地图与我的日记封面故事（1）

                            文/籍利平

   旧时日记的封面和封底都是更旧的地图，比如我大学二年级下学期的日记，封面和封底都是经度九十三度到九十四度之间纬度十九度附近、十六开纸幅面的地图。其中，有个岛屿名叫蓝里岛。

   地图居然有双份。

   我沿着东经、西经九十度的大弧线扫射世界地形图，居然没有发现这个岛屿。这是凌晨的事情，当时我不在电脑旁边。

   这个岛屿，这个充当我日记封面和封底的岛屿，到底在哪里呢？到办公室后，我自然使用了百度百科，用来寻找承当我1983——1984年日记封面的老地图上的岛屿，究竟在哪里？

   百度告诉我，兰里岛位于孟加拉湾东岸，面积约2300平方公里，是缅甸的第一大岛。兰里岛距大陆最近处约30公里。岛上多红树林沼泽，居住着数万只鳄鱼。

岛上多红树林沼泽，居住着数万只鳄鱼。岛上最大的居民点是延别，它位于该岛的东南侧。这个对于世人来说，最著名的二战期间的英国与日本的争夺战，由于日本不熟悉这里的地理与生物环境以及英军的顽强抵抗，最后是日本几乎全军覆没。

兰里岛之战是第二次世界大战尾期，在缅甸兰里岛（Ramree Island）附近（ 兰里岛(17张)）英国与日本军队之间的一场小战役。与其他战役相比，这场战役的重要性很小，但期间发生了一件很特别的事情，就是近千名日军被鳄鱼吃了，据说是历史上鳄鱼食人事件中人数最多的一次。

1945年2月19日，在孟加拉湾海域巡逻的英国舰队截击了一支企图撤回日本的侵缅日军舰队，双方展开了炮战，由于英军舰队力量远胜日舰，不一会儿，日军的几艘护航炮艇被击沉。装载有1000多名日军的两艘运输船，驶到兰里岛附近登陆。日军以此岛屿为阵地与英军展开了激烈战斗，激战到傍晚，英军还是无法消灭日军。

于是英军用舰队封锁兰里岛，各舰的指挥官都到指挥舰上，研究制定第二天的作战方案。夜黑时突然舰上执勤人员报告，岛上日军发出激烈的枪声和喊叫声，可能在与其他同盟军部队战斗。指挥官询问部下获知并无与其他盟军部队联系上。舰队指挥官则下令派遣一艘小艇去调查情况。

隔天早上，东方发白时，侦察小艇返回指挥舰报告，岛上日军已死，且有很多鳄鱼。

于是英国军队登岛，发现被撕碎了的日军尸体和上百只被击毙的鳄鱼尸体，附近的地区被血水染红。千多名英军仅找到了20名幸存下来的日军士兵，但这些幸存者已精神崩溃。

根据推论，那些鳄鱼在白天时可能被英日二军的炮火声吓着，藏在水中，是以日军没有发现他们。而天黑以后，潮水退时，当日军休息以备第二天的战斗时，日军的伤口的血腥味引来了大群的鳄鱼凶猛袭击，疲惫日军虽然拼命用机枪、步枪向鳄鱼射击，但还是招架不住，以至几乎全军覆没,900人葬身鳄腹。

鳄鱼现存8属25种，是爬行类中最大动物，最大10米长、1吨重。它的经济价值很高，鳄皮极珍贵，因此被滥捕，数量日渐减少。今已列为保护动物，好多国家还建立了养鳄场加以人工繁殖，成为一个热门的养殖部门。

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Battle of Ramree Island

The battle started with Operation Matador, an amphibious assault to capture the strategic port of Kyaukpyu – located at the northern tip of Ramree Island, south of Akyab across Hunter's Bay – and the key airfield near the port. Reconnaissance carried out on 14 January 1945 disclosed Japanese forces busily placing guns to sweep the landing beaches on Ramree, so the Royal Navy assigned a battleship and an escort carrier to provide heavy naval support to the task force.

Men of the Wiltshire regiment from the 26th Indian Infantry Division prepare a meal beside a temple on Ramree.

