The Bridge on the River Kwai

by Pierre Boulle

  Every bridge was not equally attractive to Force 316. Number One agreed with Colonel Green that they should not put the Japs on their guard before the railway was completed by attacking relatively unimportant targets. He had therefore decided that the team should lie low in the hide-out for the time being and do no more than collate and co-ordinate the information of the native agents.

  ‘It would be silly to spoil the whole show by blowing up a few trucks just for the fun of the thing,’ he would sometimes say in order to curb his companions’ impatience. ‘We want to start off in a really big way. That will enhance our reputation in the country and make the Siamese look up to us. Let’s wait till the trains start running.’

  Since his firm intention was to start off ‘in a big way’, it was clear that the less important bridges had to be excluded. The result of the initial blow was to compensate for the long period of inactivity and preparation and to endow the mission, in his own eyes at least, with an aura of success, even if circumstances dictated that nothing else should come of it. Shears knew that one could never be certain of a first attack being followed up by a second. He kept this to himself, but his two companions had realized the reasons for his plan, and the discovery of this ulterior motive had not worried the ex-professor Warden whose rational mind approved of such methods of seeing and foreseeing.

  It had not seemed to worry Joyce either, nor had it dampened the enthusiasm he had felt at the prospect of a worth-while attack. On the contrary, it seemed to have spurred him on to greater efforts and made him concentrate all his youthful powers on this probably unique opportunity, on this unhoped for target suddenly flashing in front of him like a lighthouse, casting its brilliant beams of success on to the past for all eternity, lighting up with its magic flames the grey gloom which had so far dimmed his path.

  ‘Joyce is right,’ said Warden, as sparing as ever in his speech. ‘There are only three worth-while bridges. One of them is Camp Three’s.’

  ‘We’ll have to give that one up, I’m afraid,’ said Shears. ‘The open ground doesn’t lend itself to attack. Apart from that, it’s in flat country. The banks are low. It would be too easy to repair.’

  ‘The other one’s near Camp Ten.’

  ‘It’s worth considering. But it happens to be in Burma, where we haven’t the support of the native partisans. Besides . . .’

  ‘The third one, sir,’ Joyce suddenly said, without realizing he was butting in to his CO’s conversation, ‘the third one’s the bridge on the River Kwai. It hasn’t any of those drawbacks. The river’s four hundred feet across, with steep, high banks on both sides. It’s only two or three days’ march from here. The area’s practically uninhabited and covered in jungle. We could approach it without being observed and command it from a hill from which the whole valley’s visible. It’s a long way from the nearest large town. The Japs are taking special care over its construction. It’s bigger than all the other bridges and has four rows of piles. It’s the most important job on the whole line, and the best placed one.’

  ‘You seem to have studied the agents’ reports pretty thoroughly,’ observed Shears.

  ‘They’re quite clear, sir. It seems to me that this bridge . . .’

  ‘I can see that the Kwai bridge is worth considering,’ said Shears, as he leaned over the map. ‘Your judgement’s not so dusty for a beginner. Colonel Green and I had already noted that particular crossing. But our information’s not yet sufficiently complete; and there may be other bridges which could be more easily attacked. And how far has the work progressed on this wonderful bridge, Joyce, which you talk of as though you had actually seen it?’

  6

  The work was well under way. The British soldier is by nature hard working and puts up with strict discipline without a murmur provided he has confidence in his officers and starts the day off with the prospect of unlimited physical exercise to counteract any nervous tension.

  The soldiers in the River Kwai camp had a high opinion of Colonel Nicholson – and who would not have after his heroic resistance? Besides, the sort of work they were doing did not involve much thought. So after a short period of indecision, during which they tried to get to the bottom of the CO’s real intentions, they had set to work with a will, eager to show their skill as builders now that they had proved their cunning as saboteurs. In any case Colonel Nicholson had taken steps to avoid any chance of misunderstanding, first by delivering an address in which he explained quite clearly what was expected of them, and secondly by inflicting severe punishments on a few recalcitrants who had not fully understood. This action had seemed so well intended that the victims did not hold it against him.

