Stephen Alexander - Telegraph Stephen Alexander, who has died aged 89, was a wartime prisoner of the Japanese and helped to build the notorious bridge over the river Kwai. In January 1942, Alexander, a subaltern serving with 135th (East Anglian) (Hertfordshire Yeomanry) Field Regiment RA TA (135 FR), disembarked at Singapore. The Japanese were already bombing troopships arriving and evacuee ships leaving. Hurricanes, which might have provided air cover, were shot up while still in their crates. After 16 days' fighting, the regiment was ordered to destroy their 25-pounder guns. Some 70,000 Allied troops surrendered to a Japanese force less than half their strength. Alexander, together with many thousands of British and Australian PoWs, was marched off to Changi jail. In November 1942 he and his comrades were crammed into cattle trucks, and for five days and nights sat, stood or squatted while the train made its way to Ban Pong in Thailand, a staging camp where the latrines were overflowing and the rotting huts leant drunkenly into the water. From there they moved to Tamarkan PoW camp, near Kanchanaburi. The camp had five long huts, each holding – packed tight – 300 men. Japanese and Koreans patrolled the perimeter fences. From eight in the morning until seven in the evening the prisoners worked, making the trace for the railway line two miles each side of the Kwai. This involved building a wooden bridge and then a concrete and steel bridge over the river, using only the most basic of tools. Unloading metal rails from the barges was back-breaking work, and mistakes were savagely punished. Deficiency diseases – beriberi and pellagra – were rife. Ringworm ate into the men's tattoos. Lice and bedbugs were enemies in the huts; outside, huge red centipedes and scorpions could make nasty wounds. Lt-Col Philip Toosey, who was in charge of the PoWs, refused to put up with intolerable conditions and insisted on winning the respect and co-operation of the Japanese. Alexander, in his book, pays tribute to his courage, leadership and enterprise. Some relief was offered by the oriental landscape. Pom-poms puttered up the rivers; huge rafts floated down. Exotic trees – tamarisk and kapok, coconut palms, mangoes and papayas – grew along the banks. Small boys scrubbed water buffaloes, and women wearing garments of vivid colours washed clothes. One evening, two of Alexander's brother officers stood talking, pointing to the hills and bends in the river and saying wistfully how much the scene reminded them of Henley. A furious guard, suspecting that they were discussing an escape route, leapt on them, jabbing at them with his bayonet. They were made to kneel on rolling bamboos and then put into "ovens" for the night. There were regular blitzes on hoarding. One day, Alexander was beaten up by a Korean guard known as "the Undertaker". The guard was astute, and a rigorous body search of a line of men was usually concluded with a tap on the hat. Sometimes, a concealed egg would flow down the soldier's rigid features. The coolness of the monsoon season, the fertility of the surrounding farms and the friendliness of the indigenous people encouraged thoughts of escape. Six men made a break for it. All were recaptured, and four disappeared without trace. Two were brought back to the camp roped together and executed. In May 1943 Alexander and his comrades were moved 70 miles upriver to Kin Sai Yok. After a brief journey in open railway trucks, they had to march the rest of the way, staggering under a mountain of kit with blistered feet, aching backs and a rasping thirst, their sores beset by flies, salt sweat soaking and congealing by turns. On arrival, they found sagging, ramshackle huts and pools of swill, rice and excrement. They had to work flat-out all day to erect a wooden bridge and a viaduct and to blast cuttings through rock. With the coming of the rains, conditions worsened. The huts leaked, latrines overflowed, the dynamite was damp, fires for brewing up were difficult to light. The men got sick. The Japanese, desperate to link Bangkok to Moulmein by rail, grew frantic. No one was excused work. In June, cholera struck. Men who were taken ill in the morning could be dead by nightfall. Protests at the PoWs' treatment were countered by reminders that Japan had not signed The Hague Convention and that the prisoners were lucky to have had their lives spared at Singapore. Honourable men, the Japanese insisted, would have committed hara-kiri. Alexander got a jungle ulcer on his leg and became immobilised. He was evacuated to hospital at Kanchanaburi, where he was found to be a cholera carrier. By early September he had recovered and was moved to Konkuita on the Burmese border. By the end of the year he was at Hindato, 40 miles away, doing line maintenance and felling trees. In January 1945 he returned to Kanchanaburi. As defeat loomed, the Japanese heaped more humiliations on their prisoners, denying them books, writing implements, paper, notebooks and diaries. Alexander kept a pencil in the lining of his fly buttons. In July, following a 30-mile march carrying all his kit, he arrived exhausted at Nakhon Nayok, north-east of Bangkok. Rescue came soon afterwards with the dropping of the atom bomb. Stephen Crighton Alexander, the son of a GP and the youngest of eight children, was born in Bristol on October 3 1919. He was educated at Clifton College, where he was a keen hurdler and rugby player, before going up to Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he read Medicine and then switched to Estate Management. After the war he joined the British Council and served in Medellin, Bogota, Tehran, Beirut, Hong Kong, London, Guyana, Barcelona, Caracas, Nicosia, Ankara and Madras. He was a talented theatre director and staged plays and musicals in all his postings. In retirement he lived in Bristol. He had a love of poetry as well as film and ecclesiastical architecture. In 1995 he published Sweet Kwai Run Softly, an account of his wartime experiences. Stephen Alexander died on June 14. He married, first, in 1947 (dissolved), Germaine van der Wyck. He married, secondly, in 1984, Ruth Thomas, who survives him with three sons and a daughter of his first marriage.
