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I am able to confirm from official records that the men in question all died in the Guards Base Hospital at
Mount Troodos from Enteric Fever... contracted by the soldiers concerned when they were serving on the Red
Sea coast during the Suakin Campaign of 1885. The ten soldiers... were all evacuated from the Sudan to the
Base Hospital in Troodos where they died shortly after arrival.’ 16
Individual Gravestones
A misleading date. Rather poignantly one headstone (plot 4) records the loss of the infant daughter,
Mary Jane Adams, only 1 year 10 months old, of a Sergeant Robert Adams from 31st Company Royal
Engineers, but misleadingly it gives the very unlikely date of 10 August 1859, which would be almost 20
years before the British landed in Cyprus.
This headstone was replaced at some stage due to erosion of the original, and the date was transcribed
incorrectly as 1859. It should read 1879, in keeping with the other burials of the 31st Company of Royal
Engineers in Troodos that year. The 31st Company Royal Engineers were to stay in Cyprus until April
1885, when they were ordered to Hong Kong, leaving only a small detachment behind.17-18
Further enquiry confirms the correct interment date of infant Mary Jane Adams: the National Archives
holds a list of burials at Troodos dated 1903, reproduced above, which gives the burial date as 11 August
1879,19 and the current Station Commander at Troodos has more easily accessible information held in
the Garrison files:
‘I have a hand drawn map and internment list dated April 1940
which shows the Adams infant was buried on 11 August 1879.’20
On both lists Mary Jane Adams is listed as the fourth burial in this cemetery, all in 1879.
It would appear that as recently as the mid 1970s the original date was still evident on the headstone:
Major Alan Harfield, in his landmark paper on the British military presence in Cyprus, published in
1978, records the full inscription on this headstone, with the date of death being 10 August 1879.21
16 Wing Commander (retired) Ken Pudney, Commandant Troodos Garrison, personal communication, January 2013.
17 British Garrisons of Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus and Aden. The Army and Navy Gazette, 7 March 1885 www.cgsc.edu/
CARL/nafziger/885CAE.pdf
18 General Monthly Return of the British Army, 1 April 1885, p. 112.
19 ‘List of persons buried in the Military Cemetery – Mount Troodos’ Op Cit.
20 Wing Commander (retired) Ken Pudney, Commanding Officer Troodos Garrison, personal communication to author,
January 2013
21 Harfield, A. G (1978), ‘British military presence in Cyprus in the 19th century.’ Journal of the Society for Army Historical
Research Vol. 56, No. 227, pp.160 – 172.
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