Burma Road
The
Mules of Mars
1st Lt. Don L. Thrapp, Q.M.C.
The Quartermaster Review
May-June 1946
MOST
people think a Quartermaster has about; as much business in a combat outfit as a
steer in a breeding corral, but the QMC is a diversified outfit and its members
sometimes find themselves dodging articles other than the proverbial bale of
hay.
You
take mule men, for instance. The
Quartermaster officers and men in the pack troops, or those who handle jackasses
for Infantry or other branches of the service, occasionally reach the fighting
areas. Each arm and service ordinarily trains its own packers, but a man who has
a specialist rating as a mule packer usually is received joyously by combat
donkey organizations.
Then
the 475th Infantry Regiment, veteran of the battle for Myitkyina (GJ
pronunciation: Mish-i-naw), went into intensive training at Camp Landis on the
upper Irrawaddy late in 1944, it seemed likely that another campaign was
brewing. Burma is strictly a mule country. It followed, then, that a
Quartermaster pack officer who wanted to see some action should volunteer, be
accepted and assigned-officially as third battalion assistant S-4, unofficially
as battalion animal transport officer. This
because the T/O called for an unneeded supply man, but no pack officer.
The
475th, together with the 124th Cavalry (dismounted), two
battalions of pack artillery, the 31st. 33rd, 35th, 37th, 252nd, and 253rd
Quartermaster Pack Troops, and a field hospital, became a long range penetration
outfit, the so-called Mars Task Force. And
there were those two damned elephants someone at Regimental Headquarters picked
up and brought along. A mule can get used to almost anything, but he draws the
line at an animal that hangs down at both ends. Sensible, not knowing whether an
elephant is coming or going, the mule is inclined to play safe and take off,
regardless of road, underbrush, leader, column, or common courtesy.
Five
weeks were not too long for a plunge into enemy occupied country, especially
when many of the replacements were not primarily Infantrymen. It seemed destined
to do its fighting with green soldiers. The deplorable situation at the battle
of Myitkyina was widely publicized at the time. After that engagement, during
preparation for the Mars job, replacements received to bring the regiment to T/O
strength were largely Quartermaster remount men, and the 475th again had
to start almost from scratch.
It
had this advantage however; unlike the situation the previous spring, this time
there was a strong nucleus of veterans to salt down its greener elements, and it
had a few weeks in which to train it- new men.
The
35th Pack Troop was assigned to the third battalion.
Its animals had been taken off a Liberty ship, sent to Ledo by train, and
within seven days were hoofing it down the 300-mile road to Myitkyina. There was
no time to complete shoeing them, and the result was that they arrived at Camp
Landis in very bad condition. An
extra week at Ledo putting at least front shoes on the mules would have saved
innumerable headaches for us later on.
Every
effort was made to get enough animals in shape in time to get the battalion on
the road. Saddles must be fitted-an important factor in mule operations, of
which more later-and gun and ammunition hangers located, made, stolen, or
secured on requisition. Sick mules needed doctoring. and all of them must be
shod or re-shod.
A
big job was to assign mules to a permanent task. Success of the mission would
depend to some degree on how accurately we judged the capacities of each animal
and how well each mule was "classified."
For
example, there was no need to assign a stocky. solid, well-gaited mule to
hauling grain, when gun and
ammunition mules were needed. A
pack troop is authorized nearly 300 animals, while the personnel totals about
75. Pack troopers are mounted on mules and herd their loaded animals, normally
by platoons. That is the most efficient manner of working pack animals, because
the mule can pick his own way and, to some extent, his gait; he can make things
easy for himself. That method of operation is best for situations where packers
must move supplies a comparatively short distance and do not have to operate
with foot troops in the same column.
Naturally,
when pack mules become part of a moving column, this system is impractical. The
herd of mules, moving some five to six miles an hour, would constantly over-run
the foot soldier, and doughs don't like that. On the other hand, the animals
cannot be started out before the foot troops because there is the question of
security for the animals, and there is also the quite important factor that the
foot troops want their machine guns, ammunition and mortars along with them just
in case. The same objections hold
regarding advisability of running the mules up to the foot soldiers later in the
day. A mule, like a man, is most efficient if he can be worked from dawn to noon
or about 1300, rather than from. say, 1000 till 1700.
Mulemen
have a great deal to do when camp is made. and their most important task is to
take care of their animals and to graze them.
Just as man cannot live on bread alone, so a mule won't go far on just
grain. Or very far without it,
either. The point 's that bivouac
should be established early enough in the day so that the animals can get their
two hours or more grazing and can be properly rubbed down and picketed for the
night.
