Liverpool Lance Corporal's damaged grave restored in the Iraqi desert
The damaged graves of more than a hundred Second World War casualties buried in the Iraqi desert - including a Liverpool Lance Corporal - have been restored to their former glory.
Habbaniya War Cemetery, 60 miles west of Baghdad, honours 173 Second World War casualties and 117 who died in conflicts in the late 1940s to 1950s.
Decades of conflict prevented their upkeep, and since 1990, war and political instability has made it unsafe for staff at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) to manage the site.
Following an improvement in the security situation, stonemasons at the CWGC's operations base in Beaurains, France, began producing nearly 300 white Portland stone headstones in December last year to transport to Iraq.
Local contractors started work on the ground in March, with the stones now installed and the cemetery restoration on the cusp of completion.
Among the soldiers buried there is Lance Corporal William Kirby, born in Liverpool, who died aged 22 during fighting for Fallujah on May 22 1941.
The son of a general labourer and one of eight children, he joined the army at the outbreak of the Second World War and was stationed in India.
He was part of a detachment of 350 men of the King's Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster) airlifted to Iraq to reinforce the British garrison at RAF Habbaniya who were under threat from Iraqi nationalist forces, who had been encouraged by the Nazis to destabilise the Allies in the region.
On May 19, 1941 a fierce battle began to secure the town of Fallujah, an important strategic crossing point of the Euphrates River on the road to Baghdad.
British forces, fighting against tanks and mortar fire, were eventually able to drive back the Iraqis.
Lance Corporal Kirby was one of 18 men from his regiment killed on the same day.
