The armchair critics had a lot to say about Merrill's
Marauders, but they were far from the trackless jungle where
these men fought on when nothing was left but their
gallantry. Here is the story, told by a man who was there.
By Capt. Fred O. Lyons (As Told to Paul Wilder in 1945)
I was one of Merrill's Marauders.I was one of those who marched that
thousand miles through hell to slash the hamstrings of the Japanese
armies in Burma while General Stilwell's Chinese troops herded them
backward and backward, finally to reopen the Burma Road, the famed
life line of China.The world is fairly familiar with the result of
our march and our battles. The map of Burma is testament to that.
People know that only three thousand of us started out, just three
battalions, and that not all the three thousand came back. But since
our return a lot of questions have been raised about Merrill's
Marauders. They all add up to saying that we cracked, broke down;
that our morale was shattered - even though we won the victory.The
people who say these things don't know our story, because it is in
the foot prints we left for a thousand miles across a never-never
land of mountains and jungle of blood-sucking leeches and chattering
baboons, of thundering elephants and silent Japanese. Yes, that's
where the answers to all the questions about Merrill's Marauders can
be found.Well, this is the story of those footprints made across the
long, terrible miles of Burma. I tell it as I remember it, as it
happened to me, right from the beginning.
I had been stationed in Trinidad for almost two years and had begun
to feel that the war was passing me by, when one day back in
August,1943. Colonel H. McGee, my regimental commander, called me
into his office."Do you want to volunteer for a dangerous and
hazardous secret mission in an active theater? he asked me.A
dangerous and hazardous secret mission! My heart gave a jump. But
wasn't this what I'd been waiting for?
"Sure as hell," I replied. "When do we start?Colonel McGee asked the
same question of all the officers and men in the regiment and
everyone gave the same answer but in the end only 1,100 were allowed
to go. I felt lucky, for they took me. And from then on things moved
fast.Every westbound transport plane on the African route that
landed at Trinidad was detained. Passengers who had waited weeks for
reservations were forced to wait some more while soldier after
soldier went aboard. Finally my turn came, and I boarded a huge
transport to begin the first lap of a long, long journey.The first
lap ended at Miami Beach. There, secrecy was the watchword. I was
confined to a hotel along with the men and not allowed even to walk
around the block or telephone my home, just 200 miles away. Other
men who had volunteered for the "dangerous and hazardous secret
mission" were pouring into other hotels: cavalrymen from Jamaica,
engineers from Puerto Rico, riflemen from Panama, radio experts from
Washington. They had no more information than I on where we were
going or what we were to do.
The next morning we boarded two trains with curtains drawn. Five
days later we were in San Francisco. At least we knew we weren't
going to Europe.Kept close in barracks at Pittsburgh, California, we
were given shots of vaccine against diseases in tropical or arctic
climates. We though we had learned something when we got wool
clothing, but the next day we were issued another outfit of cotton
uniforms. The rumor factories were put in production, but we still
had no inkling of our real destination.At last, just before the time
came to sail, I was allowed to make a telephone call. I called my
mother in Florida, but all I could tell her was that I wouldn't be
seeing her for a while, and not to worry. She said, "All right, son;
take care of yourself If she had believed in medals, I'd have given
her one.At sea on a converted luxury liner, I found that we were to
be given plenty of training for our mysterious mission. Day after
day on the wide decks we jumped and crouched, slashed with bayonets
and parried with gun butts. We shot at bobbing Japanese cardboard
faces, peered at cardboard models of Japanese tanks and airplanes.
