I was contacted by Cliff Thornton regarding a 55 Squadron man who died in an accident while stationed at the Aircraft Deport Baghdad and was buried at Hinaidi on the 2nd June 1935. As well as providing me with useful background information on LAC Robert Raw, Cliff also sent me photographs of Robert Raw's grave as well as the wreath placed on the grave and a photograph of the badge given to Robert Raw when he undertook his apprenticeship at RAF Halton.

For those interested in knowing the original design and grave layout for the Ma'Asker Al Raschid RAF Cemetery (formerly known as the Hinaidi RAF Peace Cemetery), here is a 1964 diagram that was produced by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission - Southern Region in 1964. It shows that the cemetery had two entrances as well as a small building just to the south of the western entrance, designated as "gardener's quarters". Apparently, the same man (an Iraqi local) tended the graves for many years.

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.

During WW1, RAF squadrons which supported the allied artillery adopted a clock code system to report aiming corrections to the gunnery officer on the ground. Aerial photographs, at a height of between four and five thousand feet, were taken the day prior to the mission, with a clock code superimposed on each photograph, in alignment with the points of the compass. Though the complete clock code employed concentric circles set at Y (0 to 10 yards), Z (11 to 25 yards), A (26 to 50 yards), B (51 to 100 yards), C (101 to 200 yards), D (201 to 300 yards), E (301 to 400 yards) and F (401 to 500 yards), in practice 6 Squadron printed only the A, B and C rings, though fine corrections were interpreted when necessary for the Y and Z rings. Anything outside the accepted range was regarded as a 'washout' and the letter 'W' was transmitted so that the gunnery officer could re-align the gun used in ranging on to the target. I have attached two examples of 6 Squadron 'shoots', both in early July 1917, just after the attack at Messine, with the lower photograph at Zandvoorde showing the accuracy achieved by the artillery shells (see red marks) and the upper photograph at Hollebeke showing that two targets were attacked at approximately the same location.

Whilst researching the services history of Edwin Ffoulkes-Jones, a man who served with the Royal Air Force in both WW1 and WW2, I came across an incident that took place in October 1920 which involved [then] Flying Officer Ffoulkes-Jones. Whilst flying Bristol F2b Serial No: D8051 on an operation over Kufa on the 19th October, 170 km south of Baghdad, he was caught in a sandstorm and crashed. Though Ffoulkes-Jones was uninjured, his aircraft was destroyed. The following day, Flying Officer A H Beach left 6 Squadron's base at Hinaidi (near Baghdad), flying another F2b Serial No: D7844, and flew to the crash site to pick up Ffoulkes-Jones and take him back to the squadron, sitting in the observer's cockpit. Having covered less than half the distance (53 km north of Kufa and over the village of Hillah), the engine cut out and the aircraft crashed. The pilot was uninjured but Ffoulkes-Jones received a deep laceration to his left knee. D7844 was later recovered and rebuilt, remaining in service with 6 Squadron until the 31st May 1922 when it crashed on landing at Sulermanejeh (144 km from the railhead at Kyri - 288 km NNE Baghdad). The aircraft was destroyed, its pilot Flt Lt F N Hudson died of his injuries and his observer Flt Lt E Drudge seriously injured. To demonstrate how dangerous it was to fly in peacetime RAF, this accident happened only two weeks after a 6 Squadron F2b (Serial No: D7845) suffered engine failure on take-off and stalled into the ground when the pilot attempted to turn back at 100 feet. The aircraft burst into flames and both pilot (Flying Officer L C Hooton) and observer (AC2 G C Butler) were killed outright. Shown below is a 6 Squadron line-up of Bristol F2b fighters, the photograph taken most likely at Hinaidi in early October 1920. The third F2b from the left is D8051, the aircraft that FO Ffoulkes-Jones crashed whilst flying an a sandstorm.

I sent a copy of my latest book, 'Over the Western Front' to Wouter Moyaert, the archivist at Poperinge Council and he kindly posted the following on the Poperinge City Archive Facebook page. As the book is set in the towns of Abele (Abeele) and Poperinge (Poperinghe), I thought it might make interesting research material for anyone who would like to know how the men of the Royal Air Force squadrons stationed around Ypres and Poperinge during the WW1 years interacted with the local civilian population. In the words of the archivist, " Post uit Australië! Auteur Steve Buster Johnson schreef op basis van het dagboek van zijn grootvader dit boek over de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Poperinge en Abele komen er uitgebreid in aan bod ."

My latest Royal Flying Corps book, Over the Western Front with 6 Squadron Royal Air Force, can now be purchased from any of the major on-line book stores, such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Abebooks, Book Depository and Alibris. However, depending upon the country of delivery, you may find that buying from FeedaRead is still the cheapest option. Check out the prices for all my books on the GoodReads website https://www.goodreads.com

Quicker than originally anticipated, my fifth writing project, a Royal Flying Corps book entitled 'Over the Western Front with 6 Squadron', has gone on sale. Initially it will only be able to be purchased direct from the publisher's website (Feed-a-Read), but by the end of February 2019, copies can be purchased from any of the on-line book stores as well as from Feed-a-Read. The RRP is AU$17 plus AU$5 postage for UK addresses (equivalent to about £12). For anyone not living in the UK, the postage at the moment is exorbitant (about AU$22 per copy). For this reason I will be keeping a small stock of books for those living outside the UK who wish to purchase a copy as a single book qualifies for a letter rate of postage from Australia. Contact me via the HELP menu item to order a copy - $17 pickup or $22.00 delivered.

The final draft of my next book, "Over the Western Front - with 6 Squadron Royal Flying Corps" was approved by the publisher, Feed-a-Read, at the end of October, as was the artwork for the cover. The book is in the production queue right now and the soft cover version of it will go on sale in late November, but only via the Feed-a-Read website initially. By mid January 2019, the book will be able to be purchased from any of the on-line book stores.