KOKINIA CAMP

Camp News, Volume 2, Issue 99, 21 November 1941, Page 4

KOKINIA CAMP

N.Z. Prisoners Of War In Greece

During the last few months numbers of people in New Zealand have been advised by the Government that relatives, wounded either in the Grdek or Crete campaigns, were prisoners of war at Kokinia, in Greece. One letter received from that place stated that there were more than 600 men from

Crete alone. Seeking information about ’ this place (which does mot appear on most maps) a reporter was told by Mr. Garland, vice-consul for Greece in Wellington. that the patch of country known as Kokinia was flat land; sand and rock, situated roughly half-way, between the port of Piraeus and th/ city of Athens. This area was considered waste land till, the Turks drove the Greeks out of Asia Minor in •1922. That meant the uprooting of over a million people, and refugees from the.country round about Smyrna streamed across the Aegean into Greece. The then Government, under great duress, had to do something for these people, most of whom had been utterly ruined. Looking round for some place to house them, the Government selected Kokinia as an area handy to both the city and tin* port, yet cheap land. So houses were built by the hundred on this extensive flat. Mr. Garland related how a bumble sergeant in the Greek army was left a mountain in this district by his

grandmother when she died. It was not a very fruitful mountain, still' it furnished pasturage for a few hundred goats, the return from which supplemented his meagre pa;, Then came the settlement of Kokinia, a few .milesaway. Greece, is deficient- in timber, and almost alt the lumber it requires litis to be imported. So, having no timber to build houses for the refugees from Asia Minor, the Government had to build them of stone, a craft well developed in that country. Where to get the stone? Handily located was Alisida and the sergeant's, mountain. It was found on investigation to be composed of good building stone, so contracts were made, the stone was hewn out in huge quantities.'carted to Kokinia, there to. rise again in the form of houses. - And as the mountain disappeared, a good flat area was created in its place. The story told how. that sergeant, who had never dreamed his mountain was worth very much.' died a multi-millionaire. The stone he sold to the Government comprises the greater part of the town of Kokinia, where so many New Zealand

troops, captured in Crete, are held in

hospital and convalescent camp