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The last tommy

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beast5680:
i keep going back to that area on holiday as i find it fascinating, i could go round all day looking at things but the family get bored after a while

laser_jock99:
I don't suppose I'll ever get to visit my Great Granfather's memorial in Iraq. Looks like Sadam had it moved too....

Until 1997 the Basra Memorial was located on the main quay of the naval dockyard at Maqil, on the west bank of the Shatt-al-Arab, about 8 kilometres north of Basra. Because of the sensitivity of the site, the Memorial was moved by presidential decree. The move, carried out by the authorities in Iraq, involved a considerable amount of manpower, transport costs and sheer engineering on their part, and the Memorial has been re-erected in its entirety. The Basra Memorial is now located 32 kilometres along the road to Nasiriyah, in the middle of what was a major battleground during the first Gulf War. The Panel Numbers quoted at the end of each entry relate to the panels dedicated to the Regiment served with. In some instances where a casualty is recorded as attached to another Regiment, his name may alternatively appear within their Regimental Panels. Please refer to the on-site Memorial Register Introduction to determine the alternative panel numbers if you do not find the name within the quoted Panels.
Historical Information: The Basra Memorial bears the names of more than 40,500 members of the Commonwealth forces who died in the operations in Mesopotamia from the Autumn of 1914 to the end of August 1921 and whose graves are not known.

WW1 in Mesopotamia seems to be a forgotten part of the war. We've all heard about the Western Front & Gallipoli but I can't seem to find much information on the war in the Middle East.

EDIT- A BBC war correspondent found the Basra Memorial in 2003:

http://members.tripod.com/nlwmemorial/nlwmemorial/pages/pagesmisc/basramemorial.htm

Looks like it's crumbling into the desert.

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