Ernest Chapman lived the life of an honest miner in Little Houghton but was regarded as a hero by many in Greece for his role as a partisan fighter against the Nazis. Paul Nizinskyj found out more.
Greece may have tailed off as a holiday destination due to the eurozone crisis but Denise Parker was not there on holiday.
She has recently returned from the island of Crete, not to work on her tan, but to visit the place where ashes of her father, Ernest Chapman, are buried. Some are also buried at Thessaloniki.
Ernest himself visited Greece many times but, again, his association with the country went far deeper than a sentimental attachment through holidaying.
Although an unassuming miner at home Ernest was something of a living legend to many Greeks - who knew him as Kiriakos Gregrialis - for his role fighting the Germans alongside Greek partisan fighters in the Second World War.
Ernest's story reads like a classic Hollywood war movie script and was even made into a book - 'Kiriakos: A British Partisan in Wartime Greece' - by Don Turner in 1982.
He signed up to the army in 1933 after telling his father he wanted a new suit - to which the reply was 'get a khaki one'. When war came, in 1939, Trooper Chapman was deployed as part of the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment.
'Back from the Dead'
Having survived Dunkirk (despite being greeted with the words 'What are you doing here? You're supposed to be dead' by the guardroom corporal on his return), he was deployed to the Middle East in Christmas 1940.
After a bout of malaria, he rejoined the regiment in Greece, where he was captured by the Germans for the first time outside Athens.
He would be captured and escape another three times during the Greek campaign though, after his fourth escape, this was alongside the Greek partisans rather than the British Army.
He was sheltered by 17-year-old orphan Athanassious Georg Laliotis - despite this being punishable by death by the occupying Germans -until spring 1943 and the two were reunited in 1980.
Back to Greece
Ernest and wife Dot made their first visit back to Greece in 1976, to a hero's welcome, and returned many times. The villagers even built a house for him and he was given an official commendation by the Greek government.
In the true spirit of modesty, Ernest, who died aged 81 in 1997, rarely spoke of his experiences in Greece and settled into life as a chock deputy at Houghton Main.
Denise, 64, of Burnham Way, said she and her mother never even knew about the story until the visit and even then not the full story until Don Turner, who at the time worked for the Sunday Express, showed up looking for stories.
She said: "Don came down and asked if there was anyone there of interest for a column and they told him to see Ernest Chapman because he did oil paintings.
"My dad told him he had been to Greece and that's how it started. But we knew nothing about it, for all we knew, he was just a soldier."
