On 2 November 1940, near the village of Samarina, while directing his unit, Davakis was hit in the chest suffering serious lung injury and lapsing into a coma. Although he regained consciousness two days later, he remained hospitalized in battlefield. In December 1942, he was arrested by the Italian occupation authorities, along with other Greek officers, suspected of participation in the Greek Resistance. The officers were to be shipped to POW camps in Italy on the liner Città di Genova, but the ship was torpedoed and sank off southern Albania in January 1943. Davakis' body was recognized by local Greeks and buried at Vlorë. His bones were transferred to Athens after the war.
