The 21 original members of Detachment 101 established their base at Nazira in Assam, India, in May 1942, and began to make initial probes behind Japanese lines. Stilwell gave the unit a multiple assignment — deny the Japanese the use of Myitkyina airport and the roads and railway leading into it from the south, and closely coordinate operations with the British and Chinese.

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A few 101 probes went overland into Burma in late 1942 with discouraging results, so it was decided to switch to parachute drops. On January 26, 1943, the first OSS men were dropped into northern Burma, and 10 more went in soon after. By March, Eifler’s men were spreading out over the north, and the first landings had taken place in central Burma.

The Americans soon discovered that they would be fighting in one of the world’s worst climates and on some of its most forbidding terrain. They were obliged to scale jagged mountains, hack their way through almost impenetrable jungles, and cross dusty plains where temperatures reached as high as 130 degrees. It sometimes rained as much as 15 inches in a single day. Clothes and boots rotted off their bodies in the sweltering humidity. Malaria, dengue fever, cholera, scabies, yaws, typhus and dysentery were at epidemic levels.

Clearly, a couple dozen Americans would have little effect in such an atmosphere against a hardened Japanese army. But, unwittingly, the Japanese themselves had sown the seeds for their ultimate defeat in Southeast Asia.

At first, the Japanese were seen as liberators freeing the Burmese from the British colonial yoke. But the Japanese treated the Burmese as they had the Chinese, brutally attacking the people and butchering entire villages. A tribe of hill people called the Kachins bore the brunt of the atrocities. As a result, the Kachins hated the Japanese, and many Kachins joined Detachment 101 in fighting the invaders.

The Kachin tribesmen were short, rugged men and born fighters, equally at home crossing mountain peaks and following virtually invisible tracks through the jungle. They had an uncanny ability to shadow their foes through the jungle for miles without being seen or heard, and in time the Japanese came to fear and dread them. Detachment 101 eventually grew to a force of more than 10,000 guerrillas.

From a string of jungle outposts established along a 600-mile front, Detachment 101 units mounted repeated attacks on Japanese supply lines, blowing up bridges and railroads, disrupting communications, and providing intelligence for the Allies. Detachment 101’s patrols ferreted out Japanese camps and supply installations concealed in the jungle; they provided such exact descriptions of local landmarks for pilots of the U.S. Tenth Air Force that the Americans were able to successfully bomb and strafe targets they could not even see.

The presence of Detachment 101 patrols in the jungle also lifted the morale of American and British aircrews flying supplies over the ‘Hump’ of the Himalayas from India to China. Now, for the first time, the fliers knew that if they crashed and survived, expert trackers would be coming to their aid. Detachment 101 even had its own air force–a ramshackle assortment of light planes used to supply its men in the field and to bring out wounded.

Detachment 101’s support of Maj. Gen. Orde Wingate’s Chindits and Maj. Gen. Frank Merrill’s Marauders was crucial to the Allied success in Burma and to the eventual victory in Southeast Asia. The regular Allied forces came to depend on the support of irregular units perhaps more than in any other theater of the war.

The Americans represented the peaks of industrialization, modernization and education. The Kachins were from the other end of the spectrum — backward, primitive and mostly illiterate. However, mutual respect bound them together. Men from both groups were usually loyal, dependable and courageous. And they were all determined to run the Japanese out of Burma.

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