In 1954 the French writer Pierre Boulle published a novel, The

Bridge over the River Kwai, which was later made into a tremendously

successful film, The Bridge on the River Kwai. These were fictionalized

accounts of the horrors endured by Allied prisoners of war who were

enslavedto build a bridge for a Japanese railway running through the

jungles of Burma and Thailand. In the climax of the novel, a commando

team attempts, unsuccessfully, to blow up the bridge. In the film the

team succeeds. This, of course, was purely imaginary.

However, the story was set in a real milieu. Allied POWs did build

such a railway partly along the River Kwae Noi (Kwai), under

horrifying conditions, with enormous loss of life. There were many

bridges along the road, but none was ever destroyed by a commando

team. One of these POW-built bridges, a modern eleven-span steel and

concrete structure at Tamarkan, Thailand (adjacent to Kanchanaburi),

has now become a popular tourist attraction and is called the Bridge over

the River Kwai. Nearby is a huge cemetery where thousands of POWs

who died on the railway are buried.

This book is nonfiction, a factual account of what happened to

2,218 Australian and British POWs---and a lone American--who

survived the railway. They returned from the River Kwai to face an

even more terrifying experience!