Mesopotamia (Iraq) - Kirkuk

Modern-day Kirkuk is a Kurdish city incorporated within the Kurdistan Region of northern Iraq.  A hundred years earlier, the British occupied Kirkuk on 7th May 1918.  Cyril Sladden and the 9th Battalion Worcestershire Regiment were involved in the occupation.  Abandoning the city after about two weeks, the British returned to Kirkuk a few months later after the Armistice of Mudros on 30th October 1918 (although Cyril was not part of this as he was by then in Persia).

Cyril expressed surprise in a letter of 29th July 1918 to his father that the Kirkuk operations had aroused so little comment in English papers.

The city sits on the ruins of the original Kirkuk Citadel, site of the ancient mid 3rd millennium BC Assyrian city of Arrapha.