Go Devil, Go...

Tribute to the Jeep.

- Shahwar Hussain

“My memory is fading very fast and I forget easily but I remember the heroes...all of them,” old man Yizamo Kikon says. He has a faraway look in his eyes as he sits near the kitchen window and gazes out at the deep green valley yonder. He points to my muddy boots and says “…those days were just like today, rainy and muddy. Men and machine were all caked in mud.”

Sitting beside him, Lirumo Kikon, nods in agreement. He doesn’t talk much. Although they fought in the same battle but under different regiments and in different areas, they share the same stories of valour, glory, desperation, heartbreak and joy.

Yizamo and Lirumo of Longsachung village in the district of Wokha in Nagaland, are veterans of World War II who fought in the battles of Kohima and Imphal and in the ensuing campaign in Burma.

Talks of the war bring back too many sad memories for him but as soon as I mention ‘jeep’ in the course of the conversation, his eyes light up. He breaks into a slow deep smile and thousands of wrinkles line up his face. He is 96 year old now and he had joined the 1st Assam Regiment when he was 22 years old.

Yizamo was attached with the medics and he carried out evacuation of the wounded when he was not letting off shots at the Japanese from his Lee Enfield rifle. He transported many wounded soldiers in a Jeep that doubled up as an ambulance and was driven by a young 20 year old Canadian. The two young men formed a good team and picked up the wounded from some impossible places. The Jeep was not the most comfortable of ambulances but it did the job with aplomb and at times carried three wounded men at one go from the frontlines.

Yizamo has great regards for the Jeep and he is not the only one. He might not have heard of General Dwight Eisenhower but he echoed the decorated General’s thought in toto.