For
these and other reasons it was necessary to take the mules along with the
column, and so each animal had to be led by a man on foot.
Thus, the pack troop retained about seventy-two mules, one to be led by
each man, and the other animals-some 220 of them-were turned over to the
battalion, where they were divided, forty-two to each rifle company and the
remainder to headquarters company and battalion headquarters.
Rifle
companies assigned ten animals to headquarters and weapons sections and divided
the rest among the rifle platoons. Headquarters company used about forty-five
mules in the heavy weapons platoon, and split the rest among transportation,
communication, pioneer and demolition, and intelligence and reconnaissance
platoons. The medics needed some animals, and besides, twelve saddle mules were
taken along, ten of them for casualty evacuation.
In
the heavy weapons platoon, four mules were assigned each heavy machine-gun and
four each mortar-one in each instance to carry the weapon, the other three to
pack ammunition. Additionally, four
mules were to carry piecemeal a short-barreled pack 37-mm., by means of which we
hoped to spray Japbearing jungles with canister; other animals carried bazookas
with ammunition, and incidentals. The setup in the rifle companies roughly
paralleled this, except that they were authorized light for heavy machine-guns,
and had but one 81-mm. mortar, filling out with 60-mm. weapons.
The
Quartermasters have been using mules since the Corps was first organized. George
Washington is rumored to have introduced the long-eared horse-donkey hybrid to
this country by the progeny of some
jacks he purchased in Spain, and some mules reputedly were used by both armies
during the Revolution. As a result
of almost two centuries of experience, the QMC has determined a lot of things
about the animals.
A
mule can carry about one third of his weight. The Army cargo pack saddle, with
trappings, weighs in the neighborhood of 100 pounds, and the average mule we
worked would weigh from 1,000 to 1,200 pounds.
Stouter mules are kept for the artillery, which has the heaviest, most
awkward loads.
Thus,
you can figure that a mule payload should not go much over 200 pounds. For a
long campaign, such as ours, we tried to keep each burden down to 180 pounds,
and succeeded pretty well on the whole.
Our
heaviest loads normally would be machine-gun ammunition, one animal’s share
consisting of ten 21-pound cans, for a total of 210 pounds.
The load, however, was evenly balanced-most important factor in animal
packing-and so was not too much.
In
the weeks of training marches and preparation we worked out these and other
problems. Supply was not up to zone
of the interior standards in Burma in 1944, and we could not count on receiving
what we requisitioned, so we had to make provision to acquire necessary items by
means other than orthodox.
We
gradually acquired enough of most items, although some of the equipment was not
in good repair and there were no facilities at Myitkyina for renovating it.
We made some hangers and improvised others, acquired a set of
horse-shoeing tools and saddler's equipment, and cut the customary pack-troop
equipment to the bone. For instance
we took along no picket lines, because we couldn't spare the animals to carry
them, and successfully employed lash ropes instead; we took no rigging covers;
we drastically reduced the number of mantas-canvas used to wrap individual
loads-needed. Each animal carried a
spare set of pre-fitted horseshoes and we divided up spare halters, shanks,
breeching, etc., to avoid making special loads of these things.
Our
worst headache was the mules. They
had scarcely rested from their 300-mile jaunt down the Ledo Road, and were about
to take off on an equally long journey, this time over no road at all. We had no
veterinary officer with the battalion at the start, but depended upon the
services of a bunch of fine vet technicians who perhaps did more than anyone
else to get the show on the road.
At
that we took thirty mules out of the sick corral and eight out of the hospital
the morning we crossed the IP. We were proud of the fact that until we struck
our first combat, one month and 150 miles later at Tonkwa, we had lost but two
animals, one through heat exhaustion and the other from an unknown cause. The
rest of the animals were in better shape then they were the morning we left
Myitkyina.
The
first stage of the campaign-the journey to ,Tonkwa-was in the nature of a
shakedown cruise.
Brigadier
(later Major) General Merrill, leader of the famed Burma Marauders, has been
quoted as making the classic definition of the troubles of the leader who
handles both men and mules. After the Marauder campaign from Ledo to Myitkyina,
Merrill said:
"Next
time give me mule skinners instead of doughboys, for it is easier to make
doughboys out of mule skinners than mule skinners out of doughboys."
The
general spoke from experience. There
are tricks to leading mules, just as there are to anything else, and it
sometimes seemed that we might have better luck if the animals had led the men.
