Russell Hamler, Last of World War II’s Merrill’s Marauders, Dies at 99

The soldiers’ mission was as dangerous as it was audacious: a trek of more than 500 miles through mountainous jungle in northern Burma to seize a Japanese-held airfield in World War II.

The threats were constant: fierce attacks by superior numbers of enemy troops, monsoon rains, tropical diseases and malnutrition.

When the airfield was finally taken three months later, only 130 able-bodied soldiers remained of the 2,600 who had crossed into Burma in 1944 with Merrill’s Marauders, a fabled unit that was one of the forerunners of the Army’s Special Operations elite, the 75th Ranger Regiment.

On Dec. 29, Russell Hamler, the last survivor of Merrill’s Marauders, died at a veterans’ hospital in Pittsburgh. He was 99.

The death was confirmed by his son Jeffrey.

Mr. Hamler left high school to enlist in the Army on his 18th birthday in June 1942. Originally sent to Puerto Rico, he volunteered, like all of the men in Merrill’s Marauders, for a secretive mission with anticipated casualties of up to 85 percent.

“In essence, they didn’t think any of us would pull through,” Mr. Hamler recalled several years ago.

Mr. Hamler, a private first class, was not a leader of the unit. But he experienced the full brunt of jungle combat behind enemy lines as much as any member. He fought in three of its five major battles, as well as in many lesser engagements, armed with a Thompson submachine gun.

“The jungles were full of Japanese,” he recalled. “We did a lot of shooting because they kept coming.”

After Pearl Harbor, Japan’s armed forces overran Southeast Asia, capturing Hong Kong, Singapore and Indochina. An American general, Joseph Stilwell, was forced into a humiliating retreat from Burma (now Myanmar). Allied leaders agreed in 1943 to