SOUDA BAY WAR CEMETERY

Northwest of the port of Souda, 5 km from Chania Town, you can find the Commonwealth War Cemetery. This is an impressive location at the edge of Souda Bay offering magnificent views of the Aegean Sea. The graves in this cemetery belong to soldiers of the Commonwealth who died in Crete during the Second World War.

It contains 19 burials from World War I and 731 World War II burials where the body was identified along with another 776 burials of bodies which are unable to be identified (Battle of Crete). It was designed by architect Louis de Soissons. On 21 May 1941, when German troops took over Heraklion, Pendlebury slipped away with his Cretan friends heading for Krousonas, the village of Kapetanios Satanas, which was some 15 kilometres to the southwest. They had the intention of launching a counterattack, but on the way there Pendlebury left the vehicle to open fire on some German troops, who fired back. Some Stukas came over and Pendlebury was wounded in the chest.

GERMAN WAR CEMETERY IN MALEME

More than 15000 German soldiers lost their lives during the Second World War in the Greek territory. The German military cemetery in Maleme (Deutschen Soldatenfriedhof in Maleme) is one of the two cemeteries in Greece where the graves of German soldiers are. The other cemetery is the German military cemetery Dionysus – Rapentozis in Attica.

The German cemetery is near Maleme airport on the north coast of Crete, 20 km western of Chania city and one kilometer above the village of Maleme. From here one can see far into the deep blue bay of Chania. Towards the west olive orchards line the hillsides all the way down to the winding Tavronitis river. Far beyond one can see the outline of the Monastery of Gonia. In the south the “White Mountains” Range rises up to 2.450 m. The basic idea of the memorial was to design the graveyard for the fallen soldiers according to the four main battle grounds of Maleme, Chania, Rethymnon and Heraklion.