I found some crumpled photocopies with this typewritten story in an old file cabinet that was to be discarded.
There is no (Google) evidence that these pages have been published, but I would be surprised if they had not. Unfortunately I have not been able to find any person that is associated with Mr. Sayers today. Here is the story. If you know more about the origins, please let me know.
YES, THAT BRIDGE IS STILL THERE
Memories on re-visiting the War's most dreaded feat of railroad engineering built not with machinery but with bodies.
As recalled in 1976
By
C. TRANS SAYERS
I was a Lieutenant in the Royal Netherlands Army - Field Artillery -that is in the Army Reserve in April 1939 when I was sent out by a Dutch export house to the then Netherlands East Indies. On arriving there I was transferred to the Army Reserve of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army automatically when the war started in September 1939. All officers in the Army Reserve were called up in the East Indies for special training. This special training lasted for one month after which we went back to our jobs. It was repeated every two months.
On May 10th, 1940 the Germans invaded amongst others, the Netherlands. We were then called up again and were told that as officers we were not allowed to leave the Netherlands East Indies although we wanted to go to Britain.
The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and the war in the Pacific started. After the fall of Singapore in February 1942 it was obvious that the Netherlands Hast Indies would be lost. By that time there were very few of our own or American planes left in the air. We were being bombed regularly by Japanese planes who also came over with their Zero fighters.
After the Battle in the Java Sea where practically the whole Allied Pacific fleet was sunk it was suddenly strangely quijt. The Japanese landed in the East Indies with the result that the Netherlands forces surrendered on March 9th while our unit on an island off the Naval Base of Surabaya surrendered on March lith. We were then shipped to Surabaya and interned in a larpc camp where we stayed until August or September 1942 and were then taken by train to Batavia where we stayed another month in another camp. The treatment by the Japanese was brutal.
In October 1942 my group was shipped in the holds of small Japanese freighters to Singapore to the Changi Barracks. Together with other officers and men 1 was sent to the Australian Imperial Forces part of these barracks. There was a whole Australian Division taken prisoner in that area.
After several months there in appalling conditions, such as shortage of food and medicine especially, we were sent in metal boxcars to Thailand. There were so many men per boxcar that it was impossible for anybody to sit down or to lie down. This trip lasted for 4 nights and 5 days until we reached Ban Pong, in Thailand. Some of our people had already got malaria and dysentery and you can well imagine what the conditions in these overheated boxcars were.
From Ban Pong in Thailand we were sent by open trucks up North into the jungle. This trip took two days. At night we just slept in the open air. When we arrived in this camp which was only half finished, more huts had to be built of bamboo, more latrines dug etc. We were then split up into parties and we walked under Japanese guard for three days up a kind of elephant path. The railway at that time had barely been started and all that was being done was various camps were built along the track. When we finally reached our destination quite a few in this party of about 400 who were all Dutch, were sick with dysentery and malaria. We then started, all the 50,000 POW's, Dutch, British, Australian and Americans along the line to Burma to work on the 'Railway of Death'.
We started from the Siamese side (later called Thailand) and others who had been snipped also from Singapore and from Sumatra started on the Burmese side working towards each other. In about September or October 1943 the whole dreadful railway was finished. It was all done by manual labour. At that time we had some elephants but there were no such things as drills to bore holes in the rock for blasting or bulldozers or tractors. The railway was built right across the jungle through rocks and mud at the cost of some 16,000 prisoners of war. A lot more died after the war of the after effects.
Later on during the period when we were driven by the Japanese like slaves and coolies, they brought in so-called 'Free Asians' - these consisted of Tamils, Indians, Javanese, Chinese, Malayans etc. These people were also put to work on the railway and died like rats. The Japanese gave us little or no medicine and hardly any food although plenty was available in Thailand.
The most vivid memories of that period was the cholera epidemic when people died like flics; the dysentery and malaria, the horrible tropical ulcers of which so many of our friends died, lack of food and vitamins with the result that quite a few were practically blind because of the deterioration of the eye nerves and the enormous courage of quite a few who were desperately sick but still wanted to live and did. Above all, one remembers the cruelty and stupidity and red tape of the Japanese. The Koreans were not regarded as human beings by the Japanese and they in turn took it out on us. Other vivid memories are the millions of maggots in the latrines, the black mud in the jungle during the rainy season and the dripping trees; The early morning parades when the Japanese rounded up everybody who could barely walk, or not walk at all, who pushed and beaten had to be working on the railway.
The most heavenly sound was when later on the Allies got the superiority in the air and we heard planes coming over in the middle of the night. They were Flying Fortresses going over to bomb targets in Singapore or in the neighbourhood of Bangkok. It was something unbelievable when you are in the middle of the jungle in conditions we were in, to hear these planes coming over. Later in the night you could hear them returning. The thing that kept most of us alive was that we were convinced that eventually we would win.
