Army & Navy – OPERATIONS: Merrill’s Mules

They arrived in Calcutta from Missouri, Texas and Tennessee—two shiploads of bewildered, seasick, lop-eared army mules. There was no time to train them for jungle warfare. Brigadier General Frank Merrill’s Marauders loaded them with mortars, 755, ammunition, radio equipment, food, and started them off on a 700-mile trek to Myitkyina through the Burma jungles.

Few of Merrill’s Marauders knew anything about handling mules. Several hundred unhappy G.I.s were pressed into service as muleskinners.

Colonel R. W. Mohri, theater veterinarian, advised: “A mule’s every bit as intelligent as a human. To get along with him you need to have as much sense as the mule.”

Mule Sense. At first the mules brayed in distress when the caravan was attacked; amateur muleskinners hauled them away in all directions. The mules resisted loudly: they had been taught by U.S. cavalrymen to trot in a decorous file after a bell mare.

Once, at Walawbum, when a Marauder unit was confronted by an overwhelming enemy force, the mules set up such a clamor that the Japs thought they must be outnumbered and withdrew.

The one fright the mules never got used to was the sight of an elephant. The fright was mutual. When elephant met mule there was pandemonium—trumpeting and braying, sometimes a hysterical stampede.

The mules got influenza, gastroenteritis, laminitis, mange, screw worm, sprains, wounds. They got the best medical care from veterinarians attached to the caravan. They were given blood transfusions. The seriously sick and hurt were sent to the rear for repairs.

Jake, Puss, Shorty. Sometimes exhausted mules slipped or fell from steep mountain paths. The muleskinners rescued them at the risk of their own necks. The ‘skinners formally named their charges Jake, Puss, Shorty. They called them, “You bastard, you sonofabitch.” They defended them passionately from any outside criticism.

At one place the trail climbed 5,400 feet in less than six miles. Natives said Merrill’s pack train would never make it. When some weary mules stalled, muleskinners shouldered loads, shoved the weary animals up the mountain.

It took them four months to cover the 700 miles of pestilential jungle, but they made it. Last week many of the mules were still there in the interior of Burma, shuttling supplies around in the battle for Myitkyina. They will probably never bray in Missouri again. When the northern Burma campaign is finished, they will be turned over to the Chinese. Some day they may plod on east over the Burma Road into China.