  ‘Believe me, I know these fellows better than you do,’ was the Colonel’s retort to Clipton, who had dared to protest against the set task, which he considered too heavy for men who were undernourished and in a poor state of health. ‘It’s taken me thirty years to get to know them. Nothing’s worse for morale than inactivity, and their physical welfare depends largely on their morale. Troops who are bored, Clipton, are troops doomed in advance to defeat. Let them get slack and you’ll see an unhealthy spirit developing in the unit. But fill every minute of their day with hard work, and cheerfulness and health are guaranteed.’

  ‘Be happy in your work!’ murmured Clipton disloyally. ‘That was General Yamashita’s motto.’

  ‘And it’s not such a bad one, Clipton. We shouldn’t hesitate to adopt a principle of the enemy’s if it happens to be a good one. If there wasn’t any work for them to do, I’d invent some for them. As it is, we’ve got the bridge.’

  Clipton could find no words to express what he felt and could only sullenly repeat:

  ‘Yes, we’ve got the bridge all right.’

  In any case the British soldiers had already revolted on their own against an attitude and code of behaviour which clashed with their instinctive urge to do a job properly. Even before the Colonel intervened, subversive activity had become for most of them a distasteful duty, and some of them had not waited for his orders before using their muscles and tools to proper purpose. It was their natural reaction, as Westerners, to make a loyal and considerable effort in return for their daily bread, and their Anglo-Saxon blood encouraged them to concentrate this effort on something solid and constructive. The Colonel had not been wrong about them. His new régime led to a rise in morale.

  Since the Japanese soldier is equally well disciplined and hard working, and since Saito had threatened to string his men up if they failed to prove themselves better workers than the British, the two stretches of line had been quickly completed, while the huts for the new camp had been erected and made habitable. At about the same time Reeves had put the finishing touches to his plans and passed them to Major Hughes, who was thus drawn into the scheme and given a chance to show what he was worth. Thanks to his organizing ability, his knowledge of the troops and his experience of how manpower can be most effectively employed, the labour under his direction achieved tangible results from the very start.

  The first thing Hughes did was to divide the personnel into different groups and allot a specific task to each, so that while one was occupied on cutting down trees, another would be trimming the trunks, a third making the beams, while the largest of all was engaged on pile-driving, and many more besides were employed on the superstructure and platform. Some of the teams – not the least important ones, in Hughes’s opinion – were made up of various experts in such tasks as the erection of the scaffolding, the transport of the materials and the maintenance of the tools: tasks of secondary importance to the actual construction work, but to which Western foresight devotes – and not without reason – as much care as to the immediately productive work.

  This division of labour was a wise move and proved most effective, as it always does when not carried to extremes. As soon as a stack of planks was ready, and the first scaffoldings were in position, Hughes set his team of pile-drivers to work. Theirs was an arduous task, the hardest and most
thankless of the whole undertaking. In the absence of all mechanical labour, these new bridge-builders were reduced to using the same methods as the Japanese, that is to say they were obliged to drop a heavy weight on to the head of each pile and repeat this operation until it was firmly embedded in the river. The ‘ram’, which dropped from a height of eight or ten feet, had to be re-hoisted each time by a system of ropes and pulleys, then allowed to fall once more over and over again. At each blow the pile would sink an infinitesimal fraction of an inch, for the ground was as hard as rock. It was unrewarding, soul-destroying work. There was no visible sign of progress from one minute to the next, and the sight of a group of more or less naked men tugging at a rope reminded one gloomily of a slave-gang. Hughes had put one of the best subalterns in command of this team – Harper, a man with plenty of drive, who urged the prisoners on better than anyone else by shouting out the time in a booming voice. Thanks to his encouragement, this punishing task was accomplished with zeal and cheerfulness. Under the astonished eyes of the Japanese the four parallel rows gradually crept forward across the water towards the left bank.

  At one moment Clipton had almost expected the embedding of the first pile to be celebrated by some solemn ritual, but there had only been a few simple formalities. Colonel Nicholson had confined himself to seizing the rope of the ram and tugging manfully, to set an example, for as long as it took to come down a dozen times.

