View source for Through the Valley of the Kwai

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'''''Through the Valley of the Kwai''''' (also published under the titles ''Miracle on the River Kwai'' and ''To End All Wars''<ref>[http://www.pauladams.org/blog/storiesernestgordon/ ''Ernest Gordon, a RemarkableMman of Forgiveness and Endurance'']; pauladams.org; accessed April 1, 2019</ref>) is the [[autobiography]] of the Scottish captain [[Ernest Gordon]], and recounts the experiences of [[faith]] and hope of the men held in a [[Japan]]ese [[prisoner of war]] [[labour camp]], building the [[Burma Railway]] during [[World War II]].
==Dusty Miller==
Dusty Miller was a British [[prisoner of war]] (POW) in [[Thailand]] conscripted to work on the Burma Railway during the last three and a half years of World War II. His life and death is attested to in Gordon's book.  Miller was a gardener from [[Newcastle Upon Tyne|Newcastle]] and a [[Methodist]]. Like Gordon, he was in the [[Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders]], but was drafted into the Military Police or "Red Caps".  He became known to Ernest Gordon during a period early on in their three-and-a-half-year incarceration under the [[Empire of Japan|Japanese]].  Gordon was seriously ill, and was attended to by Miller and "Dinty" Moore, a [[Roman Catholic]] POW.  In their care, Gordon unexpectedly recovered. Through the examples of Miller and Moore, the recovery of Gordon, and the self-sacrificing examples of numerous others, both faith and hope were restored to many soldiers in the death camps.
===Death===
At the war's end, Gordon was the sole survivor of the three. Upon liberation, he sought news of his friends. He found that Miller had been [[Christian martyrs|martyred]] two weeks before the war's end, [[Crucifixion|crucified]] by a Japanese guard because of his faith.<ref>Gordon, Ernest. ''Miracle on the River Kwai''. Collins Fount Paperbacks, 1977, p. 173</ref>
Near the end of the war, Dinty Moore was being transferred on a Japanese vessel that should have had Red Cross markings because it was a POW ship, not a warship. An Allied submarine sank it, not knowing that it was a POW ship. <ref>[https://www.canaacademy.org/blog/ernest-gordon-building-heaven-in-the-midst-of-pow-hell  Cana Academy, canaacademy.org, Ernest Gordon: Building Heaven in the Midst of POW Hell, by Joseph Wood, October 27, 2017]</ref>
==In popular culture==
The book was also adapted into a film in 2001 under the title ''[[To End All Wars]]''.
==See also==
* ''[[The Bridge over the River Kwai]]'', a novel
* ''[[The Bridge on the River Kwai]]'', a film
* [[Silence (Endō novel)|''Silence'' (Endō novel)]], a historical novel
== References ==
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==External links==
* [http://www.pauladams.org/Stories/ErnestGordon.htm Ernest Gordon's ''To End All Wars'']
[[Category:British autobiographies]]
[[Category:Memoirs of imprisonment]]
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