Ramree Island. Burma
The Burmese Island was written into history during the closing days of WWII, when Allied forces landed on Ramree to take the island from the Japanese. Obviously, that’s not what makes it so dangerous. Ramree is the home of thousands of salt-water crocodiles, malaria and venomous scorpions. As Allied forces advanced, the Japanese were pushed deeper into the island where the mangrove swamps lie. Of the 1000 Japanese soldiers defending the island that day, only 20 came out from the swamps. The rest were devoured by the crocs. British naturalist Bruce Stanley Wright, who participated in the battle, wrote: “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”