In 1944 on December 7th, I was taken back down the railway during the day to Tamarkan after first, I believe, passing through Chungkai. However, what stands out in my memory was that it was December 7th, the date marking Pearl Harbour Day. We had already seen planes coming over, all allied planes, and when you are being transported on a railway during the day it gives you an uneasy feeling in wartime. We were with a mixed group of about four or five hundred British and Dutch POW's.
During our trip we had to stop in the middle of the jungle for the locomotive to take on water. While we were standing there we heard planes coming. Suddenly we saw a huge Flying Fortress about two or three thousand feet up. We waved at it. The guards had already disappeared right into the jungle. Some others who had come down from Burma and had already experienced the bombing by allied planes had also disappeared into the jungle. Two more planes followed and went on their way down the railway line. Suddenly I heard them turning in the distance and they came back. While everybody rushed out of the boxcars into the jungle,they dropped several sticks of bombs. One of them fell right across the right hand side of the track. This killed 52 POW's. From then on these planes went up and down the train using 20mm machine guns and bombs. I was lucky that I jumped out of the other side of the train where no bombs fell at that time. When it got dark we collected the wounded who practically all died because we had absolutely nothing with us to hclp them. The next morning we buried the dead in some shallow graves and continued on our way down the track. The railway was actually finished and used by the Japanese as their main supply line for Burma. Altogether it must have cost at least 100,000 lives including POW's and all the so called 'Free Asians'.
Practically all POW's were, as of 1944, assembled in large camps more in the neighbourhood of about 100 kilometers North of Bangkok. From time to time parties of 150 more were sent up the line to maintain it. From 1944 onwards we were visited by allied bombers quite regularly and altogether we must have lost at least 300 or more people because of allied bombings. They knew where we were but we were always close to the railway line and I am quite sure that they could not avoid hitting us. In those days we never saw a Japanese plane.
Then fortunately for us, the Americans dropped their atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This saved our lives because if I am not mistaken, the allied landing in Malaya would have taken place not before the 19th of September 1945. The Japanese surrendered on August 17, 1945.
It was very strange in our camp because the Japanese commander sent for the Commandant of our group, which in this case was a British Officer and told him that the Japanese had surrendered on the orders of the emperor. You have to bear in mind that there were no allied troops anywhere nearby. The Japanese surrendered to us, gave us their rifles and ammunition and we took over. It was another month before the first allied troops, Pathans under British officers, arrived from Burma. In the meantime some paratroopers had also arrived and helped us. From then on some of us were put back into the Army, as I was, or flown back to the homeland.
The famous Bridge On The River Kwai which is now being visited every week by tourists is actually a metal bridge. It was bombed several times during the war which we could watch whenever the bombers came over. It was hit and part of it was knocked out. It was interesting to watch the bombing from close by. In the beginning, the planes that came over were all Flying Fortresses of the American Air Force and they always took the same bomb run: they circled and then came in from the original direction. There were two Japanese anti-aircraft batteries near the bridge; they were also hit. When the Royal Air Force came in they had different bomb runs; they would attack the bridge from several sides. By mistake they also dropped one stick of bombs, that was at night, right across one of the camps at Nonpladuk. We lost 100 men that time. When the bridge had been put out of action the Japanese built - or rather, we built, a wooden bridge alonside it. This was in use until the end of the war. After the war the metal bridge was repaired again by the Thais. When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, I was put back into the Netherlands army, being fit enough to serve. At that time we had our problems in the Netherlands East Indies and the Netherlands needed a lot of troops. After having been trained by a British Major I was sent to Malaya - to Kuala Lumpur, where we had the Netherlands Forces headquarters. At that time we had about 22,000 troops who came from the Netherlands and about 5,000 marines who had been trained in California. I was then sent to Port Dickson, also in Malaya, to join the staff of one of the Brigades. In April 1946 I returned to the Netherlands on the "New Amsterdam", then still a troop ship carrying 5,000 men; also a number oi' women and children returning to the Netherlands.
As President of the Canadian Importers Association Incorporated I was invited by the Federal Government in Ottawa to join the Ministerial Trade Development Mission to Southeast Asia in February and March 1976. It was apart from the business side of the mission and quite a moving experience to go to the places where I had been before, just prior and during the war. When it became known to the Minister, the Honourable Donald Jamieson and the other Govern-ment Officials who accompanied him, especially Lindsay MacNeil the Director of the Pacific area, they very kindly arranged with the Canadian Embassy in Bangkok that my programme would be such that I would be able to visit the Bridge On The River Kwai.
