Beasts of War.

This is coolbert:

[please note that this blog contains material that is disputed.]

Almost everyone that has done even a cursory reading of World War Two [WW2] history is familiar with the U.S.S. Indianapolis incident. Almost a thousand men went into the water when the U.S. Navy cruiser was sank at the very end of WW2. ONLY three hundred were fished out days later, the remainder being eaten by sharks.

Less known, but even more drastic, was an event that also occurred at the end of WW2.

An event involving Japanese troops and their predation by the salt-water crocodile.

This the Ramree Island crocodile massacre.

The salt-water crocodile. A most ravenous creature. A known man eater. Grows to huge size and will attack almost any animal it can get it's jaws to within striking distance of. Has even been seen a thousand miles from the nearest known landmass, in mid-ocean, swimming nonchalantly along, as if it did not have a care.

The year is 1945. Right at war's end. Burma. A Japanese force of about a thousand men is trapped in a mangrove swamp, with no escape or egress possible.

A MANGROVE SWAMP THAT IS ADJACENT TO THE OCEAN!! A MANGROVE SWAMP THAT IS A KNOWN HAUNT OF THE SALT-WATER CROCODILE.

Salt-water crocodiles, attacking in WAVES, in ONE NIGHT, devour almost every last Japanese soldier trapped in the swamp. Of the original one thousand, only a handful are left alive by the morning!!!

British troops surrounding the swamp hear all throughout the night continued splashing and thrashing in the water, screams, bellowing of large animals, and rifle shots.

"That night [of the 19 February 1945] was the most horrible that any member of the M.L. [marine launch] crews ever experienced. The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of 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...Of about 1,000 Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about 20 were found alive."

A CACOPHONY OF HELL!!

With daybreak, the British, entering the swamp in a GINGERLY MANNER, find only a few stupefied and shocked survivors, WHO PUT UP NO RESISTANCE!!

[my own intuition tells me that this is a true account. Those Japanese soldier splashing around in the water of the mangrove swamp would have created quite a commotion and a lot of vibrations, not rhythmic, in the water. Like the splashing and thrashing of a wounded animal. Blood in the water from wounded soldiers would have been detectable for an animal that hunts by sense of smell, such as a croc. The croc detects it's prey the same way as does a shark. It is as if those Japanese soldiers were ringing a dinner bell [dinner has arrived] for the crocs.]

See some gruesome photos of what crocs can do to humans.

WARNING: As posted at the above web site - - "Not for the Squeamish - - Some of the Pictures are Very Graphic!"

NOT for the squeamish. Where have you heard that before!!??

coolbert.