The average mule is one of the most intelligent, and certainly one of the most
sure-footed, animals in the world. He can see a trail where a man can see
nothing but rock. If left to his own devices he will never stumble, rarely slip
or bog himself down, and almost never hurt himself. When, however, he is led by
a man he can perhaps get into more trouble than any other creature on the face
of the globe, and although his difficulty is directly attributable to his
inexperienced leader, the animal gets the blame. We occasionally lost animals
over the sides of mountains, in rivers or bogs, but we would have lost not a
single one had they been free to choose their own way.
We
crossed the Irrawaddy on an eight-mule ferry the second day of the campaign.
Because of the danger that an animal might fall off the ferry, we unpacked them
and repacked on the other side of the stream. The Irrawaddy is a swift-flowing
river, wide, deep, muddy and cold, but the entire battalion crossed in less than
a day. By reaching the other side before noon we had a good opportunity to graze
the animals, and since they were on the wrong side of the river, there was no
danger that they would suddenly recall the delights of their old Camp Landis
stamping ground and take off. We
found an enclosed paddy grown to grass and turned the animals loose, herding
them on foot. We had no bell-mares,
of course, and from this time forward, herded the mules afoot when we grazed
them, if the situation permitted. It proved impractical to send leaders out with
their individual animals to graze them. The
temptation to tie the mule to a tree and catch up on mattress nomenclature
proved too strong for some.
On
one occasion we tried tethering the animals to individual trees, using 30-foot
lair ropes and leaving a couple of men on guard to untangle them, but a couple
of serious rope burns convinced even the laziest that that wasn't a good idea.
Rope burns perhaps cause more injuries to horses and mules than any other single
thing, and it required constant vigilance to keep picket lines tight and halter
shanks tied short enough to prevent the animals' getting ropes twisted around
their feet.
Sometimes
when we bivouacked in the jungle or heavy forest it was impossible to find
grassy spots for pasture. We cut either banana or bamboo leaves for the animals
in that case. They liked the bamboo best and it was better for them, because the
banana leaves have more water content than roughage.
We
carried three days'-sometimes four days'-rations with us.
Each donkey normally carried one day’s grain in addition to his regular
pack, and transportation mules in the headquarters sections carried grain in
bulk to make up the other two days' supply.
Each
mule was allotted ten pounds of grain a day and the usual mixture included
barley, peas or beans, and salt. The
men carried three days' K or C rations, and one day 's D ration, or at least
they were issued those rations and carried that part of them they wanted or
thought they could use.
A
major task was to make the men carry their own load and not slip it onto the
mules. By some quirk of T/O reasoning, mule leaders were authorized Garands
rather than the light, less awkward carbines they should have carried. In
addition, each man was required to carry a pack containing his bedding, rations,
and other personal paraphernalia, and at times the temptation was considerable
to slip the rifle onto the mule and put a few rations into the morning manta of
organizational equipment. Some
mules gradually developed into poor leaders and habitually hung back on the lead
rope. The boys, carrying heavy
packs plus heavy rifles plus steel helmets (most of which soon got
"lost"), and dragging, all day long, a 1,200-pound mule, were mightily
tempted to abandon what religion they possessed, and lurid language developed
like a fog around the more obstinate of the animals. Riflemen had it
comparatively soft during most of the campaign.
When the bivouac area was reached, they had merely to look out for
themselves and take the usual security precautions.
The mule handlers, on the other hand, had barely begun their day's work.
The argument, of course, was advanced that the riflemen were more exposed to
danger from the enemy than the mule skinners, but that point was debatable.
In addition, the sweetest tempered mule knows how to kick, and is glad to
do it, and for weeks we had more casualties from mules than from Japs.
We
were supplied by air-drop every three or four days. C-47’s and C-46's droned
in by the dozen over a previously selected and marked drop field and parachuted
rations and ammunition and requisitioned items to us, then free-dropped grain.
Occasionally a plane load of grain would get mixed up with parachuted loads and
we had some casualties and a couple of deaths from that cause. An 80-pound sack
of grain I gathering momentum through a thousand feet of space can hit a man
pretty fast and pretty hard.
Once,
near a place called Mong Hkok, the only available spot for a drop field was in a
narrow valley with surrounding hills so high that planes could not get a good
shot at the field. A "stick" of grain sacks thudded across a series of
picket lines and wrecked the battalion aid station, killing a Chinese soldier
standing nearby. Another time one of the best packers in my platoon was loading
a mule while rations were being parachuted down on the field. A grain plane came
in unexpectedly and free-dropped a dozen sacks, one of them hitting the packer.
