Page 176 - Who Was Sapper Brown

Location

This large wooded cemetery is situated on the east side of the bypass road outside the eastern edge of
Dhekelia Station, in the Eastern Sovereign Base Area, and is freely accessible to the public. Its location can

also be visualised through Google Earth via a direct link from The War Graves Photographic Project

website. It has two entrances off the bypass road; the western entrance is marked by a new memorial
erected by the Royal British Legion Larnaca Branch in 2010.

The Cemetery in Context

Dhekelia Military Cemetery, the successor to Wayne’s Keep in Nicosia, was built in the run up to Cypriot
independence, on what was to become the Eastern Sovereign Base Area. It opened between the ending

of the 1955–1959 Cyprus Emergency and the granting of independence to Cyprus (August 1960),
becoming the only cemetery for serving British personnel and their families in Cyprus from April 1960

onwards. Dhekelia Military Cemetery is now the last resting place of some 1,080 individuals, under half

of whom were serving personnel.

The first burial was that of infant Susan Francis Ballantyne, who died within 24 hours of birth, on 5
April 1960, a sad portent of what would become the hallmark of this cemetery, which is the large number

of infant and child burials. She is buried in Plot 1, Row A, Grave 1.

The first serviceman to be buried in this cemetery was 21 year old Lance Corporal Michael Allington,
Royal Army Pay Corps, who died on 17 April 1960, and is buried in the next grave, in Plot 1, Row A,

Grave 2.

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