turning point of the war in the Far East thanks to men like Raymond Street who fought with legendary courage and tireless persistence.

Raymond was a member of the 4th Battalion The Queen's West Kent and as a company runner he was uniquely placed to witness the dreadful and dramatic events as they unfolded. Not only did he miraculously survive but he made a superb record of the battle as fortunes ebbed and flowed.

His memories have been transcribed into this first-hand account of one of the most decisive and hardest fought battles of the Second World War. We Fought at Kohima will surely be judged as a fighting man's memoir of the highest quality to rank alongside such legendary works as Men at Arnhem and Quartered Safe Out Here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Aug 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781473863859

Raymond Stree

Raymond Street was born in 1920 and lived in Cheltenham, moving to Birmingham in the early 1930s. Money was tight and he left school at fourteen and worked in various shops and factories before joining up in 1942. When he left the army in 1946 he returned to factory work before going into the retail furniture business, running his own successful shop before retiring in 1978. It was at this time he recorded his ‘army days’, which subsequently formed the basis of his story. He is now ninety-four, still living in Birmingham and although his memory is failing, he still can recall events from that time. Robert Street, Raymond’s son was born in 1954 and lives in Solihull. He has pulled together his Father’s memories and created this unique first-person record.

Reviews for We Fought at Kohima

[robpalmer-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

We Fought At Kohima – A Veteran’s AccountRaymond STREET and Bob STREETBarnsley, Pen & Sword Military 2015i – vi 170 pp ISBN 978 1 47384 367 7 (hbk) £19.99Firstly, I need to state that I am a Trustee of the Kohima Museum, and I know the author of this book personally, but my interest leads me to a particular scrutiny of any book on the Second World War in Burma and South-East Asia, and the battles of Kohima and Imphal in particular. This is a reprint of Bob STREET’s first book, The Siege of Kohima, which he published privately in 2003.This reprint has done justice to the original book, and has been enhanced by some additional text and some new maps. There are fourteen pages of photographs in the middle of the book, many of which have not been seen elsewhere, although some are more common photographs of Kohima. The Siege of Kohima was voted Britain’s Greatest Battle in a poll conducted by the National Army Museum recently, and it is truly a remarkable story of human endeavour. About 2,500 men of the British and British Indian Army were surrounded at Kohima between 4 and 20 April 1944, besieged by an entire Japanese division in a most savage and determined series of assaults.This book details the siege from the account of a man who was there, Raymond STREET, a Birmingham man who found himself in the Royal West Kent Regiment, the only cohesive battalion involved in the siege. I find this story compelling, and Bob STREET has written the book in the manner in which his father told him the story. There are several short sentences, but that is how the tale was related, so to me it provides authenticity to the account. It provides the Private soldiers’ account of this epic battle, which are few and far between, and as such I thoroughly recommend it.