  Once the pile-drivers were well under way, Hughes launched the teams engaged on the superstructure. They in their turn were followed by others employed on laying down the platform with its broad tracks and parapets. The various activities had been so well co-ordinated that from then on work went forward with mathematical regularity.

  An observer, blind to elementary detail but keen on general principles, might have regarded the development of the bridge as an uninterrupted process of natural growth. That was certainly the impression that Colonel Nicholson had of it. With a satisfied eye he witnessed this gradual materialization, without connecting it in any way with humble human activity. Consequently he saw it only as something abstract and complete in itself: a living symbol of the fierce struggles and countless experiments by which a nation gradually raises itself in the course of centuries to a state of civilization.

  It was in much the same light that the bridge sometimes appeared also to Reeves. He gazed at it in wonder as it simultaneously rose above the water and stretched across the river, reaching its maximum width almost at once, majestically registering in all three dimensions the palpable shape of creation at the foot of these wild Siamese mountains, representing in miraculously concrete form the wealth of fruitful imagination and labour.

  Saito too was overwhelmed by the magic of this daily prodigy. In spite of all his efforts, he could not altogether conceal his astonishment and admiration. His surprise was only to be expected. Since he had not fully understood, and had certainly never analysed, the subtler aspects of Western civilization – as Colonel Nicholson so rightly observed – he could not realize to what extent method, organization, calculation, theoretical planning and expert co-ordination of human activities facilitate and eventually accelerate any practical undertaking. The purpose and usefulness of this sort of intellectual groundwork will always be beyond the comprehension of savages.

  As for Clipton, he was definitely convinced of his initial stupidity and humbly recognized the folly of the sarcastic attitude he had shown towards the application of modern industrial methods to the construction of the River Kwai bridge.

  He inwardly apologized for this, showing a characteristic sense of fair-mindedness mingled with remorse for having been so short-sighted. He was forced to admit that the methods of the Western world had in this case led to positive results. Starting from this premise, he pursued the argument a stage further and came to the conclusion that such ‘methods’ are invariably effective and invariably produce ‘results’. Those who set themselves up as critics of these methods never give them a fair trial. He himself, like so many others, had given way to the temptation of a cheap sneer.

  The bridge, growing daily larger and more beautiful, soon reached the middle of the river, then went past it. At this stage it became quite obvious to everyone that it would be finished before the date laid down by the Japanese High Command and would cause no delay to the triumphant advance of the victorious army.

  Part Three

  1

  Joyce swallowed the drink he had been given in one gulp. His arduous expedition had not told on him. He was still quite fresh and there was a sparkle in his eye. Before he had even taken off the outlandish Siamese disguise, in which Shears and Warden could scarcely recognize him, he insisted on reporting the main events of his mission.

  ‘It’s worth having a go at it, sir, I’m certain. It won’t be easy – let’s face it – but it’s possible and definitely worth while. There’s thick jungle. The river’s a broad one. The bridge runs across a gully. The banks are steep. The train couldn’t be cleared, except with a great deal of equipment.’

  ‘Begin at the beginning,’ said Shears. ‘Or do you want to have a shower first?’

  ‘I’m not tired, sir.’

  ‘Give him a chance,’ growled Warden. ‘Can’t you see he wants to talk, not rest?’

  Shears smiled. It was obvious that Joyce was just as eager to make his report as he himself was to hear it. They settled down as comfortably as possible in front of the map. With characteristic foresight Warden handed Joyce a second glass. In the room next door the two Siamese partisans who had acted as the young man’s guide were squatting on the floor, surrounded by some of the local villagers. They had already begun to describe their expedition and made flattering references to the behaviour of the white man whom they had accompanied.

  ‘It’s been quite a stiff march, sir,’ Joyce began. ‘Three nights through the jungle, and hard going all the way. But the partisans were splendid. They kept their promise and took me to the top of the hill on the left bank, which commands the whole valley, the camp and the bridge. A perfect OP.’

