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>> Additional support provided by... ♪ >> Support for this program was also made possible by... ♪ ♪ >> Said they would like volunteers for a hazardous and dangerous mission.

We still had no idea where we were going.

>> Which was some 125 miles deep behind the British fighting lines.

♪ >> You'd go over one mountain, there's another mountain, followed by another mountain.

♪ >> We put the machine guns in position, the mortars were in position.

>> The Japanese attacked in waves of men.

>> They make another charge.

My guns were going all the time.

♪ The field was just littered with dead people.

>> It was dog eat dog, you know?

>> We could see the Japanese almost had it.

>> Just try and keep alive, let's put it that way.

♪ >> They become combat soldiers very fast.

♪ >> Appalling scenes of destruction made on that terrifying Sunday morning when Jap planes rained death on Honolulu, showing stark realism how the air force, without warning, struck at peaceful Hawaii.

>> Following Japan's attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, allied leaders began to discuss an updated strategy for winning World War II.

Beating Hitler and Mussolini in Europe would be the top priority, eliminating Japanese aggression in the Pacific right behind that.

But there was another sizable theater of war that also needed attention... [ Machine-gun fire ] ...a location so remote that few knew it existed.

The Japanese had committed thousands of their best troops to the fight there.

British commandos had taken up the battle against the enemy in this foreboding part of the world in the Spring of 1943.

>> On a news reel for the first time, those almost legendary figures, the Chindits.

Masters in guerrilla warfare, they've taught the Japanese to fear the swift-striking columns of elusive fighting men.

>> These so-called Chindits, a mix of British troops and soldiers from India, were under the command of mercurial English General Orde Charles Wingate.

The Chindits took their name from a beast which, according to myth, guarded Buddhist temples.

Wingate's game plan was a series of hit-and-run operations deep behind Japanese lines.

The Chindits had proven to be quite good at their job, but they had run out of steam battling the Japanese.

>> August 1943 -- Canada.

At the first Quebec conference, allied chiefs were planning new strategy.

Expecting European victory in a year, the allies now marshal their forces against Japan.

>> American and British leaders, with urging from General Wingate, pushed for a new American jungle commando unit to get involved in this type of fighting, as well.

>> President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill decided that an American expeditionary force should follow in the same lines as General Wingate's Chindits.

And immediately after that, the call went out for volunteers for a dangerous mission.

>> Bob Passanisi was one of those early volunteers training as a radio operator.

>> They were looking for radio men, preferably a radio mechanic, to volunteer.

>> American jungle fighters, with no official name yet, had already been training prior to Pearl Harbor in the Caribbean and the Pacific.

In September 1943, they were now being asked to take part in a secret mission behind Japanese lines, where their casualty rates would be upwards of 85%.

But where exactly?

Only a select few knew.

Vincent Melillo joined the Army before Pearl Harbor.

He had already spent a few years training in Trinidad and Panama.

>> Said they would like volunteers for a hazardous and dangerous mission.

And I -- we all volunteered.

>> All had to be volunteers, and they all had to be single.

We'd go out the rifle range and stay all day and shoot rifles and whatever guns you had to have, you know?

>> And we had jungle training -- five-mile hikes and full field packs.

>> At 18 and 19 years old, you don't think of being the one that's gonna be the casualty.

You kind of feel really invincible.

As a matter of fact, that's what makes a good soldier.

>> It was just a jungle-type mission.

I wasn't told where, just the mission.

>> When you're young, you're foolish.

[ Laughs ] ♪ >> An eventual fighting group of 3,000 Americans code named Galahad would be heading somewhere to fight in jungles.

But which jungle?

In what country?

The volunteers were heading west.

That's all they knew.

First came a stop on the West Coast.

James Collins was among the 2,000 volunteers who arrived in San Francisco in late 1943.

Collins was a 19-year-old Army private first class when he signed up.

>> I was young and thought it was the right thing to do.

>> We wound up in Camp Stoneman, California.

>> At that time, we weren't even a unit.

We were just a bunch of stragglers from all over the States.

