Ramree Terror

Ramree Today

As the force descended deeper into the swamp, the British sitting off the island in their patrol boats began to hear screams. It lasted all night. These were not the cries of wounded men. Instead they were the guttural screams of terror. As legend now has it the retreating force of men were descended upon by salt water crocodiles that averaged fifteen feet in length. The mangroves were the nesting grounds to these giants and it was reported that there were thousands of them in the nearby area at the time. Drawn by the noise and thrashing of the retreating infantry, the crocodiles took one man after another.

Wounded Japanese had no hope of getting out.

British naturalist Bruce Wright, attached to a Royal Marine division, made the following notes of what he witnessed: “That night was the most horrible that any member of the M.L. [marine launch] crews ever experienced. The crocodiles, alerted by the din of warfare and the smell of blood, gathered among the mangroves, lying with their eyes above water, watchfully alert for their next meal. With the ebb of the tide, the crocodiles moved in on the dead, wounded, and uninjured men who had become mired in the mud. The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left...Of about 1,000 Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about 20 were found alive.”