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In August of 1943, a call went out for American soldiers willing to embark on a "hazardous and dangerous mission" behind enemy lines in Burma. The war department wanted 3,000 volunteers, and it didn't care who they were; they would be expendable, with an expected casualty rate of 85 percent. The men who took up the challenge were, in the words of one, "bums and cast-offs" with rap sheets and reputations for trouble. One war reporter described them as "Dead End Kids," but by the end of their five-month mission, those that remained had become the legendary "Merrill's Marauders." From award-winning historian Gavin Mortimer, Merrill's Marauders is the story of the American World War II special forces unit originally codenamed "Galahad," which, in 1944, fought its way through 700 miles of snake-infested Burmese jungle--what Winston Churchill described as "the most forbidding fighting country imaginable." Though their mission to disrupt Japanese supply lines and communications was ultimately successful, paving the way for the Allied conquest of Burma, the Marauders paid a terrible price for their victory. By the time they captured the crucial airfield of Myitkyina in May 1944, only 200 of the original 3,000 men remained; the rest were dead, wounded, or riddled with disease. This is the definitive nonfiction narrative of arguably the most extraordinary, but also unsung, American special forces unit in World War II.

Gavin Mortimer is a best-selling author and an award-winning historian whose versatile narrative nonfiction books have been published in the United States and Great Britain.

He is the author of Merrill's Marauders (Zenith Press, 2013), which profiles the American jungle fighters who fought a brutal campaign against the Japanese in Burma in 1944 and was seen on the CBS network during its coverage of Veterans Day 2013.

Mortimer's other recent title is The History of the Special Boat Squadron in World War 2, an Amazon bestseller that was featured prominently in the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror, the latter praising it as a "remarkable" account of the wartime SBS.

Mortimer is also the author of The First Eagles, to be released in the summer of 2014, which is a compelling account of the American pilots who flew with the Royal Air Force in World War I.

www.gavinmortimer.com

ContentsTimeline viii
Prologue: Back into BurmaChapter 1: Wanted: Men for a Dangerous and Hazardous Mission
Chapter 2: Destination Unknown
Chapter 3: India
Chapter 4: Teaching, Training, Teamwork
Chapter 5: Merrill and His Marauders
Chapter 6: Down the Ledo Road to Burma
Chapter 7: “I Fear No Son-of-a-Bitch”
Chapter 8: Death on the Trail
Chapter 9: “Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel”
Chapter 10: South to Shaduzup
Chapter 11: The Deadly Jungle
Chapter 12: Sixteen Banzai Attacks
Chapter 13: Merrill Goes Down
Chapter 14: Besieged and Bombarded at Nhpum Ga
Chapter 15: “This War Is Hell”
Chapter 16: End Run to Myitkyina
Chapter 17: Blazing the Mountain Trail
Chapter 18: A Force of Will
Chapter 19: “Will This Burn Up the Limeys!”
Chapter 20: Broken Promises
Chapter 21: The End of the RoadEpilogue: “The Soldier’s Soldier”
What Became of the Marauders
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
PrologueBack into BurmaApril 1943. Two thousand British soldiers stagger from the steaming jungle of northern Burma. Bleeding, emaciated, worn out, these men are the remnants of the 77th Brigade. For two months, they’ve been fighting a primitive guerrilla campaign against the Japanese army. They are the survivors. One thousand of their comrades remain in the jungle, victims of the enemy, victims of disease, victims of hunger.
The survivors would never be the same men again. They had endured suffering the like of which few British soldiers had ever experienced: the terror of combat against a pitiless enemy, the horror of myriad diseases, the misery of searing heat, the fear of venomous snakes and bloodsucking leeches.
And for what had they suffered? How had the war in Burma been influenced by the sacrifices of so many young British men? Materially, there was little about which to brag.
An estimated two hundred Japanese soldiers had been killed, a few bridges destroyed, and a handful of railway lines severed. The Japanese war machine hadn’t exactly been brought to its knees by the British guerrillas, but it had been shocked nonetheless.
In the eighteen months since it had entered the war with its spectacular attack on the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor, Japan’s forces had swept through Southeast Asia, conquering Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore, Indochina, and Burma.
Finally the British had struck back, jolting the Japanese out of their complacency and, with the aid of a brilliant propaganda campaign, boosting the morale of the Allies. The 77th Brigade was too prosaic a name for such a fearless band of warriors; such daring required something more exotic, more adventurous. They were rechristened “The Chindits,” in honor of the Chinthe, the mythical beast—half lion, half dragon—that guarded the Burmese pagodas.
British and American newspapers heralded the operation as proof that the tide was turning in the war against Japan. In its May 21, 1943, edition, the Washington Post described it as a “super raid” and told its readers that the Chindits had “swept through northern Burma on a 300-mile front, wrecking railroads and bridges, and generally harassing Japanese occupation forces.”
The Ogden Standard-Examiner called it “one of the greatest epics of the war” and devoted a full page to photographs of the Chindits and their commander, Brig. Orde Wingate. The Waterloo Daily Courier joined in the celebration but also offered the most perceptive analysis of the British operation. Its editorial praised the damage inflicted on the Japanese but also the fact that “the troops were supplied entirely by air.”

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Merrill's Marauders The Untold Story of Unit Galahad and the Toughest Special Forces Mission of World War II

Merrill's Marauders The Untold Story of Unit Galahad and the Toughest Special Forces Mission of World War II

0760344329

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