Here we are, a group of guys that really haven't got a name yet.

There was a feeling of we weren't wanted and nobody really cared what went on.

>> The 2,000 volunteer jungle fighters left California on the once luxurious Matson liner SS Lurline, which was now a troop transport ship.

Along the way, the Lurline stopped in the South Pacific to pick up 1,000 more volunteers.

All the new additions had combat experience on Guadalcanal in 1942 or on other islands.

There were some hints where the ship was eventually headed, including one day when a particular song played on the Lurline's on-board radio frequency.

>> The song was the song of India.

♪ It took me a while before I put two and two together that we were headed for India.

>> I knew we were going somewhere.

>> Yeah, we were all, you know, we were all gung ho.

Let's put it that way.

Thirty-one days later, we got in Bombay, India.

>> We were put under British control.

So we didn't belong to the United States Army directly.

We belonged to the British Army under the command of General Wingate.

>> Gil Howland was a corporal who would eventually be put in charge of two machine-gun squads and 16 men.

>> They put us on a train, and 100 miles north, there was a British Army camp.

>> British Commando General Orde Wingate was going to make true long-range jungle fighters out of his new American guests.

They were his to train in the ways of hit-and-run and long-range penetration warfare.

This part of the world was labeled the China-Burma-India Theater of war, or CBI.

The fighting involved the Chinese and British against the Japanese.

>> Yes, the going was rough against Jap troops who really knew had to dig in and hide in the jungle.

It took determined troops to dig them out.

But the Chinese did dig them out one way or another.

>> The Americans would soon join in.

It was November of 1943.

>> That was going to be our training area, and it was nothing more than just a blank field that we had to put up some British tents.

♪ >> He came and gave us a long talk.

We had heard rumors about his unit and what they had been doing over there with the Japanese... going behind, blowing up railroad tracks, and doing all sorts of things.

♪ >> Gabriel Kinney enlisted in the Army in late 1942.

>> Okay, this is the 12 children.

>> Out of the 12 children raised by his parents, 9 of them served in the military during World War II.

Kinney had already been fighting in the South Pacific when he decided to sign on with this new unit of American soldiers.

>> And the veterans from the Pacific, which we had already had a lot of training, we were having to train the other 2,000 that was in.

>> November 28, 1943.

"Dear family, I hope this letter finds you in the best of health.

I'm fine.

Now that I have this letter started, I don't know what to write.

Today, I had to go up on the side of a mountain and cut bamboo poles.

The reason I had to do it was that I was late for reveille.

We're making a mess table with the bamboo.

I'll sign off now.

I don't know when I'll be able to write again.

Love to all, Dom."

>> So General Wingate was of the opinion that fighting in the jungles, battalion size, was too big a unit.

So he split us up into six combat teams, which informed us of some of the hazards of jungle warfare that they were in and some of the items that we needed to know, like crossing a river and getting equipment across a river and making floats.

>> It was very valuable.

>> They showed us how to take our poncho there and cross our rifles and make a little raft, put our equipment in it.

>> And we'd tend to do a little hand-to-hand combat with these troops.

>> James Richardson was selected to be a messenger, which meant he would always be out front where the action was.

>> I carried that Thompson submachine gun on my shoulder, locked and ready to go, buddy.

>> What these American volunteers were starting to hear was that they would be facing one of Japan's top fighting units in the country of Burma, the "B" in the CBI Theater of war.

♪ The Japanese had taken over Burma in 1942 and cut off the famed Burma Road... ♪ ...preventing supplies from getting to China to support the Chinese fight against Japan.

The British wanted the Americans involved in their battle with the Japanese.

>> Well, it was a big, big thing, to go up against a Japanese division, Imperial Division.

They had taken over Singapore, Rangoon in Burma.

And they were taking over the country.

>> At the start of 1944, the American jungle fighters were given a designation as the 5307 Composite Unit (Provisional), a little more official sounding than their previous label, the Dead End Kids.

Eventually, American General Frank D. Merrill was put in command of the unit's three battalions by CBI Commanding General Joseph Stilwell.

