Flying Scotsman (CJ Allen, Steel Highway,1928).jpg The Railway Man by Eric Lomax
I’m sure most people are familiar with or at least have heard of the film adaptation of The Railway Man by Eric Lomax, featuring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman and Jeremy Irvine as the young Eric Lomax. It’s a story of courage, forgiveness and love. In the book’s Introduction, the two screenplay writers, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson pay tribute to Eric Lomax who didn’t live to see the film’s release, although he’d been on set during filming.
The autobiography is the subject of our book club discussion this month. It’s the second time I’ve read it, even though some passages are as difficult to read as the film’s visual images are confronting to view. I found it a compelling read, even though I was nauseated by the descriptions of tortuous cruelty and revolting conditions inside the prisons. The movie audience can’t fail to feel the pain suffered by the POWs at the hands of their captors, but Eric Lomax’s personal account takes us into the added unrelenting torment of his mind - the effects even worse than the physical nightmare his body endured, which almost killed him. It would be unexpectedly, many years later that a sense of peace finally comes to his mind and heart.
I’m sure most people are familiar with or at least have heard of the film adaptation of The Railway Man by Eric Lomax, featuring Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman and Jeremy Irvine as the young Eric Lomax. It’s a story of courage, forgiveness and love. In the book’s Introduction, the two screenplay writers, Frank Cottrell Boyce and Andy Paterson pay tribute to Eric Lomax who didn’t live to see the film’s release, although he’d been on set during filming.
The autobiography is the subject of our book club discussion this month. It’s the second time I’ve read it, even though some passages are as difficult to read as the film’s visual images are confronting to view. I found it a compelling read, even though I was nauseated by the descriptions of tortuous cruelty and revolting conditions inside the prisons. The movie audience can’t fail to feel the pain suffered by the POWs at the hands of their captors, but Eric Lomax’s personal account takes us into the added unrelenting torment of his mind - the effects even worse than the physical nightmare his body endured, which almost killed him. It would be unexpectedly, many years later that a sense of peace finally comes to his mind and heart.
makilica - http://www.flickr.com/ photos/60126039 @N00/306668920/ Before the horror of war began, we learn about the author’s childhood and his growing interest in trains leading to a “mania” for railways - as he tries to explain it to his interrogators in the POW camp, with his obsession for lists and details - the big steam engines, railway gauges and train stations. His hand-drawn map of the notorious Burma- Siam rail track 1942 - 45 was discovered by the prison guards, as too the radio transmitter which Lomax and other prisoners had built, purely to hear news from the outside world as a profound morale booster.
The author's account of an unimaginable time that affected so many people is an important story, as Colin Firth pointed out after meeting with 91 year-old Eric Lomax, because it portrays the decades of silent, post-war suffering and the damage caused to loved ones, but not being truly able to share the memories or understand the extent of their anguish. This wasn’t an unfamiliar experience for so many of those who served in wartime and their families, like my own father (born the same year as Eric Lomax) who trained in Canada and Britain for the Allied raids over Europe.
The author's account of an unimaginable time that affected so many people is an important story, as Colin Firth pointed out after meeting with 91 year-old Eric Lomax, because it portrays the decades of silent, post-war suffering and the damage caused to loved ones, but not being truly able to share the memories or understand the extent of their anguish. This wasn’t an unfamiliar experience for so many of those who served in wartime and their families, like my own father (born the same year as Eric Lomax) who trained in Canada and Britain for the Allied raids over Europe.
Preserved Steam Locomotive used on the Death Railway at the River KWAI BRIDGE Kanchanburi Thailand (Jan 2013) The author’s second wife, Patti played a key part in his unplanned journey to connect with and meet the Japanese man he vividly remembered and hated, revengefully for years. The ending of his hatred is an astonishing turn-around, but doesn’t happen overnight. When the two men finally meet after memories that haunted both of them for fifty years, back at the railway platform close to the River Kwae Bridge, Eric Lomax recalls the Japanese man’s last words to Eric, ‘keep your chin up.’ The last chapter which sees the author and his wife visit Japan is very moving, with Eric’s final words, ‘Sometime the hating has to stop.’
The book reminded me too of my stepfather’s connection with war atrocities committed by the Japanese. He wrote about his experience in the army that took him to post-war Japan, after serving in a Commando Squad in Borneo. His account of being seconded to the Allied War Crimes Commission for the trials of prison guards in Japan, ends with the opening and memorial service fifty years later at the Peace Memorial Park at Naoetsu.
How much easier it is for me to skip lightly down my train track memories, that go back to a time just a decade after these terrible events. Our annual train journey took forever - an exciting adventure so my sister and I thought. Dad would stay at home to keep on miking the cows as we took the “Sunlander” from Cairns or Innisfail to Brisbane. Numerous stops in the middle of nowhere were a curiosity but often happened during the night interrupting our clackety-clack sleep. For the two days travel Mum packed new activities to keep us amused, but my favourite past-time was pulling down the hand-basin in the wall of our sleeping compartment to clean my teeth and watch the water disappear somewhere magical.. My sister was very impressed by the train attendant coming each evening to make up our beds. One thing scared me - being caught on the toilet when a sudden whoosh of air would threaten to suck me down the hole as the train passed high over a river.
Boarding school days also meant taking the train home at the end of term on the “Westlander” from Brisbane to Roma, where my parents had moved to by this time. The train would pull into the station at an unearthly hour of the morning with Dad waiting in the cold. A hug was quickly followed by a grilling as to whether I’d been smoking. (Dad detested smoking and it was a continual bone of contention with Mum over her “filthy habit”) Oh no, innocent me assured him, my blazer smells cause everyone else was smoking. Later I didn’t feel so good and vowed not to puff and choke on another ciggie ever. I’d have to try some other way to impress the good-looking boys who’d quickly abandoned uniforms, so they weren’t breaking the rules.. exactly.
Although my train trips today are very short, maybe one day I’ll take a trip down memory lane on the “Spirit of Queensland" which has replaced the Sunlander ( 1953-2014).
It was interesting to note that as well as A Railway Man, being filmed in Scotland and Thailand, there were also scenes of railway yards in the Queensland town of Ipswich, where many Queensland train engines began their chuffing days.
Although my train trips today are very short, maybe one day I’ll take a trip down memory lane on the “Spirit of Queensland" which has replaced the Sunlander ( 1953-2014).
It was interesting to note that as well as A Railway Man, being filmed in Scotland and Thailand, there were also scenes of railway yards in the Queensland town of Ipswich, where many Queensland train engines began their chuffing days.
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