In 1945, the British were on the offensive to reclaim Burma from the Japanese. In January, it was decided that Ramaree Island, off the coast of Burma, would make a good place for an airfield. An amphibious assault was made to clear out the 1,200-1,500 Japanese soldiers. In fierce fighting, about 900 Japanese were pushed into a mangrove swamp. They were surrounded, but attempts to get them to surrender were unsuccessful. The trapped men were preyed on by scorpions, mosquitoes, and other critters. But most infamously, by saltwater crocodiles, supposedly. The story of crocodiles eating most of the 900 has become legendary. It started with an eyewitness account by a British soldier.
“That night [Feb. 19, 1945] was the most horrible that any member of the M.L. [marine launch] crews ever experienced,” Bruce Stanley Wright wrote, recalling the secondhand trauma of British soldiers overhearing the crocodile attacks. “The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of the 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.”
In 1968, “The Guinness Book of World Records” labeled it the “worst crocodile disaster in the world” and the “most fatalities in a crocodile attack”. The story got a rebirth on social media recently. However, the story has been met with skepticism by most historians. There is no mention of it in the official history of the Burma Campaign. Experts point out that this would not have been typical behavior for crocodiles. Historians can be such spoil sports, but if you tell this story in class you might want to add a caveat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ramree_Island#Crocodile_attack
https://www.historynet.com/ramree-battle-crocodiles.htm
https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/thousand-japanese-ramree.html
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