The Battle Of Ramree Island. A World War 2 story that would make a superb film.

World War 2 films are ten a penny. There's 70 years worth of them. Some are fantastic and some are awful but most are about the same thing. One side against the other. Man Vs Man. English vs Germans, Yanks vs Japanese and so on and so forth. 

The Battle Of Ramree Island is a different kind of war story though.

It's terrifying. The stuff of nightmares. And one that could make for a great film.

Ramree was a small Island off the coast of Burma. Small of of big strategic importance. It was being held by Japanese forces and the Allies needed it to establish a resupply airbase for South East Asia.

On the 21st of January 945 Allied forces invaded the island and started to skirmish with the enemy. The battle continued for two battles until the Japanese forces found themselves outflanked and outnumbered. 900 of them decided to retreat across land to join up with a larger group. To get there quicker they travelled through a dozen miles of mangrove swamp and while they were in there the Allied troops surrounded the swamp. But in the swamp was something far scarier than any bullet. Salt water crocodiles. Man eaters that grew up to 30 feet long. The croc's smelled blood and rapidly the place became death. 900 soldiers had entered the swamp. The next morning 20 were left. 20. The soldiers surrounding the swamp heard it all.

"The scattered rifle shots in the pitch black swamp punctured by the screams of wounded men crushed in the jaws of huge reptiles, and the blurred worrying sound of spinning crocodiles made a cacophony of hell that has rarely been duplicated on earth. At dawn the vultures arrived to clean up what the crocodiles had left…"

Nope.

This story could be the basis for one extremely intense film. Imagine The Thin Red Line crossed with Jaws. Except with crocodiles. And we'd see it from the Japanese point of view. WW2 films from their P.O.V are still rare, especially mainstream one. Offhand I can only thing of Letters From Iwo Jima. This could be very unique, especially when you add in the survival horror aspect. TBH, I'm amazed this hasn't been made into a film yet. It's ripe with potential. The nearest it's come to any sort of adaption is in the pulpy comic books (see above) of the 1950's and 60's

Now, a lot of modern day research has been done into the battle and experts claim the the numbers reported are exaggerated but since when has accuracy ever mattered to film makers.

To quote the classic western 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' - When the legend becomes the truth, print the legend."

This could be the film that haunts your dreams in the future.