Brookwood Military Cemetery – The Muslim Burials

Tucked away in the very north eastern corner of Brookwood Military Cemetery there’s a small plot of twenty four headstones, officially entitled Plot 2A, that we have visited once before, although some years back now.

Actually, there weren’t twenty four headstones when I first visited over fifteen years ago, as two headstones in the second row were missing, awaiting replacements, and the new, at the time, shrubbery had yet to flourish,…

…but the headstones have now been long replaced,…

…the planting is now firmly established, and all looks good.

I have told you the story of these men before, and how they were moved here from their original burial site on Horsell Common in Woking (original GRRF above, exhumation details below), three miles or so to the north east of here (links later), but I have never shown you the headstones in close-up, so we’ll put that right once and for all.

The eighteen men buried in the first three rows, and the first man in Row D, the final row, are all Great War casualties and are listed above, along with their regiments and dates of death, in the order of their reburial.  And photographed below (click to enlarge) along with their regiments and dates of death, because you’ll be able to read them better if you can’t be bothered to enlarge the above.

Row A, from left; Sepoy Khan Muhammad, 108th Infantry, who died on 9th October 1915, Sepoy Bagh Ali Khan, 82nd Punjabis, who died on 29th September 1915, and Sepoy Sikandar Khan, 82nd Punjabis, who died on 25th September 1915.

The row continues with Sepoy Mahrup Shah, 129th The Duke of Connaught’s Baluchi’s, who died on 16th September 1915, and Sepoy Zarif Khan, 127th Queen Mary’s Own Baluch Light Infantry attd. 129th The Duke of Connaught’s Baluchi’s & Rifleman Sarmast, 57th Wilde’s Rifles (Frontier Force), both of whom died on 22nd July 1915.

On another occasion.

Row B, from left; Driver Bostan, 9th Mule Corps, who died on 19th October 1915, Sowar Mehr Khan, 19th Lancers (Fane’s Horse), who died on 24th October 1915, and Naik Fazal Khan, 93rd Burma Infantry, who died on 14th November 1915,…

…with the two replacement headstones, fourth and sixth in the row, seen here on the left & right.  From left; Follower Hansa, Army Hospital Corps, who died on 7th December 1915, Follower Abdullah, who died on 16th December 1915, and Sepoy Sher Gul, 57th Wilde’s Rifles (Frontier Force), who died on 18th December 1915

Row B, now complete.

Row C, from left; Follower Asghar Ali, Army Hospital Corps, who died on 29th January 1915, Driver Kala Khan, 2nd Mountain Battery, who died on 2nd February 1916, and Sowar Alla Ditta Khan, 15th Lancers (Cureton’s Multanis*), 3rd February 1916.

*the headstone actually says 15th Lancers (Cureton’s Multani’s) which is grammatically incorrect, of course.

Row C continues with Follower Babu, Followers Central Depot, who died on 3rd September 1919, Sowar Shaikh Abdul Wahab, 29th Lancers (Deccan Horse), who died on 16th July 1915, and Bearer Shaikh Mohiuddin, Army Hospital Corps, who died on 5th January 1915.  Follower Babu is given a date of death of 3rd September 1919 on his headstone, despite one of the earlier forms saying 1917,…

…but there being more forms with 1919 than 1917, we’ll assume 1919 is correct until someone proves otherwise.

Barring the first headstone on the left, that of Gentleman Cadet Mirza Iqbal Ali Beg, Royal Military College Sandhurst, who died on 23rd June 1920, the remaining five burials in Row D are Second World War casualties,…

…and include, in the centre above…

…and here in close-up, the grave of my friend Sophena’s father, Leading Aircraftman Yusuf M. Ali, who served with the R.A.F. during the Second World War, but suffered a coronary thrombosis in 1947, from which he would die in Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Hospital Halton on 12th May 1947, aged 42.

At this point, before we continue, I’ll refer those of you who care to explore for the first time, or those who perhaps wish to refresh their memories, to the earlier posts I mentioned near the start of this post.  Back in 2009 I visited the at-the-time abandoned Muslim cemetery on Horsell Common in Woking (above), from where the bodies of these men were exhumed in the 1960s.  It would be 2011, during this website’s first year, before I posted the pictures that I took that day, and little did I know at the time that there were plans already afoot to do something about the state of this neglected place.  And so, the following year, in 2012, came the first response beginning a chain reaction that, should you read the rest of the comments that follow (click here), explains the beginnings of what subsequently occurred, or at least theBigNote’s part in it.

By 2015 the burial ground had been restored and was ready for its new opening ceremony (above), as you can see here,…

…and less than two years later the initial commemoration service took place, as you can see here,…

…and some sort of circle was closed.

So where to next?  Well, the burials we have just visited are marked in blue (Plot 2A) on this extract from the plan of Brookwood Military Cemetery, which shows the main Commonwealth section on the right and the American cemetery on the left.  Pine Avenue is actually the northern boundary of the military cemetery, to the north of which we find ourselves in Brookwood Cemetery itself, or at least a very small part of it, and it is here, marked in orange on the plan,…

…that we find the earliest Muslim military graves in either military or non-military cemetery, seen above in the summer, and below in winter.

