Kevin Godward kindly forwarded me photographs taken of the burial of his great uncle at the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery (now known as Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery). AC1 David Arthur Henry Oldfield was serving in the RAF at the Aircraft Depot in Baghdad when he became ill (details unknown) and died on the 20th August 1930. The following photographs were taken at the funeral ceremony and later when the headstone was erected. I have included a photograph of David Oldfield in uniform, the photo taken in England.

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.

In April 1919, the commanding officer of 6 Squadron, Major George Pirie, received orders to move his squadron from Gerpinnes in Belgium to Mesopotamia where it would support 30 Squadron in its peace-keeping duties over that region. Photographs recently came to light (courtesy of Mark Kent, grandson of Lt Ernest Kent who served with 6 Squadron and took the photographs) that were taken during the redeployment. The photographs give a rare pictorial insight into the processes and risks involved in moving a Royal Air Force squadron from one country to another. Pictured below is a photograph of a 6 Squadron Bristol Fb2 Fighter, taken in present day Iraq around 1920, after the squadron replaced its ageing RE8s with Bristol Fighters. For the full story and more photographs, select the Mesopotamia tab on the 6 Squadron menu.

With the invaluable assistance of the British Embassy in Baghdad, I am pleased to announce that the first phase of the restoration project is about to commence, comprising the erection of a boundary wall and the setting up of a basic maintenance plan. The first step in the process of bringing the cemetery back into the fold was a pivotal and significant event that took place at Hinaidi yesterday (11th November 2020) when the British Embassy’s Defence Attaché in Baghdad, Brigadier Adam McRae, laid a wreath at the foot of the grave of Brigadier-General Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton KCMG KBE CB, British High Commissioner to Iraq at the time of his death in 1929. This was probably the first time in more than half a century that Remembrance Day has been commemorated at Hinaidi and hopefully it won’t be the last. Shown below is a photograph that Brigadier McCrae took to mark the occasion. Though the headstone is missing its upper section, it can be seen that some remedial work has already been carried out re the state of the cemetery. I will add photographs in this News section as and when they become available.

Jasmin Soliman, Archivist at the Akkasah Centre for Photography (NYU Abu Dhabi) recently invited me to look at several photograph albums that have been digitised and made available to the general public. The photographers were mostly RAF servicemen who too photographs of their time, mostly in Iraq and Egypt but also Palestine and Aden. The time periods range from 1910 through to the 1940s and the albums contain both interesting and unique photographs, well worth an hour or so of inspection. By pasting the following link in your browser you will be able to choose which album you would like to look at. https://akkasah.org/en/page/frontpage~2Fcollections/photo-albums There are also several photographs of RAF aircraft crashes. Below is an example, the lower photograph featuring a Royal Aircraft Factory RE8 that had turned over on its nose after the pilot tried to force-land in the desert.

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 Hinaidi Cantonment, under the protection of the Royal Air Force. The men standing behind Willian Bartlett's headstone 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 and the headstone on the left is for Alexander Noble, a private in the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment. Peter has kindly permitted me to include the photograph in the Hinaidi section of my website.

I have added a searchable database to my website containing the name and details of every 6 Squadron man (195 in total) who has died in service since 6 Squadron was formed in January 1914. Here is a graphic that shows the deaths in alphabetical sequence within the groupings WW1, 'Between the wars', WW2 and post-ww2.

On the 18th October 1914, shortly after it had been flown across the channel, BE2 Serial 636 was at Poperinghe for one day, having a Union Jack painted on the underside of the port wing. Before this date, there were no markings on the aircraft to show whether an aircraft was friendly or an enemy, especially difficult for soldiers on the ground when defending their position.

Ben Lovegrave has kindly allowed me to use this photograph from the 55 (Bomber) Squadron archives. It was taken of Plot 3 at Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery (formerly Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery) and shows how meticulously the cemetery was laid out and how well tended the graves were before the cemetery was abandoned.

And now for something completely different. After months of devastating bushfires up and down the East Coast of Australia, Nature changed course and decided to release half the annual rainfall in two short days over selected areas across that region. Up on the northern border of NSW, Lake Kynnumboon was formed literally overnight, with many roads submerged. Then, as quickly as it came, the sun came out and the lake disappeared.

For those interested in the original (provisional) design and perimeter boundary of the Hinaidi Cantonment that was drawn up in 1932, I have added it to my website under the 'RAF Hinaidi' tab. I have also included a 2019 Google Maps aerial photograph which shows that most of the roads still exist despite the changes made to the air base since its control was handed over to the Iraqi Air Force in 1961. I have also indicated the location of the Hinaidi RAF Peace cemetery, just inside the perimeter of the Hinaidi cantonment.

