| The Bridge over the River Kwai | |
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1954 Cover, 1st English Edition |
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| Author(s) | Pierre Boulle |
| Original title | Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai |
| Country | France |
| Language | French |
| Genre(s) | War novel |
| Publisher | Julliard |
| Publication date | 1952 |
| Published in English |
1954 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
The Bridge over the River Kwai (French: Le Pont de la Rivière Kwai) is a novel by Pierre Boulle, published in French in 1952 and English translation by Xan Fielding in 1954. The story is fictional but uses the construction of the Burma Railway, in 1942–43, as its historical setting. The novel deals with the plight of World War II British prisoners of war forced by the Imperial Japanese Army to build a bridge for the "Death Railway", so named because of the large number of prisoners and conscripts who died during its construction. The novel won France's Prix Sainte-Beuve in 1952.
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The largely fictitious plot is based on the building in 1943 of one of the railway bridges over the Mae Klong—renamed Khwae Yai in the 1960s—at a place called Tha Ma Kham, five kilometers from the Thai town of Kanchanaburi.
According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission:[1]
"The notorious Burma-Siam railway, built by Commonwealth, Dutch and American prisoners of war, was a Japanese project driven by the need for improved communications to support the large Japanese army in Burma. During its construction, approximately 13,000 prisoners of war died and were buried along the railway. An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 civilians also died in the course of the project, chiefly forced labour brought from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, or conscripted in Siam (Thailand) and Burma (Myanmar). Two labour forces, one based in Siam and the other in Burma worked from opposite ends of the line towards the centre."
Boulle had been a prisoner of the Japanese in Southeast Asia and his story of collaboration was based on his experience with some French officers. However, he chose instead to use British officers in his book.
The story describes the mistreatment of prisoners in the POW camp and how they tried to sabotage the construction of the bridge.
Lt. Colonel Nicholson marches his men into Prisoner of War Camp 16, commanded by Colonel Saito. Saito announces that the prisoners will be required to work on construction of a bridge over the River Kwai so that the railroad connection between Bangkok and Rangoon can be completed. However, Saito also demands that all men, including officers, will do manual labor. In response to this, Nicholson informs Saito that, under the Geneva Convention, officers cannot be required to do hard work. Saito reiterates his demand and Nicholson remains adamant in his refusal to submit his officers to manual labor. Because of Nicholson's unwillingness to back down, he and his officers are placed in the "ovens"—small, iron boxes sitting in the heat of day. Eventually, Nicholson's stubbornness forces Saito to relent.
Construction of the bridge serves as a symbol of the preservation of professionalism and personal integrity to one prisoner, Colonel Nicholson, a proud perfectionist. Pitted against Colonel Saito, the warden of the Japanese POW camp, Nicholson will nevertheless, out of a distorted sense of duty, aid his enemy. While on the outside, as the Allies race to destroy the bridge, Nicholson must decide which to sacrifice: his patriotism or his pride.
Boulle's view of the British officers was satirical. Colonel Nicholson is portrayed as the perfect example of the military snob, but Boulle also examines friendship between individual soldiers, both among captors and captives. The victorious Japanese soldiers cooperate with their prisoners, who strive to establish their superiority through the construction of the bridge.
The incidents portrayed in the book are mostly fictional, and though it depicts bad conditions and suffering caused by the building of the Burma Railway and its bridges, the reality was appalling. Historically the conditions were much worse.[2] The real senior Allied officer at the bridge was British Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey. On a BBC Timewatch programme, a former prisoner at the camp states that it is unlikely that a man like the fictional Nicholson could have risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel; and if he had, he would have been "quietly eliminated" by the other prisoners. Julie Summers, in her book The Colonel of Tamarkan, writes that Pierre Boulle, who had been a prisoner of war in Thailand, created the fictional Nicholson character as an amalgam of his memories of collaborating French officers.[3]
Toosey was very different from Nicholson and was certainly not a collaborator who felt obliged to work with the Japanese. Toosey in fact did as much to delay the building of the bridge as possible. Whereas Nicholson disapproves of acts of sabotage and other deliberate attempts to delay progress, Toosey encouraged this: white ants were collected in large numbers to eat the wooden structures, and the concrete was badly mixed.[3][4]
The bridge described in the book doesn't actually cross the River Kwai. Pierre Boulle had never been to the bridge. He knew that the 'death railway' ran parallel to the River Kwae for many miles, and he therefore assumed that it was the Kwae which it crossed just North of Kanchanaburi. This was an incorrect assumption; the bridge actually crosses the Mae Klong river.
When David Lean's blockbuster film came out, the Thais faced something of a problem. Thousands of tourists came flocking to see the bridge over the River Kwai, but no such bridge existed. However, there did exist a bridge over the Mae Klong. So, to resolve the problem, they renamed the river. The Mae Klong is now called the Kwae Yai ('Big Kwae') for several miles north of the confluence with the Kwae Noi ('Little Kwae'), including the bit under the bridge.
The novel was made into a film, The Bridge on the River Kwai, by David Lean in 1957.
In 1962 Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, with Peter Cook and Jonathan Miller, released the record 'The Bridge On The River Wye', a spoof of the film version of 'Kwai' based around the 1957 Goon Show 'An African Incident'. It was intended to have the same name as the film, but shortly before its release, the film company threatened legal action if the name was used. Producer George Martin edited out the 'K' every time the word 'Kwai' was spoken; thus, 'The Bridge on the River Wye' was created. [5]