5th Battalion, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment
Died on Wednesday, 11th August 1943 aged 23
Personal Information:
Frederick Robert Keirle was born on 26 December 1919 in Paddington, the only son of Frederick George Keirle (1882-1950) and Ann Hughes (1894-1963), who were married in April 1915 in Paddington.
During the First World War his father Frederick was a Stoker in the Royal Navy.
The 5th Battalion The Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment was embodied on 25 August 1939 and left Liverpool on 29 October 1941. It travelled via Canada, Trinidad, South Africa and India, arriving in Singapore on 29 January 1942. Within 2 weeks Singapore had fallen and on 15 February 1943 Frederick Robert Keirle was captured by the Japanese. The battalion spent the rest of the war in the notoriously brutal Japanese POW camps. Although exact numbers are unknown, around a third of those captured at Singapore died in captivity. Frederick died at Son Krai No. 2 on 11 August 1932.
Cemetery:
Grave B4 F 12, Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery, Burma (now Myanmar).
The village of Thanbyuzayat is 65 kilometres south of the port of Moulmein, and the war cemetery lies at the foot of the hills which separate the Union of Myanmar from Thailand. Travel from Yangon to Moulmein is possible by both rail and road, taking between 6-7 hours by road and 12 hours by rail.
Prisoners who died in the camps in the north of Thailand, from Nikke to Moulmein in Burma, were initially buried in small cemeteries located close to the camps in which they died, but after the war the Army Graves Service relocated most of them to the War Cemetery at Thanbyuzayat. There are now 3,771 graves at this location.