>> General Stilwell, American commander, is greeted by General Merrill, jungle raider leader, at Ceylon, where he confers with Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of the Southeast Asia operation on new allied battle plan.

>> Merrill was chosen over Colonel Charles Hunter to lead the American commandos.

Many of the Americans felt that Hunter would be the better choice because he had been training with the unit in India.

But Merrill had served on the staff of General Stilwell and knew Japanese tactics better, having observed training in pre-war Japan.

>> He's a cracker-jack guy.

>> Later, some newspaper man came up with the nickname Merrill's Marauders.

And it stuck.

♪ Soon, Merrill's Marauders wrapped up their training with the British and set out for their assigned mission -- Burma.

They were told their job was to wreak havoc on the famed Japanese 18th Imperial Division in a series of hit-and-run battles.

Just getting in to Burma was the Marauders' first indication that the coming months would be arduous, exhausting, and demanding mentally and physically.

>> And the Ledo Road was being built by engineers to tie in with the Burma Road.

And it was 110 miles that they built at that time we were there.

[ Explosions ] >> A lot of blasting and a lot more clearing away.

Yes, it looked impossible from time to time, but General Pick said, "The Ledo Road is going to be built.

Mud and rain and malaria be damned."

So the road workers kept scratching away at the geologic nightmare that separates the peoples of India and Burma.

>> Somebody had mentioned the fact that we could go up by trucks.

Oh, no, we didn't go by trucks.

We said we had to get our legs in shape.

Mules, guns, everything, the ammo... all loaded.

And we started up 110 miles of Ledo Road.

It took us 10 days to get up there.

>> The strain of this little walk is beginning to show on some of the guys, especially when we're going uphill.

They keep telling us that the mules are on our team, but sometimes they drop from exhaustion.

GI Joe, though, has to keep going.

♪ >> We're getting to Burma.

It seemed at this point, though, this very important thing happened.

This group of guys that came from all walks of life and all kinds of intelligence and all kinds of duties, all of a sudden, seemed to meld together as one single force.

♪ >> Burma was unlike anything most of the American volunteer soldiers had ever seen or thought existed.

>> Very primitive country.

>> These trails led into other trails, into little villages.

And we just kept going that way, until we got down to the river.

♪ And off in the distance, believe it or not, I could see the Himalayan Mountains.

>> The Marauders would have to move stealthily through the jungle, carrying their supplies as best they could.

No jeeps, no trucks.

Only mules could navigate the mountainous landscape and deep valleys with any efficiency.

>> Those famous Missouri mules arrived, and troopers have quite a time coaxing them into service.

[ Mule brays ] >> I never saw a mule in my life, and now I got to take care of this dumb animal.

Well, it turned out that the mule that I had was really a difficult animal.

Whenever we were on the march and we'd take a 10-minute break, this mule would get down, also.

When you'd take your break, he would take a break.

Now, there's no way that the mule can get up with the load on his back, so I would have to unload the mule, get him up, and reload the mule, so my 10-minute break didn't occur.

>> They were falling in love with their mules.

[ Laughs ] >> We had about 300 of them, and we used to pull guard duty at night on those mules.

>> Mules are very important.

They carry the mortars, they carry the heavy equipment.

>> One mule carries eight boxes of ammunition.

♪ >> Guiding Frank Merrill's Marauders through this treacherous environment would be local natives, victims themselves of Japanese cruelty and oppression during the war.

>> And we had the Kachin guides, which, thank God, that they fought on our side and supported us in every manner.

>> They knew every trail.

They lived there.

They knew every trail, every stream, where the Japs were, were they were going.

>> You go over one mountain, and you figure that's it, but you come down, there's another mountain, followed by another mountain.

We didn't have much problem with the enemy in the mountains because they never expected anybody to come through that area.

That was an impossible area to travel through.

♪ >> In the dense jungles of Burma, the Americans quickly realized that the Japanese may not be their biggest adversary in the struggle for survival.

Nothing had prepared them for the rampant disease and the wet, humid, and insect-infested environment they were now operating in.

