Rory Stewart’s book The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq includes a description of his experience discovering a First World War cemetery in Iraq.

Stewart writes:

On my way back to camp, I passed the old British war cemetery, which had been converted to a rice paddy. A few headstones lay by the fence, and there was a white cross in the center of the field, a long wall, and a dilapidated Mughal dome that must have marked “the graves of the Hindus and Muhammadans.” On a dark granite wall was carved: 1914-1920. The officers and men of the Forces of the British Empire whose names are here recorded are buried or commemorated in this cemetery which contains also the graves of 925 of their comrades whose names are not known.

The wall continued for fifty yards on each side, with score of capbadges and thousands of names. My regiment, the Black Watch, had lost more than anyone–there were three hundred names, half a battalion, including a Black Watch brigadier. Beside them were the names of men from regiments since vanished from the British Army: the Durham Light Infantry, the Bicycle Corps, Sikhs, Punjabis, Baluch, most of whom had died trying to rescue the British General Townshend from the siege of Hut in 1916. No one I’d spoken to in Amara had referred to this period in their history, when Amara had contained a large British garrison and military hospital, although it was well within the lifetime of many of their fathers.

Because of the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq, the official agency in charge of the maintenance of British war graves once again has access to the country. The persistence of this group, despite the dissolution of the British Empire, is another fact revealed by Stewart’s account.

While I waited for the security committee at the camp, I wrote an e-mail to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, asking for a salary for the caretaker of the cemetery, who I knew had been working for a decade without pay. Then I walked up and down, squinting at the midday sun, kicking small clouds of pale dust into their air with every step, wondering what, if anything, we could do.

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