On November 1, 1940, Lieutenant Alexandros Diakos was leading his men through the Pindus mountains against Italian force...

On November 1, 1940, Lieutenant Alexandros Diakos was leading his men through the Pindus mountains against Italian forces when machine-gun fire cut him down. He was 29 years old, and he became the first Greek Army officer killed in the Greek-Italian War. What makes his story particularly striking is where he came from. Diakos was born in 1911 on the island of Halki in the Dodecanese, islands that were under Italian occupation at the time he went to war. He chose to put on a Greek uniform knowing full well he might end up fighting the same country that controlled his birthplace and his family. He was born under Ottoman rule, just before Italy seized the Dodecanese in 1912. He studied at the Venetokleio high school in Rhodes, and in 1929 left for Athens to enroll at the Evelpidon Military Academy, graduating in 1934. He never saw the Dodecanese returned to Greece. That happened in 1947, seven years after his death. Halki mayor Angelos Fragakis spoke to AMNA about Diakos 86 years on, saying that people in the village where he fell still remember him and mourn him as if he were their own. He recalled a brigadier telling him: "Mayor, we teach the heroism of Alexandros Diakos to the Evelpides cadets." His name is on a memorial plaque at the Venetokleio school in Rhodes. Fragakis put it plainly: Diakos could have stayed home, close to his family. He chose the front instead. Archbishop Apostolos of Canada paid tribute to Diakos at an Oxi Day event in Toronto this month, noting that the lieutenant shared his own roots in the Dodecanese. #OxiDay #Dodecanese #Greece