Friends of the Somme - Mid Ulster Branch
ff
Location
Region : Kalokastro, Strymoniko, Greece
Latitude : 41.018268
Lontitude : 23.333764
CWGC Link : 35000
Struma Military Cemetery is 65 kilometres north-east of Thessaloniki, before the village of Kalokastro and on the way to Serres town. Access is by a sign-posted track.

View Full Screen in Google Maps
Cookstown Casualties
No     Rank Name Service No Regiment / Service Date Of Death Grave Ref
1 Portrait Pte. Beach, John James 11417 Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers 10/09/1916 Grave 5-A-1
Cemetery History
The Struma River flows through Bulgaria southward to the Greek frontier, then south-east into the Aegean Sea. From the Allied base at Salonika, a road ran north-east across the river to Seres, and it was this road that the right wing of the Allied army used for the movements of troops and supplies to the Struma front during the Salonika Campaign.
In the autumn of 1916, the 40th Casualty Clearing Station was established not far from the road near the 71 Kilometre stone and the cemetery made for it was originally called Kilo 71 Military Cemetery.
The original plot, Plot I, was set too close to a ravine and the graves in it were moved after the Armistice to the present plots VIII and IX. The remainder of the cemetery consists almost entirely of graves brought in from the battlefields, from the churchyards at Homondos, Haznatar and Kalendra, and from little front-line cemeteries (established by Field Ambulances or Battalions), of which the chief were those at Ormanli (24 burials), Dolab Wood (17 burials) and Big Tree Well (on the right bank of the Struma, opposite Ormanli; 17 burials).
Struma Military Cemetery contains 947 Commonwealth burials of the First World War, 51 of them unidentified. There are also 15 war graves of other nationalities.