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Paul Hurdsfield - Joint Manchester AO

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Back in January I drove to the Bridge on the river Kwai just like Jezza and crew. only i did it from Pattaya 300k and 51/2 hours.

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Hellfire pass.

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My dad built a place to live near Pattaya and was always showing us amazing photos and video of Thailand

I was amazed at how small the bridge was

Isnt there a railway carved out of the mountain side thats nearby ?

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Thats where we're stood, Hellfire pass was cut out of the mountail by hand.

 

Bernie, if you've got the legs for it just do it :p

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Very emotional place due to number of young men who died there, I walked over the bridge and went on the train further towards Burma 

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It certainly is Tel, we walked over the bridge too.

A few years back we spent a few days on the Somme combined with a Le Mans trip, now that place is Emotional with a capital E.

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Visited Aushwitz and Dachau when I lived in Germany as a student, (we stayed in a flat rented from a German family of Polish/Jewish decent for a while, they were keen to educate us).

 

Those places get inside you somehow and pop up even years afterward. Had nightmares off and on for quite a while afterwards. Even now 26 or so years ago I can feel the tears burn my eyes just typing this.

 

Its a hell of a shock as a teenager to realiser that there is real, genuine pity less evil in the world, and that it doesn't come desguised as a movie monster.

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We've visited Sachsenhausen and Terezin in the last few years. Very sobering places which overwhelmingly demonstrate the enormous unpayable debt that we owe to those who fought, died or survived incarceration in such brutally cruel places. 

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Many years ago we were camping in France and were told to visit Oradour, as it was a French village that had been left just as it was in the Second world war. So we went stupidly expecting a preserved village. Was I wrong!! It was just as the Nazis left it after they had murdered and burnt everything in sight.

I am not a man who is prone to exaggeration, however, I swear there were no birds singing and there was something about the place that was deeply upsetting to me. Something that I have never felt before or want to again, as I type this I feel moved evne now many years after.

 

The link below tells the story but I have no doubt in my mind there are some places so touched by evil and suffering that makes the misery linger forever. I would never go to a concentration camp now as I fear the effect would be much worse on me.

 

http://www.oradour.info/

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Many years ago we were camping in France and were told to visit Oradour, as it was a French village that had been left just as it was in the Second world war. So we went stupidly expecting a preserved village. Was I wrong!! It was just as the Nazis left it after they had murdered and burnt everything in sight.

I am not a man who is prone to exaggeration, however, I swear there were no birds singing and there was something about the place that was deeply upsetting to me. Something that I have never felt before or want to again, as I type this I feel moved evne now many years after.

 

The link below tells the story but I have no doubt in my mind there are some places so touched by evil and suffering that makes the misery linger forever. I would never go to a concentration camp now as I fear the effect would be much worse on me.

 

http://www.oradour.info/

 

It was the opening scene and the closing scene for The World At War series.  Terrible, terrible story.

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