[This story is based on a recurring nightmare and the battle of Ramree Island]
“Ok sergeant, this interview will be recorder so we as an Army can learn the lessons from your experience and ensure this kind of thing never happens again; tell me what happened”
“Well sir, even though there were about a thousand of us in the battalion I could tell the enemy was much more experienced than we were. They were better organized and even though we had superior numbers, their attack caught us by surprise and we were never able to regain the upper hand. They took our base and flanked us on three sides. We had the option to surrender or to try to make our way through sixteen kilometers of swamp to link up with your regiment. Our commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Lee was killed in the attack and his XO (executive officer) Major Adams made the decision to take our chances in the swamp. By the time we reached the swamp we were physically, mentally exhausted and were convinced our nightmare was over. We had no idea hell was waiting for us.”
“It was midafternoon, sweltering hot, humid and a few men were bitten by venomous snakes and insects. We were low on water, food, ammo and were coming down from the adrenaline high of the battler. We all thought it would be better to travel at night but didn’t have the luxury since the enemy was relentlessly shooting at us. We didn’t like it, but we had to keep moving. As the sun went down, when we thought things could not possibly get any worse we heard a terrifying sound, the sound is hard to describe, it would be one of many horrifying sounds we would hear the night that I am sure will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“We realized what the sound was once we were swarmed by mosquitoes. The air was thick with them. There were so many of them they would get inside our ears, nostrils, and mouths. They would sting our eye lids when we closed our eyes, and get in our eyes when we opened them. We were forced to dive in the stinking water and mud of the swamp and all that noise and movement, combined with the blood from our wounds attracted hundreds of salt water crocodiles.”
“The first attack happened about fifty feet from where I was. I heard a sound in the water followed immediately by the screams of a man writhing in a large crocodile’s mouth. The initial shock made everyone freeze for a couple of seconds. After the initial surprise, a few of us approached the scene as fast as we could to try to help him before the animal dragged him to the water but before we could do anything we heard another scream a few hundred feet behind us, followed by three more, and before we could help do anything to help him, screams and the sounds of massive jaws clamping down violently were coming from every direction. Soon everyone was screaming and running in disarray.”
“I stopped in my tracks and tried to assess the situation and it became perfectly clear we were completely surrounded. The crocodile attacks were lightning fast. Out the corner of my eye I saw a man to my left rise about five feet in the air as a crocodile shot out of the water and caught him by his right hip; in a violent jerking motion the crocodile snapped the man in half. It was pitch dark and I couldn’t see anything beyond ten feet, so I couldn’t see the upper part of his body when it landed but I could hear it as it was torn to pieces by other crocodiles in the water. Every fiber in my body was screaming for me to move or do anything but stand motionless, but it was useless. I froze, and could barely think.”
“That’s when I realized panic had set in in all of us. We couldn’t think, we couldn’t focus, team work disintegrated, it was every man for himself, and we were doomed. Some men’s reaction to danger was to run, others were shooting wildly in every direction, and others like I, froze. A man running to my left was struck by a stray bullet and fell dead next to me. I immediately fell to the ground in the fetal position as bullets flew over my head, they were so close I could hear them cracking the air, and sometimes I could even hear them spinning. The conflict inside me coupled with panic made it impossible to do anything except lay in that spot motionless, then everything around me went completely dark, and I couldn’t see anything. All I could do was hear the uproar of sounds of a living nightmare. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable.”
“I don’t know how long I had my eyes closed, but when I opened them, I could see again. When I opened my eyes, I saw a man staring at me; not alive, not dead. His body contorted in a giant crocodile’s mouth. With his eyes, he asked me to help him before the crocodile swallowed him whole. I closed my eyes again and buried my head in my arms.”
