Latest news with #PoWs
Sydney Morning Herald
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
I went to visit a famous bridge - and it wasn't there
Riding on the Death Railway is an incongruously jaunty experience, like a trip on Puffing Billy. We trundle past mountains, fields, coconut palms and jungle, all a brilliant green. The locals sell food and the tourists chat cheerfully. It takes a huge feat of imagination to picture what it was like to be one of the poor PoWs or Asian labourers who were forced to put down these tracks for the Japanese. There are tributes to these men, of course. I visited a well-tended Thai cemetery in Kanchanaburi and a modest museum with a replica of the bamboo huts where they lived. It displays some horrifying photographs and paintings of skeletal and sore-ridden bodies. When the train gets to the bridge, the tourists are puzzled. Where is it, they want to know. Where is the wooden bridge on the River Kwai, so famously portrayed in the classic 1957 film? There's a bridge here all right, but it's made of concrete and steel. It turns out the wooden bridge never existed, except as a film prop. As our Thai guide explains, The Bridge on the River Kwai is a made-up story. The film is based on a 1952 novel of the same name by a Frenchman, Pierre Boulle. He was a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II but he never worked on their hellish Burma-Siam railway. It's a story of heroism and craziness. The British commander of the captured men, Colonel Nicholson (portrayed memorably by Alec Guinness in the film), is a super-stubborn hero determined to show the Japanese a thing or two by building them the best bridge British engineering skills and labour can create. He becomes a little too attached to his creation. Boulle based his character on his experience with collaborating French officers. In reality, PoWs did build a bridge under horrendous conditions, and they showed a different kind of heroism: they were determined to sabotage the construction in whatever way they could, risking the wrath of their captors. The bridge was bombed by the Allies and restored after the war. There are many books, both histories and fictions, about the notorious construction of the Burma-Siam railway, which involved about 13,000 Australians. One outstanding novel is Richard Flanagan's Booker-winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North, inspired by his father's ordeal (now adapted as an Amazon Prime miniseries). Another fine Australian novel set in part on the railway is David Malouf's 1990 Miles Franklin winner, The Great World. Our guide wanted to tell us about another film which he said was much accurate than The Bridge on the River Kwai. His pick was the 2013 film The Railway Man, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, which was based on a 1995 autobiography by Eric Lomax, a British Army officer who underwent brutal tortures when working on the railway. The experience left him with mental scars and a desire for revenge, but the story also asks about the possibility of forgiveness for your tormentors.
The Age
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
I went to visit a famous bridge - and it wasn't there
Riding on the Death Railway is an incongruously jaunty experience, like a trip on Puffing Billy. We trundle past mountains, fields, coconut palms and jungle, all a brilliant green. The locals sell food and the tourists chat cheerfully. It takes a huge feat of imagination to picture what it was like to be one of the poor PoWs or Asian labourers who were forced to put down these tracks for the Japanese. There are tributes to these men, of course. I visited a well-tended Thai cemetery in Kanchanaburi and a modest museum with a replica of the bamboo huts where they lived. It displays some horrifying photographs and paintings of skeletal and sore-ridden bodies. When the train gets to the bridge, the tourists are puzzled. Where is it, they want to know. Where is the wooden bridge on the River Kwai, so famously portrayed in the classic 1957 film? There's a bridge here all right, but it's made of concrete and steel. It turns out the wooden bridge never existed, except as a film prop. As our Thai guide explains, The Bridge on the River Kwai is a made-up story. The film is based on a 1952 novel of the same name by a Frenchman, Pierre Boulle. He was a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II but he never worked on their hellish Burma-Siam railway. It's a story of heroism and craziness. The British commander of the captured men, Colonel Nicholson (portrayed memorably by Alec Guinness in the film), is a super-stubborn hero determined to show the Japanese a thing or two by building them the best bridge British engineering skills and labour can create. He becomes a little too attached to his creation. Boulle based his character on his experience with collaborating French officers. In reality, PoWs did build a bridge under horrendous conditions, and they showed a different kind of heroism: they were determined to sabotage the construction in whatever way they could, risking the wrath of their captors. The bridge was bombed by the Allies and restored after the war. There are many books, both histories and fictions, about the notorious construction of the Burma-Siam railway, which involved about 13,000 Australians. One outstanding novel is Richard Flanagan's Booker-winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North, inspired by his father's ordeal (now adapted as an Amazon Prime miniseries). Another fine Australian novel set in part on the railway is David Malouf's 1990 Miles Franklin winner, The Great World. Our guide wanted to tell us about another film which he said was much accurate than The Bridge on the River Kwai. His pick was the 2013 film The Railway Man, starring Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman, which was based on a 1995 autobiography by Eric Lomax, a British Army officer who underwent brutal tortures when working on the railway. The experience left him with mental scars and a desire for revenge, but the story also asks about the possibility of forgiveness for your tormentors.