We had to learn a lot about fighting the Jap, and every minute
counted.At New Caledonia we met new members of our outfit
leather-faced veterans of Guadalcanal and New Guinea. On board ship
the veterans were assigned places in our units, to give weight and
experience to our novice ranks. By then we knew our goal wasn't the
South Pacific.At other ports, we were ashore only a few hours. The
most welcome sight in years was India, for it meant the long sea
voyage was over.A clanking, snorting train carried us to a rest
camp, and after three weeks we moved to training camp. There we
learned for the first time where our battleground would be.It was
the now-legendary General "Sword and Bible Wingate who broke the
news to us. He told us every detail of his famous Raider campaign in
Burma the year before, so we could profit by his experience and come
out of the jungle alive. I see him now, his hawk-like face animated
as he warned us never to speak above a whisper in the jungle, never
to try to pull away a blood-sucking leech, never to drink jungle
water without sterilizing it.For two months we trained in the
maneuvers of the jungle. We were issued jungle clothing - not the
splotched camouflage uniforms of the New Guinea boys, but solid dark
green outfits that offered even more complete concealment in the
bush. Our fatigue blouses and our pants, our undershirts and
drawers, even our handkerchiefs and matches were green. Day and
night we marched, ran, hid, feinted, learned all over again the
lessons that first had been learned by American frontiersmen in
their struggle with the Indians. Right along with us was Brigadier
General (now Major General) Frank Merrill. learning too. We became
hard as our green helmets, tough as our green GI brogans. I weighed
146 pounds and there wasn't an ounce of fat on me. I could run for
20 miles and still enjoy a brisk walk in the cool night air of an
Indian village.
At last the day came when we were considered ready. Another rocking
rolling train carried us to a little Indian town some eight miles
from Ledo near the Burma border. Supplies were waiting for us; mules
and horses were milling in a fenced field; airplanes were on landing
strips ready for supply hauls. The staff work of General Stilwell's
headquarters had prepared everything for the jump-off. It came at
dusk on February 7, 1944.One after another, men and animals pulled
into line and marched off down the Ledo Road, a twisting
40-foot-wide expanse of hard-packed earth stretching from India down
into Burma and linking with the famed Burma Road snipped off by the
Japs. That was the reason for the march: to help push the Japs away
from the connecting link between India and China, the life line that
could turn the trickle of supplies to beleaguered China into a
torrent.Lining both sides of the road as far as I could see ahead
were the bobbing heads of men in green helmets, with green packs
riding high on their backs. Mules ambled along, their packs lurching
from side to side in rhythmic movement with the marching feet.
Behind me stretched an endless line of faces chalky white in the
iridescent light from a Burma moon.The conversation was in snatches.
"I hope this thing's over with in a hurry," said Sokolowsky, a
sergeant from Pittsburgh. "I have a feeling this is going to be no
Jaunt.But for ten nights there was nothing to bear out his feeling.
All there was to it was marching. As dawn approached, we pulled off
the road and made our camp in the jungle till sundown. For 137
miles, we were disturbed only by the dust of 100-truck convoys
roaring past with provisions for the Chinese Army hacking at the
Japs in North Burma.
Then we came to the end of the Ledo Road. We struck out over a
three-foot wide trail in the jungle and changed to traveling in the
daytime, for we could scarcely inch ahead in the jungle at night.
Even though the moon was bright, the light that seeped through the
tangled mass of vines, banyan trees and verdure was hardly enough to
make a tree visible two feet away.Each man passed back to the one
behind him the information on what to expect for his next step.
"Root," Doc Henry Stelling, a medic from Augusta, Georgia, would
jerk back over his shoulder to me, and a moment later I would step
high to avoid a gnarled banyan root sticking across the trail.
"Root" I would pass on in a stage whisper to Sokolowsky behind me,
and so on down the line.
We were nearing the area at the head of the Hukawng Valley where we
knew Jap forces would be. Occasionally a flock of chattering
baboons, startled by our approach, would start leaping through the
trees and I would listen to their screeching receding in the
distance."Damn those monkeys!" Sokolowsky said more than once.
"They'll tip off the Japs we're here..Sometimes we carried on short
conversations in whispers, but most of the time we marched in
silence, automatically following the winding trails made through the
centuries by Burmese natives moving from town to town. For miles at
a time I would just think about one subject, such as a bowl of
spaghetti.As we advanced into the valley, the foodstuffs we had
packed with us ran out, and we called for an air drop. That first
supply drop was quite an experience. I assigned men to look after
the company's supplies, then went up on a rock to watch. Right on
the scheduled time of two o'clock, the planes came roaring over.
