Russell Hamler, thought to be the last of WWII Merrill’s Marauders jungle-fighting unit, dies at 99

HARRISBURG, Pa. — The reputed last member of the famed American jungle fighting unit in World War II nicknamed the Merrill’s Marauders has died. The Marauders inspired a 1962 movie called “Merrill’s Marauders,” and dozens of Marauders were awarded individual decorations after the war, from the Distinguished Service Cross to the Silver Star. The soldiers spent months behind enemy lines, marching hundreds of miles through the tangled jungles and steep mountains of Burma to capture a Japanese-held airfield and open an Allied supply route between India and China. In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to have the Army assemble a ground unit, the 5307th Composite Unit Provisional, for a long-range mission behind enemy lines into Japanese-occupied Burma, now Myanmar.