On 21 January, an hour before the 71st Indian Infantry Brigade was to land, the battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth opened fire with her main battery while planes from the escort carrier HMS Ameer spotted for her. The light cruiserHMS Phoebe also joined the bombardment, along with B-24 Liberators and P-47 Thunderbolts of No. 224 GroupRAF, (under the command of HQ RAF Bengal and Burma), which strafed and bombed the beaches. The assault troops landed unopposed on the beaches securing the beachhead. The following day, the 4th Indian Infantry Brigade landed.^[1]

On 26 January in Operation Sankey, a Royal Marine force landed on the Cheduba, which lies to the south of Ramree, to find that it was not occupied by the Japanese. On Ramree the Japanese garrison put up tenacious resistance. The 36th Indian Infantry Brigade landed with RAF and Royal Marine units. When the Marines outflanked a Japanese stronghold the nine hundred defenders within it abandoned the base and marched to join a larger battalion of Japanese soldiers across the island. The route forced the Japanese to cross 16 kilometres of mangrove swamps. As they struggled through the thick forests the British forces encircled the area of the swampland. Trapped in deep mud-filled land, tropical diseases soon started afflicting the soldiers, as well as encounteringscorpions, tropical mosquitoes and saltwater crocodiles.

A saltwater crocodile

Repeated calls by the British for the Japanese to surrender were ignored. The Marines holding the perimeter shot any Japanese attempting to escape, while within the swampland hundreds of Japanese soldiers died over the course of several days for lack of food or drinking water. Some British soldiers, including naturalist Bruce Stanley Wright who participated in the battle, claimed that the crocodiles attacked and ate numerous Japanese soldiers. Wright's description occurs in his 1962 book Wildlife Sketches Near and Far:

"That night [of the 19 February 1945] was the most horrible that any member of the M.L. [motor launch] crews ever experienced. 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. . . . Of about one thousand Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about twenty were found alive."^[2][4]

When the British eventually moved into the swamp, they found that of the nine hundred Japanese troops that originally fled into the swamp, only around twenty seriously wounded and weakened Japanese soldiers were alive. In all, about 500 Japanese soldiers escaped from Ramree despite the intense blockade instituted to stop them. If Wright's claim is true, however, the Ramree crocodile attacks would be the worst in recorded history.^[1] The British Burma Star Association seems to lend credence to the swamp attack stories but appears to draw a distinction between the 20 Japanese survivors of one attack and the 900 Japanese who were left to fend for themselves in the swamp.^[3] Furthermore there is no corroboration of the event by British military reports or by interviewed Japanese soldiers and local Burmese.^[4] These figures are disputed and the event has been described as an urban myth by British historian Frank McLynn, who opined that only a few wounded Japanese had been consumed by the crocodiles, although he did write that the saltwater crocodiles of the region were both "known man-eaters and opportunistic killers".^[4] McLynn's criticisms of the account primarily stem from his personal incredulity that the "Japanese firepower, which tore such holes in British tanks and armour", would be incapable of killing large numbers of crocodiles during the night. His suspicions are not cited to any other source, nor are they echoed by other historians. McLynn accused Bruce Wright's account as being "unverified". Wright's career in the Royal Canadian Navy and subsequently as a scientist and author is described in many additional sources. McLynn's doubts are notably not echoed by other historians.^[5]

References

1. Jump up ^Allen, Louis (1984). Burma: the Longest War. Dent Paperbacks. p. 513. ISBN 0-460-02474-4. 

2. Jump up ^Russell, Alan, ed. (1987). The Guinness Book of Records 1988. Guinness Books. p. 216. ISBN 0-85112-873-4. 

3. Jump up ^Kynaston, Nick, ed. (1998). The Guinness 1999 Book of Records. Guinness Publishing. p. 135. ISBN 0-85112-070-9. 

4. ^ Jump up to: ^abcFrank McLynn: The Burma Campaign: Disaster Into Triumph, 1942–45. Yale University Press 2011, ISBN 978-0-300-17162-4, pp. 13–15, 459 (online copy, p. 13, at Google Books)

5. Jump up ^Wall of Fame: Bruce Wright, at the Atlantic Society of Fish and Wildlife Biologists; retrieved August 9, 2013

• This article incorporates text from the public domainDictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.

现在我们可以这样假定，二战后期日海军兵员紧张，只好强迫征求未成年男子参军做炮灰。美丽海岛（***）长大的小坪黠方虚岁15变“光荣地成为了”海军。这个“倭瓜”，第一次参战就是不著名的蓝里岛之站。也就是说，幸运的黠方其实没有参与多少军事行动，就被关照撤离了。

他和两个运输船的官兵，遭遇英国海军袭击........

黠方是幸存的20多个士兵之一，他受到一些成年士兵的特殊照顾。

他是其中因为精神过度紧张而失常的年龄最小的幸存者。战后，他回到了故乡，精神一直无法康复。狂笑与在旷野里奔跑是他喜欢做的事情。他的病伴随了自己的后半生。黠方享年正好24岁周岁。