Page 11 - Who Was Sapper Brown

Introduction

I was inspired to write this book on 4 January 2013 during a visit to Nicosia War Cemetery and the co-
located Wayne’s Keep Military Cemetery in the United Nations buffer zone, when I stopped and paid

my respects at the grave of Sapper Brown, who died in 1879. The sole burial in Wayne’s Keep from the
earliest days of the British presence in Cyprus, he is buried alongside serving military personnel and their

dependants who died in the Second World War and thereafter. Who was he, and how did he and these

others come to be buried here?

My initial idea of commemorating Sapper Brown and writing about Wayne’s Keep rapidly developed
into this larger commemoration of all British and Commonwealth serving military personnel buried in

the cemeteries on Cyprus (‘service burials’), together with their accompanying dependants. I have also
sought to include veterans (if the military connection was obvious from their headstones), but I have had

to limit my search for veterans to cemeteries with burials of at least one serving military person, as time
did not permit me to visit purely civilian cemeteries before I left Cyprus on posting at the end of May

2013.

There are 12 surviving cemeteries on the island that contain British military burials, over 1,200 of them,

with nine cemeteries having a first burial dating between 1878 and 1883, including that of a Victoria
Cross recipient who died on the very first day that British soldiers landed on Cyprus, 22 July 1878.1

Eight of these cemeteries are in the southern part of this now-divided island, two (Nicosia War Cemetery

and Wayne’s Keep) are in the UN buffer zone, and two (at Kyrenia and Famagusta) are in the Turkish-
occupied northern part of the island. A 13th cemetery (at Paphos), with four burials from 1878, has

been built over and three of the soldiers buried there are now commemorated in Saint Barnabas Church,
Dhekelia. The 12 cemeteries are listed chronologically in this book according to the date of their earliest

military burial.

This wider commemoration gives a better historical perspective and also helps re-unite colleagues from

the same regiment now buried in different cemeteries. For this purpose, I have also collated new Rolls
of Honour, starting with a list of all service burials by regiment and place of burial in Cyprus from

1878 up to the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 (as those who died in both World Wars and in the Cyprus
Emergency already have theirs). Regrettably, several names have been lost in the mists of time.

It seems a fitting time to commemorate the British and Commonwealth dead now buried in Cyprus.

2014 sees the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War (with 29 burials in Cyprus of serving
British personnel, in the five cemeteries of Famagusta, Limassol Roman Catholic Cemetery, Nicosia

British Cemetery, Polemidia and Troodos).

2014 also sees the 75th anniversary of the start of the Second World War (with 350 recorded burials or

cremations, mainly in Nicosia War Cemetery, but with six shared between Nicosia British Cemetery,
Polemidia and Troodos).2

1 The 12 cemeteries, in order of their earliest British military burial, are: The Old British Cemetery in Kyrenia, Mathiatis,

Wayne’s Keep, Troodos Military Cemetery, Larnaca British Cemetery, Nicosia British Cemetery, the Greek Cemetery of St
Nicholas in Limassol, Polemidia British Cemetery, Famagusta British Cemetery, Limassol Roman Catholic Cemetery, Nicosia
War Cemetery and Dhekelia Military Cemetery.

2 As recorded on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website: www.cwgc.org

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