Jack Hawkins credited as playing...
Major Warden
- Maj. Warden: You'll go on without me. That's an order. You're in command now, Shears.
- Commander Shears: You make me sick with your heroics! There's a stench of death about you. You carry it in your pack like the plague. Explosives and L-pills - they go well together, don't they? And with you it's just one thing or the other: destroy a bridge or destroy yourself. This is just a game, this war! You and Colonel Nicholson, you're two of a kind, crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman, how to die by the rules - when the only important thing is how to live like a human being!... I'm not going to leave you here to die, Warden, because I don't care about your bridge and I don't care about your rules. If we go on, we go on together.
- Maj. Warden: [to Col. Green] Sir, it's most annoying. They say, in view of the time element, they don't think a few practice jumps would be worthwhile.
- Major Shears: No?
- Maj. Warden: No, they say if you make one jump, you've only got 50% chance of injury, two jumps, 80%, and three jumps, you're bound to catch a packet. The consensus of opinion is that the most sensible thing for Major Shears to do is to go ahead and jump, and hope for the best.
- Major Shears: With or without a parachute?
- Maj. Warden: I belong to a rather rum group called Force 316. Our headquarters is up in the botanical gardens.
- Commander Shears: Protecting rare plants from the enemy?
- Maj. Warden: [lowering binoculars] Kill him... Kill him!
- Major Shears: [screaming] KILL HIM! KILL HIM!
- Maj. Warden: Is there something wrong?
- Commander Shears: I was just thinking. You speak Yai's language, I don't. He's gonna lead you back to the river Kwai himself, by a route I never took. Will someone tell me why I'm so indispensable to this outfit?
- Maj. Warden: I know how you feel, but there's always the unexpected, isn't there?
- Commander Shears: Tell that to Chapman.