Down and down they came, seeming to skim the treetops. Then out of
their big bellies rolled boxes and packages, crates and sacks. The
boxes jerked and dangled on the parachute strings like marionettes,
but the feed sacks for the animals plummeted earthward with a thud
like the sound of our mortars.After a two days' rest while supplies
were sorted and divided, we started the march again. We were
climbing and night to attack our other battalion at Walawbum,
leaving their foxholes wide open and inviting.
We set to work digging the foxholes deeper, so two men could occupy
one at the same time. Meanwhile the gunners were setting up their
pieces and the mortar men were putting their three piece stovepipes
together. I was moving around, checking to see the crossfire covered
all the approaches and the guns were in firing when we found out
that the outfit which had left its foxholes to us was coming back.
We got ready. We crouched in our foxholes. I could feel my muscles
trying to cross in cramps and the blood pounding in my face as I
gingerly moved my position and peered down the road. This is it! I
thought. Then from the stillness of a Burmese plain came the sudden
chatter of a machine gun. It startled me, and it angered Sergeant
Cadamo beside me. He dived to the next hole to grab the gunner's
shoulder."What the hell you shooting at?" he demanded in a hoarse
whisper."What the hell you think?" the gunner shot back, and pointed
down the road.Cadamo shook his head and came back all excited. "What
did the fool kid do?" I asked."Hell, he got seven Japs in a row
walking up the road in as pretty a setup shot as I've ever seen.Then
the firing began in earnest. More Japs ran into view, so close you
could see the bronze star shining dully on their bouncing little
hats. The tommy-guns paused only for reloading as one after the
other the Japs ducked and melted away into the grass. The boys must
have killed a hundred, but it was all over in a hurry.The whole
Japanese Eighteenth Division was going to move back down the valley,
we learned, so that night we headed for the hills. We hadn't done
badly on our first road block.A two days' rest awaited us in the
Himalayas, where we re-outfitted from provisions dropped by
parachute, and then we started the trek again. We found our job
wasn't half done.
High along tortuous mountain trails we climbed and descended. One
ridge was so steep we had to chop steps in the rocks and sling ropes
to give ourselves handholds. I stationed men at the bottom to help
boost the animals up the steps, but even so, several fell to death
in the canyon below.Reaching a gorge holding the Sumpa Hka, a river
not more than waist deep, we found our most difficult terrain to
date. We'd cling to one bank for a little way, then find there was
no more room for travel and wade across to the other side. I'd step
in a little hole and sink almost to my armpits, grab a mule's tail
to keep from going under, then empty my shoes of silt and pebbles
and wade on. Back and forth we waded, until I was so groggy I didn't
even think about the number of times we'd crossed. But as we neared
the end of 20 miles of river, Sokolowsky piped up."Do you know how
many times we've crossed this thing?"About 30,1 guess," I
groaned."Hell," he said, "I've been keeping count on my sleeve. It'
49! Forty-nine times we had crossed that river just to make 20
miles.Nearing the Jap road where we planned to throw in the second
road block, we were moving carefully and quietly. Once again came
that tense feeling of nervous expectancy. Then the order came back
down the line: "Fire at point, fire at point, fire at point." I
reached around and grabbed the radiotelephone off the hook where it
was hanging from the signalman's pack.
