Take a close look at the Pegasus Bridge 70 years ago

Jun 10, 2014 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Just Google the words, “Battle for Pegasus Bridge by the Allies,” and you will see photos of the Pegasus Bridge over the Caen Canal in Normandy, France, in 1944. The battle for that Bridge was one of the decisive episodes of WW2. If the Allies had lost the bridge, then the D-Day landing would have failed.
When you see the photos of that bridge, juxtapose them with images of the Berbice Bridge. What you will find will numb your psyche. It didn’t occur to me all these decades that I have been a columnist that just ten days separate Guyana’s Independence anniversary from European celebrations of D-Day that marked the end of Hitler and Nazi Germany. It is a phenomenal contrast.
The Pegasus Bridge in 1944 was a better looking construction with greater facilities and accommodation within the structure itself than our Berbice Bridge built just five years ago. Seventy years ago, architectural engineering has traveled billion of miles that if there was to be built a bridge over a waterway in any country, it would be more impressive than the Pegasus Bridge in 1944. But that is not true for the Berbice Bridge.
There are three things that always come to mind when I read about a discussion on the Berbice Bridge. One is that when I was a little boy, about ten years old, I saw a war movie, “Bridge Over the River Kwai” in which the construction in that movie built by soldiers was identical to the Berbice Bridge.
The second one is that any fool could have noticed that the Guyana Times was ashamed of the Berbice Bridge when it printed a supplement to mark the opening of the structure. The articles in that supplement made references to lots of bridges built around the world but strangely there were no pictures at all of any other bridges. The newspaper deliberately omitted the images, because the readers would have done the juxtaposition for themselves and would have seen what a primitive thing Guyana built in the 21st century.
Thirdly, I have always maintained in these columns that the Berbice Bridge is testimony to the colossal failure President Jagdeo was. It is beyond belief that in 2009, we constructed a passage over the Berbice River identical to the make-shift bridges the Allies built to facilitate crossings in WW2.
If Berbicians are reading this, I ask them not to get annoyed. I think all Guyana is glad the journey to and from Berbice is facilitated by a canopy over the river but there can be no defence of what the Government built in 2009. It is poor, primitive and ugly. Even the Demerara facility has a walkway and a cycle lane. It is one thing to welcome the structure, but it is another thing to say it is modern. It is a stupid construction in the 21st century. Any country in the 21st century deserves better.
I am looking at the bridge against the background of our just concluded celebration of 48 years of Independence. And I have returned to the story of the Berbice structure because I think it is a gigantic testimony to our failure as a country after 48 years of Independence. If you take Helmut Roemer and show him the Berbice Bridge, Mr. Roemer would not believe he is in a country in the 21st century.
Helmut Roemer may be the only survivor living in Europe today who saw action on that bridge in 1944. He was doing routine duty when the British soldiers took over the Caen Canal. I am absolutely sure that Mr. Roemer would tell you his Pegasus thing back then in 1944 was more impressive than what you are showing him in Berbice.
The CARICOM leaders are only trying to be diplomatic with Guyana when they say that CARICOM is devising a comprehensive programme to stop the exodus of skilled CARICOM citizens. Not even wild horses can stop young people from boarding a plane at Timehri and leaving Guyana behind forever. A majority of them don’t care about PNC versus PPP. They won’t come back because they think their land is backward and very far behind in modern infrastructure.
The Bajans and the Jamaicans and other islanders may be persuaded to stay but not young Guyanese. What they see in Trinidad has convinced them that Guyana is a country living in the past. Can you really compare Trinidad and Guyana? Isn’t that like comparing Brian Lara and the seventy-year-old village cricketer? Well we will not be far behind Trinidad because the Marriott is here.

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Take a close look at the Pegasus Bridge 70 years ago

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