Bill Slape, Manager of the Hellfire Pass Museum.

Bill Slape, who managed the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum in Kanchanaburi, Thailand, suffered a fatal herat attack on the weekend while swimming.

A service will be held tomorrow, Tuesday 15 May from 1pm at Christ Church Bangkok, 11 Convent Road. Bathing rights will be held from Wednesday 16 May – Friday 18 May from 19.30 at Taewasankhalam (Wat Neua) Thanon Baak Phrae, Baan Neua Kanchanaburi. There will be a cremation service at 1pm on Saturday, 19 May.

In 2009, the Vietnam Swans visited the Hellfire Pass Museum as part of our ANZAC Tour to Thailand.

While the Vietnam Swans did not know Bill, via the Thailand Tigers, we have requested that our deepest sympathies and condolences be passed on to his family and friends.

The Vietnam Swans visited the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum in 2009 when we travelled to Thailand for the ANZAC Day Dawn Service and footy match against the Tigers. This was our 2009 ANZAC Weekend, one like no other. It left an indelible impression on each of us for the rest of our lives.

In 2010, John Williams of the NSW National Party remarked that Bill Slape is “always there to help in any way he can. He does a magnificent job of running the memorial facility” (click here for full story).

In 2009, the ABC’s World Today journalist, Kerry Percy asked Bill Slape how Hellfire Pass was named. The transcript of Bill’s reply is below:

Hellfire Pass.

(When) the men were working at night time, they could hear the hammering and the clamouring and the pith fires down in Hellfire Pass, and all the, the bamboo lanterns along the wall face of the pass itself, and men up top were saying it just looks like looking into the fires of hell, and that’s where it came from, from the prisoners of war during that period.

Bill Slape, through the museum, helped make a terrible history relevant to a new generation that has included the Vietnam Swans.

On that trip in 2009, while the Vietnam Swans did not meet Bill, we did get to meet another Bill who also made that terrible history relevant. That Bill was ex POW, Bill Haskell. Bill Haskell attended the ANZAC Dawn Service and our footy match. But it was at the Kanchanaburi War Cemetery Service where he made his greatest impression. That was where Bill H. delivered a speech like no other. Bill H, who died last year (see ex POW Bill Haskell passes on – as does his message), was determined that while people should forgive, they should never forget.

Bill’s speech was “extraordinary. Every measured and deliberate word in that speech was worth a thousand. Every word was more precise than a rifle bullet and more powerful than a rifle butt”.

The complete transcript of Bill Haskell’s speech is one of the most “searched for” posts on the Vietnam Swans’ website. As a tribute to Bill Slape and the work he did to tell the POW’s story through the museum, we include the opening few paragraphs of Bill Haskell’s speech from just three years ago:

Ex POW Bill Haskell, speaks at the 2009 ANZAC Day War Cemetery Service at Kanchanaburi, Thailand.

In Australia and New Zealand the 25^th April is known as ANZAC Day.

It is a day on which the two Nations pay tribute to our Servicemen and Servicewomen who lost their lives in defence of freedom.

We are therefore grateful to the Governments of the Kingdom of Thailand and the Union of Myanmar and their people for permitting us to honour those who died in their countries and have their remains interred in this cemetery (at Kanchanaburi) and that at Thanbuyazat.

These men died as Prisoners of War of the Japanese in World War II, during or as a result of, working on the Burma Siam Railway.

They died, in the main, through the sheer negligence of the Japanese in not supplying the basic food and medical supplies, in their inhumane and brutal treatment and in subjecting the prisoners to the absolute extreme of forced labour.

The prisoners were starved, overworked, exposed to diseases, harassed and brutally assaulted at the work place.

The established rules of warfare in relation to prisoners of war were abandoned completely in the frenzy to push the railway through.

We remember these men with great affection and deepest respect.

For those of us who were able to hear Bill Haskell’s speech, delivered with such determination and humanity, it was an utter privilege. Perhaps the one word that stood out was “inhumane”. Perhaps, the most emotional sentence was, “We remember these men with great affection and deepest respect…”. Bill served it to us with equal and palpable amounts of love, hurt and conviction in his voice.

We wish it could have been recorded so that others could hear first hand his spoken word.

• To read the rest of Bill Haskell’s extraordinary speech, click onto Ex POW, Bill Haskell, and his speech on ANZAC Day.
• To see photos of the 2009 ANZAC Cemetery Service at which Bill Haskell spoke, click here.
• To see a pictorial review of the Vietnam Swans’ 2009 ANZAC Tour to Hellfire Pass, Kanchanaburi War Cemetery, cruise on the River Kwai and the footy match, click here.

RIP Bill Slape and thank you for doing everything you could to pass on the message to us.