Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey was the senior British officer concerned with the building of the notorious \"Bridge over the River Kwai.\" This responsible and dangerous position forced him to make many critical decisions, but his dilemma was not that presented by Pierre Boulle in his fictional work. Toosey understood form the very beginning that he only real issue was how to ensure that s many of his men as possible should survive their captivity. He appreciated to the full that he bridge would be built with or without his co-operation and set himself the task of mitigating the terrible conditions under which the work was to be completed. Many thousands who knew how Toosey stood up to their oppressors at great personal risk were incensed by Alec Guinness's brilliant portrayal of 'Colonel Nicholson' in the film version of Boulle's book. The present work is designed to provide an accurate historical account of the terrible events during which more than 16,000 POWs died while building the Thai-Burma railway, of which \"the bridge\" formed an essential part. It also places the whole sorry episode into a correct historic perspective, to demonstrate how one, rather special, individual reacted when faced with an immense responsibility.A memorial to Toosey, this book is also a definitive history of the building of the railway in the context of the Far Eastern theatre of World War II.>