  ‘I hope no one saw you?’

  ‘Not a chance, sir. We only moved at night, and it was so dark I had to keep one hand on the shoulder of the chap in front. We lay up during the day in the undergrowth, which was thick enough to discourage any prying eyes. But in any case it’s such wild country, even that wasn’t necessary. We didn’t see a soul till we arrived.’

  ‘Good,’ said Shears. ‘Go on.’

  As he listened, Number One surreptitiously scrutinized Joyce to see if the opinion he was beginning to form of him was justified. To him the values of this reconnaissance were twofold; it gave him a chance of assessing the young man’s abilities when left to his own devices. The first impression he made on his return was favourable. The cheerful appearance of the two natives was another good sign. Shears knew that imponderables like these should not be disregarded. Joyce was certainly a little over-excited not only by what he had seen but also by the change in atmosphere, by the comparative peace of these quarters after the countless hazards to which he had been exposed since his departure.

  ‘The Siamese weren’t far wrong, sir. It’s a really beautiful job.’

  Zero hour drew nearer and nearer as the rails stretched further and further along the embankment at the cost of countless hardships suffered by the Allied prisoners of war in Burma and Siam. Shears and his two companions had followed the daily progress of the line. Joyce spent hours emending his map and keeping it up to date according to the latest information received. Every week he added to the line in red pencil which represented each newly-completed section. The line was now almost unbroken from Bangkok to Rangoon. The more important river crossings were indicated by a cross. The particulars of each construction were noted down on slips of paper, carefully kept up to date by Warden, who liked to have everything neat and tidy.

  With their information on the line growing more complete and more accurate, their attention was irresistibly drawn to the R
iver Kwai bridge, which had attracted them right from the start by its many advantages. With their specialized knowledge of bridges, they had been amazed by the exceptional number of circumstances favourable to the plan which they had instinctively started to work out, a plan which combined the practical sense and the imagination typical of the Plastic and Destructions Co., Ltd. Prompted by instinct as much as by logic, they had gradually come to pin all their faith and hopes on the River Kwai bridge and on nothing else. They had considered a number of other bridges just as carefully and had discussed their respective advantages, but had ended up by choosing this one, which seemed naturally and purposely designed for them as an operational target. The ‘big show’, which was at first no more than a vague, abstract idea existing only in the imagination, was now represented by a concrete body in time and space – a vulnerable target, in other words, liable to every contingency, to every degradation of which the mind of man is capable, and especially liable to annihilation.

  ‘This isn’t a job for the RAF,’ Shears had observed. ‘It’s not easy to destroy a wooden bridge from the air. If the bombs find their mark only two or three arches are damaged. The rest are just knocked about a bit. The Japs can patch it up in no time, they’re past-masters at that sort of thing. Whereas we can not only blow the whole thing sky-high and shatter the piles at water-level, but also time the explosion for when a train is actually crossing the bridge. Then the whole convoy’ll come crashing down into the river, increasing the damage and putting every beam out of action. I’ve seen it happen before. Traffic was held up for weeks. And that was in a civilized part of the world where the enemy was able to bring up cranes. Here they’ll have to make a detour in the line and build the bridge all over again – not to mention the loss of a train and its load of war material. What a show! I can just see it . . .’

  All three could imagine what a show it would be. The attack had assumed concrete shape over which the imagination could wander at will. A succession of mental snapshots, some of them underexposed, others in bright technicolour, disturbed Joyce’s sleep. The former appertained to the period of clandestine preparation, the latter culminated in such a brilliant picture that the smallest detail stood out amazingly sharp and clear: the train poised above the gully, with the River Kwai sparkling underneath between two blocks of jungle. His own hand was clutching the plunger. His eyes were fixed on a certain point in the centre of the bridge. The distance between that point and the engine was rapidly decreasing. He had to push the plunger down at the right moment. The distance between them was now only a few feet, only one foot. At that very moment he automatically pushed down the plunger. On the bridge which he saw in his dreams, he had already reconnoitred and found a suitable spot, exactly half-way across!