Lieutenant Colonel ‘Weary’ Dunlop, an army doctor, was in command of about 1000 soldiers working on the Burma Thailand Railway in World War 11. The nickname was the reverse of the facts. Dunlop was six foot four inches tall, strongly built, and full of energy. Owing to ruthless Japanese tactics, about 100,000 men died in the construction of the railway. During this period of sickness and near starvation, Dunlop was an inspiration to his men.

From the religious point of view, Dunlop makes an interesting study. At his eulogy in a Melbourne cathedral, the Governor General, Sir Ninian Stephens, insists that ‘to many, his dedication to all that was good and his own sheer nobility of character seemed saintly, they set him apart.’

Yet Weary described himself as a ‘scoffer’.  In a conversation in one of the camps, Weary confided that he scoffed at what seemed necessary to many, religion, but he knows that it matters to them, and he respects that. In an introspective moment elsewhere, he thought that perhaps he is a lesser Christian than he was before the war, but he believes that religion is good for the men [ie, those who were not officers,] but if you were an officer [like him] who didn’t believe that a woman took an apple from a talking snake and as a consequence influenced our destiny, then you should keep it to yourself.

He had some scepticisms, but that is not what his men saw in him. One of the men in his camp remarked that Weary was a man who shouldered his own burdens so they would not worry others and then piled on his own shoulders the worries of anybody who came to him. His men were impressed by his permanent and unchanging dedication to his duty as a senior medical officer and leader. He proved that every time he went with his fellow surgeon Dr Collette into the germ filled cholera ward.

Other camps along the Burma Thailand Railway were structured in a typical military way: officers were given first choice in everything, for example tents and food. Weary’s camp, on the other hand, was run as a co-operative. No one got preferential treatment. Money was pooled, the rich helped the poor, the young helped the old. They lived in a world where the sick were whipped by the guards to make them work on the railway, but in camp the rules were made in heaven.

 Wherever Weary was, things were better. Fewer men died and more men were protected from the Japanese. ‘He was the shining, he was the beam,’ one of his men wrote. After the war, when he was a consulting surgeon, old comrades from the camp came to his waiting room and sat, just to be near him. There is no doubt about where Weary fits in: 1 Epistle John.

After the war, a tribunal was set up to try guards who had been on the Burma Thailand Railway. One who had been a guard of Weary’s unit was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to twenty years imprisonment. When he finished his sentence, he came to Australia to apologise for his behaviour and ask forgiveness from Weary and any of his men who wished to see him. Weary forgave him but his men did not. The man had been too outrageously cruel. Later, Weary’s own doctor asked why he forgave him. Weary replied that the fact he had made his way to Australia and given such a heartfelt apology was proof positive that there is a little bit of God in everyone.