42
The precarious communications situation made such exchanges unique, in
that cables from the FO to the ambassador were first received by the Iraqis,
who read them and then delivered them to the embassy. If the texts were
in cipher, then all was well; however, some messages were despatched en
clair, meaning that the enemy were reading Cornwallis’s instructions
before he received them. Sometimes the Iraqis gave the game away by
offering observations on telegrams that had yet to be delivered.
After 26 May, Cornwallis received no more ‘tiresome’ notes from the
Iraqis. In the final days of the siege, the residents could hear artillery fire
and exploding bombs coming nearer and nearer as HABFORCE
approached the city from the west. BBC radio announcements kept
everyone informed about the troops’ progress. The mayor of Baghdad
telephoned Sir Kinahan Cornwallis on 30 May with the news that Rashid
Ali, the ex-Mufti, and the four fascist generals of the Golden Square had
fled the country, together with their supporters, and that an internal-
security committee had been set up to maintain order until the monar-
chy was restored. Within 30 minutes, the embassy radio transmitter had
been returned and the siege effectively lifted. It had lasted exactly
one month.^35
Notes
- See Martin Thomas, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial
Disorder after 1914 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 2,
5. Also Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country,
1914–1932 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 182–92. - See Elizabeth Monroe, Britain’s Moment in the Middle East, 1914–1971
(London: Chatto & Windus, 1981), 71. - For a detailed history of the levies, see Hugh Champion de Crespigny,
‘The Assyrian Cause’, ed. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, ‘A Small Room in Clarges
Street’: Secret War-Time Lectures at the Royal Central Asian Society, 1942–
1944 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2014), 107–17. Also, the Assyrian
RAF Levies website is a highly informative source, especially the page
authored by the late Joe O’Sullivan at http://assyrianlevies.info/grp-cpt-
joe-osullivan.html, which provides a historical overview. For an archived
account of the role of the levies in the defence of Habbaniya, see ‘An
account of the Iraqi revolt in May 1941’, n.d., AIR 23/5912, The National
Archives, Kew, Surrey [TNA], also reproduced in Anita L.P. Burdett, ed.,
Iraq: Defence Intelligence 1920–1973 (Slough: Archive Editions, 2005),
632–7.