Bridge over the river Kwai
The jungle buzzed with mosquitoes as another man keeled over; thin and wretched from undernourishment, overwork and disease he has finally succumbed to Cholera, Malaria or Dystentry.
The Japanese war effort in China was being hampered by allied supplies from Burma and India; allied contol of the malacca strait around Singapore presented a logistical problem – to sever the supply route they would need to attack and occupy Burma, and yet there was no way of transporting supplies from Indo-China and Thailand. The solution was to build a railway through the jungle to 
connect Bangkok with Rangoon in Burma. The labour force was to consist of Asian conscripts and Allied POWs living in the most horrendous conditions along the route. The price was hundreds of thousands of their lives.
Thus this became known as the death railway, and today a collection of monuments and cemeteries surrounds the railway’s most famous landmark: The Bridge over the river Kwai in Kanchanaburi; some 100 miles west of Bangkok.
