This article is about the Ta-Braxia Cemetery, Malta and some of the soldiers buried there. It is one of a series of articles I have written about Malta and the First World War which can be viewed by clicking on the link below:
Ta-Braxia Cemetery, Malta
The Ta-Braxia Cemetery, Malta is located just outside the capital of Valletta. Though it only contains a handful of graves relating to the First World War it is worth a visit. The cemetery is on one of the main roads into Valletta and very easy to visit. The Ta-Braxia Cemetery is only five minutes walk away from the Pieta Military Cemetery and it is worth visiting both. The Ta-Braxia Cemetery was opened in 1857 and designed by Emmanuel Luigi Galizia who also designed the Addolorata Cemetery.
The cemetery contains eight men who are commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, but there are a number of First World War dead remembered on relative’s gravestones. There are also graves of soldiers who died while serving as part of Malta’s garrison and returning from India. If you have an interest in the Indian Army this is definitely a cemetery to visit.
The Memorial Chapel at the Ta-Braxia Cemetery was designed by John Loughborough Pearson, in memory of Rachel Gordon, the wife of Sir Arthur Gordon. Sir Arthur and his wife were returning to England from Ceylon, where Sir Arthur had been governor when she fell ill and died at Malta.
The grave of Surgeon Major A. R. Hall, Army Medical Department (subsequently the Royal Army Medical Corps), who “Died at Malta, 4th February 1880, on his way home from India [Of] disease contracted while serving in the Afghan War of 1879”. The Ta-Braxia Cemetery was bombed during the Second World War, and it likely that Hall’s grave was damaged at this time.
The grave of Major Robert Dillon, formerly of the 32nd Regiment. Robert Dillon was a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. If you click on the photograph you will see the names of the battles he participated on the shield ”Copenhagen, Salamanca, Peninsula, Corunna, Vimiera, Badajos, and Roleia”. Sir John Dillon, Robert’s father, was a noted Irish politician and writer and created the Baronet of Lismullen in 1801. A descendant was Michael Dillon.
Lieutenant William Wynter Peache, Royal Engineers, is one of the World War One burials at Ta-Braxia. Peache’s service file is available to view at the National Archives.
There is a section of the cemetery for French colonial soldiers who died in the war. The headstone’s translation is as follows: Here lies, Nguyen Loi, Tonkinese Rifles, died for France, on 11 November 1917. Pray for him. Nguyen Loi would have been recruited from present-day Vietnam, which was a French colony at the time.