As a boy growing up in Edinburgh, Eric Lomax
developed a love of trams and then trains. The interest was maintained as a
young man but he wouldn’t have guessed just how big a part a railway was to play
in the rest of his life.
Having left school to become a telegraphist
with the post office, the natural progression at the outbreak of the second
world war was to enlist in the Royal Corps of Signals. Deployed to the eastern
theatre he ended up in Singapore just in time for its mass surrender to the
Japanese army.
As a PoW with technical knowhow he was put
to work, along with similarly skilled colleagues, in the repair sheds, maintaining
(as badly as possible) the equipment used to build the notorious Burma - Siam
railway. This group’s relatively privileged position came to an abrupt halt with
the discovery of their homemade radio receiver and Lomax’s hand drawn map of
the projected railway route.
The Japanese response is no less horrific to
the reader for being predictable from the likes of ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’
and ‘Unbroken’. Lomax relates the torture and brutality, and his stubborn
resistance without hyperbole; the drama and pathos self-evident.
His trauma does not end with liberation; for
three and a half decades he is haunted by his experiences and it is only after
meeting (on a train) his second wife-to-be that he can, with her encouragement
and support, begin to come to terms with them.
And when he discovers that one of those
involved in his interrogation is alive and is now an activist for
reconciliation, he resolves to go and confront the man and test how sincere is
his professed remorse.
It is a compulsive, powerful read, highly
recommended.
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