Sixth Sense

I'd like to start this off with the most famous member of our family, at the time of the release of the film ''The Bridge on the River Kwai'' my uncle Les was a local celebrity and guest of honour at a Stockton-on-Tees cinema. It started for Les when he was called up and sent to Singapore in 1942, he and the rest of his regiment landed at the docks as the Japanese army invaded the peninsula. When the Japanese arrived at the docks the regiment had still to unload its weapons, so had no choice but surrender. My Uncle like many of those POW's was sent to work on the Burma Railway, a scheme to extend the rail line from Thailand to India (It never reached that far as the Japanese never occupied India). As work continued Les eventually ended up on the banks of the Khwae river, here was the site for the infamous bridge 277 that is now as well known as any bridge in the world. While the film ficticiously portrays the actual building of the bridge, it does for its time (1957) try to portray accurately the conditions the POW's lived. When finally in early 1946 Les returned to Stockton he was literally a walking skeleton with many psychological problems.