Tag: William Holden

The film starts out with two Allied PoWs burying a dead comrade, one of the men being U.S. Navy Commander Shears (William Holden), who, upon finishing up the burial service bribes a Japanese guard to put him and the other prisoner on the sick list to avoid more labor. It is about this time when they hear the whistling of the British tone “Colonel Bogey March” by a battalion led by Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness), Shears blows it off thinking it is just more men he is going to have to bury in the near future.