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The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The main reason to head out here, along with millions of others each year, is to see the infamous bridge. The bridge itself is disappointing, but the history of the place makes a visit here a moving and memorable experience. As you stroll among the graves of those who died here, still and serene, it is hard to imagine the barbaric and cruel scenes of the 1940s.
The first thing you have to realize is that Pierre Boulle’s book about the construction of the Thailand-to-Burma railway was a novel, not an historical document. When David Lean’s blockbuster movie was released in 1957, further changes were made to make the film more entertaining than factual. And the film was not made here in Thailand, but in Sri Lanka.
The most surprising thing is that there never was a bridge over the River Kwai. Boulle (who also wrote Planet of the Apes) made the assumption that the railway crossed the Kwai since it followed its path for so long. The railway actually crossed the Mae Klong River.
This fact really did not matter until the tourists started arriving in droves after the movie’s release. The sleepy town was transformed almost overnight. And the Thais quickly solved the problem. The Mae Klong, where it passes under the bridge, was renamed the Kwai Yai (the big Kwai), which then flows into the Kwai Noi (the original little Kwai).
The prisoners actually built two bridges. Neither of them are anything like the massive bamboo-and-wood structure shown in the movie. The one you see today, a rather squat unimpressive bridge with concrete piers and steel spans, is much like it was in the 1940s. The steel spans were brought from Java by the Japanese; some of those were destroyed by allied bombing and replaced after the war. Records show that the prisoners completed a wooden bridge in February1943 but the Japanese, concerned about its strength, replaced it with the steel bridge a few months later.
You can’t get this close to the bridge without making a crossing. Despite warnings of its dangers, tourists do it every day, most of them whistling Colonel Bogey, the wartime song made famous by the film. If you do make the crossing, watch out for the trains. They do cross slowly and there are several escape spots on the bridge where you can step aside as the train passes.
And Colonel Bogey? That part is authentic and the march was probably sung, rather than whistled, a great deal during those horrific days. It was composed by Lieutenant F.J. Ricketts (1881-1945) who was director of music for the Royal Marines at Plymouth in southwest England. The music was first published in 1914 when the military frowned upon its officers having any outside professional pursuits, so he used the pseudonym Kenneth Alford.
Last updated October 8, 2008
Posted in Thailand | Kanchanaburi
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