The Railway Man

[Night Train]

Just watched this film on iplayer. True story, superb acting. Highly recommended.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000lqh5/the-railway-man

 

[simontaylor484]

Yes it's a good film 

[Adam88]

I always liked the comment that the real Mrs Lomax made when she saw the film that she was never as dowdy as Nicole Kidman.

[The Johnster]

Just watched; as you say, superb performances and so good that I forgave the railway anomalies.  A childhood friend had a father who was on the Burma Railway, and I know he never forgave what had happened to him there.  I always thought that some of this man's hatred (perhaps the only thing keeping him going) should have been directed at the High Command in Singapore under Percival, whose collective blindness, out and out racism, and denial of what was going as they were being invaded by what they thought were funny little chaps in glasses on bicycles while they sat behind guns pointing out to sea were as much a cause of the disaster of the Singapore loss as the Japanese Army.  He was ultimately denied the redemption that Lomax found, and died still hating; as Sid Vicious said, anger is an energy!

 

I have to say I would have had a special for the traitor Semphill, especially as he more or less got away with it, being a chum of Winston Churchill's. Despicable waste of a skin.

[chris p bacon]

5 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

as Sid Vicious said, anger is an energy!

 

John Lydon, it's a lyric from 'Rise' 

[Bernard Lamb]

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Just watched; as you say, superb performances and so good that I forgave the railway anomalies.  A childhood friend had a father who was on the Burma Railway, and I know he never forgave what had happened to him there.  I always thought that some of this man's hatred (perhaps the only thing keeping him going) should have been directed at the High Command in Singapore under Percival, whose collective blindness, out and out racism, and denial of what was going as they were being invaded by what they thought were funny little chaps in glasses on bicycles while they sat behind guns pointing out to sea were as much a cause of the disaster of the Singapore loss as the Japanese Army.  He was ultimately denied the redemption that Lomax found, and died still hating; as Sid Vicious said, anger is an energy!

 

I have to say I would have had a special for the traitor Semphill, especially as he more or less got away with it, being a chum of Winston Churchill's. Despicable waste of a skin.

That's a bit hard on Percival. He was only doing what he was told to do. In the end he disobeyed orders and surrendered in order to save lives, The map shows just why he had little choice. Many of the men died hating or suffered what was probably a worse fate and lived hating. It is only in the last few years that some of the truth has been revealed with the release of official documents. Much of what happened will never be made public. The IJA might well have arrived on bicycles but they had a heck of a lot of tanks to support them. Just how many did we have in Singapore? There was a small Indian unit that had old machines for training, but as for active combat units I believe the answer is a big fat zero.

Just for completeness dad was up by the race course at that time,

Bernard

[BlackRat]

43 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

That's a bit hard on Percival. He was only doing what he was told to do. In the end he disobeyed orders and surrendered in order to save lives, The map shows just why he had little choice. Many of the men died hating or suffered what was probably a worse fate and lived hating. It is only in the last few years that some of the truth has been revealed with the release of official documents. Much of what happened will never be made public. The IJA might well have arrived on bicycles but they had a heck of a lot of tanks to support them. Just how many did we have in Singapore? There was a small Indian unit that had old machines for training, but as for active combat units I believe the answer is a big fat zero.

Just for completeness dad was up by the race course at that time,

Bernard

Wasn't it something like 80,000 who were made to surrender?

British, Aussies and Indian troops.

 

You think he might have picked something up from Malaya, where over 40,000 were made to surrender.

 

We had a heck of a lot of men, amongst other things.

 

Absolute betrayal.

Edited August 27, 2020 by BlackRat

[JohnR]

I couldnt get past the appalling use of Marron coaches and a Green diesel on a train that was supposed to be on the West Coast Main Line to Glasgow. 

[The Stationmaster]

11 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Just watched; as you say, superb performances and so good that I forgave the railway anomalies.  A childhood friend had a father who was on the Burma Railway, and I know he never forgave what had happened to him there.  I always thought that some of this man's hatred (perhaps the only thing keeping him going) should have been directed at the High Command in Singapore under Percival, whose collective blindness, out and out racism, and denial of what was going as they were being invaded by what they thought were funny little chaps in glasses on bicycles while they sat behind guns pointing out to sea were as much a cause of the disaster of the Singapore loss as the Japanese Army.  He was ultimately denied the redemption that Lomax found, and died still hating; as Sid Vicious said, anger is an energy!

