In Memory of
B Starling
Driver
CHT/524
No. 3 Base Horse Transport Depot, Royal Army Service Corps
who died on
Tuesday, 25th December 1918.
Additional Information:
Son of Mr. H. Starling, of Church St., Hundon, Clare, Suffolk.
Commemorative Information
Cemetery:
MIKRA BRITISH CEMETERY, KALAMARIA,
Grave Reference/
Panel Number:
1159.
Location:
Mikra British Cemetery is situated approximately 8 kilometres south of Thessalonika on the
road
to the airport. CWGC signposts have been erected at appropriate points.
Within the cemetery will be found the Mikra Memorial, commemorating nurses, officers and
men of
the forces of the Empire who lost their lives in the Mediterranean and whose only grave is
the sea.
Their link with the place of the Memorial is, in most instances, the fact that others who
went down
in the same vessel were washed ashore and identified, and are now buried at Thessalonika.
Historical Information:
Salonika (now Thessalonika) was occupied in October, 1915, at the invitation of M.
Venizelos, by
three French Divisions and the 10th (Irish) Division from Gallipoli. Other French and
British forces
landed during the year, and in the summer of 1916 Russian and Italian troops joined them.
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; and these forces, with the reconstituted
Serbian Army,
formed the Salonika Army to which the Bulgarians yielded in September, 1918.
In the winter of 1919-20, while the town was still in Allied occupation, a White Russian
force took
refuge in Salonika.
The town was the base of the British Salonika Force and it contained, from time to time,
eighteen
General and Stationary Hospitals.
The earliest British burials took place in the local Protestant and Roman Catholic
Cemeteries. The
Anglo-French Military Cemetery was begun in November, 1915, and closed to British burials
in
October, 1918. In April, 1917, the British cemetery at Mikra, on the Western outskirts of
the town,
was opened, and it remained in use until 1920.
Mikra British Cemetery contains many graves which were brought in from other cemeteries
after
the Armistice. There are also unidentified War graves within the cemetery; next to it is a
cemetery
made by the Greeks for the burial of Greek refugees from Russia.
Copyright The Commonwealth War Graves Commission