Sitting here on the peaceful river Kwai that question seems remote. But rarely is the mayhem predictable. A Serbian friend of mine remarked that Serbs and Croats had coexisted peacefully in Yugoslavia for decades. The veneer is thin. Pain is not taking life.
Pain comes and goes.
You know, everyone experiences that. Unwillingly of course. That it makes beasts of men, that is certain. At Kanchanaburi, for us, it was a fight for survival. There were no 'heroes'.