Colonel Bogey March
The film The Bridge on the River Kwai is famous for the whistled march of the soldiers in a Japanese interment camp during WW2. The song is called “The Colonel Bogey March” and the titular Colonel has a long history with Scottish lore, golf, and mocking dictators. How can one person have done so much? Easy, this person does not exist. Let me give you a little bit of Bogey history:
This all started with a Scottish goblin called a Bogle which referred to any number of spirit types that plague humans. These wee beasties didn’t necessarily kill humans, but instead enjoyed causing trouble along the lines of a gremlin. As time passed, a song called Bogey Man became popular and listeners were told to beware the Bogey Man (this became the Boogey Man in American stories).
If you have ever tried to play baseball or kickball when there weren’t enough players, you might have had to have an imaginary player on base. When I was a kid, we would call these markers a ghost man. “Ghost Man on second!” Well, when standardizing the scoring for a round of golf was established, the players imagined a ghost player that played an ideal game with a low score. This was developed at a military course in the UK, so their “ghost man” was called Bogey and he was given a rank so he could use the course, thus Colonel Bogey was born. As golf scores got lower, American’s demoted the score of the Colonel and his score was considered one more than ideal and the new ideal score was call par.
Eventually, a military man who golfed (and wasn’t very good) often lost to Colonel Bogey. In his frustration, he would not yell “fore” after a poor golf shot and instead whistle a two-note descending phrase which eventually became part of the tune for the Colonel Bogey March. The song was written by a British army bandmaster named Lieutenant J.F. Ricketts who witness this golf play. Ricketts published all of his works under the pseudonym Kenneth Alford since service personnel were not supposed to have jobs outside the military.
This famous march is featured in The Bridge on the River Kwai about the failing efforts of Japan to build a railroad that went from Burma to Thailand. The film is set in 1942, after the fall of Singapore, when Japan was already losing the war and building the railroad became a matter of honor. Abandoned British plans for building a bridge over the river were discovered by Japan so POWs were used to try and complete the project. In reality, the project was called “The Railroad of Death” because tens of thousands of prisoners were forced to build 250 miles of track in jungles filled with aggressive animals and practically impassible ground.
Many POWs never even made it to the railroad because they were shipped in packed trams and given cholera water to drink. Once in Burma, the men were marched over a mountain where thousands more died. Once at the camp, the captured soldiers were hanged, beaten, worked to death, died from disease and malnourishment, and killed by tigers. The railroad was actually finished in 18 months when the original plan was for 5 years.
The films depiction did not focus on the horrors of building most of the railroad, but focused on one section that was especially troublesome. The idea of the song was to demonstrate the “stiff upper lip” mentality of the British during WW2 (things are bad but just deal without complaining) since the song march had been given words that emasculated Axis power leaders, proclaiming their testicles did not work. The added lyrics go a little something like this:
“Hitler, has only got one ball. Goring, has two but very small. Himmler, is rather sim’lar, But poor old Goebbels, has no balls at all.”
The whistled song in the film was a big middle finger or two fingers (depending if you were American or British) to the camp supervisor and a message that their spirit was not broken. With all the history behind it, the song is simple and a little childish yet symbolic of undying spirit and thus a great moment in film. Thank you, Colonel Bogey, your memory and your spirit live on.
