North Korean Commando team & Myanmar Army Soldiers

In the early morning of October 11 we had to report to the No. 1 BOC (Base Operations Command) inside Cantonment Park and we were asked to fall in. Only ten including me was selected as a special commando section and they drove us in a Hino TE21 truck to No. 502 Airbase at Mingaladon. The truck had no roof tarpaulin and we all got really wet as it was raining heavy.

We ten kamikaze had to fall in beside two helicopters on the runway. Our section leader was Second Lt. Maung Maung Aung. A group of senior officers then arrived. Colonel Myo Nyunt the Deputy CO Yangon Command, Colonel Nyi Sein the CO BOC (1), Lt. Colonel  Ohn Myint the Battalion CO, and  Captain Kyaw Soe the Battalion IO.

They wrote down our names, PSNs, addresses, parents’ names, and blood groups. They also asked our preferred next of kin for our benefits if we were killed. Then Colonel Myo Nyunt gave us the last speech ordering that we must find the enemy, diligently search every inch of that land they were hiding in, and capture them alive to redeem our country’s pride.

He ordered that to get enemy alive not even wounded we must sacrifice our lives if we need to. The enemy must be captured alive. After that they in one helicopter and we in the other we flew to the area where the North Koreans were last seen. On the way the Huskies circled the Shwedagon Pagoda three rounds for us.”

Only when we arrived we knew the place was Thakhutpin Village in Kawmhu Township of Yangon Division. Near the village was a long embankment along the Rangoon River and since the helicopters couldn’t land in the paddy fields or on the embankment we all had to jump down from the hovering Huskies.

We then cleared the village. The enemy was no longer in the village as he’d fled into the paddy fields just outside the village. Only then we were told the whole story.

Two North Koreans had been found wandering just outside the village and the villagers reported them to the police detachment at the village monastery. The policemen chased the two, captured them, and brought them back to their camp.

The two had Myanmar-style bag on each of them and the policemen tried to search the bags. The North Koreans pretended to cooperate with the police and Zin Kee-Chu started pulling stuff out of his bag. First a pile of money came out and while the policemen were temporarily distracted by the cash he then pulled out a hand grenade and detonated right there.

Their hand grenades had short 1 second fuses unlike our M-36 hand grenades with the longer 4 seconds fuses. So the explosion was immediate and some policemen and Captain Zin Kee-Chu himself were killed there. Kang Min-Chul escaped with a grenade in one hand and a pistol in other hand into the nearby paddy fields while firing back at the chasers.

The policemen radioed our battalion and now we were there to catch the North Korean Commando.

The day was October 11. We ten went in the rice paddy and trampled every inch of the field and searched for the North Korean the whole day. At dusk we had to stop the search to rest for the night and we resumed the search again at dawn.

It was the early morning of October 12 when we found him. He was hiding in a naturally-formed large ditch draining rain water down from the fields to the Yangon River. He was sitting in the water completely filled with floating water-hyacinths and we found him anyway even though he was out of sight and hard to be seen.

Once we found him in the ditch we ten had to line up abreast on the bank close to him and reported back to the officers waiting behind us. According to our platoon leader Second Lt. Maung Maung Aung the immediate order from Col. Nyi Sein the CO BOC (1) was to wait for the arrival of the elephant gun so that we could shoot him with tranquilizer darts, of course with reduced drugs in it.

So we just waited there for about ten minutes till another order came in again. This time it was direct from Col. Myo Nyunt the Deputy CO Rangoon Command and he ordered us to rush in and manhandle and overpower the North Korean as the army top brass was now waiting by the radio and they were getting real impatient.

So our Cho Oo the most senior private and the deputy section leader ordered the leftmost three men of our line to prepare for the immediate attack. The three were Nyunt Han the married one from the HQ Company, and Than Htwe and Thein Naing the bachelors from our Third Platoon First Company.

They dropped their G3 rifles on the ground and moved up one step ahead towards the North Korean. Cho Oo then clapped once and yelled out ‘Start’. The three shouted ‘Tiger’ aloud and ran to the North Korean who immediately threw a hand grenade at them. With the loud noise of explosion the area was suddenly covered by a huge smoke ball and we could clearly see our three were dead on the ground as the smoke disappeared in the river breeze.

Then Cho Oo ordered another three to prepare for the second attack. The three now were me, Myo Naing, and another one I can’t recall his name now. We laid down our rifles and stepped forward as the three before us did. When the order to attack came we yelled out ‘Tiger’ aloud and rushed forward. Luckily the North Korean was already wounded and he had no grenade left in his hands when we jumped him in the swampy waters of the ditch. So we got him alive and breathing.

Irrawaddy Myit-sone Dam Site

In the photo the dead giant snake was being lifted by a backhoe arm at Jum Bum hill in Irrawaddy Myitsone dam site, 27 miles north of Kachin capital Myitkyina, Northern Myanmar.