>> You wound up, where when you come to the end of the day and you took your leggings or your jungle boots off, there was a load of leeches.

If you used a cigarette to burn the leech, he'll pull out of your leg.

>> Leeches -- Yeah, the leeches, they were crazy and would drop out of the sky, I guess.

You wouldn't know they'd be sucking on your blood, you know?

You wouldn't even know you had them on you.

>> The leeches were so bad that the mule skinners had to stop their mules and pick the leeches off of the mules for several hours.

The jungle was extremely hot.

After we got into the foothills of the mountain, the jungles were more jungles.

They were harder jungles to get through.

>> It got to about 105 degrees.

>> Everybody had a fever all the time.

And you weren't considered sick unless you ran a fever for three days.

Otherwise, they'd have to evacuate everybody, because everybody had a fever of some kind or another.

>> We got a lot of typhus.

A lot of guys died of typhus.

A bunch of the guys got malaria.

Just try and keep alive, let's put it that way.

>> Other problem is that you're not changing your clothes.

You're sleeping in the same clothes that you waded through one river after the other.

And so, the clothes were drying out on your back.

So every crease in your body became a sore, either ringworm or fungus or something.

>> The Marauders were deep behind enemy lines in Burma.

So far away from civilization, there would be no easy way to get resupplied.

The mules could carry some supplies, but the only way to get the soldiers any additional food, ammunition, or medicine would have to come from the sky.

>> Supplies by the ton had to be assembled, sorted, and packed.

When you consider the million and one articles needed by the troops in the field, to get a rough idea of the amount of work involved, they had to hit the bull's-eye.

♪ They usually did.

♪ During that campaign, it literally rained supplies in Burma.

Look out below!

Here they come!

>> Brave American pilots based in India flying C-47 transport planes were the Marauders' only lifeline to the outside world.

Just getting these life-saving drops in the jungle became a challenge for the American commandos, especially as their contact with the Japanese in Burma increased.

>> We had a unit that went out and secured an air-drop area, put in the security.

>> And then communicate with the aircraft, which required pulling out the 284 with the hand cranks.

And we would put the white panels down in a formation so the aircraft could determine friend or foe.

The pilots of those things were great.

They would come in at about 200 feet or lower, and they would kick the shoots out.

>> The idea of dropping food and ammunition every three days is because we ran low on our ammunition and we had to get an air-drop.

♪ >> There were some times that we were fortunate if we were by a river where we would hit a rest period.

We could throw a hand grenade in the river.

>> And the fish would come up, and there'd be troops down the stream about 50 yards.

They would pick the fish up and start cooking them.

They would start cooking them so we would have some extra food to eat.

>> Fortunately, we had a Coleman stove, a single-burner Coleman stove.

That was a common item.

We used airplane gasoline for the Coleman stove.

>> I'm leaving where the river is, and this guy is coming down.

And as I got closer, I recognized it was Merrill, General Merrill.

He stopped, and he said something about, "Wouldn't it be good to have some ice cream today?"

♪ [ Man speaks foreign language ] [ Canon fires ] [ Canon fires ] >> Merrill's Marauders would be in close combat with an enemy using a language few in the United States understood.

So it was decided that 14 Americans of Japanese descent would accompany the three battalions into Burma not only translators but, more importantly, as listeners.

They were called nisei, second-generation Japanese-Americans born in the United States.

More than two dozen volunteered to join the Marauders in World War II.

They spied on the Japanese in the dense jungle and listened in on their conversations.

>> We had 14 Americans of Japanese descent with us.

They were, really, the intelligent portion of our unit.

>> Tom Tsubota was one of those nisei with the Americans in Burma.

>> In other words, I had more guts than brains.

And I also willing to protect America, and I'll be fighting the fearless and tenacious enemy.

Nisei veteran, you know, have proven they're true patriotic soldier.

We were American nisei soldier and also a wonderful citizen of U.S.A. >> We respected them, you know?

We thought, "Pretty damn gutty," you know, to fight against your own people, you know?

