(Maung Maung Khin originally was a student warrior from the Battalion-701 of notorious ABSDF-North and he acted in 2008 Sylvester Stallone’s overly-exaggerated anti-Burmese movie Rambo-4 as the ridiculously-sadist Burmese-Army-Colonel Tint. This post is the translation of his article from KOZAN Blog.)
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| Rambo Stallone killing a Burmese soldier. |
The shaken Kachin officer kept on telling me to charge at the enemy atop the hill. Only then I realized that after so many failed bayonet-charges the Kachins were now reluctant to push next charges and so they were now asking us to charge.
No moon in the sky, we were hungry, and the night seemed to be filled with the smell of carbide. Without washing our hands we opened the packed-meals and ate them all. While eating Ba Nyar and I spoke about the coming bayonet-charge.
To charge at the enemy we needed good weapons. But all our good guns were already taken by Myo Win’s squad. If we told that to the Kachins and refused to charge they would definitely think we were yellows. My M1 Carbine had only 40 bullets and it wasn’t good enough to use against the enemy soldiers well-armed with G3 and G4 automatic rifles.
And the Sten sub-machine gun Ba Nyar had was worse than my .30 M-1 carbine. So I and Ba Nyar asked the Kachins to exchange our guns with their good guns. But they refused to give us good guns while still asking us to charge together with them.
Finally we decided to stay with the Kachins, but I sent the young blokes Ah Nge and Khwat Kyi back and kept only Ba Nyar, Win Shwe, and Myint Win with me there. Even though we didn’t have good guns we still wanted to fight the enemy. So we four and three Kachins took position together at the base of the low hill nearest to the enemy position and started eating out of the packed-meals while waiting for the order to charge.
This is Armed-Revolution
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| H&K G4 light machine gun. |
We then applied Repito Insect-repellant liquid on our faces and ears to repel the relentless mosquitoes and insects from the jungle while waiting for the attack order. But the time was raining season and the heavy drops of rain coming down amidst the cordite smoke took away the repellent from our faces.
While quietly squatting I went in and out of my short sleeps the whole night waiting. Rain drops couldn’t really shock me out of my sleep but the army of jungle-mosquitoes and the sudden bursts of enemy’s G4 fires almost did. Soon the dawn had arrived after my many slow falls into sleep and sudden awakes.
The drizzles of whole last night had disappeared and the trees and the hills around were now clearly visible. Then the order to prepare for the attack came through the walkie-talkie.
KIA’s bayonet charges during the early parts of last night were defeated repeatedly by the enemy’s heavy firepower from the high hill under the cover of darkness. For three miserable times the uphill charges from our side were repelled with heavy casualties on our side.
KIA major La-zein Bout knew very well the fact that continuing the night attacks would only deplete our manpower without any success. Being a battle-hardened Kachin warrior he was wisely waiting for the daylight to resume the uphill bayonet charges.
Uphill Bayonet Charge
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| ABSDF Bayonet charge? |
The order for the bayonet charge came in through radio. One young Kachin boy behind a big tree was reluctant to move forward as we were moving up. So Ba Nyar grabbed his M21 automatic rifle from him and gave him the useless Sten gun of his and told him to stay put there as we were now going up the hill to meet the enemy.
We then spread out forming a battle line and cautiously moved up the low hill. After five minutes of slow advance we heard the searching fires of enemy’s G4s and machine guns from our left. On the radio the order for us was to attack and clear our right.
We immediately queried the Kachin officer via radio and he just replied that there were his men on our left and we could run into their friendly fire. So we just continued on our way to the top of the hill. We screamed and swore and fired at the Burmese soldiers and finally reached the top of the ridge line.
While firing at them I kept on swearing, “Mother-fucking wardogs! Where are you now? Come out! Come out now!”
But there were none of them Burmese soldiers on the hilltop and their firing back had totally ceased. In the centre of the clearing was a pile of their stuff apparently abandoned? By the tree line at the edge of clearing were the corpses of two Burmese boy soldiers.
I could see the fresh graves of their dead and also unexploded KIA’s homemade grenades. MY instant conclusion was that the enemy was hit hard and they had disorderly withdrawn abandoning their weapons and ammunitions and supplies.
“They couldn’t even carry their stuff, look at here!” I yelled out to our men as I confidently strolled up and down in the clearing.
“Hey, which group are you guys from?” from about five steps away from me a head of a Burmese soldier hiding behind a large tree popped out and asked us.
“Enemy!” I immediately knew we were in their trap and turned around and yelled out to our men already in the clearing and the gunshots from both sides loudly broke the temporary silence.
“There, Win Shwe’s fallen, he is hit,” Ba Nyar shouted and I yelled back, “Let’s go get him!”
“I’m hit,” once we reached near Win Shwe’s body and Ba Nyar had picked up Win Shwe’s rifle the enemy gun fires had found him and he was instantly hit.
“Where did you get hit?” I was curious.
“I don’t know. You just cover-fire for me. I’m running down below!”
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| ABSDF's Win Shwe lying dead. |
As I fired back at the enemy to cover him he stood up and ran downhill with Win Shwe’s rifle still in his hands. When I turned round I found the enemy bullets following him and hitting the leaves and branches beside him running.
By then I knew we were in their killing field. Once they knew we outnumbered them they set up a clever trap to get us. They had piled up their stuff and made us believe that they were gone. And we had fallen into their tactical trap.
