Albania WW2 RAF Pilots Secret Grave Found is a story about a small. isolated Albanian village which kept a deadly secret for almost 50 years during the oppressive, communist regime of Enver Hoxha. The secret they kept lay unmarked and untended in the local village graveyard. So, what was this secret that if it had leaked out could have had potentially deadly consequences for the village?
The story developed thus:
During the long and hot Albanian summer of 1998, the embassy was contacted by the Mayor of Saranda.
Saranda was a medium-sized coastal town and popular holiday resort in the south of the country located near the Greek border and lying directly opposite the island of Corfu. The Mayor said that he had been contacted by a resident of the village of Drovian which was located in the mountains just above Saranda.
Apparently, this villager, his family and the whole village had been living with a secret for decades.
It transpired that during the second World War when the Italians invaded Albania, an RAF fighter plane, during the course of a dogfight, had collided with an Italian machine and the badly burned British RAF pilot had baled out.
He landed just outside the village and despite the tender ministrations of the villagers, had tragically died from his wounds. The villagers then buried him in an unmarked grave in the church grounds as they did not want the Italians to find him.
After the war, with the advent of the brutal and repressive Hoxha communist regime and his denial of the extensive British military aid given to him in terms not only of material but also of British lives in defeating his axis occupiers and liberating his country, the villagers did not dare inform anyone outside the village about the hidden British grave in case they would be taken for collaborators.