Try free for 30 days
-
Long Way Back to the River Kwai
- A Harrowing True Story of Survival in World War II
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from Wish List failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $22.99
No valid payment method on file.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also picked
-
1000 Days on the River Kwai
- The Secret Diary of a British Camp Commandant
- By: H. C. Owtram
- Narrated by: Trevor Winslow
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After being captured in Singapore and transported to the infamous Burma railway, Colonel Owtram was appointed the British Camp Commandant at Chungkai, one of the largest POW camps. Many ex-prisoners testified to the mental and physical courage that he showed protecting POWs from the worst excesses of their captors. Of course his account does not admit to this, but what is clear is that in addition to the deprivation and hardship suffered by all POWs, the author bore heavy responsibility for those under his charge and the daily trauma of dealing with the unpredictable Japanese.
-
Black Snow
- Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb
- By: James M. Scott
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: "If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals."
-
Legend
- A Harrowing Story from the Vietnam War of One Green Beret's Heroic Mission to Rescue a Special Forces Team Caught Behind Enemy Lines
- By: Eric Blehm
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Legend, acclaimed best-selling author Eric Blehm takes as his canvas the Vietnam War as seen through a single mission that occurred on May 2, 1968. A 12-man Special Forces team had been covertly inserted into a small clearing in the jungles of neutral Cambodia - where US forces were forbidden to operate. Their objective, just miles over the Vietnam border, was to collect evidence that proved the North Vietnamese Army was using the Cambodian sanctuary as a major conduit for supplying troops and materiel to the south via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
-
-
Pretty Good
- By Mick Rose on 15-12-2019
-
Bitter Peleliu
- The Forgotten Struggle on the Pacific War's Worst Battlefield
- By: Joseph Wheelan
- Narrated by: Mack Gordon
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In late 1944, as a precursor to the invasion of the Philippines, U.S. military analysts decided to seize the small island of Peleliu to ensure that the Japanese airfield there could not threaten the invasion forces. This important new book explores the dramatic story of this ‘forgotten’ battle and the campaign’s strategic failings. Bitter Peleliu reveals how U.S. intelligence officers failed to detect the complex network of caves, tunnels, and pillboxes hidden inside the island’s coral ridges.
-
-
Great yet horrifying account of a battle
- By DGC on 11-07-2023
-
Rampage
- MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila
- By: James M. Scott
- Narrated by: Jesse Einstein
- Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 29-day battle to liberate Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese forces that brutalized the civilian population. Landmarks were demolished, houses were torched, suspected resistance fighters were tortured and killed, countless women were raped, and their husbands and children were murdered. American troops had no choice but to battle the enemy, floor by floor and even room by room, through schools, hospitals, and even sports stadiums. In the end, an estimated 100,000 civilians lost their lives in the massacre.
-
-
Humanity at its worst!
- By Mr. A. M. O'donnell on 29-05-2024
-
Marine Raiders
- The True Story of the Legendary WWII Battalions
- By: Carole Engle Avriett
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States' first Special Forces unit in World War II was known as the Marine Raiders. As one Raider explained, Raiders learned a deadly proficiency with the bayonet, they learned to use knives in hand-to-hand combat, and they learned to throw them with the infallible accuracy of vaudeville experts. Marine Raiders gives a gripping account of what it took to become a member of the elite battalions known as Raiders and how they survived their desperate fight in the South Pacific.
-
-
thank you so much for this truly amazing true stor
- By Anonymous User on 13-05-2023
-
1000 Days on the River Kwai
- The Secret Diary of a British Camp Commandant
- By: H. C. Owtram
- Narrated by: Trevor Winslow
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After being captured in Singapore and transported to the infamous Burma railway, Colonel Owtram was appointed the British Camp Commandant at Chungkai, one of the largest POW camps. Many ex-prisoners testified to the mental and physical courage that he showed protecting POWs from the worst excesses of their captors. Of course his account does not admit to this, but what is clear is that in addition to the deprivation and hardship suffered by all POWs, the author bore heavy responsibility for those under his charge and the daily trauma of dealing with the unpredictable Japanese.
