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With the kind assistance of the Australian Embassy in Baghdad and Dr Christopher Morris of the RAF Habbaniya Association over the past six months, I recently completed (18th January 2024) an interactive photographic database of the 290 headstones at the Habbaniya War Cemetery, located 50 miles west of Baghdad. Of this number, 173 graves were for WW2 deaths and 117 for burials that took place 'between the Wars' or post WW2. However, when trying to reconcile the number of photographs with the CWGC's own files and also the records kept by the RAF Habbaniya Association, I discovered that a grave had been overlooked when the full restoration of the cemetery was carried out in 2018/19. During the restoration process, the original (and almost illegible) headstone for the Norwegian sailor, First Officer Oskar Magnus Kristiansen of the M T Bralanta, was overlooked and since 2019, his grave (Plot 6, Row C, Grave 1) has remained unmarked. I immediately contacted the CWGC with photographic proof of this (see images below) and was advised on the 20th January that a meeting had been arranged between James King, the Area Director Africa & Asia CWGC and his counterpart at the Norwegian Department of Cultural Heritage to discuss the matter. The meeting took place at the end of January 2024 at which it was agreed that the CWGC would fabricate a new headstone on behalf of Norwegian War Graves and shipped to Habbaniya the next time the CWGC is scheduled to carry out works in Iraq. The headstone will be erected in its original location, Plot 6 Row C Grave 1 (see below). I will update this post as and when progress is made.

As part of researching for my book, " Leaning on a Lamp Post ", I was required to find everything I could about life in Basingstoke, England, during the nineteen-tens. This entailed working out the layout of the town at that time as well as the locations of specific premises, including the shops owned by Thomas Burberry, founder of the Burberry empire. I also went through the Johnstone & Johnson family photographic archives as both my great grandfather and maternal grandmother worked for Thomas Burberry, my great grandfather from the late eighteen hundreds through to the nineteen-thirties. My grandmother was a buyer in the Haberdashery department for two years and that is how she was introduced to Fred Johnstone, my mother's father. Somehow I overlooked two important photos that show my great grandfather sitting with his employees in the Burberry Emporium building shortly after the Armistice in late 1918. William Johnstone was the foreman of the tailoring department and had more than 130 staff under his control. Throughout the whole of his time working with Thomas Burberry, my great grandfather always wore an immaculate three piece suit, made to measure of course at Burberry, a habit he continued well after his retirement whenever we visited his home in Worting Street, Basingstoke, only a walk away from where he once worked. Shown below are the two family photos I recently discovered. My great grandfather is seated amongst the 130+ seamtresses who worked for him at the new Emporium building In Winchester Street, Basingstoke.

203 Squadron was based in Mesopotamia in the early nineteen-thirties and was re-equiped with the Short Rangoon flying boat in January 1931. These photos were kindly sent to me by Janey Wall, whose grandfather served at RAF Hinaidi during the late 'twenties and mid 'thirties as a Cypher officer. Note the engine covers and the way in which the motorboat is pulled towards the flying boat so that the passengers could climb aboard. See more details of 203 Squadron and its operations during that time in the ' Welcome to Iraq ' pamphlet featured on this website.

This is a postcard photograph of the old Exchange Square in Baghdad, kindly sent to me by Janey Wall. The postcard belonged to her grandfather, Flt Lt Wilfred Knott, a Cypher Officer at the RAF HQ in Baghdad (RAF Hinaidi) during the late 'twenties and early 'thirties.

Here is a photograph of Hawker Hardy K4063 of 30 Squadron taken from the cockpit of a second Hawker Hardy. The date is the 7th January 1937 and they are flying over RAF Dhibban (name later changed to RAF Habbaniya). The Hardy in the picture remained with 30 Squadron until January 1938 when it was sent to 6 Squadron based at Ramleh, Israel. K4063 was shot down by enemy ground fire on the 11th October 1938 and before the crew were rescued, they set fire to the aircraft. This photograph was kindly provided to me by Janey Wall, whose grandfather Flight Lieutenant Wilfred Knott - a Cypher Officer with the RAF HQ, took many photographs during his time in Iraq (RAF Mosul, RAF Hinaidi and RAF Habbaniya) during the nineteen-thirties. Janey has given me permission to show some of these photographs on my website, which I will do so over the coming months.

As a result of a recent query about 6 Squadron's movements from the start of the German Spring Offensive in March 1918 until the end of hostilities in November 1918, I found that the squadron moved eleven (11) times in seven (7) months, on one occasion spending only a single day before being obliged to pack up and move on due to the fluid nature of the front line. To help understand the distances involved, I updated the map of the Western Front that I have included in three of my books and I have attached the image to this past, as well as a table showing details of the eleven moves.

The contents of a photograph album was sent to me by Sian Sumners, grand daughter of Wing Commander Philip Harry Perkins, who served as a pilot in WW1 and after the war as a doctor at RAF Hinaidi. He was a keen photographer in his spare time and took many photos, including the one shown below of the funeral for Brigadier General Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton KCMG KBE CB, High Commissioner to Iraq at the time of his death in September 1929. This and the other images shown on the Ma'Asker / Hinaidi Old Burial Photos page of my website are remarkable in that they show the thousands of Iraqis who lined the road leading to the RAF Hinaidi Cemetery (Ma'Asker Al Raschid), such was the respect they had for Sir Gilbert, a man who was instrumental in putting Iraq on the map.

The latest satellite imagery on Google Earth clearly shows the new wall built around the western half of the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery (name later changed to M'Asker Al Raschid Cemetery or more simply the Rasheed Cemetery, Baghdad. Attached are two images, the first a 3-D satellite view of the cemetery, overlaid with the official CWGC cemetery plan and marked with the 16 graves of 6 Squadron men and the second a 2-D image of the same area, showing the great accuracy of the new wall when compared with the original cemetery wall.

