R.A.F. Sharjah
Forgotten and neglected for many years since the departure of Bitish Foces in the early 70's, the cemetery on R.A.F. Sharjah has now come under the care of the C.W.G.C.
We have a special interest in this as my wife Chris's dad was buried there in 1964. He was a civilian working for the M.P.B.W. at the time of his death and is not included in the C.W.G.C.'s commitment. We have received outstanding help and support however from C.P.O. Justin Wardle who is stationed in Dubai in the post of Port Visit Manager. Justin and crew members of visiting R.N. ships have visited the cemetery on a number of occassions to tidy it up. This is what he said:
I can confirm that I have had call to visit the Sharjah Cemetery this year for a Memorial Service in the Military site which was attended by the British Ambassador, the British Consulate General, the Defence Attaché and his team, members of visiting RAF and Army Detachment and will now be conducted every year.
The cemetery is split into two sections where the Military Site is walled off from the rest of the plot. We conducted a memorial service there this year as the site has been recently refurbished with funding from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Unfortunately the remaining part of the cemetery does not receive the same sort of funding and is very run down. The RAF/ARMY and Navy all took part in a cleanup of the military site prior to the memorial service but thought it appropriate that we also assist with the remaining part, as this element was covered in weeds and rubble. I remember that amongst them was your wife’s father and a Royal Navy Captain HW Brammall and were the only two with headstones, the rest were white breeze blocks with no names. We did tidy up the specific areas around these two graves and lined the plots with stones to mark out the plots and identify them both as “owned” and we will look after as long as we are able to do so.
I located an archive within the British Embassy in Dubai a manifest of the persons within the graves and passed this back to the church, who had not kept a record of this for many years.