Because we were tired and because probably I had discussed this experience with several other people of the Mission, the night of March 9th was quite a strange experience. Before I went to sleep and even in my dreams, 1 re-lived the whole dreadful experience again. I even imagined 1 heard the voices of old friends. It sounds silly but it actually happened.
The trip to the Bridge On The River Kwai from Bangkok is 134 kilo-meters by road. In this case I travelled under slightly different conditions; I had an air-conditioned car at my disposal with a driver and a guide and one of the members of our mission who is also a free-lance phofreelance photographer joined me for this trip - J. E. Herrmann of Oilweek in Calgary. We left at 6 in the morning and arrived at the site of the bridge in Tamarkan at 8 o'clock in the morning.
Everything of course has changed. The bridge is still there but now as a tourist attraction. The wooden bridge which ran alongside it is gone. There is a small open-sided bamboo restaurant serving beer or soft drinks and food. We took quite a few pictures and then left to go to the cemetery in Kanchanaburi. The cemetery is extremely well kept by the Allied War Graves Commission. There is a Dutch, Australian and British section. In this cemetery 8,000 people arc buried. There are two other cemeteries in Thailand and one in Burma. Of the actual campsite - at that place, nothing remains. I could find no trace of it. I then tried to find where our Boon Pong was. He was the Thai who lived in Kanchanaburi and who had a small shop there and risked his life many times during the period that prisoners of war were there, to smuggle in money and medicine. He also gave us the latest news which he had heard over the radio. Whatever was smuggled in was paid for by many people with cheques, all of which he accepted and which were all honoured after the war - when he was given the British King's Medal for courage, He does not live in Kanchanaburi now nor has he his little shop. He now lives in Bangkok, a rich old man. I tried to reach him but he had left. It was disappointing not being able to give, him a 'thank you'.
As far as Boon Pong is concerned, there is a very interesting story; Just after the war in Siam (or Thailand as it is called now) there were a lot of Thais running around with knives, sub-machine guns, revolvers, pistols etc. In our region there were quite a few guerilla fighters who had been fighting the Japanese all the time. For some reason or another also Boon Pong's life was being threatened by some Thais. As I at that time was attached to the liason Military Police, we had to protect him. Therefore at night, a friend and I would sit, each on one side of Boon Pong who was still in his store. You have to visualize that these stores in the Far East and Southeast Asia are open at the front. The store was well lit but outside it was pitch dark. We would sit there with our 45 Colts and our sub-machine guns quite close to him, hoping and trusting that nobody would try to shoot from the dark at us. However, one day, when I was sitting on the verandah of the Officer's Mess, across from his store, a few shots rang out. We rushed out of the Mess with our 45 Colts but the man who had fired the shots had disappeared around the corner. Boon Pong had been shot and had two bullets in his body. We rushed him to our small Hospital which was still in the same camp and I am glad to say that he fully recovered.
There is also a Japanese Memorial not far from the cemetery. Apparently once a year various Ambassadors and so on, go to the Allied Memorial to pay their respects, while the Japanese go to the Japanese Memorial, but this is never done at the same time.
If you ask me after 31 years, in 1976, what I think of that period - it was a horrible experience. The Japanese were very cruel, although not scientifically cruel like the Germans, and also very stupid. It is simply unbelievable that if they needed this railway line so badly, they didn't feed all their prisoners of war and coolies properly.
There was absolutely no problem in Thailand to feed people because they had more than enough rice, even in those days; fruit, fish, etc. - everything we needed. They gave us nothing and let us starve and die. My feelings was that we should have hanged quite a lot more than we did. However, it was a marvelous feeling when the war was over and you could say to yourself "I have made it".
My wife (1 did not meet her till after the war) who with her family was in another camp, suffered as only the Japanese can make one suffer but - and this is a frequent comment of Canadians we meet -we do not now express bitterness against the Japanese. To perpetuate bitterness only serves to perpetuate one's sufferings so - except when specially reminded by such a re-visit I have just described, it is best to turn over that page and close the book.
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The Globe and Mail, Toronto, SATURDAY APRIL 17, 2010
IN LOVING MEMORY
Frans (Charles Francois) Sayers
April 19, 1916 - April 9, 2010
WW11 Veteran
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Frans Sayers, in his 94th year. He was the devoted and loving husband of Lydie for 63 years and the loving father of Frans (Debra) and Renee (Johan Petersen). Opa of Celia (Eric Coulombe), Delphine (Junior Boutin), Nikko, Serena, Kirsten, and Christian as well as the proud great- grandfather of Taylor, Tyson, Reese, Maya and Kees. He leaves behind a legacy of great memories and accomplishments. His remarkable community spirit will be greatly missed by many here in Canada and abroad where he travelled and worked. A family service was held. If desired, donations may be made on his behalf to the Royal Canadian Military Institute Heritage Trust Fund, 426 University Avenue, Toronto M5G 1S9. 