In January, Colin Firth is starring in a movie called The Railway Man about Eric Lomax, the prisoner of war who suffered terribly on the Death Railway and years later met up with his Japanese torturer and learnt forgiveness.
Colin Firth was interviewed on the Today programme last week and he said “I had a strong feeling that perhaps it was time this story was told.”
By coincidence I’ve just published the diary of a prisoner of war also in Changi, Singapore and up-country beside the river Kwai and the Death Railway. My father, who later became Bishop of Thetford, was an army Chaplain when he was captured, but when he came home 3 ½ years later he had no bitterness or hatred in his heart. In fact he described those years as ‘the most meaningful of his life’. He found a little mosque and got permission to convert it into a church for the 50,000 fellow POWs and he was astonished at the way the men appreciated the comfort and faith that he gave them. Later when they were working on the Death Railway he made sure he was at the bedside of every dying man where possible and 45% of his force did not survive.
In 2011 after my mother died, we discovered his diary and other secret notes together with more than 60 drawings and paintings by fellow POWs. I’ve edited them all into: Down to Bedrock: the Diary and Secret Notes of a Prisoner of War in the Far East 1942-45 by Eric Cordingly. It’s a contemporary account written by a man who doesn’t know if he’ll survive and it brings those terrible years vividly to life.
There’s been a lot of interest in the book: the Imperial War Museum is stocking it, the Church Times did a centre page spread for Remembrance Sunday and I was filmed by Anglia TV last week. It’s also been very rewarding when people from the past who knew my Dad have contacted me – especially the son of one of the POWs who did many of the paintings and cartoons.
Down to Bedrock
Louise Reynolds