In January of 1945, the Japanese were still putting up significant resistance to the allies as the American war machine grew ever nearer to the Japanese mainland with the successful assaults on Saipan and Okinawa. A combined Indian and British force was deployed to take Ramree Island and Cheduba off the coast of Burma separated by a strait that was about 490 yards wide. With the objective of capturing a Japanese airfield on Ramree as part of Operation “Matador”, the 4th Indian Brigade  conducted an amphibious landing accompanied by British commandos.  They were up against the Japanese 11 Battalion 121st regiment. The area had been previously captured in 1942, and now the tide had turned.

The city of Ramree was unoccupied but just beyond was another Japanese garrison across the island from where the Allied landing had taken place. As the allies advanced, overcoming bitter fighting, Indian troops began to push back the Japanese defenders toward the airfield itself. By February 1st not only the 71st Brigade of the Indians were now called into to occupy the interior of the island, but the British Commando group were now out flanking the Japanese defenses from the North. With a desperate plan to link up with the Japanese forces on the other side of the Ramree Island,  they would first  have to cross 9.1 miles of mangrove swamp infested with huge salt water crocodiles! Rather than surrender to superior combined forces of the Indian and British troops, the Japanese made the ill-advised choice of entering the muddy and dismal swamps.

Attempts were made to enter the swamp with small boats and interpreters to get the Japanese to surrender and pick them up in their skiffs, but the enemy refused. One boat was confronted by a huge crocodile and the British interpreter and soldier were chased up a mangrove tree, being forced to spend the night to the horrid sounds of human bones and flesh being crushed, blood curdling screams of the victims, and the occasional gunshots as a massive attack ensued! There are varying accounts of the losses, but according to Bruce Wright, a Canadian veteran who claimed to have witnessed the massacre, 1000 Japanese soldiers went into the swamp and only 20 escaped the carnage.

Guinness Book of World Records corroborates the horrific incident as being the largest known animal massacre of human beings to ever have taken place in history. Other reports by British officers put the carnage at 500 Japanese killed and eaten by the crocodiles, some over 20 feet in length! Although some wildlife experts have disputed that so many crocodiles could have been present in a frenzy, it is quite clear that in nature over population of predators not only happens but makes the animals much more ravenous, so that this incident was very likely to have happened. Some witnesses claimed that it was all about crocodiles scavenging the bodies of Japanese soldiers who had succumbed to their wounds, drowned, or had fallen from jungle diseases like malaria.

Furthermore, there were other servicemen in the vicinity of the Battle of Ramree Island that considered the crocodiles as being unwitting allies to the cause of the British and Indian forces and attributed the slaughter by the crocodiles as a major contributing factor to the allied victory! According to accounts the gigantic crocs would grab soldiers and make a spinning noise in the swamp water as they went into death rolls to subdue the hapless soldiers before devouring them! There are rivers and bodies of water all over the world where one can flyover and view massive crocodile presence as well as alligators in the North American continent! 

During the Civil War Union soldiers also found themselves at the mercy of aggressive alligators inhabiting the swamps of Georgia and Alabama! Armed with only single shot long rifles it would have been quite difficult to defend themselves from alligators who would be hiding in those murky waters as the hapless troops struggled through the muddy waters. We have a detailed historic record of nature’s ability to wage its own kind of war against mankind when he ventures into forbidden territory!