 

I have to say I would have had a special for the traitor Semphill, especially as he more or less got away with it, being a chum of Winston Churchill's. Despicable waste of a skin.

The myth about the big guns at Singapore only pointing out to sea was exactly that - a myth.  Most of them  could be trained to fire inland and they were fired across the Johore Strait/Straits of Johor at Japanese forces in Johore.  However the guns were primarily intended to engage naval targets and most of their ammunition was of the armour piercing  variety which was of little use for engaging land targets.

 

The entire Malayan campaign was a disaster for British forces - they were not trained in jungle fighting and stuck largely to the roads on the mainland while Japanese troops worked round them, often through rubber plantations or were landed from the sea.  The RAF was poorly equipped and outmatched by Japanese aircraft.  The original Far East naval forces had been stripped of some of its most useful vessels, particularly its entire submarine force which had been transferred westwards to reinforce the Mediterranean.  And Force Z sent to meet the Japanese threat was inadequate for the job while the remaining cruisers in the Far East suffered heavily in the Battle of the  Java Sea where a combined allied force was outgunned and sunk by Japanese cruisers.

 

Overall I think everyone underestimated the Japanese and ignored the evidence of Japan's military achievements in China - the capability of their aircraft was seriously underestimated, the power of their naval forces was virtually ignored, and the obvious military prowess of their army was also ignored or grossly underestimated.  The really big strategic mistake was continuing to heavily reinforce Singapore with a mainly infantry force some of which had hardly completed basic training with grossly inadequate artillery and anti-aircraft support.

 

The surrender of Singapore Island was inevitable and unavoidable once the Japanese had landed and managed to capture the reservoir which was the only supply of fresh water.  But it shows how badly the tactical situation was handled - for whatever reason - when Percival had no option left to surrender a force which outnumbered the Japanese by almost 3 to 1 and the Japanese had virtually run out of artillery ammuntion.   Was it Percival's fault - probably not because just about every other British General would have fared little better so it was as much down to poor training and lack of experience as anything else.  But the strategic error was far greater than anything that could be laid at Percival's door with the feeding in to Singapore Island of tens of thousands of often inexperienced troops who did little to enhance the fighting strength and a lot to add to the ration strength.  

 

Virtually all the decisions that led to the Japanese victory in Malaya and on Singapore Island were made a long way away from there and in many cases long before the outbreak of WWII.

[TheQ]

On 25/08/2020 at 20:17, Night Train said:

Just watched this film on iplayer. True story, superb acting. Highly recommended.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000lqh5/the-railway-man

 

There are numerous errors in the film compared to the book,, particularly where Lomax meets the Japanese guard at the end which is very different. 

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30688680930&searchurl=sortby%3D17%26tn%3Dthe%2Brailway%2Bman&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title1

[Bernard Lamb]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

The myth about the big guns at Singapore only pointing out to sea was exactly that - a myth.  Most of them  could be trained to fire inland and they were fired across the Johore Strait/Straits of Johor at Japanese forces in Johore.  However the guns were primarily intended to engage naval targets and most of their ammunition was of the armour piercing  variety which was of little use for engaging land targets.

 

 

 

  The really big strategic mistake was continuing to heavily reinforce Singapore with a mainly infantry force some of which had hardly completed basic training with grossly inadequate artillery and anti-aircraft support.

 

 

Just to pick up on these two points.

The Sultan of Johore was very rich and we needed to keep him on our side. The gun crews were forbidden to fire towards the area of his palace for fear of causing damage. 

Singapore had to be defended at all costs. If it fell then the Empire would fall was the political thinking. How right they were. We won the war but lost the peace.

Some of the troop ships that arrived in the last few weeks before the end were used to evacuate people. When the arriving troops saw RAF people boarding the ships to get out, they knew that they had been dropped in it and were just pawns in a political game.

I have an unpublished account of the battle by one of the most senior front line officers that tells the story hour by hour. Grim reading. Unfortunately I am not allowed to quote from it. There are still things that the authorities would prefer not to be known.