>> Periodically, infiltrate out of our lines, which is dangerous, and infiltrate down to the Japanese area and get as close as he can without being spotted and listen to the scuttlebutt.

[ Man speaks foreign language ] >> Find out what the Japanese were saying, and we understood what they were saying.

>> They could hear the Japs talking, you know?

And they understand that language.

>> Tom Tsubota had also become somewhat famous for helping to capture America's first Japanese prisoner of World War II.

>> That's one of the amazing two-man subs the Japs used in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Another was sunk, as was a third, of conventional design.

The crew of the suicide ship were clothed in a special rubber suit and kept warm with an ordinary blanket.

>> Tsubota detained Japanese Lieutenant Kazuo Sakamaki after his midget submarine grounded off Oahu on December 8, 1941, following the Pearl Harbor attacks.

At the time, Tom Tsubota, born in Honolulu, was on maneuvers with Hawaii's National Guard.

>> Here come this guy, the Japan Naval Officer Sakamaki.

Right in front of me, he walk.

"Stop.

I want to question you."

But he was shivering because all -- all wet, you know, dripping.

His mind was to get dry clothing because he was so shivering.

But he wasn't hurt, you know?

Walk regular.

Not too long after that, the MP from the Bellows airfield came with a jeep, took Sakamaki away.

But Sakamaki didn't resist, you know?

♪ >> Now in Burma, Tsubota and his fellow commandos would not have to wait long to meet the Japanese in some intense fighting.

[ Machine-gun fire ] [ Canon fires ] [ Canon fires ] Following a few early skirmishes, General Frank Merrill ordered his Marauders to set up a roadblock in a remote village called Walawbum on March 3, 1944.

[ Machine-gun fire ] The goal was to trap the Japanese in a vice as the 18th Imperial Division of Japan withdrew from battle with the Chinese in the north.

>> Do you have any doubt about the importance the Japs attached to keeping us from pushing them out of North Burma?

The mere fact they fought so stubbornly was another proof of the importance of our objective.

>> So our object was to put a roadblock in at Walawbum.

And the Chinese were fighting the Japanese kind of north of us.

They would be fighting the Japanese from the front.

And we were to put a block in from the rear and prevent the Japanese from escaping.

First battalion was mostly all green troops who hadn't seen combat before, where the third battalion was -- quite a few had experience in the South Pacific.

>> Go forward.

That was it.

Keep your eyes open, you know?

>> We could hear the Japanese talking on the other side.

They thought we were elephants in the grass.

So they were totally surprised next morning when it was not elephants that hit them.

>> They found out that by listening in on a telephone line, that there was a big ammunition dump close to Walawbum.

[ Explosion ] They flew planes over and bombed the ammunition dump.

And the Japanese retreated right into our roadblock.

>> Our platoon was to hold them till we heard the major platoons strike the road north of us another couple of miles up.

>> This position was perfect.

It had about 20 bamboo bunches and a river going right through it.

And that's where we dug in.

>> So setting up our position on the riverbank gave us a great advantage because the Japanese would have to come into the clearing before they can get across the river.

So the Japanese attacked the third battalion position in waves of about 50, 60 men which would come running out.

They would hit the ground and fire.

And then another wave will come from behind them.

And their general method of fighting, their technique, was that they would overwhelm the enemy and break through the enemy's lines.

And then once that happens, the enemy is at a complete loss because it no longer has protection from front and back.

>> And they were charging across the creek at Walawbum.

And we were slaughtering the hell out of them, you know?

They weren't backing down.

Let's put it that way.

Well, they fought back, yeah, but it was dog eat dog, you know?

>> The young people that come over surprised me.

They become combat soldiers very fast.

They adapted to combat very well and very fast.

Combat is hard to adjust to.

>> The Marauders had some great front-line leaders during the campaign in Burma, men such as Colonel Charles Hunter and Captain William Lloyd Osborne.

Earlier in the war, Osborne had escaped a death march.

Along with Major Damon "Rocky" Gause, an American pilot, the two navigated an old Filipino fishing boat 3,000 miles, from the Philippines to Australia.

