No battleground ever tested the INA steel more than Imphal of 1944. Forced against their will to retreat, the men braved worsening weather, disease and starvation to try and stay alive for the battle they hoped would win freedom for their homeland.

The fields of Kohima, especially stands witness to the bravery of these men, who even as they lay dying, had Jai Hind on their lips.

The retreat from Kohima was perhaps one of the most difficult retreats that any army in the world had made. Heavy rain had washed away all tracks. The kutcha tracks had become muddy, in which many of the men got stuck and died.

At that time there was no transport of any kind. Almost every man was suffering from dysentery or malaria. No one had any strength left in him to help anyone else. In that retreat, men ate horses which had been dead for four days. There were hundreds of bodies of soldiers who had died of exhaustion, starvation or disease, and some who faced with the prospect of falling into the hands of the British, had taken their own lives.

Amid all these miseries, the fortitude and the courage of the men lent an epic character to the tragedy. A former INA soldier recalls the incident of a man who, as he lay dying in his brother's arm, bid his brother to carry his message to Netaji that he died without yielding in spirit.

Another soldier who survived the cross, also recalls an incident when a Garhwali soldier who was no longer able to walk, broke down in tears. To lighten the weight of his haversack, when his ammunition was thrown away and "as a final insult" his gun was taken from him, his commander, a burly Sikh shouted: "This man would have died with his rifle in his hand and not as like a rat you have now turned him into. Who ordered this retreat."

For the survivors and many others who followed the history of the war, the experiences of the retreat range from dealing with death in the midst of indescribable suffering to coming face-to-face with awe-inspiring sacrifice and nobility of spirit.

There is a war report which helps to summarize the events and the spirit which guided them, most befittingly. "A man was seen crouching on the ground in the posture of one trying to defecate, with his body supported by a tree trunk. When he continued to stay like that, other approached him to find that he was already dead - victim of a type of dysentery. The soldier was a well-known Punjabi businessman, Khanna, who had donated his entire property and business worth several lakhs of rupees to the Azad Hind fund. After having donated everything, he joined the Subhas Brigade, his young wife volunteered for the Rani Jhansi Brigade and their son joined Netaji's Bal Sena."

This was a family, like many others, which had responded when Netaji asked for their blood.