The Kohima Educational Trust is delighted to announce our next webinar with Dr Robert Lyman MBE who will introduce our guest speaker, historian and author Jack Bowsher.
Many histories of the Burma Campaign climax with the incredible battles of Imphal and Kohima in 1944. The reconquest of Burma that followed in 1945 is often taken for granted: it was just ‘mopping up’. Yet that campaign was the culmination of the journey that the British and Indian Armies had gone through since December 1941. This was achieved without the lavish scale of materiel afforded in other theatres, in a location that posed varied and extreme geographical challenges.
This campaign, especially around the Japanese supply hub at the town of Meiktila, should be the stuff of legend in our collective memory of the Second World War. Had it been carried out by Monty, Patton, Rommel, or Zhukov, it would be as well-known as the battles of France, Alamein, the Bulge, Kursk, or Overlord. Yet it is the most incredible battle that you’ve never heard of. The culmination of all-arms manoeuvre warfare in the Second World War; tanks, motorised infantry, self-propelled artillery and air support charging across the dusty dry belt of central Burma, striking the Japanese Burma Area Army by surprise in unexpected places. Outnumbered and surrounded, 17th Indian Division and 255th Indian Tank Brigade annihilated their enemy in the battle that really finished the Japanese in Southeast Asia.
This is Thunder Run: Meiktila 1945.
To book your free place on this online webinar on Thursday 25th September at 8pm, please register via the button below:
Jack Bowsher's book Thunder Run: Meiktila 1945 is available to purchase via the KET online shop.
Speakers:
Dr Robert Lyman MBE - Military Historian, Author and Trustee of KET Born in New Zealand in January 1963 and educated in Australia, Robert Lyman was, for twenty years, an officer in the British Army. Educated at Scotch College, Melbourne he was commissioned into the Light Infantry from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, in April 1982. In addition to a business career he is an author and military historian, publishing books in particular on the war in the Far East. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Robert is married to Hannah, has two sons, and lives in Berkshire. For information about Robert's publications please visit his website: robertlyman.com
Jack Bowsher is a military historian specialising in the Burma Campaign of the Second World War. Growing up in West Kent he was drawn to this topic because of the stories of the 4th Battalion, The Royal West Kent Regiment in the siege of Kohima. He is now a Head of History in a Secondary School in Hertfordshire, cohosts The Forgotten War Podcast: Burma Campaign WW2 with Robert Lyman, and has written two books: Forgotten Armour: Tank Warfare in Burma (2024), and Thunder Run: Meiktila 1945 (2025).
Sylvia May - Managing Trustee of The Kohima Educational Trust Sylvia May was born in New Jersey, USA in 1957. Her parents moved to England in 1963. Educated at High Wycombe School for Girls, she decided to pursue a career in the world of books. Sylvia worked for HarperCollins for 37 years, the last eleven of which she headed up their UK-based International Sales team. Sylvia May is the daughter of the late Gordon Graham, Founder and President of the Kohima Educational Trust. She is proud that her father has inspired many people to share his vision to commemorate those who fought and died in Kohima, and the wonderful Naga people who have done so much for the British in the past. She first visited India in 1994 with her husband Robert, and has returned on numerous occasions, staying in Kohima several times. In 2000, they followed the WWII route of the Queens Own Cameron Highlanders, her father’s regiment. The regiment’s first main engagement in this theatre of war was at Zubza shortly before the Battle of Kohima.
