BBC News By Anbarasan Ethirajan image captionView of the Garrison Hill battlefield with the British and Japanese positions shown. Garrison Hill was the key to the British defences at Kohima. Captain Robin Rowland was 22 when his regiment was deployed to the north-eastern Indian town of Kohima. It was May 1944, and a small group of British-Indian soldiers was under assault by an entire division of Japanese forces. Capt Rowland, now 99, vividly remembers approaching the town, following a trail of devastation to the front line. "We saw abandoned trenches and destroyed villages, and as we moved forward the smell of death was everywhere," he said.