The Death Railway
The Personal Account of Lieutenant Colonel Kappe on the Thai-Burma Railroad
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Kappe
Newport, NSW: Big Sky Publishing, 2024
Paperback 286pp RRP $29.99
Reviewer: Robert Dixon, October 2024
This is an account of the experiences of a group of 3662 AIF POW’s who, together with a similar number of British prisoners, were transported from Changi to Thailand in April 1943 to work on the Thai-Burma railway. This force of around 7,000 men was designated ‘F Force’. The commander of the AIF troops was LTCOL Kappe. This book reprints a report he wrote at the time along with some extracts from a Unit Diary maintained by Captain Ben Barnett (adjutant of 8th Division Signals). The Report covers a number of topics including: the organisation of the Force; the rail journey from Singapore to Thailand and the harrowing 290km ‘march’ to the work sites; the appalling conditions in the camps; the lack of clothing and especially boots for the men; the activities of the officers; the pay rates for officers and men; the work of the medical staff; and the journey back to Changi. The Report also mentions two (unsuccessful) attempts to escape, one involving a number of British officers.
Kappe’s report is especially interesting because it gives us an insight not only into the men’s working and living conditions – with much attention given to the prevalence of malaria, dysentery and cholera and the Japanese indifference to the health of the men – but also into the interactions which took place both within the group of senior allied commanders and also with the (limited it would seem, especially in the case of Kappe) interaction they had with the senior Japanese officers. It is this which makes the book a useful complement to the many autobiographies written by the men who survived.
By the time F Force returned to Changi in December 1943 29% of the Australians had died while deaths among the British component of the Force was more than twice the AIF total. Why this disparity? Kappe (p 5) writes ‘Without a doubt the comparatively lower death rate of AIF personnel was due to a more determined will to live, a higher sense of discipline, a particularly high appreciation of the importance of maintaining good sanitation, and a more natural adaptability to harsh conditions … [and to] … the splendid and unselfish services rendered by the medical personnel in the Force.’
The book and the publisher’s description of the book are not free of errors. On page the reader is told that Kappe was born in “Balarat”. It should be Ballarat. The publisher claims that Kappe’s “Report is reproduced here in full’ but this is not the case. On page 120 the reader is referred to Appendix VI, but the book only contains Appendices I – V, there is no Appendix VI in the book.
The book contains 17 black and white photos all sourced from the Australian War Memorial. Most of the photos show POWs at work on the railway. Strangely, to my mind, although much of the text is concerned with the work of the medical staff this is the subject of only one of the photos.
Charles Kappe graduated from Duntroon in 1921 and by the time the Japanese entered the war he was the 8th Australian Division's Chief Signals Officer. Following the surrender of Singapore he became a POW in Changi. After the end of the war Kappe was awarded an OBE for his services. The citation reads ‘High courage, resource and leadership in Malaya’. He remained in the Army after the war, retiring with the rank of brigadier in December 1954. He died in 1967.
The RUSI – Vic Library is most grateful to the publisher for making this work available for review.