The original grave of Petty Officer Stephen John Gilbert, Royal Navy, Christian Cemetery, Belemedik, Turkey. [AWM P01645.004]
Petty Officer Stephen Gilbert was an Englishman who enlisted in the Royal Navy at age 17 and became an expert in the electrical circuity of torpedoes. He transferred to the Royal Australia Navy to the submarine AE2 and sailed with the warship to Australia in 1914. Captured by the Turks with the AE2’s crew in April 1915, he worked in a number of Turkish POW camps on roads and other work. During the winter of 1915-1916, he was in Belemedik, in the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey, working on the Berlin-Baghdad railway line. In the summer of 1916, malaria and typhoid swept the POW camp and Gilbert died of malaria on 26 September 1916. Initially, he was buried in the local Christian cemetery but, in 1922, Gilbert’s remains were disinterred by the Imperial War Graves Commission and reburied in the Baghdad North Military Cemetery where they remain to this day. The Commission considered that it was impossible to look after the many isolated graves of British and Commonwealth servicemen buried in many locations in Turkey so their remains were removed to cemeteries like Baghdad North.