"What's going on? I asked. But the air was too busy. Battalion
headquarters was issuing orders to spread out in formation, and the
column was splitting up ahead to move off the trail. Finally I
learned what had happened. The pointmen - lead scouts - had run into
four Japs riding an elephant. They had killed three, but one had
escaped. We knew then the Japs would have us spotted. We circled
into our wagon wheel and dug the holes for the coming scrap. We knew
it was coming, for all night long on the road we could hear the bang
of truck tail gates and the thud of feet landing on the ground. Every
bang meant another truckload of Jap soldiers unloading.In the morning
they struck. I had heard of Banzai charges before, and now I was in the
middle of one. I was crawling through the underbrush to a gun post when I
saw the first wave. They were big Japanese marines, fully six feet tall,
wearing yellowish khaki uniforms that seemed to envelope them like
gunny sacks. There's not much expression to a Japanese face, but I
could plainly see the strained look about them that turned to shock
and surprise as our machine-gun fire hit. One Jap's rifle seemed to
fly like a spear as he fell. Another sank to the ground, hit in the
stomach.I crawled on toward the perimeter and moved into a new
foxhole. Down the incline, I looked on a strange scene of mortal
combat. A Jap had jumped into a foxhole with a boy named Ryan. Ryan
grabbed the Jap's rifle, and they wrestled, straining and pulling to
break each other's grip. No one dared shoot at the Jap for fear of
hitting Ryan.Suddenly it happened. Ryan gave the gun a twist and the
Jap fell free. Divested of his arms, he leaped upward to get out of
the way. As he Jumped, a hail of machine-gun slugs caught him.Jap
bodies were piled so deep after the fourth wave had been cut down
that, during a lull in the fighting, Cadamo had to sneak out and
kick some of them out of the way to clear the range for his gun. In
front of another gun I counted bodies seven deep.At last came a wait
that stretched into hours with no more Japs coming up that bloody
hill. The strain began to tell as the men flopped into their holes.
The fight was over. Before it could start again we headed toward the
Himalayas, rising in peaceful majesty 6,000 feet above that place of
death and suffering. Going back over the Sumpa Hka, we made 49 more
crossings. As night fell, once more in the rocky crags we learned
that the main Jap body was again falling back from the thrust of
Stilwell's Chinese and from our constant rear stings.
More nights of mountain bivouacs, more days of trudging along
ridges. Two months had passed since we left Ledo, and still no end
was in sight. We were headed for a supply drop when the battalion
reached Nhpum Ga, the ridge that almost spelled doom for a third of
Merrill's Marauders. The Japs caught us on that hill, cutting us off
from the rest of the Marauders. There were 1,100 of us, and we were
trapped.The sneaking, crawling Japs weren't so bad, for we
eventually could spot them, but the mortar fire lobbing inside the
wagon wheel was raising bob with our supplies and killing off
animals and men. Without a stream, we soon were in need of water. We
cleared the bamboo inside the perimeter and cut open the Joints,
getting as much as a cup of water from each Joint. But the bamboo
didn't last long with a thousand men. There was some water in
elephant tracks, and I tried to skim off the scum and drink that.
Although I put halazone in the chalky-tasting stuff, tried to doctor
it with lemonade tablets and even tried coffee and cream! it still
tasted just like what it was, wet mud. Back in Ledo they rushed
supplies in answer to our radio pleas, and in the first parachute
drop were plastic casks with aluminum screw tops. When I saw those
dangling sausage-like bottles come floating down the parachutes, I
breathed a fervent prayer of thanks. We had water!Day and night we were
under attack. Everyone had to stay at his gun. I called for cigarettes
from Ledo, and the next drop brought them in abundance. The packages had
little tickets on them saying they had been donated by American Legion
posts and civic clubs. It made us feel for a while that there was
such a place as the United States.From the strain and lack of sleep,
the men's eyes became glazed and staring. They began to call the
ridge Maggot Hill as the carcasses of horses inside the perimeter
decayed and the stench of dead Japs outside it became more and more
violent. Shells pounded in, and we kept pouring it out. In one
supply drop we were scheduled to get hand grenades. The parachutes
fell wide and pretty soon our own hand grenades began popping at us.
Snipers crawled into the very trees above our heads. I had gone out
to lay a line of telephone wire when the puff of an explosive bullet
kicked up the dirt a couple of yards from my feet. I flopped and
looked around but could see nothing. Another puff kicked up the
dirt. I wriggled and twisted, pulling my wire with me. Still another
puff. Five times the sniper, concealed in a tree somewhere near the
clearing, shot at me, and five times he missed.
A battalion was trying to push to us across the ravine, but they
were losing men too. Hearing of our plight, the cooks at the rear
echelon in Ledo stayed up all night to fix us something special.
Sick of K-rations, we lived on coffee and cigarettes for eight days.
Then came, floating down under great white folds of silk, box after
box of fried chicken. With the fighting underway only 300 yards off,
it was a strange sight to see a bunch of battle-worn GIs elbowing
one another to be first for the leg or the breast. Just as the feast
was being passed out to the second line, Jap artillery fire began
lobbing in and the boys scattered. In the next lull,
those who returned found somebody had risked his life for one more
taste of that chicken, for there was none left.The days dragged on.
