United Kingdom The Battle of Ramree Island (Burmese: ရမ်းဗြဲကျွန်း တိုက်ပွဲ), also known as Operation Matador, took place from 14 January to 22 February 1945, in the Second World War as part of the offensive on the Southern Front in the Burma campaign and was conducted by the XV Indian Corps.

Some editions of the Guinness Book of World Records have described this as the highest number of fatalities in an animal attack; zoologists and modern military historians have dismissed these claims.

[3] A plan was ready by 2 January, when it was clear that the advance of the Fourteenth Army (Lieutenant-General William Slim) into Central Burma would soon pass beyond the range of its airbases at Imphal and Agartala; replacements at Chittagong, Akyab and Ramree would be needed.

[5] The Japanese garrison of Ramree consisted of the II Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment (Colonel Kan'ichi Nagazawa), part of the 54th Division, with artillery and engineer detachments to act as an independent force.

On 21 January, an hour before the 71st Indian Infantry Brigade (Brigadier R. C. Cotterell-Hill) was to land, Queen Elizabeth opened fire with 69 rounds of 15 in (380 mm)-shell from the main battery, the fall of shot being watched by aircraft from Ameer.

Resistance at the chaung from the troops of the II Battalion, 121st Regiment increased and on 31 January, the 71st Brigade was ordered to move inland, north-east towards Sane, then head south towards Ramree town.

[9] In 1965, the British official historian, Stanley Woodburn Kirby, wrote that the Japanese defence of the island and the escape of about 500 men against "fearful odds", had been courageous and determined.

It had been vital to complete the occupation of Ramree Island quickly, as Operation Dracula against Rangoon needed to commence in the first week of May at the latest, to have a chance of finishing before the monsoon.

[11] On 24 February 1945, Reuters war correspondents reported that Japanese soldiers trying to escape Ramree Island were "being forced by hunger out of the mangrove swamps and many have been killed by crocodiles".

[12] In his 1962 collection Wildlife Sketches Near and Far, the Canadian naturalist and veteran of the Burma campaign, Bruce Wright, described the events of the battle, focusing on predation of the Japanese soldiers by the saltwater crocodiles.

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.

[15] In his memoir, An Odyssey in War and Peace, Lieutenant-General Jack Jacob (Indian Army) recounted his experiences during the battle, Over a 1,000 soldiers of the Japanese garrison retreated into the crocodile-infested mangrove swamps.

[16]In 2006, Robert Duff, formerly of the 26th Division, recorded an oral history for the BBC, "after a few weeks we managed to push [the Japanese] to the swamp on the other side of the island, which was full of crocodiles.

The ecosystem of a mangrove swamp, with an exiguous mammal life, simply would not have permitted the existence of so many saurians before the coming of the Japanese (animals are not exempt from the laws of overpopulation and starvation).