Lemnos Hero - Blackburn's Private Edward Tozer

The above image is of a digger playing the Last Post at sunset aboard the HMAT Euripides as it sailed from Australia to Egypt, Lemnos and Gallipoli. It was taken by a merchant seaman, Denver Wood Wansey, and is held by the Australian War Memorial.
As this ship sailed to war, aboard was one Private Edward Tozer of the 4th Battalion, AIF. A nearly 24 year old railway worker from Blackburn, Tozer would serve at Gallipoli and France - and on Lemnos.
But for Tozer and his time on Lemnos - at Sarpi and the villages nearby - is of special resonance.
For Tozer would return to Australia after WW1 and one of his relatives would marry someone from the land he had walked in 1915.
The story of Edward Tozer and how later his family would marry into the Tarlamis family from Tsimandria and Agariones - villages not far from the Anzac Rest Camp at Sarpi - encapsulates the link between Australia and Lemnos through the Anzac story.
More to come on the Tozer-Tarlamis story.
Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee