THEIR ordeal has always been overshadowed by a more famous episode of military history but the blood, sweat, tears – and deaths – were the same.
A team of archaeologists from Scotland is working to chart the remains of a Second World War jungle railway built by Allied prisoners of war as a tribute to the men who died.
The famous Burma railway claimed the lives of 16,000 Allied prisoners, a
nd its story was later told in the Hollywood movie The Bridge On The River Kwai.
The film was based on the horrors of Japan's attempts to control the Far East theatre of war by working 16,000 Allied prisoners to death building the line.
But hundreds of captured Allied servicemen – including captured members of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders – were also put to work on a 140-mile section of a line across central Sumatra, The island, now part of Indonesia, was seized by the Japanese army, which needed a railway to transport troops quickly through impenetrable jungle.
The stretch of railway between the river port of Pekanbaru and the town of Muara was completed on the day the war ended, with its construction in inhospitable terrain leading directly to the deaths of 700 Allied troops and thousands of local slave labourers. It was never used and large sections have been reclaimed by the jungle over the years.
Last month the Scottish team successfully traced most of the route of what has became known as the Sumatra "Death Railway" and are now preparing for a major series of digs to uncover forgotten war graves from an almost forgotten episode of the war.
Team leader Chris O'Connell, of Midlothian-based CRA Archeology, said: "This railway, if it was anywhere in Europe, would be a scheduled monument or even a war grave.
"As it is, it is almost forgotten and I think we owe it to the people who died building it to try to record its story for posterity.
"Indonesia is a poor country and doesn't have money for the upkeep of such a monument. That's why we think it is urgent that we fully document the physical aspects of the railway and its history."
O'Connell, whose Scottish team linked up with local and New Zealand researchers on the project, surveyed the route last month, despite being badly shaken – and nearly stranded – by the earthquake that killed thousands in the region.
The only clues they had for the route of the railway were a rough sketch made by a former Dutch prisoner and the odd rail dug up by locals to be used for fence posts. But local residents helped them to identify many of the original embankments, which are still used as tracks through paddy fields, rubber plantations and swamps.
Survivors have described how they were overworked, underfed, provided with little medicine, and subjected to constant physical and mental abuse by Japanese overseers.
The conditions for the PoWs and the local labourers, who were called Romushas, would have been gruesome, O'Connell said. "We were eaten alive by mosquitoes, we had to burn off leeches from our bodies and the heat was unbearable. But we got to get a cold beer at the end of the day. "
The Japanese plan was to create a 138-mile connection between the town of Pekanbaru, in the centre of Sumatra but connected by river to the Straits of Malacca, and an existing rail line, which ran to the city of Padang on the Indian Ocean.
The surrounding terrain was swamp, with numerous interlaced waterways, creeks and bayous and a terrible area on which to build railbeds, bridges and tracks. South of the town was dense towering jungle, complete with wild tigers and elephants. Compounding the prisoners' problems were the extreme equatorial heat and the rains of the spring monsoon.
From May to September 1944, the Japanese threw into this inhospitable area around 5,000 Allied prisoners who they had captured on Java two-and-a-half years earlier. Almost 4,000 had been in the Royal Dutch East Indies Army and close to 1,000 were British Army, Navy and Air Force personnel. Additionally, 200 Australians and 15 Americans, mostly merchant seamen whose ships had been sunk by a German raider, made up the total.
Prisoners of war died by the dozen of malnutrition, malaria and even infected rat bites. Conditions were among the worst encountered by British prisoners during the war and as bad as those faced by captured soldiers who built the Burma Railway.
Two Japanese officers were sentenced for war crimes offences for their part in building the Sumatra railway, the final spike of which was driven into the tracks on 15 August, 1945, the day Japan surrendered. It took guards weeks to tell their prisoners that the war was over.
The line, however, was never really used. O'Connell and his colleagues are now working on the theory that Japanese officers were simply paying lip service to orders to complete it, but at great cost to those who built it.
The team will return next year to try to uncover some of the graves of the servicemen and other slave labourers who died during its construction so the sites can be properly marked and maintained.
Remarkably, the Scots archaeologists came across a 93-year-old survivor of the atrocities, still living just 50 yards from the railway line.
"Damin had been taken from the neighbouring island of Java," O'Connell said. "He did not even know where to, and was made to work on the railway. He has still never been back to Java or seen his Javanese family. I was certainly tearful when I heard what he had to say. His story made our work far more real."
