Word: myitkyina
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...this world. The mission assigned them sounded simple. While General "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's Chinese divisions held the Japanese in position, the Marauders were to slice around end in long flanking attacks and set up roadblocks in the rear. The technique worked at Walawbum and Shaduzup; at Myitkyina it ended in disaster for the 5307th...
...made it axiomatic that troops could not be expected to operate efficiently in enemy territory longer than three months at a time. When the remnants of the Marauders, dragging themselves over the 6,000-foot passes of the Kumon Range in the monsoon rains, made the assault on Myitkyina airfield, they had been five months behind the Japanese lines. They gained their objective, and then simply fell apart as an organization...
...tradition begun by Rogers' Rangers and Morgan's Raiders: small groups of troops with heavy firepower, designed for mobile, long-range harassment behind enemy lines. The Marauders' job: surprise encirclement and roadblocks behind the Japanese front as Stilwell's mainly Chinese forces drove slowly toward Myitkyina...
With only two weeks' rest, the Marauders were next flung into a drive on the Myitkyina airstrip itself. Against the odds, they captured it in mid-May 1944, just as Merrill returned to lead them-only to suffer a second heart attack soon after. When Japanese reinforcements arrived, a major battle developed in which the disease-ridden Marauders (now only 1,310 strong) were ordered to participate with far larger conventional forces of Chinese and British Empire troops. In the desperate Allied effort to hold on, a call for every able-bodied man forced many incapacitated Marauders back...
...action, losing only 424 men in combat while inflicting tremendous casualties on the Japanese. But the static Nhpum Ga siege had broken their spirits-while amoebic dysentery, malaria, scrub typhus and psychoneurosis had put 1,970 men out of action. The Marauders were neither prepared nor equipped for the Myitkyina battle. They were withdrawn in June, disbanded in August...