To get back to the temple. It wasn’t a very beautiful temple, I know, but it had always been a shelter to us when we’d rested beneath the frangipani trees en route to Tamarkan when we were working on the Tamarkan Party. In the main temple a service was going on, two rows of yellow robed priests on either side of the altar were drawn up facing each other, and they were chanting some prayer to the punctuation of a great, deep gong. All that really mattered to me was that the frangipani trees were still there. And they were there, and the grass beneath them was still thick with the fallen blossoms. I picked a good handful of them, grinning as I remembered how we used to stuff them in our hats, (if we wore them) to keep away yet stronger smells . . .

A few more photographs, with rivalry between Pong and myself, and then we all climbed back into the bus, and in 3½ shattering hours, not conducive to thought, we were back in Bangkok.

June 8, 1947

APPENDIX TWO:

BBC SCRIPT FROM THE 1969 BBC DOCUMENTARY RETURN TO THE RIVER KWAI

From BBC Written Archives T56/203/1(File)

KEY:

LS = Long Shot, CS = Close-Up/Shot, VO = Voice Over, Mix To = Mix of voice over and visuals, FX = Effects, GV = General View, 2S = 2 shot

PROJECT NO: 5158/2148

ONE PAIR OF EYES

A series of highly personal films

JOHN COAST

RETURN TO THE RIVER KWAI

In company with three of his former Japanese captors John Coast revisits the scenes of his enforced labour along the banks of the River Kwai. Here, twenty-five years ago, thousands of British lives were sacrificed by the Japanese to drive a railway line through the jungle from Bangkok to Burma. If it hadn’t been for the now famous Film The Bridge on the River Kwai few people would remember their epic struggle for survival. But ironically, just because of the film, fact and fiction have become somewhat confused.

Produced and Directed by

ANTHONY DE LOTBINIERE

First Transmission: Saturday, 15th March, 1969

ONE PAIR OF EYES

JOHN COAST

RETURN TO THE RIVER KWAI