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Greek Cemeteries |
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Salonika (Lembet Road) Military Cemetery This cemetery (then known as the Anglo-French Military Cemetery) was opened in November 1915 and had British, French, Serbian, Italian and Russian sections. The British section remained in use until October 1918, although from the beginning of 1917 burials were also made at Mikra (see below under Additional Cemeteries). The front line was 40 miles away and most of the burials are of soldiers who died in hospitals established locally. In February and March 1917 Salonika received two heavy air raids and many of the graves just north of the Cross of Sacrifice are of those killed in the bombing. The cemetery contains 1,650 British burials (of whom 15 were in the Malta Labour Corps) and three Canadian; 45 Bulgarians who died as prisoners of war are also buried here. One of the more remarkable graves is that of Mrs Katharine Mary Harley, Croix de Guerre (France), age 62, who died on 7th March 1917. She was a sister of Field Marshal Sir John French, C-in-C of the BEF in France and Flanders in 1914-1915. Mrs Harley led a group of British nurses serving with the Serbian Army and she was killed in the bombing. Her grave bears a private memorial (as well as a recumbent Commission headstone) erected in 1917 by the Serbian Army and inscribed in two languages:
Though Mrs. Harley, at an age when few men were serving, died nursing in the Serbian Army, she was typical of the many women who served with the nursing and similar forces of the Commonwealth forces and whose graves lie wherever those forces served.
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The text on this page has been taken from Courage Remembered, by Kingsley Ward and Major Edwin Gibson.
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