India, June 20 -- In March 1944, the Japanese invaded north-east India. There followed some of the fiercest battles of World War 2, with as many as 60,000 Japanese and more than 17,000 Allied soldiers killed. The battles of Imphal and Kohima marked Japan's greatest land defeat in the war, shattering ambitions to invade India. While the Allied 14th Army was staffed with British soldiers and trained soldiers from traditional Indian fighting clans, it was the first time recruits from across India were tested. They more than proved their mettle. Documenting the war was an Indian journalist, PRS Mani. Through this period, he lived closely with the soldiers on the front, risking his life too. His dispatches, distributed by the Army's public relations department and relayed also in the Indian and British media, constitute rare eyewitness accounts of these battles by an embedded Indian war correspondent. They remain among the great works of Indian war writing....