6 Squadron RAF, Ma'Asker & Habbaniya Cemeteries
Ma'Asker / Hinaidi Old Burial Photos
The Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery (now known as Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery) has long been abandoned and has to date seemed to have 'fallen between the cracks' with regards the Commonwealth War Graves Commission maintenance of the headstones and the security of the site.
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I have been contacted by more than one hundred direct descendants and distant relatives of those buried at Ma'Asker who were interested in finding out more about their forbears' service in Iraq, but only a handful of people possessed any photographs or documentation that had survived the last one hundred years. Most of the photos were of very poor quality but there were a few that I thought would add to the story of what went on at RAF Hinaidi and I have included them below.
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The first two photographs were taken from the south-eastern corner of Plot 3 looking towards the north-western corner of the cemetery. The first was taken in c1935 and the second in 2020 before the new cemetery wall was built.
My thanks to Bill Palmer of the 55 Squadron RAF Association for giving me permission to use the 1935 photograph which he found in the 55 Squadron Association's photographic archive. It should be noted that 55 Squadron suffered more than any other RAF squadron in the deaths at Hinaidi, with a total of 25 burials. For more information on 55 (Bomber) Squadron, take a look at its excellent website.
Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery (formerly Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery) c1935
Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery (formerly Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery) 2020
Headstone of LAC Robert Raw (Aircraft Depot Iraq)
Cliff Thornton kindly sent me a photograph of the headstone for LAC Robert Raw's grave, Plot 2, Row A, Grave 3. The photograph of the headstone was taken shortly after Raw was buried (2nd June 1935) and is looking west with Plot 1 in the background. Note that the unused grave (Plot 1, Row D, Grave 3) is evident by the lack of a headstone immediately behind Raw's grave. Note also the cracked state of the cemetery ground and lack of foliage, showing that the cemetery had recently been flooded.
I've added a photograph of the wreath placed on Raw's grave and the badge given to him when he undertook his apprenticeship training at the Technical Training School at RAF Halton.
Buried at Mosul Cemetery Prior to Being Moved to Hinaidi
Bill Palmer also sent me a photograph that he received as part of an enquiry to the 55 RAF Squadron Association. At first glance it appeared to be showing the final resting place of a 55 Squadron sergeant/pilot and an aircraftman from 6 Squadron at the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery. Upon further examination, especially as the headstones for the two graves were side by side though the men were killed nine months apart, I realised that this was not a photograph of Hinaidi, but of the RAF Cemetery at Mosul. Sergeant/Pilot Charles Dicks of 55 Squadron was killed taking off from Mosul whilst conducting the regular mail run between Mosul and Baghdad in DH9A Serial No: 9911 on the morning of 27th July 1924. AC2 Edward Barber was the observer in a 6 Squadron DH9A Serial No: 4961 on the 18th April 1925 when the aircraft exploded in mid-air during a bombing raid near Mosul due to a petrol leak. Barber and his pilot Flying Officer Rupert Pontifex of 6 Squadron were both killed. The three men were initially buried at Mosul but their bodies were exhumed at a later date and re-buried at Hinaidi. Though the photograph below only shows details of two men, it is highly likely that the partially visible third headstone is for FO Rupert Pontifex.
Headstone of LAC William Bartlett (6 Armoured Car Company)
Peter Reichelt recently contacted me regarding a photograph he found in his father's collection - a snapshot taken in the nineteen-twenties, while the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery (later renamed the Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery) was still part of the RAF Hinaidi Cantonment, under the protection of the Royal Air Force. The men standing behind Willian Bartlett's headstone (Plot 3 Row H Grave 4) are dressed in the uniform of the RAF Armoured Car Companies. On the right in the photograph is the headstone of Flying Officer Ellis Reid of 1 Squadron RAF (Plot 3 Row H Grave 5) and the headstone on the left is for Alexander Noble (Plot 3 Row H Grave 3), a private in the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment. Peter has kindly permitted me to reproduce the photograph here. To see the exact location of each of these graves, please click HERE to see a diagram of the cemetery.
Funeral and Headstone for AC1 David Oldfield, RAF Aircraft Depot, Baghdad
It is not clear how Aircraftsman First Class David Oldfield died on the 20th August 1930, though it was most certainly due to a disease or illness that was contracted whilst he was serving with the Royal Air Force Aircraft Depot in Baghdad. In looking at the burials at Ma'Asker around that time, apart from aircraft flying accidents, the causes of death included Malaria, acute Appendicitis, Typhoid, Septicaemia, Heatstroke and Sandfly fever. Living conditions on the base at RAF Hinaidi were extremely difficult, mainly due to the hot and unforgiving climate.
