WWII Merrill’s Marauders documentary poster
One of World War II’s most heroic and least talked about units will finally receive their Congressional Gold Medal (CGM) and they will be featured in an upcoming documentary.
“We were expendable,” said Merrill’s Marauder Sam V. Wilson, the retired US Army lieutenant general, who helped start the ultra-secretive Delta Force. “A plan existed on paper to get us into Burma (now called Myanmar), but no plan existed to get us out.”
Then-Army chief of staff Gen. George C. Marshall said the Burma mission “was one of the most difficult of the war … large numbers of the enemy with few resources was unmatched in any theater.”
The Japanese thought that the 3,000 soldiers were a group of 15,000 plus because of the damage and casualties they were able to inflict.
The Merrill’s Marauders staged and trained at Camp Stoneman, then a US Army facility in Pittsburg, CA that served as a major staging area for the Pacific Theater of Operations and named after George Stoneman, a cavalry commander during the Civil War and a Governor of California.
For many years, the CGM legislation was stalled in Congress because the minimum 66.7% of cosponsors needed in the House (290 out of 435) and the Senate (67 out of 100) were not achieved.
On page 12 of the August 2019 California Legionnaire issue, I mentioned our TEAM effort to get the legislation passed, and thanks to our Department of California’s support, Public Law 116–170 was finally passed in October 2020.
Please look out for the upcoming documentary titled, “They Volunteered for This: Merrill’s Marauders” narrated by television news icon Tom Brokaw. For more information, please visit https://wwiifoundation.org/?s=marauders and your local Public Broadcasting Service TV station.
Author: Nestor Aliga
Nestor Aliga was born in the Philippines and migrated to Vallejo, CA in 1967. He was in the US Marine Corps from 1974 to 1976 then in the US Army from 1976 to 2008. He is a life-member of the Big-Three, www.CALEGION.org, www.VFWCA.org, and www.DAVCAL.org.
