Lemnos and the Anzacs 1915 - Photo Exhibition - URGENT REMINDER

We will be launching our unique photographic exhibition - along with original paintings on the Lemnos and Azanc theme by Melbourne artisit George Petrou - tomorrow at 6pm Sunday 22nd March evening at the Thessaloniki Community Hall, 439 High Street Northcote.

One of our beautiful images - taken by AW Savage of the 3rd Australian General Hospital in 1915 on Lemnos. Fryer Library, University of Queensland.

The Exhibition features 40 of the most impressive photographs from the hundreds takne on Lemnos in 1915 by the soldeirs and nurses who served there. They tell the story of Anzac's Hellenic Heart.
Tickets are $70 - all proceeds going to support the Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee's Memorial projects.
Refreshments including finger food - including recipes from Lemnos - and drinks will be provided.
This will be a great event - the Consul of Greece,Ms Christina Simantiraki, will be in attendance, along with the Hon Bruce Atkinson MLC, President of the Victoria Legislative Council - and many other dignitaries.
If you haven't already booked, please book your ticket now rather than be disappointed.
Book Now
Tickets are limited and selling fast.
Please contact Lee Tarlamis via lee.tarlamis@hotmail.com or on 0411 553 009

Melbourne commemorative artist, George Petrou, with his portrait of Private Edward 'Tiny' Falloon who served on Lemnos in 1915. photograph Jim Claven 2014.

A BigThank You to Executive Committee Member Ms Christina Despoteris

Christina meeting Vice Admiral Theodosiou of the Hellenic Navy to help plan for the Anzac events in April.

The Committee would like to thank Ms Christina Despoteris, Executive Committee member for her excellent efforts in working with authorities in Greece on behalf of the Committee in Greece in recent weeks.
Christina has been laising with Australian Embassy officials in Athens, the Hellenic Navy, the War Museum of Athens and authorities on Lemnos to help with preparations for the commemoration of Anzac in April.
It is no small part due to her efforts that the events to be held on Lemnos and in Athens this year will be the best held in many years.
These include:

• Major presentations at Portianou on Lemnos and in Athens at the War Museum of Athens to commemorate the Hellenic link to Anzac
• The display of the Committee's unique photographic display - Lemnos and the Anzacs 1915 - at the Athens War Memorial and at the Portianou Hall on Lemnos - both occurring as part of the Greece and Australia's Anzac commemorations in Greece. With the assistance of Christina, the Committee will gift this 40 photograph as well as information panels permanently to the Athens War Memorial. Similarly, she has worked with Malama Varvara, on behalf of the Lemnian Community of Victoria to make the same gift to the people of Lemnos.
• Successfully promoting our proposal to re-create the famous Anzac football match of 1915 on Lemnos this year - with the Hellenic Army and Australian Navy taking the field at Kontias to replay this famous Anzac event

All of us in Australia and those of us fortune to be able to travel to Lemnos in April look froward to a great commemoration of Anzac in April.
From all of us on the Committee back in Melbourne, thank you Christina.
Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee

Lemnos Hero - Nurse Violet Duddy Memorial Plaque Unveiled

Nurse Violet Duddy's new memorial plaque. Photograph Ange Kenos 2015

It was a great pleasure today to attend the commemorative service and unveiling of the memorial plaque for Queenscliffe Nurse Violet Duddy. The Committee was represented by myself and Mr Ange Kenos.

Born in Hastings, New Zealand Nurse Duddy served in the First World War - at Lemnos, Egypt, England and in France. She arrived on Lemnos in August with the rest of the 3rd Australian General Hospital nurses under Matron Grace Wilson. She served here until the evacuation of the peninsula and the hospital to Egypt in January 1916.
As Maggie Stowers said at the unvieling:
"Conditions were somewhat primitive, with limited medical supplies and the tent hospital exposed to strong winds. A nurse colleague of Violet's wrote in her diary..."our thoughts are constantly with the boys on the
Peninsula...last night we heard distinctly the bombardment...and this morning preparations are being made to take in another thousand wounded." Violet was one of 96 Australian nurses whoserved with this hospital on Lemnos. Today we have representatives from the Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee here to honour her."
She was trained at Melbourne's Alfred Hospital. She was 29 when she joined up to the Australian Army Nursing Service on 20 July 1915. She was one of three sisters. For her service she was mentioned in despatches by Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig. After the war, she lived with her sisters at Mt Eliza.

