39 Hours : The March That Saved India

In the spring of 1944, as the Japanese army advanced toward India, 1st Battalion of the newly raised Assam Regiment was ordered to hold the remote Naga villages of Jessami and Kharasom. Outnumbered and isolated, Lieutenant Colonel William Felix “Bruno” Brown and his men fought for five days and nights, delaying the Japanese advance toward Kohima.

When they were finally ordered to withdraw, the battalion undertook an extraordinary feat of endurance: a 124-kilometre march through the mountains and jungle of the Naga Hills in just 39 hours. Harried by the enemy and racing against time, they reached Kohima only hours before the town was encircled. Their presence played a pivotal role in what was to become one of the most decisive battles of the war in the Far East.

Eighty years later, Brown’s granddaughter Charlotte Carty set out to follow in their footsteps. Beginning at Jessami at the exact hour the Assam Regiment had departed in 1944, she and a small group retraced the legendary route to Kohima.

Part history, part personal pilgrimage, 39 Hours brings to life one of the most remarkable episodes of the Burma campaign and honours the courage and endurance of the men whose march became part of the story of Kohima.