The planning staff gave it the codename 'Brighton,' as though naming a beach holiday might lighten the task ahead. Hill 170 was nothing like Brighton. It was a wooded ridge roughly 700 yards long and 300 yards wide, rising 1,000 feet above the mangrove swamps and rice paddies of the Arakan Peninsula in western Burma. In January 1945, the men of the British 3rd Commando Brigade would fight and die on it for four days, enduring an artillery bombardment unprecedented in the Burma theatre -- and their refusal to break would shatter the Japanese 54th Division's will to fight.
The commandos' mission was to sever the Japanese line of withdrawal through the Arakan to Rangoon. Lieutenant General Sir Philip Christison, commanding the XV Indian Corps, chose the coastline near Kangaw, where waterways on the mainland offered a chance to cut off the retreating enemy. The terrain was brutal: no roads, only mangrove swamps and flooded paddies that ruled out tanks or artillery coming ashore in the initial phase. On 12 January 1945, the brigade made an amphibious landing on the Myebon Peninsula. No. 42 (Royal Marine) Commando came ashore first, with No. 5 Commando following in the second wave and pushing inland until machine-gun fire from a rise called 'Hill Rose' slowed the advance. Operations over the following days secured the peninsula and surrounding islands, with commandos from No. 5 Commando killing four Japanese in a patrol contact without suffering a single casualty.
The assault on the mainland came next. No. 1 Commando led the way onto Hill 170, supported by No. 5 Commando, while No. 42 Commando held the beachhead between two tidal creeks codenamed 'Thames' and 'Mersey.' No. 44 Commando took two valleys east of the hill -- 'Milford' and 'Pinner' -- both secured by 23 January with minimal resistance. Then the Japanese counterattacked. Over the night of 23-24 January, they struck at 'Pinner' and unleashed an artillery barrage on Hill 170 that did not stop for four days. The commandos dug in on the narrow ridge, exposed to fire from multiple directions, with no armored support and limited artillery of their own. An estimated 700 Japanese shells fell on the hill during the final day alone. The defenders held.
Among the defenders was Lieutenant George Knowland of No. 4 Troop, No. 1 Commando. During the battle, Knowland's actions were so extraordinary that he was awarded the Victoria Cross -- posthumously. His citation described a man who, at the crisis point, moved between positions under heavy fire, manned weapons personally when crews were hit, and continued to fight even when wounded, buying critical time for the defense. Knowland did not survive the battle, but his stand embodied what the entire brigade endured on that ridge. When No. 5 Commando finally advanced on the morning after the bombardment ceased, they found Hill 170 abandoned by the enemy. More than 340 Japanese soldiers lay dead on and around the hill. British losses for the entire battle were 45 killed and 90 wounded.
Christison called it the decisive battle of the whole Arakan campaign. In a special order of the day addressed to the 3rd Commando Brigade, he wrote that the victory 'was very largely due to your magnificent defence of Hill 170.' The Japanese 54th Division's spirit was broken. Had the commandos' positions fallen, every Allied unit that had landed on the Myebon Peninsula would have been endangered -- the Japanese escape route to Rangoon would have remained open, and the campaign's momentum would have stalled. Instead, the Arakan was effectively won. The brigade received the battle honour 'Kangaw,' and beyond Knowland's Victoria Cross, its men earned numerous other decorations for gallantry. The ridge itself returned to jungle and swamp, a small wooded feature in a landscape of mangroves that gives no outward sign of what it cost to hold.
Located at 20.12N, 93.44E on the Arakan (Rakhine) coast of western Myanmar, near the town of Kangaw. From altitude, the area is a patchwork of mangrove swamps, tidal creeks, and rice paddies -- flat and waterlogged terrain where a single wooded ridge would have been the dominant terrain feature. The Myebon Peninsula extends into the Bay of Bengal to the west. The nearest significant airfield is Sittwe Airport (VYSW), approximately 60 km to the northwest. The Chin Hills rise to the east. The landscape is best appreciated at moderate altitude where the contrast between the flat coastal plain and the ridge features becomes visible.