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The photographs for AC1 Oldfield's funeral were sent to me by his great nephew Kevin Godward who kindly gave me permission to include them on my website. The grave location is Plot 1 Row B Grave 11. The partially obscured headstone to the right (Plot 1 Row B Grave 12) in the first photograph is for Corporal Lucius (Lucian on CWGC records) Anderson of the Royal Air Force Fire Station Section 8 who died on the 8th August 1930 from sandfly fever leading to heat hyperpyrexia. The headstones in the background are for a baby girl Phoebe Marks (Plot 1 Row A Grave 11) and Sergeant George Garlinge (Plot 1 Row A Grave 12) of the RAF Aircraft Depot, who died of Septicaemia.
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Note the vacant grave location at Plot 1 Row A Grave 13. Though the dates of death for the burials in Plot 1 Row A Grave 14 and Plot 1 Row A Grave 12 were in April and June 1929 respectively, this plot remained unused for the life of the cemetery, as were Plot 1 Row D Grave 3, Plot 2 Row B Grave 1 and Plot 3 Row N Grave 8. To this day, no reason has ever been determined for the three vacant plots
Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery (formerly Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery) c1923
The photograph below was taken from the north-western corner of Plot 3, with the camera focussed on the grave of Flying Officer Lionel Hooton (Plot 3 Row A Grave 9) and pointing in a south-easterly direction towards the southern perimeter fence, just in from of the raised bund. The graves in the photograph are of Plot 3, with only Rows A through F used. This would date the photograph early in the use of the cemetery, namely the latter part of 1923 (refer to Grave Sequence / Breakdown for more details).
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Note the non-standard headstones for Rows A and B, with burials in Row dating from July 1922 to October 1922.
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F/O Hooton was one of twenty Royal Air Force pilots buried at Ma'Asker who were WW1 veterans, representing over the years forty RAF squadrons. Four of the pilots were official wartime flying 'aces' and many had been decorated for bravery and courageous acts during the Great War.
I have added some of the grave numbers on the photograph below which can be cross-referenced with the other charts and diagrams on this website. Two of the headstones can be seen in later photographs (also included on my website in the Ma'Asker RAF Cemetery pages):
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1. Private Barnabus Brown Plot 3 Row B Grave 4 - this headstone survives to this day, though it has been damaged over the years. It is one of the few headstones for which a recent photograph has been taken, though it is hoped that more photographs will become available once restoration work has commenced on the site. Click here to see the image.
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2. Private Andrew Rae Plot 3 Row E Grave 1 - this headstone can be seen in the photograph further up this page showing the funeral procession for AC1 David Oldfield, who died in August 1930. Note how much had been achieved regarding the standardisation of headstones and the beautification of the cemetery in the 7 years since the first photograph was taken. Note also that all of the grave allocations in Plot 3 had been filled by February 1929.
Funeral of Sqn Ldr Jasper Cruickshank, Officer Commanding No: 6 Armoured Car Company
This photograph was taken on the 20th February 1925 at the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery and shows the burial service for Squadron Leader Jasper W Cruickshank, the Commanding Officer of the No: 6 Armoured Car Company, who died from Typhoid and was buried in Plot 3 Row I Grave 14. In the foreground of the photograph, two black crosses (X) mark the grave of another member of the No: 6 Armoured Car Company, LAC John Bliss, who died of shock on the 7th October 1924 after receiving multiple burns and was buried in Plot 3 Row H Grave 7. Note that a headstone has yet to be erected on the grave next to LAC John Bliss, Plot 3 Row H Grave 6, despite the fact that Private Harry Rankin of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers died on the 12th November 1924. This photograph was taken from the southern end of the as yet unused Plot 3 Row I, looking towards the northern perimeter of the cemetery.
Funeral of Sir Gilbert Clayton - High Commissioner to Iraq in 1929
The photographs below were 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 served as a doctor at RAF Hinaidi. He was a keen photographer in his spare time and took many photos, including these of the funeral for Brigadier General Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton KCMG KBE CB, who was the High Commissioner to Iraq at the time of his death in September 1929. These images 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 the country of Iraq on the map. Though the main part of the headstone/monument has been destroyed the base remains in situ over Sir Gilbert's grave, located mid-way between Plot 1 and Plot 2. In the background of the third photograph can be seen the headstones of Plot 3, with the crowd of spectators standing in the unused eastern section of the cemetery and the yet-to-be-used Plot 2.
Funeral of LAC Ernest Guy Rosevaere - Armoured Car Coy HQ
Leading Aircraftsman Ernest Guy Rosevaere (the personal driver of Wg Cdr Primrose, who commanded the Armoured Car Companies when they were set up in Baghdad in late 1922) died only two weeks after his arrival in Baghdad and was buried at the Ma'Asker cemetery at RAF Hinaidi in Plot 3 Row D Grave 14. For the complete story, click HERE.
