Post by lol on Jan 5, 2023 20:09:46 GMT
1. Brief history of Merrill's Marauders (5307 Composite Unit)
www.marauder.org/history.htm
.
2. Diary of a soldier in Dad's team
www.marauder.org/diary.htm
.
3. List of dates of death of 5307 Unit soldiers (about 2444 men altogether; 1 is still alive aged 101; (Kinder) Dad's date of death is correct, March 2012)
www.marauder.org/passing.htm
.
4. Wikipedia's take on the 5307 Unit (seems accurate)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill%27s_Marauders
.
5. Thorough report on Merrill's Marauders (with several pictures)
www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26918040.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A6d7d49a0588c560095eb30392b9dae95&ab_segments=&origin=&acceptTC=1
.
6. Home page for the report
www.jstor.org/stable/26918040#metadata_info_tab_contents
.
7. Report on the Short-lived 475th Infantry Regiment (excerpt below giving reasons for the Burma Campaign)
arsof-history.org/articles/v5n4_over_the_hills_page_1.html
...
_From the outset, Burma presented a challenge for the United States Army. The British were in charge of operations in the country because it was their former colony. In north Burma, the U.S.-led Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC) had a small force of mostly Chinese troops. These were nominally under American control. Burma was one of the most difficult geographical environments in WWII and a lack of resources plagued operations. NCAC had to clear the area so that it could build a bypass—the Ledo Road—from Ledo, India to the portion of the Burma Road not controlled by the Japanese. Otherwise, all supplies into China had to arrive by air. Secondly, the Allies wanted to keep the bulk of the Japanese ground forces engaged in mainland Asia because the main advance against Tokyo was across the Pacific islands. To keep the bulk of the Japanese Army fixed, the Nationalist Chinese Army had to have desperately needed supplies to constitute a viable threat.
_Although the effort was insufficient, the air bridge from India to Kunming, China supplied vital resources until the Ledo Road was complete. Japanese fighter aircraft based at Myitkyina, Burma were a major threat for Allied cargo planes flying the “Hump” route. This forced the unarmed aircraft to fly a longer and more dangerous course. Clearing higher passes in the Himalayas and the additional distance meant that aircraft carried less cargo. To secure the trace of the Ledo Road and make the Hump flights more effective, Myitkyina had to be taken from the Japanese. It was for this reason that the U.S. Army formed the GALAHAD Force [nicknamed Merrill’s Marauders after their commander Brigadier General (BG) Franklin D. Merrill], the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional).
.
8. Two Quotes from Lestrade's last paper: mileswmathis.com/pacthe122.pdf
"Later in the Burma Campaign Orde (after recuperating from flower vase water) decides to invade Burma using gliders. No really. His second choice was unicycles [Miles].
"'Afterward, some Chinese units attacked the town itself, but the attack was soon called off when two Chinese battalions, in the confusion and excitement of the battle, mistakenly engaged each other in a fierce firefight, and when two other battalions were moved in, they too repeated the mistake.'”
"I love the slapstick of the Japanese running around in a panic pouring petrol on their own runway to try and stop the airfield being captured. Or the idea that the Chinese army managed to get confused and fight itself not just once but twice in the same village. Utterly ridiculous."
.
9. MY COMMENTS
_I'm not offended about anyone's speculations or findings, but Lestrade could have gotten a much better picture of the Burma campaign if he had found any of the links above. He seemed to conclude that the whole thing was fiction, but I have plenty of evidence that it was real. Dad was in the Burma campaign with Merrill's Marauders. He often told anyone who'd listen about some of the experiences he had there. He also wrote to a lot of his buddies from the war and met with them at reunions pretty often.
_What I had recalled from his stories was that he got training in Texas or somewhere in the Southwest in 1943. Then they were taken by ship through the Mediterranean and Red Seas and across the Indian Ocean. Before they reached India, a submarine torpedoed the ship, but it sank slowly so the men were rescued and taken to India nearby. The mules that they had trained with remained on the sinking ship. He said a train took them from the west side of India to the east near Burma. While riding the train, he took target practice on some India farmer's ox. He never admitted that he did it, but his buddy's son said he did. I imagine he regretted it afterward, if it was true. He saw a lot of things made from bamboo in India. Airplanes dropped supplies to them while they were in the jungles of or near Burma. Once a supply drop rolled down a hill and crushed one of the men who was napping. On another occasion Dad had planned to stay in a foxhole for the night, but his buddy told him to come stay by him. That night the foxhole got hit by a Japanese explosive. Another time Dad was smoking a cigarette at night when he heard a sniper bullet hit a tree or something near him. That was the last time he ever smoked. He said he tried to shoot Japanese soldiers on at least one occasion, but he doesn't know if he ever hit anyone. When the mission was accomplished, he and others were assigned to another unit that was to be involved with the Chinese in China just over the Burmese border.
