Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2011 | Page 35

Island Life - February/March 2011

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Jim Long pictured 1940 on his 16H Norton

Jim Long pictured (right) with George Cricket in
Amanouga Barracks, 50 miles from Bombay (1941)
hungry, so we ate it,” he said.
Amazingly, and purely by coincidence, Jim was re-united
with his bothers Bill and Len during the war. And when Jim
was hit across the head with a shovel by a guard, Bill raised
his hand in retaliation, and it was Jim who restrained him, to
save him from a bad beating.
Bill and Len had been working alongside each other for
some time, before they were spotted by Jim just after the
completion of the bridge over the River Kwai, towards the
end of 1943. So all three brothers were finally re-united
thousands of miles from home, by which time their father
Frederick, living back home on the Island, had received
three separate telegrams to inform him his sons were missing
presumed dead – James Arthur, William Frederick and
Leonard Harry.
Jim was one of the few prisoners who worked on the
railway throughout its entirety. He was captured on February
15, 1942, moved to Thailand in the September and began
work on the railway the following month. He remained there
until August, 1945.
One day he woke up feeling terrible, and discovered he had
malaria. But he also noticed that outside the wooden hut
that was the accommodation it had gone quiet. There were
no work parties going out, and no Japanese guards around.
A couple of days later a British plane flew overhead and an
officer parachuted down to the prisoners. He delivered the
news they had all been desperately waiting to hear: the war
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