Private Henry Douglas QUARTLEY (7813)
2nd (Selangor) Battalion, Federated Malay States Volunteer Force

Date of birth: 11th February 1917
Date of death: 24th October 1942

Died aged 25
Buried at Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery Plot B5 Row C Grave 4
Henry Douglas Quartley was born on the 11th February 1917 the only son of Henry Robert Quartley, manager of Seafield Amalgamated Rubber Estates in Malaya, and Vera Isobel (nee Whitehead) Quartley of Malaya.

He was educated at Lancing College where he was in Sandersons House from September 1930 to Dec 1934. He gained his School Certificate in 1934.

On leaving school he returned to Malaya from Southampton on board the SS “Ranchi” on the 11th of October 1935, where he became a rubber planter.

On the outbreak of war he was a Private in the Selangor Battalion, Federated Malay States Volunteer Force and following the Japanese invasion of Malaya in December 1941 the battalion was used to protect British lines of communication during the battle.

By February 1942 the British forces had been surrounded at Singapore and on the 15th of the month they surrendered. Henry Quartley joined the hundreds of men who managed to escape from Singapore and he got as far as the island of Sumatra, some eighty miles away before being captured, probably at the end of March. The Japanese rounded up their prisoners from Sumatra and the surrounding islands and at the beginning of May he found himself at Padang. Here, on the 9th of May 1942, 20 officers and 480 other ranks from a large number of different units were selected by Captain Morley RA to form what became known as the British Sumatra Battalion under the command of Captain Dudley Apthorp of the Norfolk Regiment. The selection process specifically included anyone who had shown signs of being likely to make trouble as a prisoner of war and Quartley was one of six members of his former unit to join the new formation.

Later on the 9th of May they were loaded onto trains, and then onto trucks, travelling to Medan in Northern Sumatra arriving there on the 13th of May. There they were interned with Dutch civilians at Uni Kampong Camp until being marched to the docks at Belawin Deli harbour on the 15th of May where they were loaded on the "England Maru", destination unknown.

Conditions on the vessel were appalling with the hold of the vessel having been divided into two levels each four feet tall. The men were packed in and were forced to sit or crouch for the length of the voyage. They laid at anchor for a day until they were joined by a convoy of ships and proceeded up the Malacca Straits arriving at Mergui on the Malayan Peninsular on the 25th of May. They were marched to a camp there where conditions were terrible with disease rife among the men and a number died in the following days, particularly of dysentery. The camp was overrun with rats and the Japanese were eventually persuaded to allow the construction of a new camp which the prisoners moved into on the 21st of June 1942. While they were at Mergui the men were in engaged in the enlargement of the local airfield.

On the 10th of August they were paraded in pouring rain, along with Australian prisoners, for another move to another unknown destination.

At 11pm they marched down the docks and were crammed onto the "Tatu Maru", casting off at about 2am the following morning. At 5pm they anchored in the estuary of the Tavoy River, were unloaded and marched three miles to the town of Tavoy. Here they were accommodated in a large stone building which became known as the "Anne Heseltine Home".

By this time most of the men were suffering from a range of illness and disease with amoebic dysentery and jungle ulcers being the main ailments. The death rate among the men, which had been high at Mergui, began to subside at the new camp where conditions were an improvement on their previous accommodation.

On the 21st of October 1942 the men were paraded for a move to another camp. the Japanese had decided to build a railway across Burma and were planning to use POW and native labour to build it. They were marched to the river and boarded barges for their journey. In the early afternoon of the 22nd of October they were unloaded at Moulmein and that night they were locked in the local jail building. On the 23rd of October they were marched two miles to the railway station and crowded into trucks for the thirty mile journey to Thanbyuzayat. The journey proved too much for Henry Quartley, who was suffering from dysentery and he died the following day.

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