The Newsletter of the Military Historical Society of Western Australia

Bill Edgar was one of the group of Society members who joined the Quiet Lion Tour to Thailand last April, 2005 and sent this impression of the tour. It is an incisive report and comment on a most unforgettable episode in Australian Military History.

BURMA / THAI RAILWAY 2005

In April I travelled to Northern Thailand on ‘The Quiet Lion Tour’ [capably led by fellow member Eric Wilson] with five other members of the W.A. Military History Society, Midge Carter, Peter [‘Chain Saw’] Illidge, Craig Machin, Chris Skoll and Bill Haskell, to walk sections of the infamous Burma-Thai Railway, constructed in 1942 and 1943. At that time the vital Japanese lines of supply by sea were threatened by the Allied air force and navy and so a plan to haul Japanese military supplies by rail into Burma from Singapore, through Thailand, was conceived in Tokyo.

We travelled in company with four ex-POWs from W.A., Neil MacPherson, Owen Heron, Ernie Redman from Esperance and, of course, the redoubtable Bill Haskell himself. Sixty odd years ago they survived the starvation, the cruel beatings and the many tropical diseases that afflicted them during that time - and then the horrific voyage to Japan to work in the salt and coal mines until the end of the war.

The so-called ‘Death Railway’ was eventually completed and it is calculated that a man died for every sleeper laid along the 415 kilometre route. You can work the numbers out quite easily but what is quite incalculable is the agony and the suffering of the men themselves and of the tsunami effect that it had on each and every family back in Australia, in England, in Holland, in America and also among the Malay and Thai people. It remains a quite shocking period, indelibly etched into our history - as perhaps it should be. Being there with Neil, Owen, Ernie and Bill, and listening to their recollections, added immeasurably to the immediacy and poignancy of our own personal experience.

But there are inspiring stories too. Many, cognisant of these events, maintain that the greatest Australian of all time is not a cricketer like Don Bradman, or a footballer such as Polly Farmer, or a writer like Patrick White or a scientist such as Walter Florey, but a doctor on the Burma/Thai railway in 1943. Colonel E. ‘Weary’ Dunlop has been described by his fellow prisoners, many of whom he saved from the ravages of cholera and other tropical diseases, incessant bashings and the cruelty of the guards, as a lighthouse in a sea of insanity. His medical skills and his ingenuity were considerable but his enormous strength, his compassion and his sheer humanity amid so much misery gave many hope when there was none, and helped stiffen resolve to see it through. He took beatings from his captors and defied their bestiality as he stood between his patients and those that would end their lives so unfeelingly. Nevertheless, today, what remains of the railway stands testimony to the inhumanity that man is capable of inflicting on his fellow man.

Probably, we of the modern generations are of the opinion that something like this could never happen again. Or can it? The capacity for self denial remains. It seems little of the war is outlined in Japanese schools; only the memorial to the Hiroshima tragedy gives a vague hint at the events that led up to it. And the steam locomotive that was the first to travel the railway after it was completed is now a national icon in Japan. Eric Lomax wrote of it in his memorable book, ‘The Railwayman’:

The [Yasakuni] shrine is at one level a moving war memorial, dedicated to the worship of those who died for the Emperor, but at another it is an unashamed celebration of militarism. Cherry blossom trees are bedecked with little white ribbons with personal messages and requests. In the grounds you can find a monument to the Kempeitai - it is like seeing a memorial to the Gestapo in a German cathedral. In front of the museum building next to the shrine, and very much part of it, is parked a field gun, for all the world like the Imperial War Museum in London - except that this is a place of religious worship. And alongside the artillery-piece, there is an immaculate C56 steam locomotive, described by the shrine authorities as the first engine to pass along the Burma Railway. It stands proud, its smoke-deflectors polished and its great wheels pressing down into the gravel, its beauty a monument to barbarism.

A monument, too, to the fact that we are a species that right through history has consistently embarked on crusades to expunge our rivals from the face of the earth - and, it seems, continue to do so? Weary Dunlop despairingly wrote in his Konyu Camp diary on the 28th February, 1943:-

Man seems to be still far too unintelligent an animal to realise that happiness comes from harmonious relations with one’s fellows and service to mankind, rather than in a dirty, unprincipled, self-seeking existence.

On the point of self-seeking, I expected to find the Anzac Day dawn service in Hellfire Pass as every bit as moving as the silent vigil at Kings Park. I found aspects of it grated, however. In that eery cathedral of reverence and remembrance, the be-suited, be-ribboned and be-medalled took centre stage while our four ex-POWs, who had suffered so much, were seated to one side. Would it not have been more appropriate to have the veterans of that awful experience placed in pride of (rightful) place? There is political correctness, certainly, but surely there should be a protocol beyond the banality of what seemed a blatant exercise in political opportunism.

Are there lessons to come from the Burma/Thai Death Railway experience? Perhaps from the legacy of Weary Dunlop - that man’s only hope is to change his basic nature if our existence on this planet is to endure. But that, I suppose, is mere whistling into the wind. Can a leopard change its spots?

Many thanks to Eric Wilson and his team for a memorable trip - and to those tough, enduring diggers, Neil, Owen, Ernie and W.J.(Bill Haskell). Long may they remain among us.

Bill Edgar