“The conflict inside me was incredibly intense, a part of me said I should run, do something, anything besides freezing but it was impossible to override my brain’s decision to remain motionless. I was sure I would die if I didn’t do anything, but I was wrong. Not moving is what saved my life. Motion was one of the many things that caught the crocodile’s attention. Those who moved got eaten, those who didn’t were ignored. Then it dawned on me..I was thinking. I had figured out something, I lifted my head to look around me. The scene was increasingly more chaotic, but I felt a certain calm, I could see that the pattern was the same. Men running, shooting, screaming, being eaten, crocodile’s shooting out of the water, tearing men to pieces with their death rolls and violent thrashing. I was becoming desensitized.”
“I realized that no matter how chaotic the environment, there is always a pattern. Realizing it, helped me make predictions, and this allowed me to develop a strategy. I saw a soldier by the water’s edge, with his legs tucked in shooting in the direction of sound or motion. He shot a crocodile that was approaching him right between the eyes. I had a bingo moment. I jumped on my feet and realized that the man who had fallen next to me had disappeared which sent a shiver down my spine but I didn’t have time to think about it. I ran to the man on the water’s edge, I picked him up by his shirt collar and dragged him to higher ground away from the water. I sat him down and told him he was doing great, to keep his legs tucked in and shoot low in the direction of sound and motion. He had developed a winning strategy, all I did was improve upon it. By placing him away from the water I may have saved his life, and by staying away from the water we denied our enemy the advantage of a surprise attack. Now we were using the terrain to our advantage. We were forcing the crocodiles out of the water where they were slower and made noises that would give away their positions low on the ground, helping us differentiate between beast and man. I knew that the longer we survived, the more our chances of survival increased”
“He looked up at me, and I looked at him. We felt camaraderie, like we were working together and had each other’s backs. Then it hit me, I was looking at him, and he at me. We could see. I asked myself why before there were times I couldn’t see at all. I looked up and saw the moon and clouds. I realized that the swamp went pitch black when the clouds blocked the moon. To my dismay, I saw huge clouds approaching the moon. I also saw a break in the clouds and knew it would be pitch dark soon, but fortunately it was also windy, so I knew the darkness would only last a few minutes. Those few minutes in hell would be an eternity but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I saw a young officer running in a panic, shooting his side arm in every direction. I ran to him, tackled him, held his firing hand away from me, and locked eyes with him. He looked up at me, and when I could see in his eyes that he was starting to rationalize what was happening and using his brain, I pulled him to his feet and took him where the man I had pulled from the swamp earlier was sitting cross legged. I sat them back to back and gave him the same instructions. I looked up at the sky and everything went dark.”
“I immediately sat down with my back to them. The three of us were leaning against each other and set up a 360 perimeter. I softly told them to ignore the screams, to focus on sounds on the ground that were different from those made by human feet. I told them helping anyone at this moment was beyond our control, that if we wanted to live and help others we had to survive the darkness first. Then I realized I had made a fatal mistake. I had left my rifle on the ground when I went to position the first man on higher ground..”
“You left your rifle?”
“Yes sir.”
“God damn…ok, carry on.”
“It would have been impossible to find it in the dark and trying would only have attract the attention of the crocodiles, so I stayed where I was and I pulled my bayonet from my belt and held it parallel to the ground. Trying to stab a crocodile from above would have been too dangerous, it was safer to stab it as close to the ground as possible.”
“Our nerves were shattered. I think the only reason we didn’t go insane was because we didn’t
have the luxury. It was incredibly stressful, and it seemed to be never ending. It took a
superhuman effort to concentrate on ignoring the screams of dying men to try
to identify the sounds made by the crocodiles, and to keep those screams of terror from making
us panic. Our lives and the lives of our teammates depended on our effort to survive. We had to
survive the darkness to share the strategy we had developed. I heard the sound of a crocodile
approaching us and before I could alert the guys I was leaning on, the first man I pulled to higher
ground fired his weapon and the sound subsided. His lack of hesitation told me a lot. It told me
he was focused and confident in what he was doing, it told me he was thinking; and that was the
key. The crocodiles had every advantage. They were faster, stronger, invisible. They had
adapted to this environment thousands, if not millions of years ago. I remembered a middle
school lesson in which our teacher told us that in the beginning, every animal had an advantage
over humans, bigger size, speed, sharp claws and fangs, that this forced humans to develop our
brains and use sophisticated solutions to problems. She said that as we became smarter our
brains grew as opposed to those of crocodiles for example, which stayed the size of a walnut
despite their huge bodies because all a crocodile needs to know is that it’s hungry, and how to
stalk and catch its pray.”
