To the Kwai – And Back: War Drawings 1939-1945
By Ronald Searle Souvenir Press, 308pp, £12.99/$19.99
This is a welcome reprint by Souvenir Press of Ronald Searle’s original collection of sketches, first published in 1986. Although almost the same time gap separates that initial publication from when they were drawn and from today’s reissue, the shock and revulsion one feels while looking at the pictures have not dimmed. Those feelings are, if anything, stronger.
Searle was taken prisoner by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore in February 1942. He remained a prisoner until August 1945: 45 months of captivity during which he made hundreds of illicit drawings which, if discovered, would have led to his immediate execution.
The drawings are reproduced here in excellent detail. The faintest pencil mark or brush stroke appears as it would on the original. These are not, for the most part, carefully considered portraits. They are snapshot-like sketches intended to capture a moment, a feeling, a mood – a sort of grotesque holiday album showing a journey to the depths of human depravity. Colour is a rarity. These are, for the most part, ink or pencil sketches. Bare lines and shading combine to leave one with a strong impression of place and situation.
The accompanying text is an account by Searle of his three-and-a-half years as a prisoner, along with contextual descriptions of some of his drawings.
The bald, matter-of-fact way in which he describes his treatment amplifies its horror, as does the lack of rancour in his descriptions. In a few curt lines he dismisses the myth of “the Bridge on the River Kwai” – both the bridge itself and the portrayal of how British soldiers in the jungle behaved, thus: “As for The Bridge on the River Kwai, it crossed the river only in the imagination of its author; his idea of British behaviour under the Japanese was equally bizarre.” This gentler, less insistent portrayal leaves one with a far firmer sense of their bravery than could any number of stiff-upper-lipped Hollywood performances.
Towards the end of the book, Searle gives an account of his being ordered to send a selection of his drawings to Captain Takahashi, commandant of Changi Gaol (his talent for art had been noticed in the drawings he had done for the prison newspaper). Searle had no idea why this was ordered and was terrified that anything other than utterly innocuous sketches would lead to his death.
As it was, he received a note commending him on his skill, returning the drawings and bestowing a gift of fine paper. Then, without explanation, he was sent to work at the Officers’ Beach Club, on the pretence of adding murals.
All becomes clear when Captain Takahashi, visiting the Club, explains briefly in their one meeting that before the war he was an art student in Paris. Searle ascribes his special treatment to a gesture of artistic solidarity in the face of barbarism. Perhaps so; perhaps it was a man attempting to make partial amends for the inexplicable cruelty meted out in his name. Either way, it is a passage of lightness in a book otherwise unremittingly dark. British humour in the face of adversity goes only so far.
Despite that, despite the despair and horror I was assailed with nearly every page, it is hope one feels more strongly than anything by the end.
The fantastically brave young men whom Searle portrays, emaciated, diseased, all but destroyed, fought for survival in an environment that could not have been crueller had it been designed for such punishment. That they did so while being subjected to the sort of casually inhuman brutality of which the ordinary mind cannot conceive is more remarkable still.
So yes, hope is the feeling. But hope that it will never again be necessary for British soldiers to survive such wanton savagery, such utterly dishonourable conduct meted out by a morally bankrupt foe, as much as hope – indeed, conviction – that they would if put to the test.
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