At the request of his father, Antonios, Dilboy was later buried at his birthplace Alatsata, which was at that time a predominantly Greek city. After a funeral procession through the streets of his birthplace—said to have been witnessed by 17,000 mourners—his flag-draped casket was placed in the Greek Orthodox Church of the Presentation in Alatsata to lie in state before the high altar. But rampaging Turkish soldiers soon seized the town and during the three-year Greco-Turkish War of 1919–22, Turkish troops recaptured Smyrna and the surrounding region from the Greeks. The church was ransacked and Dilboy's grave desecrated. The American flag was stolen from atop Dilboy's coffin. The coffin was overturned, after which—according to an account by Bishop John Kallos—the bones of the Greek-American war hero were scattered by the marauding attackers.