“All I had to do to adapt, and overcome the odds was to think. My brain would be my weapon, it would allow me to use tools like rifles and knives more efficiently, and above all, it would allow me to use the crocodile’s biggest advantage which was the environment in our favor. The first step was to stop letting them overwhelm my senses and calm down. Which was a monumental task in itself because that meant controlling the part of my brain that housed the survival instinct that was in overdrive. We were up against an enemy that was intent on killing us, we could not reason with them. Our options were limited to fighting, until we could get away since submission, and any attempt to intimidate them would have meant a swift and gruesome death.”
“As I was thinking all these things, and concentrating on every sound, the swamp slowly began
to come into focus. I looked up at the sky and realize that our visibility depended on the
thickness of the clouds, that it wasn’t all or nothing. The moon was still covered by some
clouds, but now at least I could spot motion, and so could my two teammates because the clouds
were not as thick as they had been a few minutes earlier. The lieutenant whispered that he could
see something moving in front of him, I looked to my right and could tell there was something
moving. As I strained my eyes trying to see what it was I realized that it was easier to look
slightly above or to the sides of the object of interest to tell the direction of movement, and the
kind of movement that would tell us whether it was a one of our buddies or a crocodile. I had
developed another strategy we could put in our kit bag that would allow us to adapt to our
environment. Whatever it was, it was very close to the ground, it could have been a man
crawling, but was too big to be human, it had to be a crocodile but it wasn’t moving in our
direction, and I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, so I told him not to shoot. This would save
ammo, ensure an accurate kill, and above all, avoid friendly fire. We knew we had to do
everything we could to positively identify the animals before we shot them.
“As the moon slowly began to emerge from behind the clouds, I saw a motionless crocodile in
front of the man to my left. He had shot a crocodile that was approaching us in the dark. We
exchanged glances and we sighed a sigh of relief. I got on my feet, looked around me to make
sure there weren’t any crocodiles near, and ran to look for my rifle. It was where I had left it, as
I intended to run back to the safety of my buddies I saw that the carnage had not subsided, but
increased. I saw that men had let their fear take over, were not using their brains and were being
slaughtered. So instead of running to my teammates, I spotted the man closest to me and
carefully approached him making sure I didn’t get eaten and making sure I didn’t surprise him
and get my head blown off. I didn’t want to approach him with his back turned to me, but I
didn’t have a choice. I wanted to make sure he heard me coming so I whispered as I walked
toward him, he turned pointing his weapon up at me. I quickly pushed the muzzle away from my
face, got him on his feet, and took him to our small group.”
“I sat him down where I had been and went to look for more soldiers careful not to get eaten, or shot. Once our portion of high ground couldn’t accommodate another soldier I moved on to another location, and repeated the process; building what I called “small pockets of resistance on high ground” while doing so I kept repeating “don’t get eaten, don’t get shot.” It helped me keep from panicking and losing control. Cursing also helped every time I put my feet in the water which could have been fatal since a sixteen-foot crock could easily hide in three feet of water and I never would have known it was there. They were invisible, until in a flash they could become the last thing I ever saw.”
“I was doing everything I could to focus on the task of organizing small groups, but the process was slow and painful because I had to be extremely cautious, and that slowed me down so much that sometimes a crocodile would get to the men before I did and I had to watch them watch me as they got caught between their jaws and dragged into the water. That happened a few times and each time I had to fight the desire to give up. At the same time, whenever I did drag a man to safety and was able to organize a small group of defense against the crocodiles, I felt like we were gaining momentum, that maybe there was a small chance of survival.”