Myanmar President Thein Sein’s announcement of a halt to construction of the controversial Irrawaddy Myitsone Dam was after the killing of a giant snake by Chinese workers on Sept. 22 at a road construction site at the dam in Kachin State, eyewitnesses said.

The snake was 48.5 feet long and 5 feet in circumference and it was found in a hole on Jum Bum hill while workers were digging, said eye witnesses.

It was killed when workers from the Chinese state-owned China Power Investment Corporation (CPI) struck its head with a backhoe bucket, eyewitnesses said.

CPI workers brought the dead snake to China, according to eye witnesses.

Local Kachin villagers see the killing of a big snake at the dam site as a bad omen for the hydroelectric mega project at Mali-N’Mai Zup (Myitsone in Myanmar or Confluence in English) on the Irrawaddy River (Mali Hka nu in Kachin), a local villager said.

Eight days after the killing of the snake, Myanmar President Thein Sein proposed to parliament on September 30 that the Myitsone Dam should be halted because it is strongly rejected by the public.

(This python is even bigger than the giant Myanmar python my rifle squad of three on a LRP (Long-Range-Patrol) stepped on and killed in early 1973 near the May-kha river which meets the May-li-kha river at the Myit-sone (the Confluence) and forms the mighty Irrawaddy. Read the story at this link.)

Myanmar pythons now happily residing and propagating in Florida Everglades  are getting bigger and bigger too. The photos below are of the remains of almost 20 ft long python, the biggest ever caught on American soils, caught with just swallowed endangered-dear in its stomach on October 27 this year.

These big snakes will soon be eating Americans as they have been hunting and swallowing humans alive in theMyanmar's jungles for  thousands and thousands of years since the beginning of recorded history.

But these Americans in the photo were very lucky as they caught one of those man-eaters before it caught one of them on the swampy grounds of the Okeechobee Veterinary Hospital in South-Florida. The huge snake is over 17 ft long and it weighed 207 lbs and measured 27 inches in diameter.

Another python 14 ft long was also caught in a drainage pipe near a day-care-centre in Bradenton, Florida.  It was big enough to eat an 8-year-old child.

There are at least 100,000 Myanmar pythons in South Florida and their number is growing rapidly as one mama python can lay up to 150 eggs at least once in a couple of years in the wild like Myanmar jungles or swampy Florida Everglades.

(This article is partly from the Kachin News Group Web site.) 

Myanmar nationalist leader (or) Myanmar army father (or) General Aung San

General Aung San was born on 13 Feb 1915, Natmauk Township,Mague Division, Myanmar. He was the Myanmar nationalist leader and assassinated hero who was instrumental in securing Myanmar's independence from UK. Before World War II Aung San was actively anti-UK; he then allied with the Japanese during World War II, but switched to the Allies before leading the Myanmar drive for autonomy.

Born of a family distinguished in the resistance movement after the British annexation of 1886, Aung San became secretary of the students' union at Yangon University and, with U Nu, led the students' strike there in February 1936. After Myanmar's separation from India in 1937 and his graduation in 1938, he worked for the nationalist We-Burmans Association, becoming its secretary-general in 1939.

While seeking foreign support for Myanmar's independence in 1940, Aung San was contacted in China by the Japanese. They then assisted him in raising a Myanmar military force to aid them in their 1942 invasion of Myanmar. Known as the "Myanmar Independence Army," it grew with the advance of the Japanese and tended to take over the local administration of occupied areas. Serving as minister of defense in Ba Maw's puppet government (1943-45), Aung San became skeptical of Japanese promises of Myanmar independence, even if an unlikely Japanese victory were to occur, and was displeased with their treatment of Myanmar forces. Thus, in March 1945, Major General Aung San switched his Myanmar National Army to the Allied cause.

After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the British sought to incorporate his forces into the regular army, but he held key members back, forming the People's Volunteer Organization. This was ostensibly a veterans' association interested in social service, but it was in fact a private political army designed to take the place of his Myanmar National Army and to be used as a major weapon in the struggle for independence.

Having helped form the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League (AFPFL), an underground movement of nationalists, in 1944, Aung San used that united front to become deputy chairman of Myanmar's Executive Council in late 1946. In effect he was prime minister but remained subject to the UK governor's veto. After conferring with the UK prime minister Clement Attlee in London, he announced an agreement (Jan. 27, 1947) that provided for Myanmar's independence within one year. In the election for a constitutional assembly in April 1947, his AFPFL won 196 of 202 seats. Though communists had denounced him as a "tool of British imperialism," he supported a resolution for Myanmar independence outside the British Commonwealth.

On July 19, the prime minister and six colleagues, including his brother, were assassinated in the council chamber in Yangon while the executive council was in session. His political rival, U Saw, interned in Uganda during the war, was later executed for his part in the killings.