Merrill’s Marauders: America’s greatest special forces

[phuketrichard]

If this wets ur appetite, I've got lots of good Ebooks on the battle's fought in Burma during WW2


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.


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.