Eleven British and Commonwealth soldiers buried in Amara War Cemetery, in what is now Iraq, died on this day in 1916. One was Gunner Albert STONEHOUSE, born in Filey in 1883, the fifth of Abraham Waugh Stonehouse and Alice SKELTON’s ten children. He was 32 years old when he succumbed to heatstroke while serving with the Royal Field Artillery, fighting the Turkish Army in Mesopotamia. His unit, 14^th Battery, 4^th Brigade, was under the command of the  7^th Meerut Division of the Indian Army.

In peacetime, Albert had worked in the family business, as a carriage proprietor. He married Elizabeth GASH in 1907 and they saw four children into the world. Their only son, also Albert Charles, would serve as a Navy gunner in the Second World War and be killed in 1942. Two of his uncles, David and Edward GASH, died in the Great War.

The Amara Cemetery was desecrated during the illegal wars that followed 9/11 and only the brave actions of the Cemetery caretaker prevented total destruction of the place. I have plotted the approximate location of Albert’s grave on the 2012 Google Earth satellite image (Source: CWGC).

Albert was remembered on the GASH family grave in St Oswald’s churchyard, on an additional stone that has now disappeared. The discrepancy between his age at death, 32 calculated from his birth registration and 30 on the missing stone transcription (and in the CWGC Index), can’t be resolved.

Also of Gunner ALBERT C. STONEHOUSE R.F.A., killed in the Great War Jun 19 1916, aged 30.

Albert is on the FamilySearch Tree and several people have been making contributions to his pedigree in the last few years.

Albert is a nephew of Samuel Stonehouse who killed his wife Maria in 1894. (Some duplicate records need to be merged for this relationship to appear clearly on FST).