TRAVEL WRITING

 

            Travel writing is one of my special
             interests. This article appeared, 
             with illustrations, in British and
                   Canadian newspapers. 

                                                                

  

                                          BRIDGE OF MEMORIES


As bridges go it isn’t much to look at – a modest grey steel span carrying a single track high over the river.

I walked slowly across from the village on the east side, taking care to stay on the solid timbers between the rails and avoid the gaps along either side through which I could see the murky brown waters below.

When I got to the far side I stood for several moments staring along the track to where it disappeared into the trees. I found myself listening intently. Perhaps I expected to hear the barked commands of Japanese guards or the defiant banter of  prisoners of war. I heard only the crickets and the muffled shouts of boatmen calling to each other on the river.

I was standing on the bridge on the river Kwai, known to millions through David Lean’s Oscar-winning film. The bridge, at Kanchanaburi in central Thailand, was a vital link in the infamous ‘Death Railway’ between Burma (now Myanmar) and Siam (Thailand), built during the Second World War by prisoners of war and forced civilian labour to transport supplies for the invading Japanese forces.

The inhospitable climate and terrain, primitive accommodation, and lack of food and medical facilities took a fearful toll of the cruelly over-worked labour force.

Japanese engineers originally estimated the railway would take five years to build. In the event the 260-mile line was laid in only 16 months. By the time it was completed in late 1943, more than 16,000 British and Allied prisoners of war – an average of one for every 28 yards of track – and many thousands of Siamese, Burmese, Malays and other civilian labourers had died of starvation or ill-treatment.

As I strolled across the bridge, I stopped to gaze over the side.

‘You looking for the wires?’ The voice was unmistakably that of the chatty Australian who had sat in front of me on the minibus from Bangkok.

‘Sorry…’ I began.

‘You saw the film The Bridge on the River Kwai didn’t you?’

I nodded.

‘Remember where the British C.O., Alec Guinness’s character, spots the wires attached to the explosive charges planted under the bridge by the commandos, and how he alerts the Japanese commandant?’

I told him I remembered it vividly.

‘I felt like cheering when the bridge was blown up and the train went crashing down into the river,’ said the Aussie.

I recall having much the same reaction when I first saw the film back in the late fifties, though it was, of course, a fictional account events and wasn’t shot on the the river Kwai but in Sri Lanka. The actual Kwai bridge, incidentally, bears little resemblance to the structure used in the film, which was built by a Danish company.

Ex-soldier John Stewart, a survivor of the death railway, who was a technical advisor to David Lean during the making of the film, wrote later that the reality of what happened during the construction of the railway was much worse than suggested by the movie. Lean had ‘soft-pedalled all the horror bits’ because he did not want to put out an anti-Japanese tract.

The bridge built by the prisoners across the Kwai – its Thai name is Mae Nam Kwae Noi or Little Kwae – was later heavily damaged in Allied bombing raids and rebuilt.

Fact and fiction have combined to make the bridge a poignant monument to the suffering and heroism of those who died in one of the most shameful episodes of the war. The enduring symbolic significance of the bridge is manifested by the many visitors from around the world who make pilgrimages to the site each year. No pilgrimage would be complete, however, without a visit to the nearby museum and military cemetery.

Established in 1977 and run by Buddhist monks from a local monastery, the so-called JEATH museum derives its name from the initial letters of the six countries principally involved with the death railway: Japan, England, American, Australia, Thailand and Holland.

The museum is housed in a faithful reconstruction of one of the bamboo huts in which the prisoners lived. The displays include items such as pistols, knives, helmets, water canteens used by the prisoners and their captors, and a collection of photographs, drawings and articles written by ex-prisoners.

The monks stress their aim is not to sustain hatred between the wartime allies and the Japanese, but to warn how terrible war is. Though I found my visit to the museum a moving and salutary experience, the military cemetery for victims of the death railway had a more subtle emotional impact.

Walking along the immaculately maintained rows of graves in the British section of the cemetery, I saw an elderly man kneeling by one of them quietly sobbing. When I passed the spot again later he had gone, and I looked at the headstone. It bore the name of a 19-year-old private from one of the county regiments.

I saw several more graves of teenage servicemen and couldn’t help reflecting that in a saner world many of them would now be long retired, tending their roses and enjoying their great-grandchildren.

Back aboard the minibus I though again of the old man at the young soldier’s graveside. Could he have been a relative, a brother perhaps? Or was he simply another holidaymaker like myself who had casually booked a seat on one of the more popular day-trips from Bangkok, and found himself  profoundly moved by the sadness of what he found at the cemetery.

The small group on the bus didn’t talk a great deal on the journey back to Bangkok, and no-one was quieter than the middle-aged Japanese man sitting alone on the back seat.