The Kohima Epitaph

The Kohima Epitaph is the epitaph carved on the Memorial of the 2nd British Division in the cemetery of Kohima (North-East India).
It reads:

The verse is attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds (1875-1958), and is thought to have been inspired by the epitaph written by Simonides to honour the Greeks who fell at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480BC.

Kohima, the capital city of Nagaland state, is some 200 kilometres from the Indo-Burmese border (now known as the Indo-Myanmar border)

Background Information

The Japanese advance into India was halted at Kohima in April 1944 and Garrison Hill, a long wooded spur on a high ridge west of the village, was the scene of perhaps the most bitter fighting of the whole Burma campaign when a small Commonwealth force held out against repeated attacks by a Japanese Division. The fiercest hand to hand fighting took place in the garden of the Deputy Commissioner's bungalow, around the tennis court, but the heaviest casualties on both sides occurred after relieving forces reached the Garrison and the Japanese were driven off the ridge, so re-opening the road to Imphal.

Kohima War Cemetary lies on the battle ground of Garrison Hill. No trace remains of the bungalow, which was destroyed in the fighting, but white concrete lines mark and preserve permanently the historic tennis court.

The cemetery now contains 1,420 Commonwealth burials of the Second World War.

At the highest point in the cemetery stands the Kohima Cremation Memorial commemorating 917 Hindu and Sikh soldiers whose remains were cremated in accordance with their faith.

At the lower end of the cemetery, near the entrance, is a memorial to the 2nd Division. It bears the inscription;- "When you go home Tell them of us and say, For your tomorrow - We gave our today."

The cemetery also contains a memorial to the 2nd Battalion, the Dorsetshire Regiment and a number of other regimental memorials have been erected on and near Garrison Hill.