By Arjun D. Ryntathiang
“All wars are boyish and are fought by boys” – Herman Melville
The year 2025 marks the 100th birth anniversary of a brave-heart from these hills called Wellington Massar of the Assam Regiment. He lived for just 19 years and his legacy is slowly fading with the passage of time. This is an account of his achievements at the Battle of Jessami and the vital Battle of Kohima. The Battle of Kohima has been voted Britain’s greatest battle over infinitely more celebrated British battles such as those of D-Day and Waterloo in a contest that was organised by the National Army Museum at London. Historian Robert Lyman, making the case for Kohima in a debate at the museum, asserted without exaggeration,“Great things were at stake in a war with the toughest enemy any British army has had to fight.” It was ranked with Midway, El Alamein and Stalingrad as a main turning point of World War 2. The overall battle saw approximately 12,600 Commonwealth casualties and 58,800 Japanese ones, in what Compton Mackenzie has described as “fighting as desperate as any in recorded history.”
The Japanese fighting man believed he was fighting in the proud tradition of the ancient samurai. Bushido, the “Way of the Warrior,”had for centuries been the honoured code of Japan, calling upon all young men to be willing to die for their Emperor. This motivated the Japanese soldiers to fight to the death in a manner that the Allied troops judged fanatical. Death in battle was portrayed as a transcendental act and surrender was a disgrace to the soldier and his family. Into this maelstrom of battle was thrust Sepoy Wellington Massar.
Even before he joined the Assam Regiment, Wellington Massar showed a talent for sticking his neck out! When the British launched a campaign to eradicate kala-azar, a potentially fatal disease spread by a parasite, Massar was one of the 5 members of the Khasi tribe to volunteer to be infected and ‘treated.’ “He had already shown courage in the public service,” recalled the Governor of Assam. “The result of this experiment was to establish scientifically the method of transmission of this disease and thus to provide material assistance in the campaign against it.”When Wellington Massar was undergoing training at the Assam Regimental Centre in Shillong, he was rather high spirited and was getting into trouble with the regimental police! While researching the life of Massar, I came across a quote that summed up his life. “It is a fact that men who do not fit in the barracks and are the despair of Adjutants and Sergeant Majors sometimes find their spiritual home on the battlefield and they thrive there until they are killed.”So it was with Sepoy Wellington Massar.”
The Battle of Jessami was fought from March 28 to April 1, 1944 by the First Battalion of the Assam Regiment, thus holding the advance of the Japanese 31st Division for 5 days thereby gaining time for the preparation of the defences at Kohima. The citation of ‘Battalion Bad Boy’ Sepoy Wellington Massar reads, “Throughout the battle at Jessami between March 28 to April 1, 1944 this sepoy on a light Machine Gun showed courage and determination of the highest order. In spite of repeated attacks on his post by ever increasing numbers of the enemy supported by mortar fire and infantry gun, he remained cool and steady, maintaining a very accurate fire which took a heavy toll of the attackers. When his light Machine Gun had stoppages he continued to hold the attackers at bay with rifle and grenades. When the withdrawal was ordered on the night of April 1-2 he was the last man to leave his sector.”
Fergal Keane writes in his book ‘Road of Bones,’“One of the last to leave was Sepoy Wellington Massar, the Khasi tribesman who had taken part as a human guinea pig in the fight to rid the hills of kala-azar. Massar had fought hard at Jessami; the pile of dead bodies outside his bunker attesting to his remorseless Bren-gun fire.”
The survivors of the Battle of Jessami appeared in Kohima on April 3, 1944. They were all exhausted and hungry, many without boots and in tattered clothing. Wellington Massar among them to shore up the defences of Kohima. When Lt Col Bruno Brown, the commandant arrived, his ragged condition so moved Charles Pawsey, the Deputy Commissioner that he went to his bungalow and found him a sweater to wear! So one can quite imagine Wellington Massar’s condition! Kohima became the furious heart of the battle and men on both sides were to endure unimaginable privation.
In the famous Battle of the Tennis Court in Kohima on 16 April 1944, a party of 4 men led by a local Naga corporal, Angami, jumped out of their trenches and raced down the slope and across the court. Major Albert Calistan asked Wellington Massar to give covering fire with his Bren Gun. Massar put his Bren Gun on the billiards table of the ruined clubhouse on the slope above the tennis court. It gave him a good line of fire over the Japanese trenches, but once he started firing, Japanese in other positions could easily spot him. Before they left the trenches the men removed the pins from their grenades, giving them seconds to sprint the twenty yards to the Japanese trenches. The Japanese were taken unawares. The Japanese machine gun team were killed and documents and an officer’s sword were captured. But as the raiders raced back, Wellington Massar’s gun jammed! He was quickly spotted and shot in the leg, rolling off the table and crashing to the floor. Despite the pain, Massar levered himself back on the billiards table and resumed firing until the raiding party was back. Carried out of the clubhouse under cover of darkness, he refused to be taken to the Advanced Dressing Station. He would linger for several more days before being evacuated to Dimapur. He contracted gangrene and died on 18th May 1944, aged 19. [He is commemorated in CWGC, Imphal War Cemetery at plot 7.G.21.]
With half the battalion of the 1st Assam Regiment dead, sick or wounded, Lt Col Bruno Brown and Major Albert Calistan came back to Shillong to recuperate and rebuild. In August 1944 there was a medal ceremony for their dead hero Wellington Massar, with all of the survivors of Kohima drawn up on the square facing the Governor of Assam on a raised dais. Fergal Keane, the BBC correspondent who has made a detailed study of the siege of Kohima, states evocatively, “It was a scene from the imperial twilight. The ranks of sepoys in starched jungle greens, the white commanding officer standing in front of them and the King Emperor’s Pro-consul gazing with studied benevolence upon the entire scene.” “Wellington Massar belonged to these hills’ declared the Governor, Sir Andrew Clow. Lt Col Brown came forward and turned towards a diminutive woman in the crowd.‘His bereaved aunt to whom we all offer our sincerest and deepest sympathy, is here in his stead, he announced‘and we can assure her that she has an undeniable right to feel as proud of her nephew as we are. Will your Excellency be pleased now to bestow this symbol of his Emperor’s gratitude on Miss Florestie Massar.’
Massar was awarded the Indian Distinguished Service Medal and a posthumous Military Cross for his bravery at the Battle of the Tennis Court.” Japan has always been reticent about its war past. However, things are beginning to change. Recently, Japan’s Emperor Naruhito, marking his 65th birthday in 2025 stressed the importance of telling the tragedy of WW2 to younger generations. “As the memory of the war fades today, it is important that the tragic experiences and history are passed on to the generations who do not know the war.”
Tenacious men like Wellington Massar fill one with a sense of awe at what they endured on this forgotten Asian battlefield. If we can have statues of icons like U Tirot Singh, U Kiang Nangbah, Pa Togan Sangma and Captain Clifford Nongrum, the Government of Meghalaya could easily erect a statue of this ‘Khlawait’ at an appropriate place to remind our coming generations of this incomprehensibly brave man of the greatest generation!