He was carrying a carbine across his back and the sack hit him on the shoulder,
snapping the weapon into three pieces. The packer was evacuated with what the
medics feared was a broken neck, but fortunately they were mistaken and he
recovered.
The
march south to our first combat was mostly over level country, the greatest
difficulty being occasional bogs or river crossings.
The
second battalion lost a couple of mules during a moonlight river crossing.
Again a ferry had been provided, but the mules were not unpacked and two
of them fell off the raft, their loads spinning them belly up and causing them
to drown.
No
climbing was required during this first stage, nothing but a dogged plodding
through dust and heat. Yet this was a difficult period for the animals. The
column walked at the pace of infantry. The average rate was just a little over
two miles each forty-five minutes, followed by a fifteen-minute break. We took
advantage of every halt to let the animals graze, and encouraged the men to turn
them loose during this period even if it meant a short search when the column
got under way again. After the
first few days we ceased taking time out for the noon meal, but nevertheless we
marched at the rate of foot soldiery, and the animals, even on a short hike, had
to be loaded well into the heat of the day. This cut down on the grazing time we
could give them and tired them extravagantly, since they could not be unpacked
during the quarter-hour rest periods and thus derived no benefit from them.
On
halts of twenty minutes or more we did unpack the mules, but often we did not
know how long a halt was to be, since it usually came as a result of someone
fouling up ahead somewhere and we had no contact with the head of the column
except for urgent matters. We skirted besieged Bhamo close enough to hear
Chinese-manned .30-caliber heavies talking to Nambus, and went on south to Sikaw
and beyond. It was somewhere along
in here that I established the Burma 300-yard foot record.
I was attempting to coax a skittish mule past an elephant at the time.
Everything would have been okay, had the pachyderm not decided to tickle
the mule on the business end with his trunk. The mule took off, and since I was
on the other end of his halter shank, I took off, too.
The
second battalion was committed at Tonkwa, and I Company from the third
battalion, and part of the heavy weapons platoon of headquarters company, were
assigned the task of cleaning out a patch of woods. Mule packers from the
transportation platoon and others were employed to pack ammunition and supplies
to both the second battalion and the elements of the third engaging the
Japanese. Most of the work was short hauls, occasionally under inaccurate sniper
fire. We suffered no casualties from this fire.
Our
bivouac area was some two miles back of the second battalion’s front
positions. The Japanese had four field guns we called 77-mm., although they
actually were 75-mm., chambered slightly larger than our 75’s so they could
use our ammunition and we could not use theirs.
They
had excellently camouflaged positions for their guns, and in the morning and
again in the evening would loose a salvo or two, then move their pieces. They
were zeroed in on our bivouac area at a river crossing, and their fire caused us
some casualties in men and animals. One tree burst accounted for seven animals.
Another shell cut between two mules tied to a picket line and burst about eight
feet behind them, but injured neither.
After
a couple of days' fighting, the Japanese abandoned the Tonkwa sector and our
units moved up about four miles across an immense paddy, now grown to grass, and
into a wood, where they bivouacked near some abandoned enemy positions.
Mules were used once or twice to pack supplies into the advanced
positions, but otherwise were kept back well out of possible artillery range.
Mules are difficult to replace under Burmese combat conditions.
Patrol activity established that the Japanese had at least temporarily
given up all the territory north of the Schweli River loop, although their
patrols criss-crossed the area, as did ours.
They supplied their patrols by means of pack elephants or little pack
ponies or diminutive mules, using the typical Chinese wooden pack saddle.
Chinese troops captured some of the little ponies, about the size of Shetlands,
and did a brisk business trading them to GIs for cigarettes, flashlights, or
other items they could later convert to cash in China.
Eventually,
however, the brass arrived and, distressed by the unorthodox looking
"toy" animals in the outfit, decreed that the ponies were apt to
spread disease among our mules and ordered their abandonment. This despite the
fact that throughout the campaign our Kachin scouts used the same animals in our
column, grazing and feeding and packing them alongside our mules, with no
disastrous effects.
Even
during a campaign one can get a little time off, and on Christmas Eve we spent
the day hunting. Flocks of pea fowl were common, and they tasted just like
turkey; a couple of the huge, 40-inch-long Burma black squirrels were good; and
one of the boys even shot, cooked, and ate a tremendous hornbill, which looked
more like a buzzard than anything I ever before saw in a cooking pot.
The
Chinese came back to relieve us shortly after Christmas, and by New Year’s Eve
the entire regiment had turned east and plunged into the mountains toward the
Burma Road.