39
the embassy was surrounded by Iraqi police and, in spite of the fact that in
principle diplomatic relations had not been severed, no British subject was
allowed to enter or leave the embassy precincts. In fact, it was the Iraqi
police who constituted the embassy’s only real defence against external
threat. In the event of a direct attack by rioters or demonstrators, if those
20 police guards at the embassy gates had failed, Cornwallis’s own emer-
gency defences, such as they were, could not have held out for long.^30
With their families evacuated and their communications cut, male
British expatriates in the north—mostly Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC)
employees in Kirkuk—found themselves isolated and left to fend for them-
selves. Together with some captured RAF pilots, Wallace Lyon (land set-
tlement officer), John Chapman (Kurdish expert), ‘Johnny’ Johnson
(ALO Sulaymaniyah), and John Brady (educationist) found themselves
separated out from the main group and selected for ‘special treatment.’
Apparently on German orders, these men were first moved from the main
IPC compound to the K1 pumping station; thence they were transported
to the fort at H1 on the Haifa pipeline. There they were imprisoned under
Fig. 2.1 Refuge from the storm: the embassy on the banks of the Tigris (from
an official Christmas card, ca 1942). Source: Container 12.2 (Sir Kinahan
Cornwallis), Series II Correspondence, 1893–1985, Harry Ransom Center,
University of Texas at Austin
PRELUDE TO CONFLICT AND THE EMBASSY SIEGE