The Daily Telegraph (UK) recently published an article on the grave restoration works currently nearing completion at the Habbaniya War Cemetery, 60 miles west of Baghdad. In returning the two hundred and ninety headstones back to their former glory (173 WW2 burials and 117 non-world-war burials). In December 2018, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission commissioned stonemasons at its operations base in Beaurains, France, to produce new headstones for all of the graves (non-world-war burials as well as WW2 burials). According to the article, this work was able to be carried out following an improvement in the political stability and security situation in Iraq. The fact that the war cemetery at Habbaniya lies inside an Iraqi military air base makes it a secure place to carry out repairs. Local contractors started work in Iraq in March 2019 and the cemetery restoration is nearing completion. This is encouraging news for the abandoned Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery in southern Baghdad where three hundred and one non-world-war graves have been in desperate need of protection and restoration for many years. Like Habbaniya, the cemetery at Hinaidi lies inside an Iraqi air base and like Habbaniya, the 301 non-world-war burials being for 197 Royal Air Force personnel, 73 British Army personnel (including the isolated grave of Sir Gilbert Clayton, British High Commissioner to Iraq in 1929), 2 Royal Navy personnel and 29 civilians. Pictured above is a photograph taken of the Hinaidi RAF Cemetery c1925 (with the grave of LAC John Bliss of No 6 Armoured Car Company - who died from multiple burns on the 7th October 1924) when only half of the first Plot had been used. Bliss's burial was the 122nd at Hinaidi.

On the 2nd August, in an 'Official' letter written to the 6 Squadron Association from the office of the Defence Services Secretary, it was confirmed that the Ministry of Defence does own the site of the Ma' Masker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery - formerly known as the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery - and that it [the site] is managed on the MoD's behalf under a commercial arrangement with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Though this is indeed good news, the Defence Services Secretary staff officer who wrote the letter stressed that due to ongoing instability in Iraq, the MoD will be unable to request the CWGC to visit, inspect and arrange maintenance of the cemetery until such time as the situation improves. Pictured is a an aerial photograph of Baghdad as it would have looked in the nineteen-twenties.

Here is a recent satellite photo of the Hinaidi RAF Cemetery, taken earlier this year (2019). I have superimposed a box that shows the approximate perimeter of the cemetery as well as yellow circles around five Iraqi trucks that, at the time the photograph was taken, were using the cemetery grounds as a short cut from the military air base to the main highway, in the southern suburbs of Baghdad. For more details on the Hinaidi RAF Cemetery and the Royal Air Force officers and 'other ranks' who were buried there "between the World Wars", refer to the appropriate pages on my website.

I have just added a five-page breakdown of the 183 RAF men so far identified as being buried at Hinaidi RAF Cemetery in Baghdad, Iraq. Information provided is the date of death, Full name, Rank at time of death, RAF Unit, Military and Civil honours, cause of death and in a few cases the exact grave location. Shown below is an image of the first page. I will soon be adding the full military service details of the forty-one RAF officers who are buried ay Hinaidi.

The 'Flyboys' exhibition opened in the Visitor Centre at the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery on the 1st July and will be open daily until the 15th November. The exhibition tells the story of the Royal Air Force airmen who died during WW1 and were buried at Lijssenthoek and features some of my work, including extracts from my latest book, 'Over the Western Front'. Sixty-nine of the ninety-four airmen graves are for men who were stationed at Abeele, with thirty-one of this number serving with 6 Squadron at the time of their death. If you are planning to visit Ypres or Poperinge this year, I recommend a side trip to the Lijssenthoek Cemetery and Visitor Centre. The care in which the Belgian volunteers tend the 11,000 WW1 graves is quite remarkable and you can really appreciate the enormity of the sacrifice made by so many servicemen during that dreadful time.

Here is a copy of the review of my latest book, as it appears in the C&CI journal for Spring 2019 50.079: OVER THE WESTERN FRONT - 6 Squadron Royal Flying Corps by Steve 'Buster’ Johnson. FeedaRead.com Publishing. 276pp, 215x280mm, Softback, Illustrated. ISBN 978-1-935881-67-4 The author's grandfather served with 6 Squadron in France and Belgium from November 1915 to January 1918, His service was as an ordinary airman who specialised in working with wireless equipment. The squadron helped pioneer the use of wireless in France before the creation of the HQ WT Unit, which became 9 Squadron. Fred Johnstone, the grandfather, was posted to 6 Squadron because of his expertise with wireless equipment. He served with the unit for over two years until illness led to a home posting at the Flowerdown wireless school as an instructor. The book is in two distinct halves. The first is a month-by-month summary of the diary kept while in France. As the author explains, diary entries were obviously regarded as being very personal and so were entered in both cryptic and coded forms. Simple reproduction of them would mean nothing to the reader and so the author has synthesised their content. The result works well and the diary entries are a combination of information about day-to-day life in the squadron and the personalities involved. The latter include both flying and ground crews. The photographic illustrations come from a variety of sources. Quite a number are those that had belonged to Fred Johnstone and show the men and women he knew. Others are contemporary postcards of locations mentioned while aeroplane shots come from present day collections, including CCI. The author demonstrates his knowledge of all things 6 Squadron in the second part of the book. This is a month-by-month summary of the squadron's strength and losses. For completeness, it covers the period October 1914, when the unit joined the BEF, to December 1918. Tabulations for each month give serial number information for machines on charge at the beginning of the period, on charge at the end, those struck off and new additions. A further table shows the month's casualties by cause. The accompanying text gives further information about casualties and details of any unit movement. Appendices give information of the unit's aeroplane establishment for selected months, a breakdown of the turnover of machines by cause, a summary of casualties by cause and short biographies of four 6 Squadron aircrew, two pilots and two observers. This book provides a lot of what anyone might need to know about 6 Squadron's aeroplanes and operations and casualties. The only thing really missing is a detailed personnel roster. Exceptional value for the price of a couple of pints of beer.