Irish Independent
14-06-2025
- Irish Independent
Agony of Ukrainian families as bodies of troops repatriated
Deal to hand over 1,000 PoWs now being implemented Today at 21:30 Volodymyr Umanets, a 69-year-old security guard, hopes his son will be among the Ukrainian prisoners of war now being handed over by Russia, but he knows he could be part of a more sombre homecoming: the repatriated remains of dead soldiers. Not knowing which group his son, Sergiy, will be in is a torment. 'I am told to wait. What else is left for me to do?' said Mr Umanets, as tears welled up in his eyes.
News18
11-06-2025
- Politics
- News18
Russia returns 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian servicemen, gets 27 in return
Last Updated: Moscow, Jun 11 (PTI) Russia on Wednesday returned 1,212 bodies of Ukrainian servicemen killed during the fighting on the eastern front and received 27 bodies in exchange. 'The transfer of fallen soldiers' bodies has begun in accordance with the Istanbul agreements," Russian Presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky wrote on his Telegram channel. During the second round of talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on June 2, Russian negotiator Medinsky had offered to hand over 6,000 frozen bodies to Kiev without any preconditions and had expressed Moscow's readiness to accept any such bodies of Russian servicemen. Russia and Ukraine have also exchanged two batches of prisoners of war (PoWs) under the age of 25 as agreed in Istanbul. On June 12, they are preparing a humanitarian exchange of seriously wounded PoWs requiring urgent hospitalisation, Medinsky said, according to the state-controlled Vesti FM radio. PTI VS GSP GSP
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Putin tells Trump Russia ‘will have to respond' to Ukraine drone attack
Donald Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin for more than an hour on Wednesday, but he conceded the talks would not lead 'to immediate peace' in Ukraine, and warned that Russia would respond to Ukraine's successful attacks this week on its airfields. The US president, who repeatedly claimed he could end the Ukraine war in 24 hours during his election campaign, did not attempt to discourage the Russian leader from retaliation, according to his description of the discussion on his Truth Social platform. He noted instead that Putin had offered to participate in US talks with Iran about its nuclear programme, which Trump claimed Tehran had been 'slowwalking'. The programme has expanded considerably since 2018, when Trump withdrew from a multilateral agreement to constrain it in exchange for sanctions relief. In separate remarks on Wednesday, Putin once again ruled out a comprehensive ceasefire in Ukraine, claiming it would just give Kyiv time to regroup and rearm, while Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy described Moscow's peace proposals presented earlier this week as nothing more than an 'ultimatum'. Related:Operation Spiderweb: a visual guide to Ukraine's destruction of Russian aircraft The comments from both leaders confirmed negotiations in Istanbul on Monday had made no headway towards a truce, but the two sides signalled progress on other issues, including the transfer of captives and bodies. Russia said it was 'working' on the return of more than 300 Ukrainian children who the Kyiv government and the international criminal court (ICC) say were abducted by invading forces. It also confirmed there would be a prisoner exchange in the coming days, and there were continuing discussions on plans to repatriate thousands of bodies of fallen soldiers from both sides. Zelenskyy said he expected 500 PoWs to be swapped this weekend, but he said that the broader peace proposal put forward by Russia in Istanbul amounted to 'an ultimatum from the Russian side to us'. Immediately after Monday's meeting, Ukrainian officials said they needed more time to study the document handed over by the Russians, but press reports at the time said that it simply restated Russia's maximalist demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from four regions under partial Russian occupation. Putin stated his position on Wednesday in the form of a televised virtual meeting with his aides. After being informed that Ukraine had proposed an unconditional ceasefire of 30 to 60 days, Putin asked: 'Why reward them by giving them a break from the combat, which will be used to pump the regime with western arms, to continue their forced mobilisation and to prepare different terrorist acts?' He pointed to recent Ukrainian attacks on bridges inside Russia, one of which helped cause a train