Men so weak with stomach ailments they couldn't stand up but lay
against the boxes and bales. The medics rushed around trying to tend
the wounded, and shallow graves were dug for the dead. One moment
seemed like hours and hours like weeks, Actually it was lust 15 days
when the relief of Chinese troops got through on April 9th. I
remember the date because somebody said it was Easter Sunday, And on
that day we flied down from the hill, With our few remaining pack
animals - 89 of the original 400 - we made our way back to a new
area for a rest.We had to build another air strip, though, before
the wounded could be evacuated. The little mud retaining walls of a
Burmese rice paddy were knocked down and smoothed over, the trees at
one end were chopped away, and an earthen bank at the other end was
cut into before we had a runway long enough to take even the little
grasshopper planes. The buzzing of their dinky motors was sweet
music to the ailing, and one by one they were flown back to the
hospital.
Although I had managed to keep my strength for the two months of our
Journey, it was taking more and more effort to keep moving. I had
amoebic dysentery. The medics were of the opinion I had contracted
it when I drank water out of the elephant tracks, for halazone kills
all germs except amoebae. Then, too, I had lost a considerable
quantity of blood to leeches, those horrifying grayish-brown
parasites that bury their heads in your veins and suck till they are
bloated several times larger than normal size with your blood.I had
learned how to get rid of leeches by touching a burning cigarette,
iodine or salt to them, but they were always to be found under my
blankets at night. It got so that I began every morning with an
examination to see how many leeches had been living off me through
the night. Once there were nine, swelled to the size of half sausages
with my blood. Some of the boys got them into their ears and noses, and
then the medics made use of a special technique. It seems a leech will
reach down to put its tail in water that's near, so the medics would hold
a cupful of water under a leech sufferer's nose or ear. As the leech
reached down, the medic would tie a loop of string to the tail and pull
tight. Then he would touch the end of a burning cigarette to the
leech, and it would immediately come loose. But if you tried merely
to pull it out, its head would break off beneath your skin and cause
an infection.Other illnesses broke out among the men- yeliow
Jaundice, malaria, stomach disorders - but we kept plugging on. Our
goal was Myitkyina, and we hated to quit before we got there. When
our rest was over, we went back to the mountain trail to start our
march for the final drive.It seemed then as though I couldn't last
another day. As we'd reach the crest of one hill, maybe a mile high,
we'd look down and see another valley a mile below, and another hill
beyond. Maybe the crest of the next hill would be only half a mile
away, but we'd have two miles of walking before we'd get there.
Driving, driving, driving ourselves forward, we inched up one hill
and down another. Going up, the blood pounding in my head from the
strain of hauling on vines and helping pull a mule up the trail.
Going down, my heels pounded right up to my backbone, and every step
was like beating an open wound. I couldn't think of anything but:
'We've got to make it: there can't be much more to go.' Then would
come another hill.Sometimes I'd look ahead at Doc Henry Stelling,
who carried a pack twice as big as anybody else's, and I'd wonder
how in the world he could make it. Then Doc showed what a man he
was. On a supply drop a parachute with his medical supplies caught
in the top of a tree. It must have been 50 feet high. The drop
contained all the supplies we could get for two days. Doc got a
rope, fixed a sling and started shinnying up the tree. From below we
watched him. When he finally reached the parachute and cut loose the
shrouds, a loud cheer went up, Japs or no Japs near by. Doc waved and
grinned, then began the descent. He had saved his precious supplies,
and it may be that some lives were saved by that climb.
Somehow, we got down out of the mountains and near Myitkyina. Once
more we set up the wagon wheel, and sent out patrols to feel out the
Japs. We soon made contact. The other battalions, moving in by
different routes, came up, and soon we were in the thick of sniping
and fighting again.
