Lance Corporal Edward Richard Moss   3528347

1^st Manchester Regiment

Edward was already in the army at the outbreak of the Second World War. He was in the 1^st  Battalion, of the Manchester Regiment. He was serving in Egypt when the order came to move to Singapore.

Soon after, he was captured by the Japanese when that city fell. He was forced to work on the Thailand railway at Songkhla in appalling conditions. Badly treated and underfed, Edward Richard succumbed to beriberi and died on the 7^th June 1943 aged 25.

Only ten out of the original 600 strong Regiment survived. He is interred at Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, Burma. Plot B3, Row P, Grave 10.

Son of Thomas and Elizabeth Moss of Lords Row, Skelmersdale Road, Bickerstaffe.

A Commonwealth War Graves Commission Inspector photographed his grave at Thanbyuzayat  Cemetery in 1992.

Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery

Both village (pronounced 'Tunboozyat') and cemetery lie about 40 miles south of Moulmein in southern Burma. In 1942 the Japanese, needing improved links to maintain their then victorious army in Burma, decided to complete the railway connecting Moulmein with Bangkok. It had been begun before the 1939-1945 War but abandoned with 250 miles remaining unfinished. The country is mountainous, covered with malarial jungle and experiencing high temperatures and humidity, and Thanbyuzayat was the Burmese terminal of the proposed line.

British, Australian, Dutch and American prisoners of war set up a base camp and hospital and started work in September 1942 and finished in December 1943. Unknown hundreds died of malnutrition, sickness, privation, ill-treatment and misery, and many were buried in the camp cemetery. Frequent Allied bombing raids also took their toll of the prisoners. Because of the severity of raids, the camp was evacuated in June 1943, and the prisoners sent to other camps on or near the railway. Nevertheless, Thanbyuzayat continued to be used as a reception camp for newly arrived prisoners. After the war the Army Graves Service brought in the remains of those who had been buried in the jungle or along the line and reburied them in the now expanding camp cemetery, laid out basically in its present form. It now contains 1,700 British, 1,350 Australian, and 15 Indian and 80 Malayan war dead, together with over 600 from the Netherlands. The American dead were sent home for burial.

The graves are marked by bronze plaques. The Cross of Sacrifice stands where the original wooden cross set up by the prisoners stood; that cross is carefully preserved in the entrance building and has an explanatory plaque below it.