Thai Marines with Arisaka Type 38 Rifles

The Burapha Army's Chanthaburi Division, under the command of Colonel Luang Kriengdejphishai, was tasked with the capture of the Cambodian town of Pailin. From there, it was to advance on to Battambang where it would make a rendezvous with the Lopburi Division.

On December 3, 1940, High Command ordered four battalions of marines under Lieutenant Commander Thonglor Khamhiran to be transferred from the Sattahip naval base to the Chanthaburi Division.

On the morning of January 5, 1941 , a mixed force of tirailleurs of the IV/3 R?giment de Tirailleurs Tonkinois and legionnaires of the I/5 R?giment Etranger d'Infanterie crossed the border into Chanthaburi Province.

The assault on Ban Pong Sala began with little difficulty as the marine company stationed there had never expected an attack. Security measures were lax and the marines had billeting themselves in the village proper, an act contrary to standard regulations (which called for troops to be barracked in a position some distance in front of civilian-inhabited areas).

The company commander, Sub-Lieutenant Cherd Phukkasaph, was bathing in a small stream when the French attack began. He ran back, naked save for a towel wrapped around his waist, to find the village in flames and his demoralised men running away. The officer quickly did the same.

Sounds of the shooting attracted the attention of the section-strong (twelve men) patrol of Petty Officer Yai (surname unspecified), which rushed back to Ban Pong Sala. By then the Indochinese tirailleurs had entered the village. Yai quickly went into action, opening fire with the section light machinegun and his men with their rifles.

A French officer was “observed” to have been shot and carried away. This apparently caused a bugle to be sounded and the enemy to withdraw with a stunned prisoner in tow. Cadet Akhom Thitakasikorn, a member of the company's medical section, was in bed suffering from a fever when the house he was sharing with Sub-Lieutenant Wong Haaputhipong was bombarded with grenades. A group of Indochinese soldiers promptly burst in, dressed him up in Sub-Lieutenant Wong's uniform, rope-tied his hands, and then marched him back to their posts (mistaken for an officer, he was promptly sent to be treated “excellently” as a POW in Saigon).

It was during the enemy withdrawal that Petty Officer Yai was killed instantly when a bullet smashed straight through his forehead.

When informed of the incursion, battalion headquarters at Baan Khlong Yai ordered for Lieutenant Thaeb Dis-arun's company, recently disembarked from HTMS Chang, to despatch reinforcements. The platoon (four sections, each of twelve men) under Sub-Lieutenant Phin Bunsaeng thus set off from Pong Nam Ron, some six kilometres away from the fighting. They were accompanied by a heavy machinegun section.

The marines had all been given amulets by the abbot at the local monastery, and morale was high. Their trust in the amulets' protection was strengthened earlier onwhen Sub-Lieutenant Banchob Maenchak, the officer charged to inspect the area across the frontlines, returned unscathed from a scouting expedition, despite coming under “intense” machine gun fire from an enemy lookout post he had managed to blunder into.

The relief force arrived at Baan Pong Sala hours later, too late to do any fighting. Five Indochinese bodies were collected, as were nine rifles, one revolver, one pocket watch, one walking stick, and a few sun helmets. The revolver, timepiece, and cane were seen as proof of the wounding of an enemy officer. Further reconnoitring of the area provided the Thais with three more enemy bodies and a number of satchels. Many of them contained nothing but rice, a few however stored grenades. The bodies were buried in the area.