Bernard 

[The Johnster]

I was a bit harsh on Percival (not as harsh as my father would have been), but the British defence of Malaya seems not to have been the British Army's proudest moment from the outset; I am sure that a more pro-active and adaptive approach could have held the Japanese back and possibly resisted them.  Imagine the difference a successful defence of Singapore would have made to the Far East and Pacific theatres.    Similarly, it is my view that a more aggressive stance by the British and French in late 1939 might have prevented Hitler's westward assaults and made him turn on Russia a year earlier than he did.

 

What ifs are irrelevant and there's no point in regretting it now; what happened happened, and the repercussions are still being felt.  Percival was indeed hampered by perceptions on the other side of the world and the belief that Singapore was impregnable; the film clip of him throwing down the Union Flag in disgust as he is marched away by Japanese officers is highly expressive and very telling of the disgust he must have felt at his abandonment.

 

I am unrepentant in my view of Semphill, who should undoubtedly have been shot as a traitor; in fact, as a member of the nobility, I'd like to have seen him hanged, drawn, and quartered in a public execution, and I'm not a supporter of the death penalty...  If you take the most charitable view possible of the matter, you might say that his enthusiasm for the potential of air power as projected from carriers made him vulnerable to a friendly, enthusiastic, and supportive Japanese approach, which got the better of him, but I don't take the most charitable view and even if I did it does not excuse blatant and flagrant treason, and an intolerable use of a position of trust and power.  He was an anti-Semite, and not alone in that in the British ruling classes at a time when such attitudes were not as shameful as they should have been, but did not overtly support the Nazis, so he must have been calculating and aware in the execution of his treason; the Kriegsmarine seemed less interested in carriers than the IJN.

 

The IJN had realised early that aircraft carriers would be of great benefit to a nation that wanted to halt American expansion in the Pacific so as to build a South East Asian and Chinese empire.  Semphill readily advised on technical aspects of the design and operation of the ships, and the successful Japanese assault on Pearl Harbour owes much to him.  One wonders if the Americans had realised this at the time if they would have been so supportive of our intentions in their war against Germany; remember, the Americans never declared war on Germany, Germany declared on them (even without retrospection, this was not the most intelligent thing Hitler ever did).  

 

Semphill was also instrumental in betraying the finer points of the defence of Singapore to his Japanese friends, and his advice on bombing ships at sea may have been a factor in the loss of 'Prince of Wales' and 'Repulse'.  His treason cost us dear, and MI5 were aware of him, yet Churchill protected him and kept his doings out of the realm of public and even political awareness (I doubt if most of Semphill's fellow peers knew), and he was never brought to any sort of account for his treachery,

 

I blame him far more than I blame Percival.

7 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

There are still things that the authorities would prefer not to be known.

This does not surprise me in the least.

 

I can be pretty cynical about Churchill on occasion (my parents hero-worshipped him, and a great aunt that lived in Tonypandy never forgave them for it) and the loss of 'Prince of Wales' and 'Repulse', the capital units Churchill sent to reinforce Singapore, were, and I mean no slight whatever to their officers or crews, not the most effective in the fleet and thus could be 'spared', even sacrificed.  'Prince of Wales' had never been properly refitted after her encounter with 'Bismark' and had never worked up to full efficiency as a fighting ship; this was in no way the fault of her men, there had simply not been time.  'Repulse' was fully effective, an old hand at the game, but that was the problem, she was obsolete, and despite brilliant avoidance maneuvering (quoted as 'thrown around like a destroyer), vulnerable to air attack. To claim that those ship and lives were sacrificed in a political move by Churchill would be a terrible thing to do, but IMHO he was ruthless enough to be party to such an act.  Remember the 'Lusitainia'; after the Germans declared that they were going to sink British ships on sight, the then First Lord of the Admiralty commented to the effect that some merchant shipping would get into trouble with American citizens aboard and that this was to be hoped for; his basic policy in both wars was to draw the Americans in on our side.

 

At the time of 'Prince of Wales' loss, 'King George V' was in full commission, 'Duke of York' was working up, and 'Anson' was not too far off completion.  'Prince of Wales' needed extensive and expensive refit and may have been thought of as a liability.  Much of Singapore's defence seems to have been impressive, but ineffective; obsolete equipment, untrained men, not enough tanks, a long way from London.  Perhaps the impact of the Japanese entry to the hostilities had not hit fully home in London yet (it was about to!).  Compared to the efforts to relieve and hold Malta, which my father was directly involved in (he was 3/O of MV Melbourne Star, one of the ships in Operation Pedestal), Singapore, the lynchpin of the Empire, seems to have been regarded as more of an irritation by Churchill, until it's loss.  

