From an early age, he enjoyed tinkering, designing and making things.

He spent a lot of his time going down to the south coast and sailing little boats that he had designed himself and built himself.

There was no money in the family at all.

And he knew that in life, any success that he was ever to achieve would be at his own hands.

He knew that he had to be the master of his own destiny.

Dad couldn't go out to the pub with Blondie Hasler or whatever because there was obviously that gap between them.

What they did was immensely courageous.

The idea of sending 12 kayaks, canoes into the heart of enemy territory was ridiculous, to blow up some ships with limpet mines and then get back successfully.

Nonetheless, Yamamoto Force assaults the next peak on the Shanam Saddle known as Scraggy Hill which is defended by the 3rd 1st Gurkhas of the 80th Indian Brigade.

10 May was really the culminating point of the long battle for Scraggy.

10 May is very interesting.

It's only a few days before the loss of the tennis court by the Japanese on the 13th of May.

So it's a real turning point for the Japanese.

And it's a turning point in more than one sense because Scraggy, there's a whole series of hilltops over the Shennam saddle.

And Scraggy is the last one.

The battles of Imphal and Kohima have a large impact on the Japanese people.

He is the co-host, along with Jack Boucher, of The Forgotten War podcast about the Burma campaign of the Second World War.

A fundamental feature of Mutaguchi's plan for 1944 for Operation U-Go were the use of Churchill supplies.

It's very interesting.

In the number of Japanese veterans accounts that we have, they all talk about their reliance on Churchill supply, so much so one Japanese soldier, Watanabe Amata, who got to Kohima on about the 8th of April, had already run out of food by the time he got to Kohima, right at the start of the battle.

And he was angry because he looked around for food and realized that the British and Indians not only had destroyed it or, they had either destroyed it or removed it, and there was no food outside of what they could take from poor Naga villages.

Naga villages, being subsistence farmers, didn't have much food of their own.

So that was the first and most egregious problem.

Many of these buildings will become defining locations of the coming battle.

Despite Japanese hopes that this diversionary attack can succeed in destroying two enemy divisions, the British and Indians ferociously hold their ground in a reversal of previous engagements against the Japanese.

The Admin Box, which was the headquarters of the 7th Division, was just known as the Admin Box.

It was where one of the primary fights took place, and their tactic was simply to infiltrate through and between the various positions of the 7th Indian Division, commanded by a fantastic GOC called Frank Messervy.

And to make all their way up to Bawli Bazar and then thence on to Chittagong.

So their tactics were classic 1942 infiltration, but they had not recognized Allied tactics, which were to stay firm.

And in 1942, when Allied positions were surrounded and overtaken by events, troops on the ground, mainly British and Indian, would look at each other and say, "Well, we're surrounded.

We may as well withdraw.

Mutaguchi sets the night of the 7th of March as the launch date for Operation U-Go.

By

the British Army.

Now, well, the Empire Army as well, because there are lots of Canadians and Australians involved.

And I have to say that many of the brilliant ideas, particularly in the Fourth Army under Rawlinson, came from the Australians.

Monash's incredible battle in Le Hamel involved dropping ammunition to forward troops by aircraft in 1918.

Really, really quite revolutionary.

Anyway, so we have a situation where we created a Continental Army in 1914 and it was very successful and defeated the Germans.

Britain is not this nation anymore and we should forget about it and look to spend all our money on other things like welfare and like public services.