IRAQ: British rededicate cemetery in Habbaniya

Fifty years after the last of its soldiers leaves Iraq, will the U.S. be holding memorial services in Iraq for those died there?

Probably not, because the U.S. dead are taken home for burial.

It's different with the British.

Nearly 300 British subjects are buried at the Royal Air Force Cemetery in Habbaniya, 60 miles from Baghdad. They died between 1936, when the cemetery was opened, and 1959, when the British left Iraq.

After the U.S.-led coalition dethroned Saddam Hussein, the U.S. Marine Corps took over the onetime British base that surrounds the cemetery. The weedy, misbegotten look of the cemetery offended the Marines and the British public.

U.S. troops began a cleanup campaign and, in Britain, the Commonwealth Graves Commission vowed to restore the cemetery.

And so, in a recent ceremony attended by the British ambassador to Iraq and the top Marine general in Iraq, the cemetery was rededicated. A ceremonial wreath was laid, and two minutes of silence were observed.

"This is a renewal of our pledge of faith" with the dead, said the British ambassador, Christopher Prentice.

--Tony Perry, in San Diego

Photo: A bagpiper at the rededication ceremony at the Royal Air Force Cemetery in Habbaniya. Credit: Crown Copyright via Getty Images

Comments

[Michael Cooke]

As a BBC reporter I recall a memorable visit to this cemetery by the Queen and Prince Philip in 1953. Following their world tour after the coronation, they had landed at RAF El Adem and toured the cemetery prior to joining their children on the Royal Yacht Brittania anchored in Tobruk harbor. Philip, true to character, was overheard to sarcastically reprimand the head of the War Graves Commission for his ignorance of some of the headstones inscriptions!