Pembroke Military Cemetery

Cemetery in former Pembroke Army Garrison, Malta

Pembroke Military Cemetery

Details
Established| 1908 (1908)
Location|

Former Pembroke Army Garrison

Country| Malta GC
Coordinates| 35°55′45″N 14°28′13″E﻿ / ﻿35.92917°N 14.47028°E﻿ / 35.92917; 14.47028
Type| Military Cemetery and War Memorial
Style| Single and group burials
Owned by| Commonwealth War Graves Commission
No. of graves| 697
No. of interments| 697

Pembroke Military Cemetery Malta is a burial ground for military personnel and their dependants.[1][2] It is located close by the former St Patrick's Barracks (now St Clare's College) in the Pembroke Council area, on a minor road (Triq Adrian Dingli).[3]

The first soldier buried at the cemetery was Sapper F Jarvis of 28 Company the Royal Engineers, who died on 5 May 1908.[4] The majority of those interred and remembered at the cemetery are casualties of the two World Wars (but mainly the Second World War), many in communal graves.[5] The last person buried at the site was a civilian Maria A Sammut who died on 15 September 2003.[6] There are a total of 324 war graves associated with First and Second World Wars; the CWGC also maintains 273 non-war graves.[7]

One group of graves and a memorial was erected to remember the Maltese servicemen of the Malta Fortress Squadron, Royal Engineers who died instantly and later of their injuries when their RAF Hastings airplane crashed at El Adem Airfield in Libya on 10 October 1961.[8][9] Many other Maltese servicemen are buried in the cemetery.

Malta's CWGC Cemeteries became the centre of a controversy when the then Prime Minister of Malta Dom Mintoff was recorded as considering doing away with the island's war cemeteries in 1978; the threat was never carried out.[10]

There are a number of CWGC graveyards and sites that are cared for by the British Government through the auspices of the CWGC and some of the larger collections of war graves can be found at the following locations:[11]

* Pieta Military Cemetery
* Capucinni Naval Cemetery (also known as Kalkara Naval Cemetery)
* Imtarfa Military Cemetery
* Malta Memorial \- Valletta (not graves but commemorating those with no known grave)

## See also

[edit]

* Pembroke Army Garrison
* Siege of Malta (World War II)

## References

[edit]

1. ^ "Military Cemetery, Pembroke". MEPA. Retrieved 12 July 2017.[permanent dead link]
2. ^ "Planning Authority". www.pa.org.mt. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
3. ^ "Pembroke Military Cemetery". CWGC. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
4. ^ "F Jarvis (died 1908) - Find A Grave Memorial". www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
5. ^ "Pembroke Military Cemetery - Researching WW1". Researching the Lives and Service Records of World War One Soldiers. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
6. ^ "Maria A Sammut (1921 - 2003) - Find A Grave Photos". www.findagrave.com. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
7. ^ "Pembroke Military Cemetery". CWGC. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
8. ^ "Pembroke Military Cemetery". website.lineone.net. Malta Family History. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
9. ^ Simmonds, Donald. "Hastings WD498 Crash, Libya". www.don-simmonds.co.uk. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
10. ^ Allied, Newspapers (13 January 2013). "Mintoff's threat to bulldoze the war graves". Times of Malta. Retrieved 12 July 2017.
11. ^ "Commonwealth War Graves Commission Country Report: Malta" (PDF). CWGC. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 13 July 2017.

## External links

[edit]

* CWGC official website
* CWGC Guide for Malta
* British War Graves on Malta
* Find a Grave Pembroke Military Cemetery
* Australian War Memorial
* Pembroke Military Cemetery, Graves

*[No.]: Number