The single grave at the front in the left foreground…

…marks the grave of the final burial made in this small plot, Kot Dafadar Amir Ali, 17th Cavalry, who died on 18th August 1919, although the man buried behind him,…

…seen on the left here, Sepoy Moti Ram, 112th Infantry, died just a few days earlier, on 14th August 1919.  You will notice that the inscription at the top of his headstone is in a distinctively different script than on all the other headstones in the plot; this is because Moti Ram was a Hindu, the only one among these graves, and the only cremation.  The centre headstone simply says ‘In memory of Muhammad Ali’ and has no date, and the remaining graves in the row, beginning with Sowar Muhammad Sarwar, 19th Lancers, on the right, are all from much earlier in the war,…

…from left, Driver Inayat Khan, Indore Transport Corps, who died on 7th June 1916, Sepoy Lal Khan, 40th Pathans, who died on 13th May 1915, and Sowar Rahim Dad Khan, 84th Poona Horse, who died on 8th May 1915,…

…and Sepoy Amir Shah, 40th Pathans, who died on 9th May 1915, Colour Havildar Lajbar, 57th Rifles, who died on 6th May 1915, Driver Sultan, 2nd Mule Corps, who died on 28th April 1915, and at the end of the row, far right, Sowar Langar Khan, 36th Jacob’s Horse, who died on 24th April 1915.

The second row continues the chronological burials, even if we are going backwards in time, from left, Driver Garib Aladid, 1st Mule Corps, who died on 6th April 1915, Sowar Alwa Khan, 34th Poona Horse, who died on 26th March 1915, and Sepoy Pasar Lay, 127th Baluchis, who died on 26th March 1915,…

…Sepoy Muhammad Khan, 59th Rifles, who died on 20th March 1915, Sepoy Sher Muhammad, 59th Rifles, who died on 18th March 1915, and Sowar Rahim Dad Khan, 34th Poona Horse, who died on 22nd February 1915,…

…and Lance Duffadar Dhuman Khan, 34th Poona Horse, who died on 13th February 1915, Follower Daulat Shah, 2nd Mule Corps, who died on 21st January 1915, and finally Sepoy Feroz Khan, 57th Rifles, who died on 19th February 1915.

The back row begins, left, with the grave of Driver Lal Din, 32nd Mule Corps, who died on 20th January 1915, Sepoy Inzar Gul, 57th Rifles, who died on 19th January 1915, and Sepoy Iman Ali Khan, 107th Pioneers, who died on 18th December 1914,…

…and continues with two more men of the 107th Pioneers, from left, Sepoy Fateh Khan, who also died on 18th December 1914, and Sepoy Latif Khan, who died on 8th December 1914.  On the right, Sepoy Muhammad Jan, 21st Company, 3rd Sappers and Miners, died on 4th November 1914,…

…as did Sepoy Wali Muhammad, also 21st Company, 3rd Sappers and Miners, here on the left.  The final headstone is that of Sepoy Ahmad Khan, 21st Company, 3rd Sappers and Miners, who died at Netley Hospital in Southampton, where we looked around only recently, on 4th November 1914, and is the earliest Muslim military burial made in the U.K. during the Great War, as reported below.

Blue plaque notifying visitors that this piece of land was Britain’s first Muslim cemetery.

There are also a handful of scattered Second World War Muslim graves nearby (you can see the graves we have just visited beyond the trees),…

…one of whom, Pilot Officer Ali Raza Khan Pasha, Royal Indian Air Force, was killed, along with another Indian pilot officer, Kali Prasad Chaudhury, in the crash of an Armstrong Whitley near Abingdon, Oxfordshire, on 18th June 1941.  Note the R.I.A.F. emblem on his headstone.  Chaudary’s name can be found among the almost five hundred names on the memorial panels at Golders Green Crematorium in north London.  In the background,…

…the grave of Seaman Subedar, Merchant Navy, one of the crew of the British cargo ship SS City of Brisbane which was bombed by the Luftwaffe in the Thames estuary on 2nd August 1941 and eventually sank, after burning for three days.  Eight crewmen died, the other seven (all Indian Merchant Navy, incidentally) are today remembered on the Bombay or Chittagong 1939-1945 war memorials*, but their dates of death are all given as the date of the initial bombing; Subedar’s date of death is given as 11th August, which suggests he may have spent some time in hospital before he died – or maybe 11th August was the date his body was recovered.

*the two memorials, both in book form, between them contain the names of over four hundred sailors of the Indian Navy and almost 6,000 sailors of the Indian Merchant Navy who were lost at sea during the war.

Don’t ask me!  It’s all been long-cleaned up.

Close by, there is also this small Turkish Air Cemetery, marked in mauve on the earlier map, and as a delve into the fate of these men proved quite interesting, we shall take a closer look at the graves within.  Next post.