Thanbyuzayat, Burma. c. September 1945. Members of a War Graves Commission survey party with a ...

Thanbyuzayat, Burma. c. September 1945. Members of a War Graves Commission survey party with a metal box of films, paybooks and other records recovered from the grave of TX4217 Private D. A. Eyles, 2/4th Casualty Clearing Station (CCS). These records included the records of Brigadier A. L. Varley. They were secretly buried for post-war recovery. From left to right: Sergeant Lloyd Rankin, 26th Australian War Graves Unit; Leading Aircraftman S. O. Simpson, RAAF; Private G. H. Kindred, 1st Fortress Signals; Sergeant J. H. Sherman (Schurman), 2/4th Machine Gun Battalion; Captain A. R. White, 2/26th Battalion; Padre H. C. F. Babb (British Ex-POW). Thanbyuzayat was the Burma starting point of the railway. The POW camp was occupied from September 1942 until mid June 1943. It was both a base hospital camp for seriously ill patients from up country railway camps, and a transit camp for POWs arriving from various sites in Burma and Java. The Japanese also established their Burma POW headquarters here. On 12 and 15 June 1943 Allied aircraft bombed and strafed the camps, resulting in the deaths of nineteen POWs and another thirty injured. The hospital was then moved to Retpu, thirty kilometres south of Thanbyuzayat, and finally to the fifty five kilometre hospital at Kohun Khun where Lt Col A. E. Coates was in charge. (Donor A. Mackinnon)