crash that killed seven people. On Sunday, Ukraine also carried out a remote-controlled mass drone attack on four Russian airfields, which Kyiv claims knocked out more than a third of Moscow's heavy bombers capable of firing cruise missiles. Ukrainian officials said 41 Russian warplanes, including strategic bombers and other types of combat aircraft, were destroyed or damaged in Sunday's operation, which they claimed had taken 18 months to plan. On Wednesday, they released additional drone footage of the attack, codenamed Operation Spiderweb. Satellite photos analysed and published by the Associated Press showed aircraft wreckage and scorched areas at Belaya base, one of the four airfields targeted. It said the images showed at least three Tu-95 and four Tu-22M bombers – both capable of firing cruise missiles – had been destroyed on the runway. Other aircraft at the base appeared unscathed. In his Truth Social post, Trump said the drone attacks on Russian airfields had come up in his hour-and-15-minute conversation with Putin on Wednesday. 'We discussed the attack on Russia's docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,' Trump said. 'It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.' Trump told Putin that Ukraine did not inform him before the drone attacks, a Kremlin spokesperson said. Putin also spoke on Wednesday to Pope Leo XIV, in the US-born pontiff's first call to the Russian leader since he became head of the world's Catholics last month. The Vatican said in a statement that during the call, 'the pope made an appeal for Russia to make a gesture that favours peace'. Before the Istanbul talks, Russia stepped up its aerial attacks on cities, and pushed further into Ukraine's northern region of Sumy, seizing more than 150 sq km (58 sq miles) of the area in less than two weeks, according to Russian claims and Ukrainian open-source mapping. During his election campaign, Trump claimed more than 50 times he could end the Ukraine conflict within a day, but his comments on Wednesday did not involve any calls for restraint. While Putin has ruled out a comprehensive ceasefire, Russia has suggested two- to three-day local truces on different parts of the frontline, to allow the opposing armies to collect their dead, a proposal Moscow says Kyiv has rejected. However, both sides showed on Wednesday they were ready to continue with the exchange of PoWs, the bodies of dead soldiers, and to offer some cooperation on Kyiv's priority, the return of Ukrainian children. In the televised government meeting on Wednesday, the chief Russian negotiator in Istanbul, Vladimir Medinsky, said Russia was 'working' on the return of Ukrainian children, noting that Kyiv had presented a list of 339 of them. Russia has claimed Ukrainian children were taken to Russia for their safety, while Kyiv insisted they had been abducted. The Ukrainian view was underpinned by the ICC, which issued arrest warrants in March 2023 for Putin and his 'commissioner for children's rights', Maria Lvova-Belova, for their role in the 'unlawful deportation' of the Ukrainian children. After the Istanbul meeting, Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian delegation had handed the Russians a list of nearly 400 names of abducted Ukrainian children, but claimed that Russia had only offered to resolve the cases of 10 of them. After Monday's talks, Turkey's leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, announced he wanted to host a Putin-Zelenskyy summit also involving Trump. Zelenskyy has been challenging his Russian counterpart to meet him face to face for some months. 'We are ready for such a meeting any day,' the Ukrainian leader said on Wednesday, adding it was 'pointless' to hold further talks with the midlevel Russian delegates Putin has sent to the talks – who Zelenskyy has previously dismissed as 'empty heads' – since they were not empowered to agree a ceasefire. Putin maintained his opposition to a personal meeting with Zelenskyy, however, on the grounds of the recent attacks on railways in the Kursk and Bryansk border regions, which he described as 'terrorist acts'. 'How can any such [summit] meetings be conducted in such circumstances? What shall we talk about?' Putin asked in his video call with his officials. Since Trump's return to the White House in January, European capitals have sought to take more of a leading role in bolstering Ukraine's defence, and on Wednesday, a series of military industrial support measures were announced at a meeting of the 52-country strong Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Nato headquarters in Brussels, chaired jointly by the UK and Germany.
