The Battle of Ramree Island
Here we have a comparable case to the USS Indianapolis. In 1945, the Japanese controlled Ramree Island, measuring 80km x 50km, which was deemed by the Allies to be vital for invading mainland Burma. In a long and bloody battle lasting over a month, Japanese and British forces fought across the island’s swamps, until a Japanese stronghold was outflanked and abandoned. The nine-hundred fleeing troops intended to join up with a larger battalion on the other side of the island and, threatened by their enemies from all sides, decided to travel there across 16km of a dense swamp. Big mistake.
The mangrove swamp that they crossed was home to many saltwater crocodiles, beasts that can grow up to 7 metres, and are fiendishly well-camouflaged. Powerful and fast-moving, they favor ambush attacks, which the roots and debris of the mangrove tree greatly aid. They are the most likely of all crocodilians to attack people, and few have survived an encounter with one. Saltwater crocodiles also have the strongest bite of any animal, exerting a peak bite force of 16, 414 newtons, nearly four times that of the second-placed spotted hyena (see the Mulanje Hyenas later in the list).
Pity, then, the poor retreating troops tasked with crossing the crocodiles’ stronghold on Ramree. They really were between the devil and the deep blue sea: surrounded by armed enemy troops, they had the choice of being shot or risking the crocodiles on home turf. The cloying mud of the swamp slowed their progress, the intense heat left them desperate for water, and they also had to deal with venomous spiders and snakes, to say nothing of the swarms of mosquitoes carrying deadly tropical diseases or the odd period of British artillery fire.
Allegedly, 500 Japanese soldiers ended up as dinner for the crocodiles, with another 480 succumbing to disease, exhaustion or venomous swamp-dwellers. Despite the naturalist Bruce Stanley Wright’s eyewitness testimony, the exact figures are disputed by modern historians. Wright claimed that there were ‘thousands’ of crocodiles, though the ecosystem of the mangrove swamp is far too small to support such a number. Perhaps it would be harsh to accuse Wright, who of course was fighting in the battle himself, of exaggeration, since the chaos and horror of war hardly provides a suitable platform for accurate observations of natural history.
Yet, even if we estimate but a handful were seized by the saurians, the ordeal of the Japanese soldiers is unspeakably awful. Word would surely spread through the beleaguered lines of soldiers, shouted above the artillery fire, that crocodiles were attacking. The thought of the primeval roar of the saltwater crocodile, mixed with the desperate agonized cries of their victims and the panicked yelling of witnesses, is enough to keep the bravest awake at night. In the words of Wright, the swamp was alive with ‘a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth’.