I had the opportunity to sit down with Jeremy Casdagli of Casdagli Cigars to give you an introduction to the Cypher 3311, now available on-site.

[Tyler Caldwell]: Tell us a bit about the Cypher 3311.

[Jeremy Casdagli]: This was actually a line of cigars we created to honor my grandfather, and we launched in 2022. I think it was the first PCA after COVID-19. I'd like to share more about his background as a famous prisoner of war of the Germans. If you're really interested in delving into more of it, you can search about his story online. The Germans today are lovely people, but this is a historical account.

Alexis Casdagli's Story

You have to understand just a little bit of that backstory of how he was captured and what he did, and then we'll come back to the cigars.

My grandfather, Major Lex Casdagli, was in the British Army during World War II, but also was attached to the Greek force. We are Levantine Greeks. He could speak fluent Greek. The name Casdag actually is a confusing one because it's Turkish, although it was Hellenic until 1922. He had been an amateur archeologist actually, and did all sorts of interesting things in Egypt.

He fought at the Battle of Crete in 1941 and was captured there. He led the surrender and they put him on a hellish trip all the way through to northern Germany by rail. He kept a hidden diary that has been published, so we know what he went through.

But what made him quite famous in the international press was that in the first six months after being incarcerated, he was still in his tropical uniform, and he found himself in the winter of 1941 in Dössel-Warburg, which was an absolute hell hole.

He was attached to General Kapatos, who was captured with him, who spoke nothing but Greek — he was actually quite a famous Greek general from the wars against the Ottomans in the earlier parts of the 1900s. 2,000 British prisoners of war lived in freezing conditions, and there was some barbed wire, and about 30,000 Russians, so you can imagine what that camp was like.

But he managed to convince the Greek general to deliver his jersey sweater to him. He unraveled all its threads and he created what we call a sampler. He got some linen from another officer. He did this sewing, and by the way, the German administration was quite happy for him to do this. I do underline that because around the inside there's a British lion, a Soviet symbol — the hammer and sickle — the Nazi Germany, and an eagle. Unfortunately, it's not the American one. It's the Italian eagle, and we have cotton spools running around the outside. All cotton came from southern Egypt and northern Sudan.

If you read what he sewed, it says, "This work was done by Major A.T. Casdagli, number 3311," his POW number, "whilst in captivity, Dössel-Warburg, Germany, December 1941." That's when you chaps joined the party. Thank you for that.

[TC]: You're very welcome.

[JC]: This hung on up at Dössel-Warburg, and he was eventually shipped off to Spangenberg Castle as general, which was kind of like Colditz Castle, for those that are into that part of history, which was for VIPs and naughty boys.

After three years there, he was on a death march but was liberated by the Americans in Hadamar Concentration Camp, so thank you for that. My grandfather always loved your country.

What the Germans never spotted were the little dots and dashes, which wrote a message in morse code. If you do a Google search of Casdagli, and I'll give you the final words on that one so you can look it up, in the middle he wrote, "God save the King," and around the outside it says, "F**k Hitler" five times, so if you're really interested in this story, just do Casdagli F**k Hitler and you're gonna get a lot of papers. It's been in many museums.

He left all of these embroideries at the castle, and a lovely German civilian sent them on to the family in 1946 after saving them. Since it had Casdagli on the back, which is a particular name, he could track us down.

Inspiration for Cypher 3311

My grandfather passed on in the early '90s, and in 2012, they had a big exhibition of him and Winston Churchill. They were the two most famous prisoners of war that had been to Harrow School. Winston was a prisoner of the South African Boers during the Boer War.

I live in Estonia now, and my father calls me after this. One particular embroidery was in the Albert Museum and the Imperial War Museum. The latter museum called my father and said, "The Official Secrets Act is over. We have special things to show you." My father called me and said, "When you're next home in London, come and see what I've been delivered." There were all the letters my grandfather sent to my grandmother delivered through the Red Cross, and there were codes. My father said to me, "Jerm, during the war, when these letters were delivered to your grandmother, she was always crying the next day and I always thought there was sad stuff in there." But actually, he was a top military man as well, and some upper class thug would deliver the letters and they'd pick them up the next day, and say, "Some of this is for you, Mrs. Casdagli. The rest is for us. You might not understand it."

Lex was a member of MI9, and MI9 was responsible for intelligence coming from the British POW camps, and also escaped officers or other prisoners, information on them, and the escape resistance lines that they, both the prisoners escaping and the American and British bomber crews, utilized to get them to Spain or Switzerland or elsewhere.

I thought, I have to honor this. I wrote to the Estonian Red Cross and I shared his story. My grandfather always wrote in his diaries, "The Red Cross saved my life, my stitching saved my sanity." I told them about my cigar company and that I wanted to honor the Red Cross by contributing one euro per cigar sold to them. Any of us working the cigar business know that's a big hefty part of what we do with the cigars.

