Publications

The Trees are All Young on Garrison Hill
by Gordon Graham

In this memoir, Gordon Graham takes the reader on a journey from a quiet, respectable boyhood and adolescence in Scotland to the sudden brutality of jungle warfare in Assam and Burma, and afterwards through the twilight of empire in India to his later life as an international publishing executive doing business with his former Japanese enemies.

Gordon Graham

Drawing not only on personal sources, but on his extensive reading and on official records including war diaries of his battalion, the author succeeds in blending an objective account of great events with a soldier's spontaneous and candid reactions to them. Episodes of drama and intense emotion are punctuated by moments of both poignancy and humour, leavened by mature reflection on the meaning and meaninglessness of war.

The narrative is accompanied by excerpts from the diary of the author's daughter, Sylvia, who in 2002 embarked with her husband Robert on a pilgrimage to retrace the steps of her father and the Cameron Highlanders from Kohima in Nagaland to Mount Popa in central Mayanmar (Burma).

The title of the book is the opening sentence of an article written by the author in 1954 when he revisited Kohima, the site of an epic battle in 1944 between British and Japanese forces. The young trees have healed the shattered landscape. A child born after the war guides him to his battalion's memorial. 'Stumbling through the thickets in the mists of a rainy dawn, I looked for ghosts and found none.' Perhaps, he says, we are the ghosts.

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The Trees are All Young on Garrison Hill

Read the Foreword

Published in a first edition, designed and produced in the UK to the highest standards

160 pages 248 x 170mm

Casebound in burgundy cloth with gold blocking on front and spine

Illustrated with maps and photos, including a select bibliography and index

Publication 2005. All royalties go the the Kohima Educational Trust

Only 100 copies remaining

ISBN 0-9552687-0-2

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Read about the Author – Readers Testimonials

Celebrating the 60th Anniversary of WW2

The UK Ministry of Defence has published a series of booklets on significant battles in the Second World War. The first was on Kohima, ‘The turning point in the war with Japan’.

If you would like a free copy, please go to PDF downloads.