My next writing project is going to be a factual novel set in Iraq during the nineteen-twenties, highlighting the dangers and depravations experienced by the Royal Air Force squadrons based in Baghdad "between the wars". The fighting in Mesopotamia is a largely forgotten conflict, as are the deaths of hundreds of Royal Air Force and British Army personnel whose bodies lie in a deserted and unprotected RAF cemetery at Hinaidi, a southern suburb of Baghdad, compared to hundreds of other servicemen who died during the same conflict but by chance were buried at the well-tended war cemeteries at Baghdad North Gate and Habbaniya, both of which have been recently refurbished by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The provisional title for the book is Above the Sands of Iraq.

 

The six books already published are Rising from the Flanders Mud, Over the Western Front  (the story of 6 Squadron which fought over the Western Front during the Great War), For God, England & Ethel (a biography of my grandfather who served with 6 Squadron during WW1), Seven Days in April (a Royal Flying Corps historical novel in the genre of a murder / mystery), Leaning on a Lamp Post (an autobiography covering the early part of my life in the UK, shortly after the end of WW2) and A Man of Many Letters, all of which can be purchased from any of the major on-line book stores or direct from Feed-a-Read. Only the last two titles mentioned on this page are not on the subject of WW1.