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ILL Met By Moonlight The story of the abduction, in 1944 from Crete, of General Kreipe, and of "In the footsteps of heroes", two expeditions in Crete remembering and honouring both the Greek and British heroes involved in the original operation. |
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OFF SITE LINKS The War Graves Photographic Project |
Some corner of a foreign field. A conundrum- Can you help? In the Commonwealth War Grave Cemetery at Botley, Oxford, there is the grave of single Greek soldier. To the best of my knowledge this is the only Greek soldier buried in the U.K. (There are Greek sailors buried elsewhere in the U.K.) The headstone bears a name in Greek script as follows: Τ ΛΑΓΟC which is translates as: T. Lagos and gives further details in English:- Private Greek Army 18th October 1944 followed by further Greek script which translates as:- 'The whole Earth is the grave for distinguished men'. I, and a number of the London based Greek military attaches have, over a number of years, tried to find out more about Private Lagos - but without success to date. We can find no additional information about him amongst the cemetery records, the C.W.G.C. records, or Greek military records. If you have any knowledge, or suggestions, then please use the link on the home page to contact me and help us find out more about this man. The C.W.G.C. cemetery at Botley is a regional R.A.F. cemetery and contains the mortal remains of many Commonwealth airman as well a number of allied airman who came to serve with the R.A.F. Perhaps more relevant in respect of Private Lagos is the fact that there are many graves of servicemen there who were not connected with the R.A.F. There are a small number of Italian graves, probably connected to the fact that there was an Italian P.O.W. camp nearby in WW2. There are also German graves and it is thought that these may be of servicemen who failed to survive injuries that were treated in temporary hospitals that had been set up in Oxford during both world wars. My best bet at the moment is that Private Lagos may have had some severe head injury that required treatment at one of the specialist local hospitals. Another suggestion is that he may have been a Greek living abroad, perhaps in the U.S., and who served with a non-Greek force. As is the case of Allied servicemen's graves in Greece, the grave of Private Lagos is well tended by the C.W.G.C cemetery staff. He is remembered every Remembrance Sunday by his own countrymen and others.
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