Ernest Gordon (1916–2002)

## Review
Starved and abused to the point of death by his Japanese captors, Captain Ernest Gordon recounts in "To End All Wars" how he and his fellow prisoners of war found not only a reason to live but a new way to live in the midst of hell on earth.
In gruesome detail, the author brings us with him into the jungles of Thailand and shows how, in a hopeless situation, the soldiers were able to "find a way of life that proved to be vital, meaningful, and beautifully sane."

The book was originally published in 1963 as "Through the Valley of the River Kwai" and was one of the sources for the movie "Bridge Over the River Kwai" as well as the more recent movie "To End All Wars" for which this book was renamed.
It was the movie that made me want to read the book and must say that the although the movie took a lot of license, they both tell the same story.
Having read the book, I now want to go back and watch the movie again.

This book will shock your sensibilities. It should make you sick. But it will keep you reading. Can we really be so cruel? Would you survive in the same situation? How would you respond? The book tells us how the Allied prisoners found faith and dignity in in a veritable hell.

## First Sentence
- I was dreaming, and I was happy with my dreams.

## Quotes
- The whole atmosphere of the Death House was anti-life; over it all was the miasma of decay, the promise of nothingness. pg 87
- Whether we like it or not, we are the ones who create the enemy and lose the neighbour. Mine enemy is my neighbor. pg 198
- The liberators were so infuriated by what they saw that they wanted to shoot the Japanese on the spot. Only the intervention of the victims prevented them. Captors were spared by their captives. pg 205
- We had been sent as boys to do men's work on the battlefield. Now that we returned as men we were offered boys' work. pg 221

## Final Sentence
- He comes into our Death House to lead us through it.… (mer)

If you watched the movie "Over the River Kwai," you have seen how Hollywood can take liberties with the truth. This book is the author's real experiences in a deadly jungle camp during WWII. It does not dwell on the excruciating details of torture and mistreatment, but I still found it difficult to read sometimes. Man's inhumanity to man!! The author was an agnostic who was transformed by the Christlike attitudes and behavior of two of his fellow sufferers. (He later became a minister in the Church of Scotland and dean of the chapel at Princeton in the USA. That's long after the events in the book, but I was encouraged by his triumphal use of the horrific events of his life.)… (mer)