Marco Pallis - Early Life: Education, Travels, and Wartime Experiences

Early Life: Education, Travels, and Wartime Experiences

Born in Liverpool on 19 June 1895, he was the youngest son of wealthy and cosmopolitan Greek parents. Pallis was educated at Harrow School and the University of Liverpool, where he studied entomology. In 1911 he traveled to British Guiana to study insects, and in 1912, he joined the Greek campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the first of the Balkan Wars. During the siege of Ioannina, the ancestral town of the Pallis family, he worked at a field hospital in Arta.

During the First World War, Pallis, initially aided the Salvation Army in the region along the Sava River in Serbia. In 1916 he enlisted in the British Army and received a commission as an army interpreter in Macedonia. Malaria and a severe inflammation of his right eye cut short his Macedonian service. After a lengthy convalescence in Malta, Pallis applied to and was accepted by the Grenadier Guards. He received basic training, then advanced training as a machine-gunner. In 1918, as a second lieutenant, he was sent to fight in the trenches of the Western Front. During the battle of Cambrai, in a charge that killed his captain and first lieutenant, Pallis was shot through the knee and was forced to retire from combat.