“The screams of terrified men had been going for so long, I had tuned them out until I heard a different tone in their voices, that’s when I stopped to pay attention and heard the enemy machine guns about a thousand meters from where I was, and that’s when I broke down. I fell on my hands and knees and began to cry; after everything that had happened, the battle, the swamp, the crocodiles, we were under attack from the enemy again; it was just too much. I was angry, sad, afraid, and hopeless. I had given up and had no will to fight anymore, I just wished a crocodile would kill me fast so the nightmare would end.”
“I was waiting to die, when the screams began to make sense. I started to hear the actual words they were screaming. They were saying that the enemy was helping us, they were yelling to go got towards the enemy.
What happened was that the enemy flanking us on the sides had heard our screams of terror, the clamping of the crocodile’s jaws, the thrashing and shooting and knew what was happening to us. They were not an enemy trying to kill or capture us. They were soldiers helping their fellow man survive. Then my desperation turned to tears joy, I was too far to get to the enemy, but their actions moved me and gave me the hope and morale boost I needed to keep fighting. My despair turned to hope and then determination to get all of us out alive. The enemy’s effort strengthened my resolve to move forward.”
“You mean the enemy was capturing our soldiers.”
“No sir. We were in dire need, and the enemy answered the call. At that point they weren’t the enemy, they were men helping men. I grabbed my rifle and resumed my mission to organize groups of men on high ground. Most of the men around me began to carelessly run toward the enemy which wasn’t a sound decision, and there was no way to pursued them once they had made up their minds. I was trying to identify those who decided to stay when I heard a man grunting, as if he had been stuck in the deep mud and was clawing his way out. I followed the sound expecting to see a man waist deep in the mud based on the effort I knew he was making, but what I saw was not a man sinking to his death in the mud, it was a horrific sight that made me freeze for a second so I could actually process what I was seeing.”
“It was a man sinking his teeth into the face of a crocodile that had him in its jaws. He was engaged in a life or death struggle with an enormous crocodile. When the animal tried to shake him off, the man wrapped his arms around the crocodile’s neck and that kept him from being torn apart, I raised my rifle but I couldn’t shoot the crocodile without shooting the man. Instead, I pulled my bayonet and ran towards them hoping to stab the crocodile before he killed my teammate, but before I could get to them, the soldier drove his hand into the crocodile’s eye and the animal released him and disappeared into the water.”
“I had never seen anything like it, he was one of the many men I would meet that night who had qualities I wish I had; like the man who developed the strategy that helped us survive, this man was a of different breed. He fought with everything he had. The thought of giving up never crossed his mind, and I felt ashamed of myself for having given up twice that night. This man had suffered a lot more than I had and he kept fighting. He was a better man than I had been and at that moment I promised myself I would be the mentally toughest, and most resilient man in that swamp. I wasn’t going to be bested by the crocodiles, or even my teammates. I ran to him and pulled him to high ground. As I was dragging him he felt incredibly light, I knew he wasn’t dead because he was moaning and looking at me, but he had used every ounce of strength and had fought so hard that he didn’t have any left in him. He didn’t even have the strength to control his bladder or digestive system. He had given everything he had.”
“He had earned my respect and I was determined to make sure he got out of this swamp alive, even if it meant giving my life in the process. I couldn’t leave him alone when he was helpless but I couldn’t waste time either. I had a mission to organize groups of men, and set up security perimeters, I put my arms under his, pulled him to his feet, threw him over my shoulders and continued my mission. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait too long before I ran into someone who had also seen what happened and made his way to help us. I told that soldier take care of our buddy while I went to look for more soldiers and left them both on high ground while I went to look for more soldiers.”
