The Museum has received an enquiry about this medal (pictured) and believe it relates to a hockey competition held in Basra, Mesopotamia (that is to say, Basra in modern-day Iraq) following the First World War.
Between 1914-1918, British and Indian Army troops fought a campaign against the Ottomans whose Empire had entered the War on the side of Germany. The port city of Basra was occupied by British Indian troops in November 1914 and acted as a launch point for a long and bloody inland incursion toward Baghdad, which was taken for the British in March 1917.
The medal is dated after the end of the war when the British remained in Mesopotamia as the new colonial power, presumably in a more peaceful situation which allowed for activities such as hockey, a long-established sporting pastime in the British military.
Guns from 1/5th Hampshire Howitzer Battery being loaded onto a raft at Basra, 1915.
Online Collection | National Army Museum, London (public domain)
Indian Troops in New Street, Baghdad, 11 March 1917.
Online Collection | National Army Museum, London (public domain)
Our research has been unable to establish a direct link between the forebears of the medal’s current owners and the British campaign in Mesopotamia or the period of reconstruction that followed. It is this latter period from which this hockey medal dates. If you know anything of hockey in Mesopotamia (Iraq) during this period, please get in touch.
