Customer Reviews

The Marauders

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This is really a haunting read. If you are interested in both heart thumping narrative and beautiful prose, this book brings it together with a flair borne in the passion and heartache of pesonal experience. Ogburn was communications officer for one of the three battalions of the original Marauders.

Ogburn covers a lot of ground in his 300 pages and this narrative brings together beautifully the macro political level intrigues and the intense strain of personal combat. I have read perhaps 2000 war books in my short 40 yrs, but there are parts of this book that I will always remember: his description of his first operations against the Japanese and the strain of patrol action and the actual realisation of battle hits a person hard. It is not death that is shocking, but the realisation that one is close to death without ever experiencing it --- that a line gets crossed somewhere, where you are conscience that you are in a completely different territory. For Ogburn that happenned on his first patrol when he noticed the first fresh footprints of Japanese patrols.

Ogburn is in fact one of the small minority of "thinking soldiers" --- ones able to philosophise on morality in time of combat, draw judgements about right and wrong, but also to act with supreme daring. His quotes about viewing Japanese dead are haunting:

"viewing these dead, one wants to conjure some kind of image that foreordained them to some mortal sin. Some act or upbringing that marked them clearly as crossing over in the land of the wicked. That leant a notion of justice to their deaths and the fact that you still lived. You searched for it. But you knew there was nothing in it."

Ogburn took part in two of the three hooking actions of the Marauders. After nearly slicing his foot off he missed most of the last operation at Myitkyina. For this operation he relies on the personal experiences of everyone in his unit and there is no flagging in the pace.

Since I have read more on the Chindits than the Marauders I really came to appreciate how much both units, formed seemingly for the same operation --- initially conceived to be under the command of Wingate --- became victims to the insidious greed of careerism that seems to be a defining mark of the US military. In no other western democratic military has there ever been such a thorough-going willingness to sacrifice grunts for the ambitions of the supreme officer class. Stilwell with his pathetic personal vanity and pathological hatred of the English, meant that he would never ask for the British to support them with one of their free divisions at a time when the Marauders had ceased to exist as a functioning unit. He pressed medical orderlies to certify everyone as fit for battle at a time when the unit only could muster about 20% effectives. People suffering wounds, ameobic dystentery, fever and chronic undernourishment were flung into the battle of Myitkyina. (One officer continually passed into and out of consciousness from undernourishment while commanding his battalion, and still he was not certified for withdrawal). Stillwell placed the blame of the British Chindits for their "slow" advance from the south and failure to block the railway -- as Ogburn points out, it was a convenient scapegoat. In a tribute to clear and fair thinking Ogburn describes that the British were at this time functioning in very similiar, if not worse conditions (since they had to be 100% supplied from the air -- the Marauders had a road). One Chindit battalion could only muster two rifle platoons! Such was the intensity as Ogburn describes, that both the British and the Marauders faced.

But the one vital element was, that there were fresh troops that the British were willing to commit -- but Stilwell refused to for the sake of his personal vanity. The British therefore came to hate Stillwell, but Slim at least said that he could "work with him." The Marauders hated Stillwell more: one soldier, that we know of, drawing a bead on him with a rifle and almost shooting him "I could have shot him right there and no one would have thought it was anything other than a sniper."

Ogburn also cites the irony of the American way of war where the number of soldiers in US uniform increases proportional to the distance from the front. At a time when Stillwell commanded 30,000 men in Burma-India he still kept rotating essentially the same combat troops and convalescences of the original 3 battalions (although in the end he eventually dragooned about 1000 construction and engineering troops to fill the void created in the Marauder ranks).

Lt-Col. Hunter, the defacto commander of the Marauders for a lions-share of the campaign (Col. Merrill suffered two heart attacks and was hors de combat for most of the campaign after Shaduzup), was also sacrificed and eventually removed by Stillwell from command with no reason -- accept to find a fall-guy for his inability to quickly capture Myitkyina. Eventually mutiny swelled in the ranks and whole sections of the front and rear areas became effective "no-go" areas for American officers.

The text of this book should serve as a tribute to the personal courage and individuality of the US combat infantryman and his rugged ability. It should also serve as a warning to those still in the US military on operations.... the tendancy of careerism in the senior officer class, right up to President, and the willingness to sacrifce the average grunt, has become noticeably worse since the times of the Marauders --- in this sense Ogburn is not merely a poet, but also a trenchent analyst of our own times as events that happened in the Burmese jungle 60 years ago...