-
Black Snow
- Curtis LeMay, the Firebombing of Tokyo, and the Road to the Atomic Bomb
- By: James M. Scott
- Narrated by: L.J. Ganser
- Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Seven minutes past midnight on March 10, 1945, nearly 300 American B-29s thundered into the skies over Tokyo. Their payloads of incendiaries ignited a firestorm that reached up to 2,800 degrees, liquefying asphalt and vaporizing thousands; sixteen square miles of the city were flattened and more than 100,000 men, women, and children were killed. Black Snow is the story of this devastating operation, orchestrated by Major General Curtis LeMay, who famously remarked: "If we lose the war, we'll be tried as war criminals."
-
Legend
- A Harrowing Story from the Vietnam War of One Green Beret's Heroic Mission to Rescue a Special Forces Team Caught Behind Enemy Lines
- By: Eric Blehm
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Legend, acclaimed best-selling author Eric Blehm takes as his canvas the Vietnam War as seen through a single mission that occurred on May 2, 1968. A 12-man Special Forces team had been covertly inserted into a small clearing in the jungles of neutral Cambodia - where US forces were forbidden to operate. Their objective, just miles over the Vietnam border, was to collect evidence that proved the North Vietnamese Army was using the Cambodian sanctuary as a major conduit for supplying troops and materiel to the south via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
-
-
Pretty Good
- By Mick Rose on 15-12-2019
-
Bitter Peleliu
- The Forgotten Struggle on the Pacific War's Worst Battlefield
- By: Joseph Wheelan
- Narrated by: Mack Gordon
- Length: 12 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In late 1944, as a precursor to the invasion of the Philippines, U.S. military analysts decided to seize the small island of Peleliu to ensure that the Japanese airfield there could not threaten the invasion forces. This important new book explores the dramatic story of this ‘forgotten’ battle and the campaign’s strategic failings. Bitter Peleliu reveals how U.S. intelligence officers failed to detect the complex network of caves, tunnels, and pillboxes hidden inside the island’s coral ridges.
-
-
Great yet horrifying account of a battle
- By DGC on 11-07-2023
-
Rampage
- MacArthur, Yamashita, and the Battle of Manila
- By: James M. Scott
- Narrated by: Jesse Einstein
- Length: 21 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The 29-day battle to liberate Manila resulted in the catastrophic destruction of the city and a rampage by Japanese forces that brutalized the civilian population. Landmarks were demolished, houses were torched, suspected resistance fighters were tortured and killed, countless women were raped, and their husbands and children were murdered. American troops had no choice but to battle the enemy, floor by floor and even room by room, through schools, hospitals, and even sports stadiums. In the end, an estimated 100,000 civilians lost their lives in the massacre.
-
-
Humanity at its worst!
- By Mr. A. M. O'donnell on 29-05-2024
-
Marine Raiders
- The True Story of the Legendary WWII Battalions
- By: Carole Engle Avriett
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The United States' first Special Forces unit in World War II was known as the Marine Raiders. As one Raider explained, Raiders learned a deadly proficiency with the bayonet, they learned to use knives in hand-to-hand combat, and they learned to throw them with the infallible accuracy of vaudeville experts. Marine Raiders gives a gripping account of what it took to become a member of the elite battalions known as Raiders and how they survived their desperate fight in the South Pacific.
-
-
thank you so much for this truly amazing true stor
- By Anonymous User on 13-05-2023
-
Into Enemy Waters
- A World War II Story of the Demolition Divers Who Became the Navy SEALS
- By: Andrew Dubbins
- Narrated by: Basil Sands
- Length: 11 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Into Enemy Waters is the story of World War II's most elite and daring unit of warriors, the direct precursors to the Navy SEALs, told through the eyes of its last living member, ninety-five-year-old George Morgan. Morgan was just a wiry, seventeen-year-old lifeguard from New Jersey when he joined the Navy's new combat demolition unit, tasked to blow up enemy coastal defenses ahead of landings by allied forces. His first assignment: Omaha Beach on D-Day. When he returned stateside, Morgan learned that his service was only beginning.
-
Lost Airmen
- The Epic Rescue of WWII U.S. Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines
- By: Charles E. Stanley Jr.
- Narrated by: Qarie Marshall
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Late in 1944, 13 U.S. B-24 bomber crews bailed from their cabins over the Yugoslavian wilderness. Bloodied and disoriented after a harrowing strike against the Third Reich, the pilots took refuge with the Partisan underground. But the Americans were far from safe.