 

A line in the film has Lomax saying to his mate 'I believe we have just witnessed the end of the British Empire', which in the light of the events of the next 30 years or so seems to have been just about on the mark.

[62613]

16 hours ago, The Johnster said:

 

I have to say I would have had a special for the traitor Semphill, especially as he more or less got away with it, being a chum of Winston Churchill's. Despicable waste of a skin.

Agree with that; how on earth did the government allow him to carry on, even after we were at war with the Japanese?

 

As for our army in Malaya; you can have as many men as you like, but if they are tied to roads and they have no air cover, you've had it. Besides, they weren't really trained for combat in the jungle, which the Japanese had no problem with; they infiltrated round any defensive position and established roadblocks in the British rear. They then had to fight their way out, or surrender. Slim had the same problem in Burma at least until early 1943, and had to remake his army, and let his troops see for themselves that they could survive off-road before he turned the tide.

[simontaylor484]

The whole of the campaign was sadly a disaster. Operation Boomerang removed the more trained soldiers for the home front and the North African campaign. Sadly the barely trained replacements sadly we're virtually delivered into horrific captivity.

       The Naval and Air support was also in the same sort of state Brewster Buffalo fighters that were no match for the Zero. The Naval units suffered with no Air cover the loss of capital ships such as Prince of Wales and Repulse to air power alone prove that.

Imphal and Kohima were the turning point for the British Army proving they  would stand and fight the Japanese and not retreat. 

 

I agree with Johnster that Semphill should have been executed for treason

Edited August 27, 2020 by simontaylor484
Missing text

[adb968008]

Singapore and the whole Thai Malay peninsula is a fascinating place.

Britain did not give enough support to the region, simple as, my guess it was deliberate or sheer arrogance.

They completely under estimated Japan, since 1937 in Shanghai, the warning signs were there, just ignored... Japan managed even greater achievements than Germany.. Shanghai was already 1000 miles from Japan, troops battle hardened 2 years before WW2...they just continued heading south, spread into the pacific building on the established ports, including already captured Hong Kong as they went and travelled another 1000 miles south, then a further 1500 miles down Thailand to Singapore.

 

Japan crossed nearly 5000 miles square, all down the pacific, inland china, Germany managed barely 1500 miles from Berlin, with far superior weaponry.

 

Without enough resources the British were doomed, Sending 2 ships to protect a 5000 mile region is pointless. As soon as the Japanese sunk the Prince of Wales and Repulse they must have known back in the UK all they were fighting for was time and left the region to its fate.

 

Percival was running a collapsing bag, saving resources in a retreat to Singapore to allow as many to get out as possible... Once in Singapore his back was literally in the water.  A 1000 mile retreat, culmulating in 1 million people crammed into a small part of southern Singapore, not much bigger than Canary Wharf.
 

Could he have held out.. sure he could have traded soldiers lives for more time, but no help was coming over the horizon, and with Japanese soldiers able to thrive off the peninsular, access to water and ultimately get supplies via Malaysia unopposed, the only help Percival could get would be Australia (via Japanese occupied half of Indonesia) or down the Thai/Malay peninsula occupied by Japan... Any ships trying would have been lost enroute to Singapore.

 

Was it deliberately abandoned, I believe so, the UK wasnt able to save the Channel islands from Hitler, they too were abandoned. Britain was defeated in Normandy,  they were losing to Germany in the Atlantic to U-Boats, the Africa campaign was on going.. in short they couldn't fight every war everywhere and didn’t have enough resources. Don't forget even the Americans were in retreat from the Philippines.
 

British Empire was a mobile force like Japans, which is its weakness, they didnt have a big enough military, equipment to maintain a strong hold over territory gained, and at peace, whilst expanding forwards, instead it creates focal points with resources as required. The result is weak defences over time, “our man in Penang” was simply that, 1 guy on his tod holding some old rope.. Britain is militarily weak at this type of behaviour, Japan simply exploited that, Argentina did the same in 1982, China is able to do that with HK politically now, over time the same will happen in Gibraltar, of course Covid did the same to our health system this year.