This is an excellant account of Merrill's Marauders and the battles they fought and the conditions they endured. Charlton Ogburn Jr. was the communications officer for the 1st Battalion of Merril's Marauders and his book includes many first hand accounts ( including his own ). His narrative encompasses from when the unit was formed until it was deactivated in Aug 1944 during the siege of Myitkyina. What is especially intriguing is reading about the living conditions and the long difficult marches the unit toughed out. It is very obvious this was written by a person who was there. This was one of the first accounts ever written of Merrill's Marauders and their campaign and it does them justice. The maps in it could be better but you can still easily follow the action and not get lost. I was fortunate that I found a paperback copy of this book at a used bookstore in excellant condition. I recommend this book for any WWII buff or anyone who enjoys reading about extraordinary acts of valor and courage by ordinary people in unordinary circumstances.

This is an excellant account of Merrill's Marauders and the battles they fought and the conditions they endured. Charlton Ogburn Jr. was the communications officer for the 1st Battalion of Merril's Marauders and his book includes many first hand accounts ( including his own ). His narrative encompasses from when the unit was formed until it was deactivated in Aug 1944 during the siege of Myitkyina. What is especially intriguing is reading about the living conditions and the long difficult marches the unit toughed out. It is very obvious this was written by a person who was there. This was one of the first accounts ever written of Merrill's Marauders and their campaign and it does them justice. The maps in it could be better but you can still easily follow the action and not get lost. I was fortunate that I found a paperback copy of this book at a used bookstore in excellant condition. I recommend this book for any WWII buff or anyone who enjoys reading about extraordinary acts of valor and courage by ordinary people in unordinary circumstances.

From the inside end flaps:

The Marauders is the first full account of a wildly assorted band of volunteers for "a dangerous and hazardous mission" whose exploits touched the imagination of the American people, and whose fate led to a Congressional inquiry. Superbly told, with a unique combination of excitement and compassion, it is a factual narrative with the emotional appeal of fiction.

The three battalions of American infantrymen who, in spring of 1944, marched and fought across six hundred miles of northern Burma to achieve fame as Merrill's Maurauders won both an extraordinary victory and an enduring place in the American legend. Theirs was not only a victory over determined and resourceful enemies, over "the most forbidding fighting country imaginable," as Churchill called it, over malaria, dysentery and typhus, but also over mismanagement from above and their own limitations as human beings. When in the end the odds against them proved overwhelming, a poignant finale was written to one of the most moving, dramatic and inspiring episodes of the war.

This is the story of the foot soldier, on whose will to take the next step whether he is sick, exhausted or mortally afraid the fate of nations ultimately depends. As the author, who served with the Marauders, points out, it is also a story in which is compressed and intensified the common experience of human beings, of whom nothing less is required than to keep on going in the face of the impossible.

There is nothing I could add that would explain the book any better. Maybe a WWII vet or another member of the US Military could write something more in depth, but I was impressed.

I picked this book up on Amazon.com. This book is written by a 2nd Lieutenant in one of the three battalions of the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional). He was just high enough up in the pecking order to know what was SUPPOSED to be going on, and low enough to know what WAS going on. The Marauders were under General Merrill who General Stillwell at least liked. On the other hand, the Marauders were treated badly when the fighting was over. They weren't taken out of battle soon enough to recover their health. They went on three missions between 24 February 1944 and 17 May 1944, which basically ruined the health (physically and mentally) of Merrill and everyone under him. The Japanese they were fighting were some of the best Infantry that the Imperial Army had ever had, but they weren't the main problem. It was hot, it was a jungle, there were a multitude of diseases, snakes, and their supply wasn't all that reliable. I highly recommend this book.

i picked this up because Charlton is my first name. I knew of Heston, but now I know there are at least 4 people with my first name (Charlton Ogburn of this book is Jr, so it stands to reason there is a Sr.) Anyway, this book is very interesting in that it covers from a first person account, the Burma theater of World War II. I've studied WW2 since 1969, and this is a first for me. The prose is very thick, I've had to get my dictionary out twice, but it's a very good account. If you're a historian with an eye toward WW2, Read this book.

The style of writing was one of the poorest I have ever seen. The story just never gets off the ground. Fragmented...