Unit leadership became even more important following two heart attacks suffered in Burma by General Frank Merrill.

>> We were told three to six weeks mission.

Well, that was seven weeks, when we left Walawbum, when we had finished.

We rested for quite a length of time, resupplied and all.

And then it was decided that since we had did such a good job at Walawbum, there was another town, Maingkwan, that we could do the same thing with.

>> American hit-and-run tactics kept the enemy on the run and off-balance.

The Japanese could never get a handle as to the number of American troops that they were fighting.

They always felt they were facing a much larger force.

Because of that, Japan had to keep extra troops stationed in the China-Burma-India Theater of war, Japanese soldiers that would, otherwise, be fighting the allies down in the South Pacific.

The American jungle fighters proved to be so effective, despite their smaller numbers, that General Stilwell ordered additional missions in northern Burma.

He wanted more disruption of Japanese supply lines and the movement of the battle-hardened Imperial Division.

>> We kept hitting the Japanese patrol resistance.

>> This type of jungle fighting was what British General Wingate had trained the Marauders to do.

However, the Americans were being pushed to the point of exhaustion in both body and mind.

>> Well, in order to get to our destination, we now had to travel night and day.

So the last day, I think we went like 35 hours continuously on the road.

So on our way to Shaduzup, during the night in the jungle with the canopy overhead, it was pitch black.

You couldn't see -- Theoretically, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.

>> Then, with the Americans executing a series of left hooks, the Chinese went to Maingkwan, Walabum, Jambu Bum, Shaduzup, Kamaing, Mogaung.

♪ >> The Marauders' next few battles would test their resilience, courage, and mental strength.

The men were falling victim to disease and lack of sleep, not to mention malnutrition.

Swallowed up by the Burmese jungle, the question was fast becoming "Would any of the original 3,000 volunteers ever make it out of the jungle?"

The Japanese seemed to be everywhere.

♪ Including hundreds in a small village named Shaduzup.

They had no idea they were about to be attacked by the Marauders on March 28, 1944.

>> Comes back about 6:00 or so in the morning when the Japanese start to break out for breakfast.

We could hear their mess kits and such.

That's when we opened up on them.

♪ What I could see was like a turkey shoot.

We was killing Japanese left and right.

The Japanese didn't know what was happening.

Those that weren't in the actual middle of the battle didn't think the gunfire was enemy gunfire.

They thought it was their own.

>> After the fight at Shaduzup, the Japanese pulled back but regrouped enough to hit the Marauders at a village named Inkangahtawng, another location the Marauders struggled to reach.

♪ >> Was anywhere from 25 soldiers to maybe 150 or 200 soldiers just running in the open right towards us into the fire of automatic weapons.

♪ >> This went on for quite a while.

They would charge and try to get in our trench system.

They did eventually get in with the rifle platoons and started wrestling with them.

Then they would pull back or they would lose their men.

And they'd make another charge.

My guns were going all the time.

[ Machine-gun fire ] >> And they was totally calm as they charged us 16 times and when they died.

Which you can imagine used an awful lot of ammunition.

>> Well, I couldn't understand why they kept charging across there.

Evidently, they had done it before and got away with it.

But they just ran into a storm of machine-gun fire and mortar fire that they just couldn't handle.

♪ Everything just went dead.

You couldn't hear a pin drop.

Both sides just stopped.

Because the field was just littered with dead people out there.

We had some and they had plenty.

That one fight was -- over 700 men, Japanese, were killed.

We had been firing most of the day.

And we were just about out of ammunition.

We decided to get an air drop.

>> Here come the C-47 -- supplies.

>> Had to get food and ammunition.

We were low on both.

>> We've got to carry that stuff the rest of the way.

When this is all unpacked and then repacked, we should be about ready to shove off.

>> After that quieted down and nothing happened, we pulled out of there.

>> Following Inkangahtawng, the Americans faced down more Japanese troops in a pitched battle at a spot named Nhpum Ga.

It was near a strategic mountain trail.