 

The same mentality exists today in the region with the US and China, at some point China will kick the US presence out of the region in quite an embarrassing fashion. It started with the Spratlys and will go on until it ends in Singapore and take everything from India’s border west to Guam in the east, with them including Korea and Japan too.
Right now China is calculating when it is strong enough to think it can do it and maintain it, (which could be decades), its already absorbing HK, at some point Taiwan will follow, which I would Imagine China will calculate the US will protect less over time, and that a portion of Taiwanese will attracted to PRC from ROC loyalty making it easier...Then follows disputed Japanese islands. They will likely buy influence and ultimately end in a stand off with the Philippines, promote a unified Korea and seek reabsorbing Indo China with the Middle kingdom, leaving The Malay Peninsula and its vast oil reserves “to be defended”.

 

The US will then have to decide when and if its going to take it back and how far they will let China go before intervening, my guess would be Japan and Singapore, the rest would be “observation” and rhetoric

As regards the film, absolutely brilliant, but the rolling stock choices were a bit unforgivable, considering the film is about a Railway enthusiast.. i’m sure the real Mr Lomax would never have tolerated that level of inaccuracies, even worse considering for the UK pieces everything exists, including appropriate mainline approved locos and stock (in 2012/13 Filming)  for ascending Shap as in the 1970’s. From the portrayal of his character, i’m sure he would have had words with the filmset designers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 27, 2020 by adb968008

[62613]

11 hours ago, simontaylor484 said:

 

Imphal and Kohima were the turning point for the British Army proving they  would stand and fight the Japanese and not retreat. 

 

I agree with Johnster that Semphill should have been executed for treason

The "Admin Box" battle in Arakan in 1943 was the turning point; Slim proved to his own troops that they could survive in the jungle, even if surrounded; by insisting that they stayed where they were, and he would arrange air supply, the Japanese were worn down and eventually had to retreat.

 

Imphal anf Kohima were the result of a last gasp offensive by the Japanese; they were being strangled logistically by the US submarine campaign and the requirement for troops elsewhere. Again (according to his memoirs, anyway) he was quite happy for the Japanese to attack him in Eastern Bengal, where he had few supply problems, and then to defeat them on the wrong side of the border between India and Burma. It would then be easier to counter-attack in turn. His problem was that the Japanese offensive began a month earlier than he bargained for, and his defensive preparations weren't complete. 

[Bernard Lamb]

Examples of stock used on the railway. There are several plinthed locomotives in different places and the Australians have opened a museum and visitor centre near the infamous cutting. It is strange to see the area of the railway turned into some strange theme park with the Bridge on the River Kwai being a major tourist destination.

Imagine a 3-4 day journey with around 60 men in each van in temperatures in the high 30s and no clue as to where you were going.

Bernard

[Bernard Lamb]

Getting back to the topic.

At around the time that  the film was first released I had lunch with one of the people who worked on it as a technical advisor on the military detail. They gave me a fascinating account as to how Colin Firth would prepare for shooting a scene. It would seem that he works very hard to achieve the desired result. Vey much a perfectionist of the method acting school.

Bernard

[The Johnster]

On 27/08/2020 at 21:47, adb968008 said:

 

Japan crossed nearly 5000 miles square, all down the pacific, inland china, Germany managed barely 1500 miles from Berlin, with far superior weaponry.

It is interesting (by which I mean outright terrifying) how close the German's furthest eastern advance into Russia and Japan's furthest western advance into China came to meeting up with each other, which would have enabled the major axis powers to supply each other and led to a very different outcome to the war.  The distance is nothing by Asian standards, 600 miles or so.  Very fortunately for us, and for the entire population of the Asian continent, this 600 miles is over the Pamir and Hindu Kush, about the worst possible terrain on the planet for military conquest or supply routes.  The Burma road would have been a suburban driveway to what the axis would have had to build there; slave labour deaths would have been in possibly the hundreds of millions as the logistics of feeding the labour force would have been impossible in such terrain.  

 

All possible 'what if' outcomes from this scenario vary between complete catastrophe to even worse.  By the time the axis implodes into the warlordism that has always been the default in most of Asia for much of history as a result of corruption and Nazi racism towards the Japanese, they develop nukes about the same time as us, allowing them to fall into the hands of the warlords just as their empire disintegrates.  We are all dead by about 1955, and I don't have to worry about the 94xx any more...

[simontaylor484]

Last time i was in Chester we visited the military museum there they had the pen given to Percival by Mcarthur at the surrender ceremony on the Missouri