“I had found a rhythm, I could tell who I could approach, and who I couldn’t, I knew I could never organize groups larger than ten because there was never enough room and at a certain point I had to catch my breath, so I sat down with the last group I had organized which had six soldiers including me. As I was catching my breath and thinking about what we had accomplished, my mind moved to how we could improve, how we could be proactive and develop new and better strategies. With a sense of urgency I was trying to come up with good ideas, when I saw a pistol belt with ammo pouches near the water. Thinking of good ideas would have to wait.”
“We still had ammo, but I didn’t want to wait until we ran out because I considered Murphy’s law, and knew that when we did run out, it would be at the worse possible moment so I went to get the pistol belt with ammo pouches close to the water’s edge. I got on my stomach, and slowly low crawled towards it as quietly and slowly as possible to avoid getting the attention of a crocodile that might have been lying in wait. As worried as I was when I got close to reach the belt, I was sure that if I hadn’t been attacked by then I would have been in the clear. I thought that a crocodile would not have been able to resist the impulse to attack, but I was wrong. As careful as I had been, I had become complacent and in a split second a crocodile flew out of the water and in a flash it’s jaws clamped down on my arm completely shattering my elbow.”
“The pain was electric, intense and my first reaction would have been to shoot it but the attack and pain caught me by surprise and I had let go of my rifle. All I could do was relax completely. Putting up a fight would have been futile and would have made the crocodile more excited. This way, he was relaxed thinking he had an easy meal and slowly started backing up into the water dragging me to my death. I made eye contact with one of the guys sitting with his rifle, but he was frozen and couldn’t bring himself to shoot. I was pleading with my eyes, too worried to make any kind of sound with my mouth thinking that if he didn’t shoot this thing, I was as good as dead. The crocodile was almost fully submerged, I could feel the water in its mouth with my fingers and it was time to fight. If the crocodile was going to eat me, I was going to make sure I would be his last meal.”
“As my hand reached for my bayonet the right side of the crocodile’s head exploded. I looked up and saw a master sergeant from another unit coming towards me. He jammed the muzzle of his rifle into the crocodile’s mouth, got on his hands and knees, put the buttstock of his rifle over his shoulder and pushed himself up, prying the jaw open a few millimeters just enough for me to wiggle my arm out. When I did, I looked at him and before I could thank him, he as a matter of factly told me to get the ammo, and get back to the fight. Then he walked into the darkness. So, I did as I was told, I grabbed the pistol belt with the ammo, and got back to the relative safety of my group thinking there was yet another man who outperformed me. What I envied about him was the fact that he was not afraid, he was confident as if he knew something I didn’t. Or maybe he just wasn’t a pussy. It was embarrassing to me to have been so afraid. I scolded myself for doing the unthinkable twice, and promised myself that I wouldn’t leave my rifle a third time.”
“We sat there for a long time, and not doing anything was a bad thing. Without realizing it, my mind began to wonder. I thought about the first time I saw a dead body. It was the body of a young soldier in a sister platoon after the battle earlier in the day. The upper right side of his skull was missing; I threw up and almost fainted. He was motionless, the only movement I saw was that of the delicate red waves of blood slowly moving into the water. He had a blank stare in his eye and there was no life in him anymore. After the horrors of that night in which I had seen hundreds of dead bodies, I was desensitized and I remembered something as I was staring at the torso of a fallen comrade. I remembered what my physics teacher had told us, that the universe was made of two things; matter and energy.”
“That became clear to me as I watched the torso of that soldier, it was only matter, the flesh and bones were no different than the rocks and branches around it. The difference was that at some point the body had had energy running through. It made me think that just like the universe, the human body is made up of matter and energy only. There is no spirit, just electric impulses that are shot be my neurons so my brain can adjust to the environment, and electric impulses that make my heart beat. Once that energy is gone, it is like turning off the light switch and our bodies die, decompose, and become part of the rock cycle. We will become sediment, later morph into rocks, after billions of years travel to the core of the earth, under millions of tons of pressure become magma, only to be expelled back to the top in volcanic eruption after another couple of billion years and repeat the process until our sun turns into a black hole and swallows our solar system.”
