In the valley of the Kwai River, somewhere in the jungles of Myanmar and Thailand, the Reverend Ernest Gordon suffered tremendous hardships and emerged with an unshakable faith in the human spirit. Through three and a half years of life as a prisoner of war in a Japanese camp during World War II, the former Dean of the Chapel suffered from diphtheria, malaria, typhoid, dysentery, intestinal worms and Beri Beri.
Gordon's spirit suffered as well. He saw men beaten, starved to death, bayoneted and beheaded. Yet, somehow Gordon survived both emotionally and physically. His arduous journey to find faith in a forsaken land is the focus of the new movie "To End All Wars," opening Feb. 28.
The movie is based on Gordon's autobiography, "Through the Valley of the Kwai," later renamed "Miracle on the River Kwai" and recently re-released as "To End All Wars." Unfortunately, Gordon did not live to see the finished movie. He died one year ago, tomorrow, at 85.
"To End All Wars" follows the experiences of a group of four soldiers in a Japanese war camp from their capture to their eventual freedom. Before freedom is gained, however, the soldiers go through many trying ordeals and band together to form a tight knit group of friends in a hostile environment.
The producer of the movie, Jack Hafer of Gumshoe Productions, first read Gordon's book in 1968 when he was in college. For thirty years he wrote a Christmas card to Gordon, wishing him well and asking for the rights to the movie. Finally, in 1998, his years of determination paid off.
"The story of what these guys overcame — to still keep going in life and find meaning in the worst of situations — it really challenged me to look at how I was living," Hafer said.
Gordon was born in Scotland in 1916 and grew up in a lighthouse on the River Clyde. After studying history and philosophy at Glasgow and St. Andrews Universities, he joined the Royal Air Force. A year later, in 1938, he joined the Army as part of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and was sent to Singapore.
When Singapore fell to the Japanese, he and some of his unit escaped on an old sloop. After eight weeks of starving on the high seas, they surrendered to a Japanese warship. For the next three and a half years, they worked to build the Siam-Burma railroad through the jungles for Japan. The railroad was also known as the Railroad of Death.
During his years of captivity, Gordon saw many of his friends executed in cold blood. "[One] knelt, bared his neck, and the Samurai sword flashed in the sun," Gordon was quoted as having said in his New York Times obituary.
The prisoners had to work together to survive. When Gordon fell terribly sick, his friends moved him to higher ground — the camp morgue. They gave him part of their rations, which was a single lump of rice per day.
Their sacrifices inspired him. He became camp chaplain and began the Jungle University. As shown in the film, Gordon taught from Plato's Republic. Another prisoner knew some Shakespeare, so that was added to the curriculum.
Gordon returned from the war and spent several years at home recovering from his illnesses. He married his wife, Helen Robertson, and came to the United States. In 1955, he became the Dean of the Chapel at the University.
The most amazing thing about Gordon's experiences is what he did with them afterwards. Instead of turning to anger and hatred, he learned to keep going, said his son, Alastair, a writer.
"Selfishness, hatred, jealousy, and greed were all anti-life," Gordon wrote in later life. "Love, self-sacrifice, mercy, and creative faith, on the other hand were the essence of life, turning mere existence into living in its truest sense."
"There are a lot of guys who went through what he went through at the camps, but didn't become what he became," Hafer said.
For 26 years, Gordon worked to provide a voice to civil rights and peace. He brought the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to campus twice to preach at the chapel. He voiced opinions against Senator Joseph McCarthy. He urged students to protest the Vietnam War by laying their draft cards on the altar of the chapel.
"He was a man of incredible character. Some of the stands he took while he was at Princeton — that was radical. He was always pretty frustrated with the concept of war. He took a pretty strong stand against rushing into war," said Hafer.
Even after retirement, he continued to work for peace and human rights. As president of the Christian Rescue Effort for the Emancipation of Dissidents, he helped hundreds of religious dissenters escape persecution in Eastern Europe and the former U.S.S.R.
"Dad as a Christian very much believed in forgiveness," said Alastair. "But he also reminded me, 'You never forget. Forgive is one thing and forget is another. You've got to remember.' "
"I wonder how long it took him after the war to learn how to keep going," he added. "His Christian spirit, I think it evolved over quite a long period of time."
Alastair remembers that his cousin saw his father first return from the war when she was still a little girl. She thought he was a black man because he had turned so dark in the jungle sun. Because Gordon had bad dreams of his experiences, she was not allowed to go near him at night.
Three years ago, Alastair accompanied his father to Thailand and revisited a lot of the sites of his imprisonment, an experience he referred to as "amazing."
"It was very upsetting and emotional for him to be there," Alastair said of his father. "Seeing the graves of these 19, 20 year olds buried there and knowing that he was able to go on and live into his 80's was difficult for him."
The father and son also visited a cave overlooking the river while they were in Thailand. It was the same cave that four of Gordon's fellow prisoners had hidden in during an attempted escape. The four men were soon found and executed.
Ciaran McMenamin is the actor who plays Gordon in the film. A young, up and coming star, McMenamin never got a chance to meet the man he portrayed. A meeting was planned for the week of Sept. 11, but after the tragedy, no more plans were made.
"He really understood the role, had researched it thoroughly and he knew Ernest's background and the cities he grew up in," Hafer said.
At the memorial services, a copy of the still-unfinished film was shown. The audience was awed and touched.
"It's very powerful. Maybe it's too real, it's too intense. It's a very antiwar message. It's a real message of what it's like to go through war," Alastair said.
Alastair, a writer, is currently writing a book about his father's postwar life.
"It's a father-son story, about how people live with these kinds of really traumatic memories. How you go on and make a life," he explained.
"He was a great man. Just a great father, a wonderful man," Alastair remembered.
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