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The soldiers’ mission was both daring and dangerous. The mission involved traveling more than 500 miles through the mountainous jungles of northern Burma to capture an airfield occupied by the Japanese during World War II.
The threats were constant: heavy attacks by overwhelming enemy forces, monsoon rains, tropical diseases, and malnutrition.
When the airfield was finally captured three months later, only 130 able-bodied soldiers remained of the 2,600 able-bodied soldiers who had crossed into Burma with the Merrill Raiders in 1944. The Merrill Raiders are a legendary unit that was one of the forerunners of the Army’s special operations elite, the 75th Rangers. regiment.
On Dec. 29, Russell Hamler, the last surviving member of Merrill’s Marauders, died at a Veterans Administration hospital in Pittsburgh, his son Jeffrey said. He was 99 years old.
Mr. Hamler dropped out of high school on his 18th birthday in June 1942 to join the Army. He was originally sent to Puerto Rico, where he, like other members of Merrill’s Marauders, volunteered for a top-secret mission in which casualties of up to 85 percent were expected.
“Essentially, they didn’t expect any of us to make it,” Hamler said years ago.
Mr. Hamler was a private first class and not a unit leader. But like the others, he found himself in the thick of jungle combat behind enemy lines. He fought in three of his five major battles, and also in many smaller battles armed with a Thompson submachine gun.
“The jungle was full of Japanese people,” he recalls. “They came over so many times, so we took a lot of pictures.”
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese military overran Southeast Asia, occupying Hong Kong, Singapore, and Indochina. American General Joseph Stilwell was forced to make a humiliating retreat from Burma (now Myanmar). Allied leaders agreed in 1943 to send troops back to Burma, which Winston Churchill called “the most forbidding country imaginable.” It would be a long-range infiltration force that would challenge control of Japan’s northern half. The men carried only what weapons and supplies they could carry on mules or on their backs, with additional supplies occasionally dropped from planes by parachute.
General Stilwell appointed General Frank Merrill to command what would officially become the 5307th Composite Group (Provisional).
The jungle’s dense bamboo, tangled vines, and banyan trees were as much an enemy as the Japanese army as the men marched single file in the dense tropical heat and humidity. Red intestine and malaria were endemic.
Hamler trekked until his boots wore holes and walked barefoot until he parachuted to receive new footwear, he recalled in a 2022 interview with Hamler member Carol Ortenzo, a retired Army colonel. Hamler’s big family. He says the leeches sucked blood from his limbs and the bugs “got into his arms.”
The Army primarily supplied K-rations, providing only 2,830 calories per day to soldiers who consumed much more energy. Starving soldiers dropped grenades into the river, scooped up dead fish that floated to the surface, and cooked them in their helmets.
“There had to be absolute silence at night in the jungle because any noise would invite artillery fire from the Japanese,” Hamler said. Two men dug a trench so one could sleep while his partner stood guard. When changing roles, the guard pulled the rope attached to the sleeping man and silently woke him up.
In one of the Marauders’ heaviest battles, which began in late March, Hamler’s 2nd Battalion dug into the besieged ridgetop village of Npum Nga.
During the siege, which lasted 10 days, the Japanese fired mortar and artillery fire before a salvo by fearless soldiers willing to fire volleys from American Browning machine guns. According to Gavin Mortimer’s 2013 history book Merrill’s Marauders, the Japanese advanced far enough to taunt the battalion’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel George McGee, by name. The Marauders’ Japanese-American interpreter, Roy Matsumoto, got close enough to enemy lines to hear about the dawn attack plan and warn his comrades.
Mules killed in raids rotted and attracted swarms of maggots. With no drinking water left, the men became dehydrated and delirium, and tried to chop up bamboo and suck water from their joints.
Early in the fighting at Nupum Ga, Mr. Hamler was hit in the hip by mortar fragments and was stuck in his home trench for more than 10 days until American soldiers from the 3rd Battalion stormed into the village, at which point he became a “maggot.” American forces, named “Hill,” attacked and the Japanese retreated. The marauders lost 57 men, 302 were wounded, and the enemy’s corpses numbered 400. General Merrill himself suffered a heart attack shortly before the siege and was evacuated.
Command of the marauding army passed to Colonel Charles N. Hunter, who later wrote a report critical of General Stilwell for returning soldiers to combat while recovering from jungle disease. The report elicited a Congressional investigation.
Although General Merrill was made into a hero in Samuel Fuller’s 1962 film “Merrill’s Marauders,” Mortimer’s book notes that many veterans of the unit, including some who consider Col. Hunter its true leader, It is said that it surprised him.
In May 1944, three months after the Marauders entered Burma, the mission’s main objective, an airstrip in the heavily fortified town of Myitkyina, fell into the hands of reinforcing American and Chinese troops. . In August the town itself was captured. The Marauders disbanded a week later.
Overall, the unit suffered 93 combat deaths and 30 deaths from illness in Burma. A further 293 people were injured and eight were missing. At one point, an additional 1,970 men were hospitalized with the disease, 72 of whom were hospitalized with an illness called “psychiatric neurosis.”
After the Battle of Nuppum Ghar, Hamra was evacuated to northern India in April, where he spent five weeks in a hospital. He was transferred to Pennsylvania and served as a military police officer until his discharge in December 1945. He was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.
He became a mechanic for Transworld Airlines, retiring in 1985.
Russell Hamler was born on June 24, 1924 in Mount Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh. His father, Robert Hamler, was part owner of a bus company. His mother was Margaret (Schweig) Hamler. Russell attended Mount Lebanon High School.
In addition to his son, Jeffrey, Mr. Hamler is survived by another son, James. His wife of 71 years, Imelda Hamler (also known as Jean), passed away in 2018.
In 2022, Merrill’s Marauders were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal after lobbying by a small number of surviving veterans and their families.
Hamler was awarded the medal at a ceremony near his home. He said that “people who have never killed someone” do not understand the horrors of war. “I want to see them outlaw war,” he said of the children who died in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He proposed establishing an organization of international leaders to solve the world’s problems. “This group will come together and solve this with words, not bullets,” he said. “I want to see a peaceful world.”
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