RETURN TO THE RIVER KWAI (II)

I was born just after the Second World War .I was one of the ‘baby boomer’generation , as Bill Clinton described us , a child conceived to celebrate victory,the return of peace and the promise of a better world.I grew up on an air force camp in southern England.Every day,my father mounted his bicycle and pedalled to work on the camp,returning in the evening.Two doors away from us lived the Prosser family.The father,Teddy Prosser,was a rather puny ,withdrawn man who seldom spoke and who was frequently ill.I also noticed that he only worked mornings,returning home at lunchtime.I was a curious child and asked my mother why.
“ Oh,it’s because he worked on the railway in Burma when he was a prisoner of the Japanese.”