The area lay 4,000 feet up on a ridge line.

>> We could see the Japanese almost had us.

We had to climb the mountain, which was a good eight-hour climb.

But the Japanese was, at that time, shelling the trail ahead of us.

They were about to trap us again.

>> So we couldn't get out.

But we were holding them there.

Artillery started coming in, and after the first three days, they had us surrounded.

>> The fighting there didn't stop for 13 days.

This time, the Marauders found themselves low on ammunition and had to get another air drop.

Despite help from the air, a full battalion of Marauders became surrounded.

They spent almost two full weeks beating back merciless Japanese attacks.

>> The artillery was still firing very heavy.

It was open territory.

That's where the mules and the supplies were.

And the artillery landing there was killing most of our animals and a lot of our people.

>> But there was so much noise and so much going on, you know?

The only time it would quiet down would be at night.

And anybody moved at night in the jungles, they're crazy.

You don't move at night.

>> We were out water and food for a pretty good while there.

And so, Colonel McGee asked for an air drop there, and they dropped plastic bags of water.

>> You think of all that action that they're trying to get in that perimeter.

But you got to remember that we had on call four planes coming in, firing their machine guns and dropping bombs on our position.

>> Us poor guys had no food, no water.

>> They were finally rescued by fellow American commandos who fought their way through the stiff Japanese resistance.

Casualties were heavy.

>> Colonel Hunter gives them the okay, and we get two 75-millimeter howitzers dropped.

>> And it was no time.

They were firing 200 yards.

>> They could fire almost dead blank at the Japanese and then, as they managed to gain ground, move them up.

On April the 9th, 1944, which turned out to be Easter Sunday, the Japanese gave up and they pulled out.

>> We managed to hold them for 13 days.

>> You can't believe it, but the place was just completely loaded with maggots, maggots a foot high out on the bodies.

The stench -- you knew you were getting there when you were a couple of hundred yards away.

And we had Easter Sunday Mass at Hsamshingyang, and I can assure you that everybody -- everybody attended Mass.

There was no stragglers there that day.

They were so thankful.

>> That morning, about 10:00, here comes the C-47s in with another drop.

This drop was full of fried chicken.

>> We got an air drop of fried chicken and apple turnovers.

>> April 16, 1944.

"Dear Mama, just a few lines to let you know how I am and where I am.

You probably know by now I've been getting along as well as could be expected.

Your dream was just about true.

I am fighting in Burma in coordination with the Chinese.

Hope everyone at home is getting along fine.

This is the first chance I've had to write in a long while.

Will write again as soon as possible.

Tell everyone hello.

Love, John L." ♪ >> The Marauders were down to just several hundred of their original 3,000 volunteers because of disease and combat.

However, CBI Commanding General Joseph Stilwell kept handing the men more missions.

It was becoming death by attrition.

>> This time we're in on something big.

We're to walk in 400 miles.

400 miles.

Our objective is called Myitkyina or Mitchenaw or something like that.

Everybody says it different.

>> The Chinese needed help in the taking of a strategically important, all-weather airfield known as Myitkyina.

Just getting to Myitkyina would pretty much finish off the Marauders as an effective fighting unit.

>> Yet there was enough of us left that could still walk and carry a rifle that we could go take an airfield, Myitkyina airfield.

That was the last major block...

They decided that we would walk across the mountains.

>> We started out, but the mountains were unbelievable.

They were steep and now it's monsoon season is starting, so there's rain and mud and slipping, and remember.

We're not physically fit anymore.

>> And I don't remember how long it'd taken us to get across that mountain.

But that mountain was so steep that we had to dig steps in the mountain for the mules to step in that carried our supplies up, and in fact, we lost several of our mules, supply and all, off of the trip up.

And we lost men.

They could not make it all the way and they just passed out and left.

>> As we were going into Myitkyina, I remember a railroad track going right across, right in front of the airstrip there and a train going by.

>> The attack was well-coordinated.

Marauders, natives, all of them struck at once.

[ Gunfire ] >> We charged the airport.