“I felt claustrophobic, and as soon as the rational part of my brain registered what I had just though about I knew it was time to get up, keep working, and never let my mind stray like that again. I got up and continued with my mission. I organized a few more groups while shooting and killing as many crocodiles as I could before I ran out of ammo. Others who saw what I was doing from a distance, began to do the same. When day broke, we could see. Some crocodiles were still feeding on the dead, most were fat, sluggish basking in the sun uninterested in us. Some were five feet long, others seemed over twenty feet long. I think it was my mind exaggerating their size..but not by much. We knew what we had to do, nobody had to say anything, in unison we got up, grabbed our weapons, took a silent headcount, and carefully resumed our march to get you.”
“On our way, back there was a man lying on his back with a large crocodile rolling around trying to rip off his leg. As in a trance, but at the same time with a sense of purpose I walked to where they were, sank my bayonet in the crocodile’s throat and ran it down the length of its body, it thrashed and went into the water where I know it died. We took turns carrying him, and the other wounded the last few miles to safety. The man whose leg was almost torn off was the master sergeant who had save my life earlier. It was a good feeling knowing I had been there for him when he needed help, and I made sure I never lost sight of the man who had fought a crocodile with his bare hands and won. He was walking and helping others out of the swamp.”
“I don’t know how many men were saved and later captured by the enemy. I just know out of a thousand men who walked into that swamp, sixty-two of us made our way here when day broke and the crocodiles were distracted.”
“Sergeant, can you tell me what you learned from all this?”
“Sir, I’m sure I’m going to think about this experience for the next few years and I will keep
learning lessons as I do, but the two things that come to mind right now are that we as leaders
must always consider the environment in which we are going to conduct operations. This will
allow us to develop contingency plans for the worst-case scenarios by identifying the obstacles
each specific region has. That’s what the enemy did, they used the swamp to their advantage.
The other thing I learned is that every place, no matter how chaotic and fast paced, has a rhythm;
the longer you are there the more your chances of survival increase, because your brain
inevitably starts to identify patterns and allows you to adapt to that environment.
“Ok sergeant, we are done here. We got word from the enemy Brigadier General; they will hold their fire so we can get our dead and look for any survivors…why are you giving me a weird look?”
“Sir I…”
“Listen, I know you and your men are exhausted and don’t want to go back, but if you leave in these circumstances you will be traumatized for the rest of your life. You will feel defeated even though you won. Facing and overcoming your fears will be a good first step into gaining peace of mind in the years to come. Right now is your turn to slaughter them, cut them open and get our teammates back so we can at least give them a proper ceremony. If you and the others don’t go back, none of you will be able to leave this swamp and what happened behind and you won’t be able to move on with your lives. But if you go back to get our dead, look for survivors and kill those fucking crocodiles, “you” will be in control. I will lead the way, and you will be next to me. Now get on your feet, fill up your canteens, load up on ammo, and I want a formation outside in thirty minutes. Sergeant Major is already getting every soldier ready to go into the swamp with a rifle, side arm and a knife.”
“A knife sir?”
“Yes, we are going to cut those fucking things open and bring “all” our soldiers back. We are
not going to leave anyone behind, and we are not going to leave a single crocodile alive. I will
have all my officers lead from the front, and you and your men close behind.”
“Dad..that was a good speech and all, but I’m telling you the soldiers and I would rather face a
firing squad than those crocodiles again.”
“Hey sergeant! And I’m telling you that if the leaders under my command lead by example, the
soldiers will follow..that’s why you are going. Now do what I told you.”
“Roger Sir.”
(30 seconds later)
“Hey Smith”
“What’s up man..my PL (platoon leader) just told me we’re going back out there”
“Yeah, the Battalion Commander just told me the same thing…how can we issue that order, how
can we ask the guys to go back?”
“Looks like we won’t have to…look!”
