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The Marauders

Legends seldom fit the facts comfortably. The military outfit called Merrill's Marauders — 3,000 American soldiers who ranged hundreds of miles through the Burmese rain forest fighting vastly superior Japanese forces — stands up admirably to the legend that surrounds it, as veteran Ogburn capably shows. The first American force to fight on the Asian mainland since the Boxer Rebellion, the warriors of Galahad — as the three battalions under General Frank Merrill were code-named — suffered terribly in their long campaign over what Winston Churchill called "the most forbidding fighting country imaginable." Writes Ogburn, not only were they felled by bullets, but they also endured lack of food and supplies, a host of tropical diseases, and exhaustion — and, worse, poor treatment at the hands of commanders and strategists far from the fighting. Even so, they scored some important successes and took their toll on a seasoned enemy, which "had never before come up against another first-class outfit on even terms, and the experience must have left them sore and puzzled." Ogburn's action-filled book merits a place alongside the dispatches of Ernie Pyle and Richard Tregaskis's Guadalcanal Diary as an important firsthand account of the war in Asia. — Gregory McNamee

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 307
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9781585672349
  • Genres
  • history, asia, war
  • Release date
  • 2002