Macalester College DigitalCommons@Macalester College Book Chapters Captive Audiences/Captive Performers 2014 Chapter 5. "The aT markan Players Present ": Tamarkan Convalescent Camp Sears Eldredge Macalester College Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/thdabooks Recommended Citation Eldredge, Sears, "Chapter 5. "The aT markan Players Present ": Tamarkan Convalescent Camp" (2014). Book Chapters. Book 17. http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/thdabooks/17 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Captive Audiences/Captive Performers at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Book Chapters by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 152 Chapter 5: “The Tamarkan Players Present” Tamarkan Convalescent Camp It was early December 1943 when Brigadier General Arthur Varley and the first remnants of A Force from Burma arrived at their designated convalescent camp in Tamarkan, Thailand, after a long journey by rail. As their train traversed the wooden bridges and viaducts built by their counterparts, they passed the construction camps where the POWs in Thailand anxiously awaited their own redeployment back to base camps. When they entered Tamarkan, they found a well-ordered camp with a lean-to theatre left by the previous occupants. Backstory: October 1942–November 1943 Tamarkan was “the bridge camp”—the one made famous by David Lean’s film The Bridge on the River Kwai, based on the novel by Pierre Boulle.i There were, in fact, two bridges built at Tamarkan: first a wooden one for pedestrian and motor vehicle traffic that served as a temporary railway trace until the permanent concrete and steel railway bridge could be completed just upriver of it.