Lembet Road Military Cemetery, Salonika, Greece


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Country: Greece
Identified Casualties: 1634

Location Information
The Cemetery is located at 192 Langada Street on the Serres highway approximately 2 km north of Thessaloniki city centre on the west side of Langada Street. The cemetery is inside a very large, mainly First World War Allied cemetery containing Serbaian, French and Italian casualties and is known locally as ‘’Zeitenlik’’ and is to the rear of the Serbian, French and Italian sections. The main entrance to the CWGC cemetery is clearly signposted on Langada Street.

Visiting Information
The Cemetery is permanently open and may be visited at any time.

For further information and enquiries please contact maoffice@cwgc.org

Historical Information
At the invitation of the Greek Prime Minister, M.Venizelos, Salonika (now Thessalonika) was occupied by three French Divisions and the 10th (Irish) Division from Gallipoli in October 1915. Other French and Commonwealth forces landed during the year and in the summer of 1916, they were joined by Russian and Italian troops. In August 1916, a Greek revolution broke out at Salonika, with the result that the Greek national army came into the war on the Allied side.

The town was the base of the British Salonika Force and it contained, from time to time, eighteen general and stationary hospitals. Three of these hospitals were Canadian, although there were no other Canadian units in the force.

The earliest Commonwealth burials took place in the local Protestant and Roman Catholic cemeteries. Salonika (Lembet Road) Military Cemetery (formerly known as the Anglo-French Military Cemetery) was begun in November 1915 and Commonwealth, French, Serbian, Italian and Russian sections were formed. The Commonwealth section remained in use until October 1918, although from the beginning of 1917, burials were also made in Mikra British Cemetery. After the Armistice, some graves were brought in from other cemeteries in Macedonia, Albania and from Scala Cemetery, near Cassivita, on the island of Thasos.

There are now 1,648 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. The Commonwealth plot also contains 45 Bulgarian and one Serbian war graves.

Casualties
Name Service No. Regiment/Service Died
Hugh Lennox 602 Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders (Princess Louise’s) 09/10/1916

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