The British Army pulverised nearly 800 First and Second World War gravestones from a Commonwealth cemetery in southern Iraq and used them as gravel to fill a drainage ditch at a military base, documents released under freedom of information laws reveal.
The gravestones, along with 80 large, two-inch-thick slate panels engraved with regimental crests and the names of the fallen, were removed from the Basra War Cemetery in 2003. A journalist who visited the site just before the US-led invasion of Iraq that year found that local militia had been using the gravestones for target practice. The soldiers buried beneath, who died in the First and Second World Wars, remained interred but unmarked after the stones were taken away.
Within 18 months, almost all of the gravestones and panels had been deliberately pulverised into gravel. A situation report from 64 Works Group, Royal Engineers, dated April 2005, states: “The gravestones have now been crushed and are ready to be placed in the soakaway.” The material was used to build a drain at the Shaibah Logistics Base, nine miles south-west of Basra. The work was overseen by the Royal Engineers unit and appears to have gone ahead after the approval of a padre.
Freedom of information battle
The destruction came to light only after Ben Soppitt, 55, who lives near San Francisco, pursued freedom of information requests about the cemetery over a period of years. The Ministry of Defence resisted disclosure until the Information Commissioner ordered the release of the documents.
Soppitt’s grandfather, Gunner Joseph Soppitt, died from dysentery in 1941 and is buried at the cemetery alongside more than 360 other Britons and comrades from India, Poland and other Commonwealth nations. The cemetery holds more than 3,000 men and women in total.
Soppitt has accused the MoD and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission of concealing the truth about the demolition for more than 20 years. He has filed a High Court application for judicial review with the aim of holding the MoD accountable.
“The MoD is fighting this claim, unwilling to bear the cost of ensuring the over 3,000 men and women buried there are properly commemorated with the honour they deserve and that the public expects,” Soppitt said. “It is a bitter irony that a member of the public, a relative of one of the casualties buried at Basra, is having to pursue the MoD through the courts simply to secure the basic dignity of commemoration that those who died in service are owed.”
A broken promise
When the gravestones were removed in 2003, an unnamed officer was filmed at the scene promising they would be stored for safekeeping. “We will take them back to our camp where we will hold them for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which will come back in the future and restore this cemetery to its former glory,” the officer said. That promise was not kept.
Field Marshal Lord Richards of Herstmonceux, the former chief of the defence staff who served as Assistant Chief of the General Staff at the time the gravestones were destroyed, said he was “deeply saddened” by what happened. He said that “with the benefit of hindsight there is of course no excuse,” but added that he had “no doubt that in the dangerous and febrile environment of Basra at the time, the officers who took this decision thought they were doing the right thing.”
Lord Dannatt, a former chief of the general staff, called on the authorities to act. He said a decision should be made to either reinstate all the graves or put in place a memorial bearing all the names of those buried in the cemetery, along with “a suitable explanation of recent events.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, whose regimental forerunner had 130 soldiers among those whose gravestones were destroyed, described the episode as “a callous disdain for the memory of the fallen.” He said the cemetery remained bare and the fallen still unmarked, and called on the MoD to correct what he described as a “terrible mistake.”
A grandson’s pilgrimage
Last year, Soppitt travelled to Basra carrying a new granite gravestone to mark his grandfather’s resting place. A service was held at the cemetery, attended by the Archbishop of Basra and local residents.
The Basra Memorial, about 30 kilometres from the war cemetery, was left untouched when the gravestones were removed in 2003.
The MoD said it was unable to comment for legal reasons.
