Cole, O
Owen Cole
From Jo Bennett. 15/04/2024
Owen’s story is remarkable.
He left NZ on 01 May 1940 to England where he was stationed in Kent during the Battle of Britain. In December 1940 he embarked for Egypt. to undertake desert warfare training.
He was posted with his unit to Greece and was evacuated to Crete. He was unable to leave the island and became prisoner after the withdrawal and ordered to capitulate to Germany on 01 June 1941.
His unit had a 77% loss. Owen’s time is now a mystery, and much is presumed, or taken from eyewitness accounts, and most of this was recorded after the war ended.
It seems he was captured on 01 June and taken to a prisoner of war camp near Skines which was mostly Australian. It is here there was an eyewitness account of Owen being here. Several soldiers escaped, Owen Cole being one of them. Later two were shot. These bodies were taken to the Suda Bay cemetery as unidentified, and were later exhumed and dental records examined.
One of the records closely matched Owen, but the bodies were badly damaged that only the bottom jaw was identified. It is presumed Owen died around the 4 September 1941, and he is buried at the Suda Bay War Cemetery in Crete.
He is not listed as a POW in any record apart from his war records and personal diary. His war records document the hunt to find him.
His story continues… Owen Cole’s diary was discovered among thousands of wartime documents in a Moscow vault in the 1990’s, apparently seized from the German Army during the Russian Army advance. His diary was passed to Boris Yeltsin, then to PM Tony Blair before being given to the NZ High Commission in London.
On the 01 June 1941 he writes about being taken prisoner on Crete at 10am, before marching 48 miles which took three days with very little food. His diary ends on 23 June 1941, two weeks after escaping the prison camp. The last entry states that a Greek soldier gave him bread and cheese, and had tea in a cafe with one egg in Pontonea.
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