Death of Leonard Marks, Electrician and Father to Phoebe Marks
Over the past few months I have had several conversations with Ron Workman and Lucille Mole (the children of Dorothy Marks, Leonard Marks’ second daughter) and they have kindly provided me with family photographs and details as to the movements of the Marks family before and after the deaths of their grandfather Leonard Marks and his first-born child Phoebe, both of whom were buried in the Ma’Asker al Raschid RAF cemetery. Ron and Lucille are very keen to see the cemetery restored and have offered to pay for new headstones for both Phoebe and Leonard Marks if that proves to be possible.
Leonard Marks and his brother Frank were born in Fremantle during the time their British parents were working in Australia (their father was a doctor, their mother a senior nurse). In their late teens (c 1923) Leonard and his elder brother Frank took jobs in Baghdad at RAF Hinaidi working for the Royal Air Force in the Works and Building Dept, with Frank already a seasoned oil driller. Leonard was an electrician and he lived off-base in rented accommodation in Old Baghdad where he became friends with Rosemarie Hannah (known as Marie) whose grandmother owned the building in which they were both living. Leonard and Marie were married in Baghdad at the beginning of 1928, when RAF Hinaidi was the centre of operations for all British Forces (Army, Navy and Air Force) in Mesopotamia, present day Iraq. Leonard moved in with Marie and commuted to work at RAF Hinaidi by motorcycle. Marie gave birth to their first child, Phoebe, on the 6th November 1928. Sadly, Phoebe died on the 17th July 1929 when she was only eight months old and she was buried in the Hinaidi cemetery, Plot 1, Row A Grave 11, located in the south-western corner of the RAF Hinaidi cantonment. At that time the cemetery was named the Hinaidi RAF (Peace ) Cemetery but the name was later changed to the Ma’Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery. The cause of Phoebe’s death remains unknown, as no death certificate has been found despite extensive research. Marie was already six months pregnant at the time of Phoebe’s death and gave birth to her second daughter Dorothy in October 1929. Three and a half years later, in May 1934, Marie gave birth to her third daughter, who she named Leonora.
On the morning of the 11th September 1934 at RAF Hinaidi, a local native employee at the Works & Building Depot was engaged in a dispute regarding his pay with civilian contractor James White. During the argument, the man pulled out a pistol and fired a number of shots, fatally wounding James White and seriously wounding Leonard Marks who was sitting next to him in the office. James White died that day in the RAF General Hospital and Leonard Marks succumbed to his injuries in the same hospital on the following day, the 12th September 1934. On his deathbed, Leonard made his brother Frank promise to look after Marie and his two daughters, five-year-old Dorothy and four-month-old Leonora.
Leonard Marks was buried next to James White in the same cemetery as his daughter Phoebe, less than twenty yards away from her grave in Plot 1. Their grave location were Plot 2 Row A Grave 13 and Plot 2 Row A Grave 14 respectively.
The extended Marks ‘family’ remained in the family home in Old Baghdad for a short while before Marie’s grandmother sold the building to buy a modern house in New Baghdad. When RAF Hinaidi closed in 1938, Frank, Marie and her two daughters moved to RAF Habbaniya where Frank took up a position associated with maintaining the British oilfields in Kirkuk. At about this time, Frank planned to marry Marie and he set off on a trip to England where he intended to obtain a divorce from his first wife. Sadly, before he had even left Iraq he caught an eye infection whilst driving across the desert. The infection quickly spread to his brain and he died. In 1948, when Dorothy was nineteen, she married a sergeant in the British Army and later gave birth to two children, Ron and Lucille. Tragedy was to strike the family yet again, when in 1963, Dorothy’s husband was run over by a police car in mysterious circumstances in Baghdad and died of his injuries. Ron was fourteen and Lucille was just nine years old. Over time, Ron and Lucille both married and moved to England. Lenora, Marie’s youngest child, grew up in Baghdad with her mother, Frank and Dorothy and eventually married a German before moving to live in Germany. They had three children, Barbara, Jurgen and Christina, all of whom are married.
I often wonder how life would have been different for the Marks family had Phoebe grown to adulthood and her father Leonard not been murdered.
I have reproduced here photos of Leonard Marks’ funeral procession (with his wife Marie following the coffin carrying a wreath) and his headstone, the headstone photo also showing part of Phoebe’s headstone in the background. I have also attached a press cutting describing the incident and a present-day photograph of Phoebe's headstone. Sadly, Leonard Marks' headstone is not one of the 71 headstones (out of 300 burials) that has survived the decades of neglect at the Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery. To see Phoebe's headstone as it is today, click HERE.
Burial of Corporal Mark Osborne LXX (70) Squadron Royal Air Force
Corporal Mark Cyril Osborne was posted to LXX (70) Squadron at RAF Hinaidi as a chef / butcher on the 8th February 1933. A little over two years later he succumbed to heatstroke and heart failure in the RAF General Hospital Hinaidi on the 25th July 1935 and was buried in the Ma'Asker Cemetery (then named the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery) in Plot 2 Row 2 Grave 2. His grand-daughter, sent me photographs of her grand-father as well as of his burial ceremony which she has kindly permitted me to attach below.