At least Ba Nyar had escaped, but I was still lying flat on the killing ground under flying bullets from enemy guns. I couldn’t even raise my head. I tried to look for the bullet wound on Win Shwe and found none on his body.
Then I saw white gooey stuff on the fallen leaves behind his head. Only then I looked at his face and realized he was shot right in the middle of forehead and his head was blasted open and his brain was blown off. The white stuff I saw were pieces of his blasted brain.
I got shot in the head
As gunfires slowly died down I raised my head and tried to take of the equipment webbing from Win Shwe’s body. Immediately I heard the gunshots as nearby enemy had fired and I suddenly felt like my head was hit by a massive hammer. I immediately flattened myself on the ground and quickly crawled backward away from the enemy guns.
Very soon, while I was lying down flat on the ground the droplets of blood started coming down through my hairs. Only then I realized I was hit and I tried to find the wound by feeling my head with my right hand. Lucky, I didn’t find a hole like what Win Shwe had on my head, but the blood was coming down more.
What I thought then was since I was in a state of battle-numb I wouldn’t know whether my wound was fatally serious. But I still thought I didn’t want to die here on this enemy hill. I just wanted to die back where my comrades were.
What I knew then was that it would take only two steps down away from where I was lying I could be out of their shots. But I was in a situation that I couldn’t even raise my head up a bit. So I quietly waited as if I was shot and dead.
Enemy seemed to have believed that I was dead as their gunfire had stopped. Then I suddenly remembered that well-known joke from Maha Zanekka play where the main theme is the prince Zanekka’s ship was wrecked and he had to swim in the ocean seven days before he was rescued by a pretty angel.
The joke goes like this. Before he dived down into the ocean from the mast-top of the rapidly sinking ship Prince Zanekka said there remarkable words which were one two three. So I counted one two three slowly and then rushed up and ran downhill like hell. Enemy’s bullets followed me from behind but they couldn’t catch me. Only when I was out of their shots I remembered Myint Win still on the hill and called out to him to withdraw.
“Myint Win, we are withdrawing, you don’t stay back by yourself!”
“Yes, yes, I am returning their fire four five times more,” he yelled back and still kept on firing back at the enemy.
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| Burmese army LIB-114 neck-scarf. |
“We are hit and we are going back down. I think there are only two Burmese soldiers still firing back on the hill ahead,” I told the KIA officer and we continued descending the hill.
At the foot of the hill we met two KIA medics waiting there ready with bleeding-stopping medicines. They straight away injected the medicines into our arms without even taking off our shirts and then sent us together with our student medic back to where the men from the students army and NLD(LA) were waiting.
We lucky men out of a real bad situation
Only there the medic sewed our wounds without any kind of anesthetics. Both my head-wound and Ba Nyar’s back-wound were flesh-wounds from grazing bullets not penetrating ones. We both were extremely lucky. Especially Ba Nyar as the bullet only grazed his back while flying between his back-pack and his back.
If the bullet hitting my head was down only half a centimeter lower I wouldn’t be alive now. And if Ba Nyar’s bullet was up only half a centimeter higher it could hit a major nerve and he would be paralyzed for the rest of his life.
My backpack also was riddled with bullet holes. None of my clothes inside were intact as every piece of them was damaged. Even the blades inside my razor box were all bent out of shape by the bullets’ impact. Still I was very lucky as enemy bullets didn’t find the TNT pack and detonators inside my back pack. If the explosives were hit I could easily be blown up into many pieces.
I was extremely lucky to be still alive. But it was true that I was really saddened by witnessing with my own eyes the untimely death of our men killed in the battle.
It didn’t take long at all for the good news announcing that the hill was recaptured from the invading enemy troops to reach us at just after ten in the morning. It wasn’t very long after we came back down from our bayonet charge.
By midday KIA troops had cleared all the enemy troops from the area and captured the enemy’s heavy weapons, guns, ammunitions, and supplies. What I was told was the enemy column venturing into our territory was led by a Lt. Colonel Tin Ohn and comprised of one full army company from LIB-258 and another full company from the LIB-259.
During the battle they were surprised by our overwhelming manpower and so they had to send back LIB-259’s company to fetch the army reinforcements while the LIB-258’s company was defending the captured hill.
When we from the student army went up the hill and reached the clearing at the top they thought we were their reinforcement as we students were speaking Burmese to each other. That was the reason they had stopped firing for a while and asked us who we were. And that surprised us and we ended up in a deadly close firefight.
When the KIA troops cleared the area they found some Burmese soldiers seriously suffering from Malaria were abandoning their guns and just sitting hopelessly on the tracks in the jungle. I was told by the Kachins that those captured-soldiers were taken care by their medics and later released. I just hoped they were telling us the truth.
Obviously the enemy was hit really hard in the battle. Both companies had been completely destroyed and their leader Lt. Colonel Tin Ohn had escaped only by fleeing after abandoning his troops. On our side ten were killed and over thirty were wounded. From our students’ army ABSDF Secretary Myo Win and comrade Win Shwe were killed while me and Ba Nyar were wounded.
Rambo Maung Maung Khin’s Fighting Peacock (4)
(Following youtube video is the Rambo-4 Ending where Rambo killed Maung Maung Khin.)
(Following youtube video is the Rambo-4 Ending where Rambo killed Maung Maung Khin.)