Book Review - Life on the Death Railway: The memoirs of a British POW

Life on the Death Railway: The Memoirs of a British POW by Stuart Young
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A rather flippant account of POWs held by the Japanese during WW II. The gruesome details are tempered by levity. A diet of rice led to continence

Our urge to urinate rose spectacularly, but the complementary bodily function disappeared completely. Twice a day we would visit the bore-holes by the Changi cinema and squat there for half an hour or more without result. Going through the motions without motions so to speak... In about a couple of weeks, the maladjustment had indeed righted itself, while the 'record' as far as I know was forty-one days. It is one of life's little ironies that the record holder would in less than twelve months succumb to dysentery.

... a denouement that rivals a yarn by Saki. The harsh reality was far from beautiful

The ulcers grew, stretching from ankle to knee, laying the bone open in the centre of the rotting, pus-laden, gangrenous flesh. Cleaning was brutally simple. A dessert spoon was sterilized and, while the poor unfortunate patient bit on a piece of weed, and clung desperately to the head of his bed, the pus and rotted flesh was literally scraped away from the affected part. There was no anaesthetic of any sort and the agony must have been almost unendurable.

Despite such tropical ulcers, intestinal worms, fungal infections, malaria - including cerebral malaria and blackwater fever, dysentery - bacterial, amoebic, cholera, typhoid the author still has a sunny outlook on life

Even at Tonchan South, there were moments of relaxation, and, dare I say, beauty

His fighting spirit braves all adversities

So, with the distant view softening the memory of those terrible days of long ago, it is with the railway. As the years go by it becomes more and more difficult to recapture in mere words, the horror, the filth, the degradation and the saturated stinking misery of interminable day upon day with no end in sight, no time when one could say "This is the last day of my sentence, and I am once again free."

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