Mangroves

The Ramree Island Crocodile Massacre

De: R. G. West

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Ramree Island, Burma, February, 1945

As World War Two raged like an inferno across the globe, Captain Ryoichi of the Imperial Japanese Army could feel the cancer growing inside of him, like the roots of a plant reaching into the darkness, clawing at his lungs, growing larger each day. Not wanting to end his life in a hospital bed, the Captain longed to die in battle; a glorious, honourable death. The British were coming and they would soon provide the opportunity for immortality. But after a terrible defeat, fate would lead the Captain and his men, most of them injured, near starving, and suffering from numerous life-threatening diseases, waist-deep into the tropical mangrove swamps, where they would face their greatest adversary, Mother Nature and her ferocious bite. The swamps were home to many dangerous animals, poisonous plants, wriggling parasites, creepy crawlies every size and shape imaginable, scorpions and spiders, and an ancient, revered species of territorial, hungry and aggressive saltwater crocodile. And it was mating season. The following is the incredible true story, what the Guinness Book of World Records calls, "the worst crocodile disaster in the world".