40
primitive but bearable conditions in a large shed for about three weeks.
The food and the heat were awful, but probably no worse than their surly
Iraqi guards had to endure. No physical exercise was permitted, but oth-
erwise there was no maltreatment. Apparently the most humiliating expe-
rience was being inspected by German officers from time to time.^31
Apart from its dependence on the de facto authorities for protection,
the besieged Baghdad embassy was also dependent on them for electric-
ity, water, food, and medical supplies. The food reserves that had been
collected were soon reduced to a dangerously low level, and the large
daily deliveries of fresh food and other supplies needed to maintain in
good health the hundreds of men, women, and children of various
nationalities who took refuge in the embassy could only be obtained
through the goodwill of the Iraqi authorities. Cornwallis therefore con-
sidered himself obliged to be more circumspect in his dealings with the
Iraqis than he might have been, had he been responsible merely for the
welfare and survival of his own personal staff. From Cornwallis’s charac-
terization of the grave situation in which the besieged found themselves,
one realizes that the early days of the siege were in fact the most hazard-
ous, because Rashid Ali and his supporters were ‘deceived by their own
success’ until the AOC responded robustly with successful ground opera-
tions at Habbaniya and equally effective air raids on Iraqi military camps
in the vicinity of Baghdad. As Cornwallis put it: ‘We were dealing not
with a properly constituted government which, even though hostile,
could be relied upon to observe the recognized procedure of interna-
tional law, but with a number of desperate men in league with the Axis
Powers.’ In the face of such danger, Cornwallis ordered the burning of all
secret archives and most ciphers.^32
Despite the imminent threat, Cornwallis used a simple ruse to keep the
flag flying and British morale high throughout the 30-day siege. On 3
May, the Iraqi foreign-affairs ministry sent him a note stating that the fly-
ing of the British flag over the embassy at a time when Britain was ‘waging
war on Iraq’ would increase public excitement and provoke a regrettable
incident. Cornwallis sought advice from his staff about flag protocol and
was told that foreign diplomatic missions did not necessarily have any pre-
scriptive right to fly their national flags daily over their missions. However,
in Baghdad the custom had existed for many years for all foreign legations
to fly their national flags daily throughout the year. To avoid provocation
and to protect the embassy from the danger of mob attack, Cornwallis
decided to remove the Union Jack from the flagstaff on the embassy roof,