October 2022 marks the 80th anniversary of the ‘official’ start of construction of the Burma-Thailand Railway. Something that would be an engineering success but resulting in the needless loss of so many lives.

Private Harold Martin joined the army in late 1940, he was 23 at the time and left behind a wife and young son. Like so many men of that time, he felt “It was the right thing to do” to fight for his country. In late 1941, he was sent to Singapore as part of the Australian commitment to the British Garrison. On the 15th February 1942, he was amongst the 15,000 Australian soldiers who became prisoners of war (POW’s) of the Japanese in the Fall of Singapore.

Each Anzac Day, in the pre-dawn darkness surrounded by jungle, more than 500 mostly Australians, gather for the Dawn Service at a disused section of the Burma-Thailand Railway, known as Hellfire Pass.

The are many sites along the Burma-Thailand Railway where you can only be amazed by the construction ability of the men who built them. Sites like the Bridge over the River Kwai, the Wang Pho Viaduct and the railway cutting known as Hellfire Pass. Without exception, these sites were constructed with little more than hand tools and the sweat of the POW’s who laboured under the harsh treatment of the Japanese for long hours each day.

Whenever I visit the Burma-Thailand Railway, I am always on the lookout for something that adds a little extra to the story of the Railway now nearly 75 years old. On a recent visit, at Namtok Railway Station, almost at the end of the current operating section of the Railway, I found an old framed black and white photo taken back in 1955, showing the reconstruction of the Bridge over the River Kwai which was badly damaged by allied bombing during the war.