My thoughts now turn to the centenary of the end of World War 1 which we will all be celebrating in ten days time. I especially think of my grandfather William Louis Reed who began work in 1912 in the fledgling oil industry as a marine engineer for Lynch Brothers who were bringing the first oil supplies out of Iran. The company was the "Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company". Grandfather sailed on their ships and mended their bridges until war began in 1914 when all the ships were commandeered by the British Navy to fight the Turks in Iraq.
William Reed spent two and a half years (1916 - 18) in a Turkish prisoner of war camp after being captured and force marched along with others from his ship, Julnar, and from the army up through Iraq and into Turkey. He was awarded the DSO for his part in the attempt to free the besieged garrison at Kut-al-Amara. The captain of the ship and the navigating officer both received a VC but were both killed in Kut.
After being freed my grandfather went home but was soon back in Iraq to work and it was here that he married my grandmother, an Iraqi christian.
I inherited his diaries which he kept just before and during the war. It is on these that I have based my book Battle in Iraq to tell the whole story of these extraordinary events which took place 100 years ago.
