The Marauders

In a time when battles were still fought on the ground, between men who could see their enemies with their own eyes, a wildly assorted band of soldiers volunteer for “a dangerous and hazardous mission.” Their exploits ended up touching the imagination of the American people and their fate led to a Congressional inquiry.

Three battalions of American infantrymen marched and fought across six hundred miles of northern Burma to drive the Japanese from an area the size of Connecticut and achieve fame as Merrill’s Marauders. Theirs was a victory over determined and resourceful enemies: over what Churchill called “the most forbidding fighting country imaginable”-over malaria, dysentery, and typhus: and over mismanagement from above. In the end, these men won both an extraordinary victory and an enduring place in American legend.

Charlton Ogburn, Jr.’s extensive research coupled with his own experience as a Marauder and an engrossing writing style make for a dramatic and moving narrative. This is jungle combat at its most real, its most adrenaline-pumping, and its most terrifying.