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Merrill’s Marauders: America’s greatest special forces

Posted: Tue Dec 31, 2019 8:39 am
by phuketrichard
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If this wets ur appetite, I've got lots of good Ebooks on the battle's fought in Burma during WW2

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They were the real ‘Dirty Dozen,’ many in military prisons and promised a pardon if they took part in a secret mission

The year was 1943 – a pivotal year in the Second World War — and you’ve been fighting for nearly 1,000 miles, against vicious Japanese forces in the thick jungles of Burma, with no relief in sight.

The Japanese aren’t nice to prisoners, either … often torturing them and leaving them behind as barbaric trophies of war, splayed horrifically.

They may well have been the toughest special forces of all time, suffering horrific casualties – of those 3,000 volunteers, only about 200 surviving members of the original Marauders were left after the battle of Myitkyina, on August 10, 1944.

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In 1943, General Frank Merrill was appointed to command a new volunteer US Army special forces unit patterned after the Long Range Jungle Penetration groups formed by the British to harass Japanese forces in Burma, called the Chindits. Credit: Handout.