The World History of War and Peace ·
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When the sunset, the giant reptiles attacked and in the darkness blood-curdling screams echoed.
Towards the end of the Second World War, in the tropical jungles of south-east Asia, during the Burma Campaign, General William Slim having turned near-certain defeat against the Japanese Empire, into a sublime reversal, having launched a seemingly unstoppable counteroffensive with a mixed force of soldiers drawn from across the largest empire in human history. The fighting was exhaustingly brutal and the enemy showed no quarter, expecting none in return. An unbelievable night of horror approached.
The Battle of Ramree Island , Burma Campaign, Second World War, 1945.
Soldiers of the diverse all-volunteer British Empire Army inspecting an overrun Japanese position in the jungle of Burma, a well-disciplined and trained force of British, Ghurkha, Indian and West African soldiers.
Ramree Island being the largest island on the Burma coast, was of strategic importance and the fact it was wide and flat, making it the perfect site for a new RAF airbase, desperately required to support the relentless advance of General Slim.
What followed was an intense 6-week battle for the island, that involved massive naval bombardment of Japanese positions and valiant opposed amphibious assaults by 3 Commando Brigade and various other battle-hardened units drawn from across the Empire, that threw the occupying Japanese forces into disarray, this opening was immediately followed by weeks of hard-fought combat in the towns, villages and dense jungles of the island.
Anyway, things were not going well for the Japanese forces, who had frankly been thoroughly enjoying themselves during the war, until just a few months ago, now they were repeatedly losing battles and ground to what they believed was an inferior enemy, which didn’ t sit well with their indoctrinated belief that they were inherently superior to their enemies. a few thousand Imperial Japanese soldiers garrisoned Ramree Island. They fought doggedly for weeks until elements of the 4th Indian Brigade formed of soldiers of the Ghurkha Rifles, Green Howards and the Warwickshire Regiment (a fabled unit with 283 years of continuous service), along with many other capable combat units, managed to flank and break through the Japanese line, cutting roughly 1,000 Japanese soldiers off from their main force.
The British sent demands for the surrounded pocket of a thousand Japanese soldiers to surrender, but the Japanese troops trapped in the pocket ignored the calls to surrender and hatched a plan to escape.
I suggest we retreat into the Mangroves other there. Yes, Fuji , I’m well aware retreating is shameful, thanks for reminding everyone. We will traverse the safety of the island’s Mangroves and eat juicy fresh Mangos. God damnit, yes Fuji , I’m bloody certain there will be Mangos in a Mangrove.
The terrifying events unfolded like a slow-motion car crash, the plan hatched by the Japanese had failed to account for the inhospitable environment, the complete lack of drinkable water and the plethora of deadly snakes, spiders and much worse, that called the thick mangrove. home.
Off the thousand-strong Japanese force went, marching with banners unfurled into the waist-high murky water of the mangrove, they would have to traverse 9 miles of a watery maze, navigating a tangle of roots that sprang from deep mud that sucked at their Boots with every step.
Fuji had yet to see any Mangos. But then again, Fuji had been busy staring gormlessly at the monstrous reptiles everywhere, amphibious giants leisurely sunbathing on the shoreline.
What follows is reminiscent of the horror movie Lake Placid , only that movie doesn’t have diddly squat on the true events that unfolded in that mangrove during an overlooked WWII campaign. The Japanese force seemed to be making good headway at first, sure the tropical heat and lack of drinking water were worrying as mild dehydration set in, on top of these clouds the mosquitoes plagued the Japanese troops. All the while, the docile Saltwater Crocodiles, the largest of which were up to 20 feet long, watched them pass, slithering into the water to monitor the progress of this substantial force of humans as they slowly moved deeper into the heart of the mangrove.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate Saltwater Crocodiles — by far the largest reptiles on earth, apex predators that haven’t changed in millions of years, the perfect amphibious killing machines that thrive in the tropical mangroves and grow to upwards of twice the size of other. species of crocodile.
Less active during the daylight hours, preferring to sun themselves on the cool mud and lounge in the shallows, ambushing anything foolish enough to venture too close, but otherwise seemingly docile during the midday heat, because these terrifying giant lizards are nocturnal, being night- time hunters. Perhaps the Japanese were less familiar with these apex predators, but the soldiers of the British Empire knew full well and instead shadowed the Japanese progress from the edge of the mangrove, following on land and sending out Motor launch Boats to monitor from the water.
Aboard one of these boats serving in a Motor Launch Crew, was a British Naturalist who knew full well what Saltwater Crocodiles were capable of and it is his first-hand account that stands out, his name was Bruce Stanley Wright and he wrote about what happened when the sun went down, when the night came with nightmares.
“That night [of the 19 February 1945] was the most horrible that any member of the Motor Launch crews ever experienced. The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn, the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left… Of about one thousand Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about twenty were found alive.” — Bruce Stanley Wright, British WWII veteran and acclaimed Naturalist.
A thousand Japanese soldiers surrounded in a pocket, tried to cross a dense nine-mile-wide mangrove to reach Japanese-controlled territory, only the mangrove was infested with Saltwater Crocodiles and during the night the Japanese soldiers struggled through the waist-high water and mud, only to be attacked by hundreds of apex predators. At first sporadic gunfire was all that could be heard, but soon blood-curdling screams, heavy gunfire and the sounds of thrashing reached the ears of those monitoring the situation, which lasted throughout the night. The more noise and blood in the water, the more Saltwater Crocodiles were attracted, giant reptiles that weigh more than 2,000lb, fracking dinosaurs with jaws lined with sharp massive ivory teeth, watching, gliding underwater towards herds of strange unfamiliar prey, before biting terrified. Japanese soldiers and pulling them under the water, violently rolling and tearing them to pieces, as guns open fire desperately in the darkness and the hungry apex predators from miles around converge.
[Edit] This event is so unbelievable that many choose not to believe, there is no evidence, all we have to go on is the witness accounts from allied soldiers who were there, primarily Bruce S. Wright who in his book Wildlife Sketches: Near and far,
described how over the nights of the 19th and 20th of February 1945, roughly a thousand Japanese soldiers died violently in a mangrove swamp in Burma, a large population of the largest reptiles on earth call this habitat home, the naturalist recounted how his The crew had listened to the chilling sounds of gunfire and bloodcurdling screams for two nights.