We had quite a funny little meeting. It was during COVID, as I said, so I'm there with my bloody mask on, there's three chaps all in masks, and they had a television at the end. I suppose the Red Cross will be a bit upset at me telling how the meeting went, but here we are. We're cigar smokers and it all ended well.

One of the main fundraisers for the Red Cross, a very beautiful lady, said, "Jeremy, it took us a couple of weeks to come back to you because I ordered your grandfather's books, and I wanted to read about it. And first of all, Jeremy, we do not endorse companies. You might be making baby food, but perhaps you're an American company. We have the Red Crescent, we are bipartisan, and your grandfather was making escape equipment from our Red Cross parcels. That's not what they were for." She said, "That could have all sorts of trouble for us trying to help prisoners of war on both sides if that got out." Everyone suspected it, but there was no proof.

They mentioned a very big company that delivers tens of millions each year to the Red Cross, and they said they're never to be mentioned. It makes you feel a little bit different about big tobacco, actually, on hearing that. When I looked over your Virginia tobacco fields in North Carolina yesterday, I said, "They're doing good stuff, too."

I asked her, "Why am I here?" They were making an exception. "Do not put Red Cross all over your boxes, but you can put a nice insert in there and say you deliver to the Red Cross." So I did it.

Cypher 3311

Cypher 3311 is what we created. Many of you might have come across it when we launched it. We initially made four cigars, and then we added an extra one. We do mysterious blends here. They're all coming from Inversiones González Martínez, a Cuban expatriate-run company in Costa Rica, and of course, that is a very old Cuban.

We have a Diadema, which we call the Lorenz, which is a German coding machine, which is a bloody hard one to break. It's a hard cigar to roll and it's quite difficult to smoke. You have to know what you're doing, but it's very satisfying when you do.

We have a Double Corona that we call Enigma. Again, a German coding machine. You can see they both have a darker Ecuadorian Corojo, because they're the bad guys, right?

And then we have a lighter Colorado Ecuador here for the Colossus. Now, I'm not one for big ring gauges. If we do make them, I make a Campana. I like it sitting nicely in my mouth. This is great with a punch. It's a 6" x 60, and we call it the Colossus, which was the first mainframe computer that Alan Turing made to break these two little chaps here, with help from the Polish as well, and various other countries. It wasn't just us. That mainframe computer had big rollers on it, hence the 6" x 60.

We have a box-pressed Churchill we call a Needle, because my grandfather needled the Germans, and we eventually came out with Boniface, which was the code name for Ultra. That's an interesting story of itself, but we only have so much time.

We put them in coffin boxes, and they really are beautiful with the Morse codes on the outside. We included lots of hidden symbols. We have three witches on there, which is all part of it, you can look that up yourself if you'd like. There are also poppies there. There are eight poppies, and if you look very carefully at the stalks, you'll see the Chinese number eight, which represents hope and luck. In Latin, eight is infinity, hope, and luck.

As for the ring, we chose one of my grandfather's embroideries that he created in 1943. It has a beautiful note, which we don't replicate, we just put the shield on for the ring: "What I have, and what you have I hold, I'm all right," which is his freedom, and very briefly we have squash tennis rackets. He's an amateur squash champion of Egypt, his rank of major general, his ladder of escape committee. The Germans knew he was a bad 'un, that's why he was there, right?

Strangely enough, the Wehrmacht allowed him to do this. There's a ship in the top right corner, which actually has his message for the Germans as well from when he was captured. That was a ship called the Pasteur where German prisoners of war were abused, and it was really stating to the Germans, "Yes, we're remembering you're prisoners of war." Some might think that actually it was, "You f**ked with us, we can f**k with you back." It was a little warning for them. So there you have it.

Charlie from Halfwheel called the box the most beautiful packaging alongside Davidoff's Year of the Dragon that year. The Red Cross was very overwhelmed. The Estonian Red Cross said, "None of us smoke, but perhaps your community sitting and smoking might remember the Red Cross when you tell your wonderful stories." And I think that's really very moving, I can give you one guess which is the biggest market for this cigar in Europe: Germany. The reception has been amazing.

[TC]: It all comes full circle.

[JC]: It does indeed. They've taken me to the castles, I've been driven to some of the camps, and we were even at a wonderful meeting with a chap called Ralf Moeller — those that are fans of Gladiators would notice he was the gent that had the arrow in the leg and went, "Ah." He came and visited me and said some very kind words, and we spent some time together.

[TC]: Incredible history to go along with an incredible cigar. Make sure to check out Casdagli Cigars and Cypher 3311 at Smokingpipes, and let us know what you think.