_After reading Lestrade's take on the Burma campaign, I looked online for more info and found and read the links above. So I now know a lot more about it than I did before. The Marauders were volunteers. Dad had been drafted into the army, but once in, he apparently accepted the offer to volunteer to Burma. Some places say there were 3,000 soldiers in the unit, but the link on dates of death above show only 2,444 men were in the unit. It's probably because battalions can have up to 1,000 men each, but these only had about 800 each. If anyone wants to say that there was no Burma campaign, I don't know how the 2,444 men with their dates of death (#3 link), and the stories we in the family know, and the many reunions that Dad and some of my family attended, can be explained.
_The #7 link seems to have a good rationale for the Burma campaign. From the airfield at Myitkyina the Japanese were able to send up planes to intercept Allied planes taking supplies to the Chinese. So the Allies needed to take that airfield from them.
_Regarding the 2 quotes at #8, the gliders were actually used. My brother said Dad saw or knew about the Allied gliders that landed at Myitkyina. Dad was talking about that at one of his reunions and one of the guys who overheard him said he was one of the glider pilots. His name was Al Deckert, not on the list above. The purpose of gliders is often to prevent anyone hearing them in flight. As for some of the Chinese battalions fighting each other, Dad knew about that too. In the confusion of fighting it's to be expected that there will be mistakes like that. There were others, like Allied planes dropping bombs on their own men there.
_My brother had heard that at one point Japanese troops were trying to cross a river or creek to engage the Marauders despite a machine gun mowing them down. He heard that they had done that against Chinese, on the expectation that the machine gun would get too hot and the charge would eventually succeed. But the Marauders used two machine guns and took turns firing them, so when one got too hot, they switched to firing the other one. He heard that the Japanese lost 700 men at that creek, but in one of the links above, probably the diary, it said 300 were killed there. He says Dad told him that the Marauders could tell when the Japanese were preparing for an attack the next day or night, because they sounded like they were having a drunken party.
_I think the Japanese may have been drugged much of the time. If the U.S. or Britain was in control of Japan, as one of Miles' papers concluded, since before the war, then it may not have been hard to cause them to fail.
_Some of the men who volunteered with the Marauders are said to have had war experience in the Pacific earlier. Miles and his other writers should look for first-hand accounts for their papers. The Pacific Theatre papers have seemed pretty strongly suggestive that much of the war was fake, but if there were troops who fought in any of them and if they had reunions like the Maruaders did, those should be better sources than most anything else online.
www.marauder.org/history.htm
.
2. Diary of a soldier in Dad's team
www.marauder.org/diary.htm
.
3. List of dates of death of 5307 Unit soldiers (about 2444 men altogether; 1 is still alive aged 101; (Kinder) Dad's date of death is correct, March 2012)
www.marauder.org/passing.htm
.
4. Wikipedia's take on the 5307 Unit (seems accurate)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill%27s_Marauders
.
5. Thorough report on Merrill's Marauders (with several pictures)
www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26918040.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A6d7d49a0588c560095eb30392b9dae95&ab_segments=&origin=&acceptTC=1
.
6. Home page for the report
www.jstor.org/stable/26918040#metadata_info_tab_contents
.
7. Report on the Short-lived 475th Infantry Regiment (excerpt below giving reasons for the Burma Campaign)
arsof-history.org/articles/v5n4_over_the_hills_page_1.html
...
_From the outset, Burma presented a challenge for the United States Army. The British were in charge of operations in the country because it was their former colony. In north Burma, the U.S.-led Northern Combat Area Command (NCAC) had a small force of mostly Chinese troops. These were nominally under American control. Burma was one of the most difficult geographical environments in WWII and a lack of resources plagued operations. NCAC had to clear the area so that it could build a bypass—the Ledo Road—from Ledo, India to the portion of the Burma Road not controlled by the Japanese. Otherwise, all supplies into China had to arrive by air. Secondly, the Allies wanted to keep the bulk of the Japanese ground forces engaged in mainland Asia because the main advance against Tokyo was across the Pacific islands. To keep the bulk of the Japanese Army fixed, the Nationalist Chinese Army had to have desperately needed supplies to constitute a viable threat.
_Although the effort was insufficient, the air bridge from India to Kunming, China supplied vital resources until the Ledo Road was complete. Japanese fighter aircraft based at Myitkyina, Burma were a major threat for Allied cargo planes flying the “Hump” route. This forced the unarmed aircraft to fly a longer and more dangerous course. Clearing higher passes in the Himalayas and the additional distance meant that aircraft carried less cargo. To secure the trace of the Ledo Road and make the Hump flights more effective, Myitkyina had to be taken from the Japanese. It was for this reason that the U.S. Army formed the GALAHAD Force [nicknamed Merrill’s Marauders after their commander Brigadier General (BG) Franklin D. Merrill], the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional).
