News-Info-Alerts

Re: River Kwai

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: March 20, 2002

"Thai-Burma rail section comes to UK
January 8, 2002 Posted: 5:07 AM EST (1007 GMT)

Kwai bridge -- Allied prisoners-of-war were forced to build the railway  

LONDON, England -- An original section of a railway forcibly built at the cost of the lives of thousands of Allied prisoners of war has arrived in Britain where it will go on display.

The 415-kilometre Thai-Burma railway, which included the infamous bridge over the River Kwai, was built by about 60,000 Australian, British, Dutch and American PoWs during World War II.

About 16,000 of those were killed by exhaustion, by their Japanese army captors or by malnutrition, cholera, dysentery and other diseases in PoW camps.

The railway started 40 km west of Bangkok, crossed Thailand and Burma and finished east of Rangoon.

A 30-metre stretch of track from the "Railway of Death" -- complete with sleepers and spikes -- is being taken to the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, in Staffordshire. The museum is dedicated to armed forces personnel who served in conflicts across the world.

The track, which was collected by a Royal Navy frigate during a recent visit to Thailand, arrived at the Devonport Naval Base, in Plymouth, where former prisoners of war who helped build it watched its arrival.

'Emotional day'

Among the veterans was Roy Blackler, 83, who spent 14 months working on the railway.

"Looking at it now, I don't see rails or sleepers. I think of all my mates that were left behind," he told the Press Association.

"They were young lads -- 23 or 24 years of age -- young happy lads. You have never seen a finer set of men.

"We worked together and suffered together. I knew today wouldn't be easy. We suffered so much and I lost a lot of friends."

Thomas Webber, 80, an ex-Royal Marine, was sent to work on the railway in June 1942.

He said: "Today is a very emotional day. It makes me think of the work we did and all the lives lost out there.

"The memories are always there in the back of my mind. They never go away."

David Childs, director of the National Memorial Arboretum, told PA: "It is the first time that a section of the track will be on display to the general public.

"It will remind people of the horrors of that time and the definite need not to get ourselves in a position where they are not repeated in the 21st century."

The 150-acre museum also hosts a memorial to about 700 Allied soldiers and native forced labourers who died building the Sumatra railway.

A further ceremony commemorating those who died constructing the Thai-Burma railway is planned for August 15. "