MAY I use your columns to express my appreciation to all those involved in the arrangements for the Remembrance Sunday service at North Hinksey, and to see if any of your readers may be able to help solve a mystery concerning a particular soldier interred there.

As always, the event was well organised and this year I think that the numbers attending were up.

The rain just about held off, which was welcome, especially for the young Scouts who were not allowed coats over their uniform shirts.

The WI again provided a most welcome cuppa and biscuits at the end of the ceremony.

Many other local organisations contributed to the ceremony being another memorable event which did North Hinksey proud.

Visitors to the cemetery will have noticed that many nations are represented among the interred, from both Allied and Axis forces. There are many reasons surrounding the tragic events that have led to the men (and two women) being buried in the cemetery.

Most can be explained with a little research (killed on active service/from local POW camps etc) but one remains a complete mystery and something that I am keen to solve.

Private T Lagos, who died on October 1944, is the only known Greek soldier buried in a UK cemetery.

Friends and contacts, including the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Hellenic Embassy staff, Oxford City Council Cemetery Department, the local Greek Orthodox Church, and many other organisations and historians have all failed to come up with any explanation as to how and why Private Lagos came to be buried in North Hinksey, or anything about his background and family. The rules governing who may be buried in a CWGC cemetery suggest that he must have been on active service at the time of his death – but I know of no reason for a Greek soldier to be in the UK in October 1944.

My own gut feeling, for which there is absolutely no evidence, is that for some reason he found himself in one of Oxford’s wartime specialist hospitals and that he died of his wounds.

I hope that there may still be someone in Oxford who might have had connections with such hospitals, local undertakers of the time, the cemetery, or otherwise be able to help unfold this mystery.

Though I have tried every avenue of inquiry that I and friends can think of, I expect there are others to be tapped and I would greatly appreciate any suggestions or information that might enable me to take this further.

Those online can email me at im@illmetbymoonlight.info

TIM TODD, Exmouth, Devon