A few Japanese that were there.

General Stilwell flew into Myitkyina this time, which was well established.

>> Pretty rough landing in 10 inches of Burmese mud.

>> Myitkyina airfield would be the final battle for the famed Merrill's Marauders alongside their Chinese allies.

At the beginning of the attack, roughly 200 of the original 3,000 Marauders were able to stand and fight.

After finally taking the airfield, that number would be even fewer.

On August 10, 1944, the 5307 Composite Unit provisional was officially disbanded.

At the time, after starting with 3,000, only 130 Marauders were considered fit for battle.

Jungle and mountain combat had claimed the rest.

The Marauders had accomplished their final mission.

They had done what they were trained to do, what they had volunteered for.

As predicted in those early days, the cost was high.

>> One of the things that you develop when you're in combat with a bunch of men is that you all went through the same hardship, the same suffering, and the same experience, so that experience really ties you together.

You may not know the other guy or never met him, but if he was a Marauder, he went through the same that you did, and that made him a buddy right off the bat.

So one of the things that you carried through is you had such great respect for the guy who was there with you and more so for the ones that stayed there.

So it's hard to explain, but there's a kind of bond that doesn't occur with any other meeting.

And here's a guy who died as many deaths as you did, and even if you don't know him, he's your buddy.

How did I handle it when a man I knew was killed in action?

There wasn't time to think.

In all reality, no matter what anybody tells you, there's a certain feeling that you're thankful it wasn't you.

>> We are close, yeah.

Everybody knew each other, knew where their hometown was, more or less, you know?

You sit around at night and talk about this and that, you know?

We got close, yeah.

And when somebody got hurt or something, yeah, it kind of made you think a wee bit, you know?

>> I was 23 years old.

I was the oldest person in the first platoon.

...Combat, you know?

We had from 16-year-old to 23-year-old.

They were kids.

♪ >> There were no parades for Merrill's Marauders when they returned home to the United States.

They were not allowed to talk openly regarding their special commando mission behind enemy lines in Burma.

However, privately, the unit did receive a presidential unit citation for its actions.

Every Marauder who fought also received a Bronze Star.

Merrill's Marauders had more continuous jungle combat fighting behind enemy lines than any other American infantry unit in the entire Pacific region in World War II.

♪ >> There's no sense in telling a civilian anything about what occurred.

Of course, they just wouldn't understand and you're wasting your time.

Besides that, they may not believe you anyway.

>> There will be no citations, there will be no promotions since there is no unit.

>> We shouldn't talk too much about it, you know?

Amongst ourselves maybe a wee bit.

Those are the last three.

>> It wasn't until recently that Merrill's Marauders received the public recognition they deserve, acknowledgement for their special-forces role in what some call World War II's forgotten theater of war, China-Burma-India, the CBI.

>> Well, yeah, we did eventually get recognition of what we did.

>> But when I heard of the Congressional Gold Medal and I saw some of the organizations that were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, I felt that Merrill's Marauders certainly did enough to deserve the Congressional Gold Medal.

So the first thing we managed to succeed with the Senate and then later on this year, we managed to succeed with Congress.

It was like 10, 12 years of battling for this award, and we finally got the recognition.

♪ >> It's an honor for us guys that are still here, you know?

It's recognition more or less of what we did.

>> I didn't realize that our accomplishment was so unique.

I mean, after all, there were 15 million men in service.

Who cares about the only GI who fought in Burma?

So there was no expectation that we would have any other celebration or acknowledgement.

We fought in what's known as the forgotten theater.

>> A legacy in our eyes?

Never say die, say "damn," and keep on rocking.

>> Well, being an Army trooper, I would say that we did the job very well.

We have to think of the men that we lost too.

>> Today, the legacy of Merrill's Marauders lives on in the form of the 75th Ranger Regiment, a new generation of volunteers who take on the Army's toughest missions.

>> The Army decided to re-establish the special unit.

So they searched all the military records of World War II and the only unit that they found that was all volunteers, that long-range penetration behind enemy lines and successful was Merrill's Marauders.

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