.
8. Two Quotes from Lestrade's last paper: mileswmathis.com/pacthe122.pdf
"Later in the Burma Campaign Orde (after recuperating from flower vase water) decides to invade Burma using gliders. No really. His second choice was unicycles [Miles].
"'Afterward, some Chinese units attacked the town itself, but the attack was soon called off when two Chinese battalions, in the confusion and excitement of the battle, mistakenly engaged each other in a fierce firefight, and when two other battalions were moved in, they too repeated the mistake.'”
"I love the slapstick of the Japanese running around in a panic pouring petrol on their own runway to try and stop the airfield being captured. Or the idea that the Chinese army managed to get confused and fight itself not just once but twice in the same village. Utterly ridiculous."
.
9. MY COMMENTS
_I'm not offended about anyone's speculations or findings, but Lestrade could have gotten a much better picture of the Burma campaign if he had found any of the links above. He seemed to conclude that the whole thing was fiction, but I have plenty of evidence that it was real. Dad was in the Burma campaign with Merrill's Marauders. He often told anyone who'd listen about some of the experiences he had there. He also wrote to a lot of his buddies from the war and met with them at reunions pretty often.
_What I had recalled from his stories was that he got training in Texas or somewhere in the Southwest in 1943. Then they were taken by ship through the Mediterranean and Red Seas and across the Indian Ocean. Before they reached India, a submarine torpedoed the ship, but it sank slowly so the men were rescued and taken to India nearby. The mules that they had trained with remained on the sinking ship. He said a train took them from the west side of India to the east near Burma. While riding the train, he took target practice on some India farmer's ox. He never admitted that he did it, but his buddy's son said he did. I imagine he regretted it afterward, if it was true. He saw a lot of things made from bamboo in India. Airplanes dropped supplies to them while they were in the jungles of or near Burma. Once a supply drop rolled down a hill and crushed one of the men who was napping. On another occasion Dad had planned to stay in a foxhole for the night, but his buddy told him to come stay by him. That night the foxhole got hit by a Japanese explosive. Another time Dad was smoking a cigarette at night when he heard a sniper bullet hit a tree or something near him. That was the last time he ever smoked. He said he tried to shoot Japanese soldiers on at least one occasion, but he doesn't know if he ever hit anyone. When the mission was accomplished, he and others were assigned to another unit that was to be involved with the Chinese in China just over the Burmese border.
_After reading Lestrade's take on the Burma campaign, I looked online for more info and found and read the links above. So I now know a lot more about it than I did before. The Marauders were volunteers. Dad had been drafted into the army, but once in, he apparently accepted the offer to volunteer to Burma. Some places say there were 3,000 soldiers in the unit, but the link on dates of death above show only 2,444 men were in the unit. It's probably because battalions can have up to 1,000 men each, but these only had about 800 each. If anyone wants to say that there was no Burma campaign, I don't know how the 2,444 men with their dates of death (#3 link), and the stories we in the family know, and the many reunions that Dad and some of my family attended, can be explained.
_The #7 link seems to have a good rationale for the Burma campaign. From the airfield at Myitkyina the Japanese were able to send up planes to intercept Allied planes taking supplies to the Chinese. So the Allies needed to take that airfield from them.
_Regarding the 2 quotes at #8, the gliders were actually used. My brother said Dad saw or knew about the Allied gliders that landed at Myitkyina. Dad was talking about that at one of his reunions and one of the guys who overheard him said he was one of the glider pilots. His name was Al Deckert, not on the list above. The purpose of gliders is often to prevent anyone hearing them in flight. As for some of the Chinese battalions fighting each other, Dad knew about that too. In the confusion of fighting it's to be expected that there will be mistakes like that. There were others, like Allied planes dropping bombs on their own men there.
_My brother had heard that at one point Japanese troops were trying to cross a river or creek to engage the Marauders despite a machine gun mowing them down. He heard that they had done that against Chinese, on the expectation that the machine gun would get too hot and the charge would eventually succeed. But the Marauders used two machine guns and took turns firing them, so when one got too hot, they switched to firing the other one. He heard that the Japanese lost 700 men at that creek, but in one of the links above, probably the diary, it said 300 were killed there. He says Dad told him that the Marauders could tell when the Japanese were preparing for an attack the next day or night, because they sounded like they were having a drunken party.
_I think the Japanese may have been drugged much of the time. If the U.S. or Britain was in control of Japan, as one of Miles' papers concluded, since before the war, then it may not have been hard to cause them to fail.
_Some of the men who volunteered with the Marauders are said to have had war experience in the Pacific earlier. Miles and his other writers should look for first-hand accounts for their papers. The Pacific Theatre papers have seemed pretty strongly suggestive that much of the war was fake, but if there were troops who fought in any of them and if they had reunions like the Maruaders did, those should be better sources than most anything else online.