I took out a patrol along the railroad. By now my dysentery was so
violent I was draining blood. Every one of the men was sick from one
cause or another. My shoulders were worn raw from the pack straps,
and I left the pack behind, carrying only my rifle, ammunition and
belt. The boys with me weren't in much better shape, but we moved up
along the railroad and set up a tommy-gun near the tracks. A scout
moving ahead suddenly held his rifle high in the air. That meant
"Enemy sighted.. Then he started moving the rifle vigorously up and
down. That meant "enemy in force." We hunched back into the bushes to
watch. I felt almost indifferent to the outcome. Then at last we saw
them, coming down the railroad four abreast. The Japs had no idea we
were in the neighborhood. The gunner crouched low over his tommy-gun and
tightened down. Then the gun spoke. Down flopped a half-dozen Japs, then
another half dozen. The column spewed from their marching formation into
the bush. We grabbed up the gun and slid back into the jungle. Sometimes
staggering, sometimes running, sometimes dragging, I made it back to
camp. I was so sick I didn't care whether the Japs broke through or
not; so sick I didn't worry any more about letting the colonel down.
All I wanted was unconsciousness.
"I've got to call it a trip, fellows," I told the medics. They
looked at me and said they guessed I was right. So, I lay down and
waited for the plane to come and take me back to Ledo.I was one of
the last of the Marauders to leave Myitkyina. I left because I
couldn't go any farther, no matter how much I wanted to. I was sick,
exhausted, whipped down mentally and physically. I know the others
were the same way.The breaking up of the Marauders was not from any
one cause. All along the march men dropped out, one by one - no,
they didn't drop out; they dropped down. At first there were
accident casualties - men who broke their legs in falls on the
ridges: men whose ribs were smashed in by kicks of cantankerous pack
animals.After the first road block, disease began to take its toll.
After the second road block and then after the battle of Nhpum Ga,
the need for air evacuation grew more insistent with battle wounds
and ailments. As we finished each Job it looked as though we'd be
relieved; then we'd have one more job to do.But the battle for
Myitkyina Airfield was the straw that broke the Marauders' back. We
just couldn't take it any more. Faster and faster our men began
dropping - from wastage of disease, yes, but mostly from exhaustion.
Transports were loaded time after time with men who could scarcely
lift a hand.By the time my endurance finally gave out,
reinforcements were coming in by air to the captured Jap air strip.
They were green, brave as hell, thrown in because the battle for
Myitkyina was reaching the crucial stage and we needed men - any
kind of men. The newcomers grasped at every chance to talk with the
Marauders, seeking advice even as we were being loaded into the
transports.
Not a man of the Marauders went back to India a walking, well man.
Every one was ordered out by the medics; every man who marched into
Burma so proudly and confidently three months before All either went
out as a medical casualty or was left in a Burma jungle grave.At
the hospital I was in bed a week before I even wanted to look at my
accumulated mail. We had got mall twice in supply drops, but I had a
torrent of it spilled onto my bed. The month was June, but the boxes
were Christmas gifts from the folks. Other boys coming back by air
got their delayed presents, and it was almost like Christmas
again.And then we learned that some of us not even up from sick beds
were being called upon to return to the hell of the jungle. We knew
the battle for Myitkyina had reached the critical hour and the need
for men was desperate, but we couldn't believe they were calling
upon our men. When calls came in for 100 volunteers to return, there
were none.Thus, there gradually came about what has been called the
"crack-up" of Merrill's Marauders.In the hospital rooms the men
lived over again those weary hours of moving upward and downward,
around and across, back and forth over the Burma hillsides. They
relived those days with the flies, the leeches, the ripping
undergrowth, the rains, the mud, the moldy stench of ancient jungle
and dead Japanese, the ever-present terror of ambush, the occasional
grim quip. And this comprehending couldn't include return.Finally
came orders for us to return to America. And we came home - five
officers and about 400 enlisted men in the first batch, others as
their condition warranted. We came home to hear it said of us that
we cracked up.But we didn't. Yes, the men who had to go back did
grumble and a lot of them didn't make it out there on the line, but
that was not because our morale had cracked or we had
fizzled.Merrill's Marauders - all of us who can still walk - would
march another such thousand miles to meet the Jap, if that were our
mission. No, the morale of Merrill's Marauders never ended. We never
backed down. We just wore out!
