Paul Norman Towler

Private - Service No. S/212492 - Royal Army Service Corps

Paul Norman Towler was the eldest son of William Alfred Towler and his wife Edith Helen (Hemnell) and was born on 7th April 1911 at the village Post Office in Swardeston. Billy Towler had had a new Post Office built just the year before on a plot of land beside the turnpike (now the B1113) to replace the original clay lump Post Office beside High Common. Some 9½ years later Paul's brother William Peter Towler was born.

On December 27th 1937 Paul married Constance Irene Burton in Swardeston church and the couple moved into a bungalow (The Hollies) that Paul and his father had built on a piece of the land that Billy owned, opposite the Post Office. On January 9th 1940 Constance gave birth to a son Norman John Towler. By now the war was well underway and Paul joined the Royal Army Service Corps as Private S/212492 and undertook training in Yorkshire and then Edinburgh before embarking on the long voyage to Singapore in or about June 1941.

Exactly when he arrived in Singapore or what he did en route and once he arrived is something of a mystery as, despite the family still having several of Paul's letters, the army censors obliterated all dates and places. A Christmas card (sent 31.10.1941) from Cape Town did however slip through the net. We know that, once he arrived in Singapore, he quickly tired of the heat and the palm trees. When Singapore was overrun by the Japanese on February 15th 1942 Paul was taken prisoner and consigned to No.15 P.O.W. Battalion which left Changi Singapore Camp for Siam (Thailand) on October 26th 1942. Once there Paul, along with many other P.O.W.s and slave labour, was put to work on the infamous Burma-Siam "Death Railway".

Paul, now noted as Corporal P N Towler on camp records, died of cerebral malaria on January 28th 1943 at Kanyu Camp and was buried at Lower Kanyu Camp Cemetery in Grave 52. Kanyu Camp was the camp from which prisoners worked on Hellfire Pass, the most difficult part of the whole construction. After the war, bodies from the individual camp cemeteries were exhumed and Paul was re-buried in Khanchanaburi War Cemetery, Grave 8.J.29, on March 17th 1946. 

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