With so many prisoners considered expendable by the Japanese, along with native workers recruited from conquered lands, FM Count Terauchi, Commander of Japan’s Southern Army, cut the estimated building of the bridges over the River Kwai from six years to just eighteen months, according to Brian MacArthur, author of the excellent book, Surviving the Sword: Prisoners of the Japanese in the Far East, 1942-45.

One set of prisoners worked in Burma and a much larger group in Thailand. The order for construction to begin was given June 20, 1942, after the defeat of the Japanese navy at the Battle of Midway.

The Japanese despised the Koreans, many of whom guarded the prisoners. One time, a Japanese soldier knocked a Korean flat to the ground and gouged out his eye with the heel of his boot. In turn, the Koreans took out their rage on the prisoners.

Lt. Col. Philip Toosey, elected by the British commanding officers as the senior British Officer, was described by MacArthur as tall, a trifle vain, handsome, and determined to look like an officer as he moved about the camp. He also demanded that the men shave every night and keep their hair cut, partly because of the problem with lice, partly to maintain morale.

Ian Watt described Toosey’s style of dealing with the Japanese without forcing an issue to such an extent that they lost face: “Instead, he first awed them with an impressive display of military swagger, and then proceeded to charm them with his ingratiating assumption that no serious difficulty could arise between honorable soldiers whose only thought was to do the right thing.”

David Boyle, an anti-aircraft gunner of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, acted as Toosey’s interpreter, and said that the Japanese soon learned “that if Toosey said no, he meant it and was prepared to go on saying it until they shot him.”

Capt. Stanley “Pav” Paviland, later served under Toosey as a medical officer and said, “He was blind to all danger.”

All the commanding officers in Burma and Thailand faced the same dilemma. No matter what it took, the Japanese were going to build the bridges, despite the Geneva Convention, however sick the men were, and by using the most brutal force possible.

Toosey explained:

I therefore addressed the troops and told them that good discipline was essential and that they should work cheerfully and keep their spirits up. We on our part would do our best to ensure that they got good food and fair treatment. They responded as usual – cheerfully.

After the war, Toosey described the behavior of the Japanese by quoting from Red Star Over Asia by Edgar Snow: “Nowhere in the world was sadism practiced with greater efficiency than in the Japanese Army. Every form of cruelty that an uncivilized mind could invent was used on the prisoners.”

When ten prisoners were caught selling tools to the Thais, the guard beat them with bamboo shafts. They held one man down on the floor while a guard repeatedly jumped down on his stomach from a table. Eventually, Toosey was able to stop the beating.

However on the following morning, the Japanese Gestapo arrived in camp with their instruments of torture: thumbscrews, handcuffs, pieces of shrapnel, bamboo and whips.

MacArthur tells us that in direct contradiction to The Bridge on the River Kwai, the prisoners sabotaged both the wooden and steel bridges through poor workmanship, using rotten tree trunks on the embankments, and collecting huge numbers of white ants to put in parts of the wooden bridge. Concrete was incorrectly mixed and many of the nuts and bolts were left loose.

Some men called their leader “champagne Toosey” – for he always dressed smartly, though the men were in rags. Even when he stopped wearing a shirt, his shorts were immaculately pressed, his long stockings clean, his shoes highly polished, and his cap worn straight. Some younger officers mocked this emphasis on personal style, as well as his showmanship, his belief in ”army bullshit,” and his use of a batman who could have been out at work on the railway.

Yet, with the batman at his side, Toosey was free to attend directly to the needs of his men. Consequently, after much lobbying, the prisoners who were convalescing, were given permission to refurbish the dilapidated huts, and Tamarkan eventually became known as the showcamp of Thailand.

On one occasion, when David Boyle was left with a broken arm and two broken ribs after shouting at a Korean guard, Toosey sent him to bed and stood guard outside, refusing to let the Japanese in and deliberately failing to understand what they said, so no instructions could be given to the workers, and all work on the bridge stopped. After a day of this, apologies were made, and the work resumed.

Eventually, Toosey persuaded the Japanese to allow his staff to supervise increasing food and medical supplies, improving working conditions, allocating tasks more reasonably, and persuading the Japanese that the issuing of tools and the allocation of the day’s workload would be better handled by his staff, and that the work of the guards should be limited to preventing the prisoners from escaping. Much less time was wasted, daily tasks were often finished early in the afternoon, and weeks passed without any prisoners being beaten. “Suddenly the camp became almost happy,” said Ian Watt.

Toosey did not allow the officers to place themselves apart from the men, nor was he adverse to punishing them for serious infractions of duty. One man, who stole a blanket from an extremely ill patient and sold it to the Thai outside the camp to get money for food, was beaten by two regimental sergeant majors behind a hut. The sick man had died after the blanket had been taken from him.

When the second bridge had been completed, most of the fit men were moved up the line to new camps. Toosey was ordered to stay at Tamarkan to take charge of turning the camp into a hospital.

The first 117 patients arrived on May 5, and they were allocated to separate wards for dysentery, malaria, malnutrition, skin infections and injuries. Rations dropped because the sick received only 50 percent of the food given to the workers. The supply of drugs was almost gone. In July, the camp reached its maximum capacity of three-thousand patients. On hand were a few dozen iodine tablets, three bandages, and eight aspirin tablets.

Capt. Ralston, working in the dysentery ward, had no drugs, but endless patience. Capt. C. F. Blackater said:

Daily he listened to everything the men had to tell him. He knew and they knew just how little he could do for them, but that morning talk ...was a tonic in itself. Men pinned their faith on him, and many were cured.

Toosey’s kindness was also recognized:

I was the second person to have a leg amputated in Tamarkan in September by Major Moon. Colonel Toosey visited the ulcer ward every day, a great figure, immaculate in uniform. As he walked down the hut this particular day he asked when I could get on my crutches. I told him that I would be allowed to the following day, so he invited me to his office for a cup of coffee at 5:P.M. But on that day, I got a dose of malaria and I told the Colonel’s batman to let him know that I wouldn’t be able to come. But at 5 P.M., along came the Colonel to the hut with a tin plate and a cup of coffee in his hands. He sat down on my bamboo-slatted , sack-covered bed and said: “As you couldn’t come to me, I thought I would visit with you.” And I dined on the fried egg, sweet potatoes, ersatz coffee he had brought me, with a Nippon cigarette to follow.

With no imprimatur from Rome, while reading this book, I canonized Toosey. What a soldier and great leader, an example of Christianity at its best.

(To be continued)

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