-
The Panzer Killers
- The Untold Story of a Fighting General and His Spearhead Tank Division's Charge into the Third Reich
- By: Daniel P. Bolger
- Narrated by: Stephen Mendel
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Two months after D-Day, the Allies found themselves in a stalemate in Normandy, having suffered enormous casualties attempting to push through hedgerow country. Troops were spent, and American tankers, lacking the tactics and leadership to deal with the terrain, were losing their spirit. General George Patton and the other top US commanders needed an officer who knew how to break the impasse and roll over the Germans - they needed one man with the grit and the vision to take the war all the way to the Rhine. Patton and his peers selected Maurice Rose.
-
-
Great Man great story
- By Anonymous User on 21-08-2022
-
Until the Eyes Shut
- Memories of a Machine Gunner on the Eastern Front, 1943-45
- By: Andreas Hartinger
- Narrated by: Tim H. Dixon
- Length: 5 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The rulers’ mistakes are paid for with the blood of the people. This is shown in history both recent and ancient, time and time again. It was no different for an Austrian mountain farmer’s son who was thrown into the carnage of the Eastern Front. He was in the prime of his youth, and the German Reich was already close to losing the war. In ripe-old age, he remembers those dark hours that have haunted him throughout his life.
-
-
detail accounts
- By Dieter L. on 24-04-2024
-
Against All Odds
- A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II
- By: Alex Kershaw
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism. Maurice “Footsie” Britt, a former professional football player, became the very first American to receive every award for valor in a single war. Michael Daly was a West Point dropout who risked his neck over and over to keep his men alive. Keith Ware would one day become the first and only draftee in history to attain the rank of general before serving in Vietnam. In WWII, Ware owed his life to the finest soldier he ever commanded, a baby-faced Texan named Audie Murphy.
-
-
Top class story telling
- By Pipc on 02-08-2023
-
I Escaped from Auschwitz
- The Shocking True Story of the World War II Hero Who Escaped the Nazis and Helped Save Over 200,000 Jews
- By: Rudolf Vrba, Alan Bestic, Sir Martin Gilbert - foreword, and others
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 17 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
April 7, 1944 - This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over 100 miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz.
-
-
Amazing story and perfect narrator
- By Anonymous User on 25-03-2024
Editorial reviews
While many know the fiction from having seen the movie Bridge On the River Kwai, few alive know the facts. Loet Velmans, a 17-year-old Dutch émigré was beaten, enslaved, and set to work on the Burmese railroad in camps where as many as 200,000 died. His memoir, performed with a tone of reasonableness that belies the story’s outrage, is one of a mental and emotional struggle. With a return to the River Kwai 57 years after an indomitable spirit allowed him to survive as a catalyst, Velmans searches for an answer to a paradox of humanity: How can one group of people impose near-unimaginable, inhumane horrors on another?/p>
Publisher's Summary
The astounding memoir of a World War II veteran who spent three and a half years in the slave-labor camps made famous by The Bridge on the River Kwai.
Loet Velmans was 17 when the Germans invaded Holland. He and his family fled to London on the Dutch Coast Guard cutter Seaman’s Hope and then sailed to the Dutch East Indies - now Indonesia - where he joined the Dutch army. In March 1942, the Japanese invaded the archipelago and made prisoners of the Dutch soldiers. For the next three and a half years Velmans and his fellow POWs toiled in slave-labor camps, building a railroad through the dense jungle on the Burmese-Thailand border so the Japanese could invade India. Some 200,000 POWs and slave laborers died building this Death Railway. Velmans, though suffering from malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and unspeakable mistreatment, never gave up hope. Fifty-seven years later he returned to revisit the place where he should have died and where he had buried his closest friend. From that emotional visit sprung this stunning memoir.
Long Way Back to the River Kwai is a simply told but searing memoir of World War II - a testimonial to one man’s indomitable will to live that will take its place beside the Diary of Ann Frank, Bridge over the River Kwai, and Edith’s Story.
More from the same
What listeners say about Long Way Back to the River Kwai
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 06-02-2023
Interesting story, reading of could be better..
The narrator needs to learn the difference between the words “gaol” and “goal”, as he continually refers to the Changi “goal”… He could also afford to learn how to pronounce words like “nougat” properly…maybe it’s an American thing… Oh well, if you can get past such blemishes, it’s an interesting listen.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!