The February 1935 edition of The Aeroplane carried a one-page feature on 6 Squadron's 'coming of age' dinner at London's Mayfair hotel, attended by past and present officers of the squadron as well as the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Chief Marshall Sir Edward Ellington and guest of honour Brigadier-General John Becke, who as a major formed 6 Squadron back in January 1914. The story also included a photograph of an old scrap of paper, purportedly evidence that a pilot from 6 Squadron was the first member of the Royal Flying Corps (or any other air force for that matter) to successfully communicate a message from an aircraft to an artillery battery on the ground. The message, scrawled in pencil, read " You hit them We must go home No petrol " and the citation beneath the photograph read, "This message was dropped, in a streamer, by a pilot of No. 6 Squadron on October 20, 1914, on 87th Battery R.F.A., 12th Brigade, 6th Division, when they were stationed near the village of Ennettiers, about three miles West or Sou' West of Lille, and near the Bois Grenier. They had been engaging a German battery on the outskirts of Lille." No doubt, the existence of said scrap of paper and its detailed provenance was sufficient to convince those who saw it that 6 Squadron did indeed hold this distinction and until now it has stood the test of time. However, upon closer examination, there is a question of doubt over this claim as a number of anomalies have come to light regarding the description, viz: On the 20th October 1914, there was only one reconnaissance flight made by 6 Squadron, with the intended reconnaissance area around Courtrai and Menen, well to the north of Lille. In the event, the weather was so bad the mission was aborted and the aircraft did not make it back to Poperinghe until the evening. The following day, 6 Squadron was moved to St Omer and did not patrol the Lille region until the 25th October 1914 - see attached entries from Lt J Tennant's personal diary and the page from 6 Squadron's War Diary From research into the history of the RFA, 87th Battery was transferred from 12 Brigade to 38 Brigade on the 10th October 1914, ten days before the event. I have asked an expert to corroborate this, as well as the date the battery was sited at the specified location. In examining the photograph of the message it is clear that the writing has been enhanced, as the flow of the letters is uninterrupted over the numerous creases in the paper. The fact that this has not been mentioned is of concern. If anyone has any information that would help prove or disprove the veracity of the message, I would be very grateful to hear about it.

I recently worked on an enquiry regarding the role of flying observers during WW1 and the topic widened to the growth of the RFC/RAF and its size at the end of WW1. I’ve often wondered at the overly large number of aircraft and men cited on various internet sites (even the RAF) when they simply don’t "pass the pub test". I may be missing something obvious but here is my reasoning. The oft-quoted ‘official’ figures are 291,000 men, 22,647 aircraft and 400 squadrons (equating presumably to 200 operational and 200 training). If I use a complement of 250 men per squadron (the largest number of men I’ve found serving on any operational squadron during the war – and a two-seater squadron to boot) and use that figure for each of the 400 squadrons, that equates to 100,000, leaving almost 200,000 men unaccounted for who presumably worked in administrative roles within the RAF by the end of WW1. A bit of an overkill methinks if the 291,000 figure is correct. Now for the 22,647 aircraft. At the time of the Armistice, many operational squadrons had been cut back severely from the norm of 18 aircraft on charge. But let’s be generous and assume that every squadron (operational and training) had 18 aircraft. Multiplying that number by 400 yields a total of 7,200 aircraft, leaving an unaccounted figure of 15,447 aircraft that were presumably standing idle in aircraft depots or straight off the production line waiting to be delivered (though the latter number would not be great as orders were being cancelled right, left and centre towards the end of 1918). Totalling the military serial numbers for all aircraft produced during hostilities (as per the ‘British Military Aircraft Serials’ by Bruce Roberston), approximately 73,000 aircraft came off the many production lines. Comparing this figure with the 22,647 aircraft remaining at the end of the war, does this mean that 31% of all aircraft built between 1914 and 1918 survived the war. I think not. I have shown my findings to Trevor Henshaw, author of the well-respected ‘The Sky Their Battlefield’ and he provided the following comment which adds weight to the hypothesis that the official figures are over-optimistic: “ The only DEFINITE figure I can give you is that at the Armistice the RAF/IF were mustering 1874 aircraft amongst their squadrons on the Western Front. The idea that there were 200 Operational Squadrons by, I presume, War's end, is so totally wrong. I would make it about 145 Squadrons and Flights - not including Training Units - but several of these 145 or so were barely operational by War's end. ” Can anyone reading this post tell me where I have gone wrong in my calculations?

In answering a query from fellow researcher James Offer regarding a 6 Squadron pilot, Frank Neville Hudson (who served in WW1 but later died in Iraq and was buried at Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery (name later changed to Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery), James sent me a of an RAF booklet, entitled "Introduction to Iraq", once belonging to his uncle, Wing Commander Aubrey Rickards, who was the commanding officer of 55 Squadron during the 1930s. The booklet gives an excellent insight into the operations and daily life at the RAF Hinaidi cantonment in the nineteen-thirties and also includes brief histories of some of the RAF squadrons that were based at RAF Hinaidi 'between the wars'. With the kind permission of James, I have included some of the pages on my website under the menu heading, " Hinaidi Cantonment Operations 1935 ".

This photograph recently came to light of the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery (renamed Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery in 1961) and is the earliest known image of that cemetery. The photograph was taken of Plot 3 in the latter part of 1923 (judging from the fact that the latest graves were for Row F), with the camera pointing in a south-easterly direction towards the southern perimeter fence. The grave in the foreground with a propeller for the headstone is for Flying Officer Lionel Hooton MC and Bar of 6 Squadron. For more details, refer to the menu selection of my website that deals with the Ma'Asker RAF Cemetery.