Lieutenant Jeffrey Goodwin TOWERS (EC/9109)
7th Battalion, 2nd Punjab Regiment

Date of birth: 11th December 1922
Date of death: 10th February 1944

Killed in action aged 21
Buried at Taukkyan War Cemetery Plot 10 Row F Grave 13
He was born at Twickenham on the 11th of December 1922, the son of Reginald Goodwin Towers, silk broker, and Madeline (nee Stanley) of 2 Montpelier Row, Twickenham, Middlesex.

He was educated at the Junior King's School from September 1936 and at the King's School Canterbury from January 1937 to December 1940, where he was in The Grange.

On leaving school he enlisted in army as a Trooper before being commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Indian Army on the 30th of May 1943 and posted to the 7th Battalion, 2nd Punjab Regiment.

On the 5th of February 1944 the Japanese launched a new offensive against British and Indian forces in the Arakan in Burma code named Operation "Ha-Go". One of their key objectives was the administrative area at Sinzweya where clerks, cooks and headquarters personnel, supported by artillery were defending a position some 1,200 yards in diameter which became known as the Admin Box. This defensive position was to be supplied by air. Very soon the position was completely surrounded with hand to hand fighting taking place along its perimeter; the main dressing station was captured on the 7th of February where a massacre of staff and patients took place.

Tasked with defending an isolated position on the north east corner of the Box was Captain Peter Ascham, commanding officer of the 89th Indian Brigade Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Ascham was told that he and his small force of seventy five men were to stay in this position temporarily until orders would be sent for him and his men to fall back. With the fighting having started along other areas of the perimeter and no orders having arrived, Ascham ordered his men to dig in along a low bluff which had a small jungle hill to its front. Shortly afterwards they received thirty five reinforcements under the command of Lieutenant Scott Gilmore of the 4th Battalion, 8th Gurkha Rifles. By the third evening of the siege Ascham and his force had fallen back to a redoubt with Gilmore and a few men holding the forward position on the bluff. Ascham was joined by Jeffrey Towers who, after having been appraised of the situation, volunteered to take his men to relieve Gilmore and his men on the bluff. By the time the relief was completed, night had fallen. During the night the Japanese called on the defenders of the redoubt to surrender but no attack was made until the early morning when shouting, screams and shots were heard from the bluff followed by the explosion of grenades. By the time it was fully light all was quiet and there was no sign of the Japanese but lying at the base of the bluff was a badly wounded Scots soldier who died shortly afterwards. Also a surviving Punjabi made his way back to report that during the night the Japanese had crept up a path in the bamboo, their movements being masked by the wind. When Towers and his small force saw them they opened fire but the Japanese were already too close and the fighting quickly became hand to hand. Jeffrey Towers was killed along with one of his men whose body was thrown over the cliff. The mortally wounded Scotsman Ascham had found had managed to scramble down the cliff but had then been shot.

The following day the position on the bluff remained silent and Gilmore suggested that he take a couple of men and see if there were still any Japanese up there. The three men climbed the bluff where they found the body of Jeffrey Towers lying where he had fallen. They then moved along a path but remained concealed when they saw a party of more than one hundred Japanese soldiers in a clearing. They all threw grenades and ran.

Unable to take the Admin Box the Japanese withdrew on the 24th of February 1944; the first time that British and Indian troops had held and defeated a major attack by the Japanese during the war.

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