MERRILL’S MARAUDERS, 1944 Special Operations Spearhead
BY DAVID C. ISBY called them Merrill’s Marauders. Officially, they y Journalists were the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional). To the transportation planners, they were Shipment 1688. Operationally, they were Galahad Force. The story of their campaign in the jungles of northern Burma showed the capabilities of this improvised force of American soldiers. They gained surprise by undertaking seemingly impossible marches through mountainous jungle and defeated numerically superior forces of the Imperial Japanese Army that previously had an aura of invincibility in jungle warfare. They gained and held their objective despite too few supplies, too much disease, planners that did not understand special operations forces (SOF) and, in the end, exhaustion. Some 75 years after they became the U.S. Army’s largest special operations force to be sent into battle in World War II, this unit – intended to last only for one 90-day combat mission – is part of the heritage of today’s Rangers.
The 5307th originated at the August 1943 Quebec Conference of the Anglo-American political and military leadership. The charismatic British Brigadier Orde Wingate described how he had organized the Chindits, SOF light infantry, and infiltrated behind Japanese lines in Burma. Politicians, generals, and public alike were hungry for news of victories from the China-Burma-India (CBI) theater of war, where there had been little except defeats. Wingate offered hope of success in the CBI in 1944. President Franklin Roosevelt committed to send ground combat units to fight under Wingate. The chief of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Gen. Henry “Hap” Arnold, enabled the formation and deployment of what became the Air Commandos to support Wingate. The difficult coalition command relationships in the CBI – where U.S., British, and Chinese Nationalist strategic interests all widely differed – made it imperative that the United States have “boots on the ground” in Burma. The U.S. Army pulled together a force of volunteers, mixing combattested infantrymen that had fought the Japanese on Guadalcanal and in New Guinea, and others, jungle-trained, from garrisons in the Panama Canal Zone and Caribbean, with shortfalls made up from Army correctional facilities. A provisional force, intended for only one mission, its personnel arrived with no official commander or staff, no shared loyalties, no shoulder insignia, no colors, and limited cohesion. Few in the U.S. Army had any experience or knew about special operations, whether Wingate’s or any other model. U.S. Army Gen. Joseph Stilwell was tasked with keeping China in the war. He was openly hostile to the British, the Chinese Nationalist,
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Special Operations Outlook
NATIONAL ARCHIVES
The Road to Burma
