Lyons Memoir - Merrill's Marauders and Orde Wingate

In a recent post we had just learned of the long-running newsletter for CBI veterans, Ex-CBI Roundup.   An issue from 1991 contained a memoir by Captain Fred O. Lyons, one of Merrill's Marauders from summer 1943 until the capture of Myitkyana Airstrip on May 17, 1944.

If primary historical sources, first-hand accounts, and undeniable authenticity are what's wanted, then there is nothing better for it than a memoir like this.  Some passages from just one paragraph will clue us in to what is happening on the sea lanes and in CBI theater at that time:

(Emphases and formatting are mine.)

" . . . The next morning we boarded two trains with curtains drawn. Five days later we were in San Francisco. At least we knew we weren't going to Europe.Kept close in barracks at Pittsburgh, California, we were given shots of vaccine against diseases in tropical or arctic climates. We thought we had learned something when we got wool clothing, but the next day we were issued another outfit of cotton uniforms. The rumor factories were put in production, but we still had no inkling of our real destination.

. . . At sea on a converted luxury liner, I found that we were to be given plenty of training for our mysterious mission. Day after day on the wide decks we jumped and crouched, slashed with bayonets and parried with gun butts. We shot at bobbing Japanese cardboard faces, peered at cardboard models of Japanese tanks and airplanes. We had to learn a lot about fighting the Jap, and every minute counted.At New Caledonia we met new members of our outfit leather-faced veterans of Guadalcanal and New Guinea. On board ship the veterans were assigned places in our units, to give weight and experience to our novice ranks. By then we knew our goal wasn't the South Pacific.

At other ports, we were ashore only a few hours. The most welcome sight in years was India, for it meant the long sea voyage was over.A clanking, snorting train carried us to a rest camp, and after three weeks we moved to training camp. There we learned for the first time where our battleground would be. It was the now-legendary General "Sword and Bible" Wingate who broke the news to us. He told us every detail of his famous Raider campaign in Burma the year before, so we could profit by his experience and come out of the jungle alive. I see him now, his hawk-like face animated as he warned us never to speak above a whisper in the jungle, never to try to pull away a blood-sucking leech, never to drink jungle water without sterilizing it."

Orde Wingate

" . . . For two months we trained in the maneuvers of the jungle. We were issued jungle clothing - not the splotched camouflage uniforms of the New Guinea boys, but solid dark green outfits that offered even more complete concealment in the bush. Our fatigue blouses and our pants, our undershirts and drawers, even our handkerchiefs and matches were green. Day and night we marched, ran, hid, feinted, learned all over again the lessons that first had been learned by American frontiersmen in their struggle with the Indians. Right along with us was Brigadier General (now Major General) Frank Merrill, learning too."

Frank Merrill

We became hard as our green helmets, tough as our green GI brogans. I weighed 146 pounds and there wasn't an ounce of fat on me. I could run for 20 miles and still enjoy a brisk walk in the cool night air of an Indian village."

Here at Ex-CBI Roundup is the entire Lyons memoir, including useful medical information about amoebic dysentery and giant leeches.  With those leeches, there are certain things one must do and must not do.

Note that in the fall of 1943, Lyons's troop transport sailed from San Francisco to New Caledonia to India (probably Calcutta.)

At roughly this same time, Dr. Gumaer transported those mules to CBI by way of the Atlantic.

A year later, fall of 1944, Walter Orey  sailed Los Angeles to Fiji to Melbourne to Bombay.