The memorial plaque including the refurbishment of Violet's grave at Queenscliffe Cemetery, the plaque being placed on the headstone.
The local Queenscliffe Historical Museum has showcased items, documents, medals and photographs from Nurse Duddy. A very good display and worth seeing.
Below are some photos of the commemorative service and the Museum display.
The campaign to commemorate Nurse Duddy was led by Maggie Stowers of the Queenscliffe Historical Museum, and received support from the ANMF and the Alfred Hospital Nurses League. Ms Lisa Fitzpatrick, Secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation (Victorian Branch) attended the unveiling.
The event was well attend - with many former Alfred Hospital nurses in attendance.
Congratulations to Magge Stowers and all who supported this new memorial grave site. This will ensure that another Lemnos nurse is not forgotten.
To read Maggie's speech at the unveiling click  here.
Note Maggie Stowers will be visiting Lemnos later this year along with a number of nurses.
Lest we forget.
Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee

Alfred Hospital nurses pay their respects.

Rev Peter Martin, St George's Anglican Church Queenscliff, Maggie Stowers and Gretel James, the family representative

Committee Member Ange Kenos pays his respects.

 

The exhibition at the Queenscliffe Historical Museum

 

 

 

 

 

Lemnos Hero - Private Percy Graham of Richmond Terrace Richmond

Grave of Private Percy Graham, Portianou Military Cemetery, Portianos, Lemnos. Photograph Jim Claven 2013.

One of the diggers who fought at Gallipoli was young Percy Graham, who had been born in Richmond in 1893 – who enlisted as Private No 1754 in the 5th Battalion.
When he enlisted at Melbourne on 5th December 1914 he was 21 years old, 8 months. Standing at over 5 and half feet, he was recorded as having brown hair, grey eyes and a “fresh” complexion. His religion was Anglican. He had worked as a labourer, unmarried and living with is parents - David Arthur and Florence Graham at 11 Richmond Terrace, Richmond. As a labourer, Percy was one of 30% of the AIF who came from his occupation - along with 34% who were tradesmen.
Percy was one of the nearly 1,500 Richmond men who volunteered up to March 1915, as Richmond historian Janet McCalman has recorded.
The Australian War memorial records that Percy’s Battalion was among the first infantry units raised for the AIF during the First World War. Like the 6th, 7th and 8th Battalions it was recruited from Victoria and, together with these battalions, formed the 2nd Brigade.

HMAT Wiltshire. AWM image.

Percy embarked from Princes Pier in Melbourne as part of the reinforcements for the 5th Battalion. He sailed on 14th April aboard the HMAT Wiltshire (designated A18).
Percy did not take part in the Anzac landings in April or the battle of Krithia thst the 5th took part in – the latter of which saw it lose a third of its strength.
Percy arrived at Gallipoli and was taken on strength with the 5th Battalion at Anzac Cove on 13 July 1915.During his service here at this time, he would have taken part in defending the beachhead and in August taken part in the battle of Lone Pine on 6-9 August 1915.
Percy thus took part in one of the most famous assaults of the Gallipoli campaign. This was originally intended as a diversion from attempts by New Zealand and Australian units to force a breakout from the ANZAC perimeter on the heights of Chunuk Bair and Hill 971. The Lone Pine attack, launched in the late afternoon of 6 August 1915 pitched Australian forces against formidable entrenched Turkish positions, sections of which were securely roofed over with pine logs. In some instances the attackers had to break in through the roof of the trench systems in order to engage the defenders. The main Turkish trench was taken within 20 minutes of the initial charge but this was the prelude to 4 days of intense hand-to-hand fighting, resulting in over 2,000 Australian casualties.

No 2 Australian Stationary Hospital, Turks Head Peninsula, Lemnos, 1915. AWM image.

Like many other diggers at Gallipoli, Percy did not die of wounds on the battlefield but from the unhealthy conditions prevailing on the peninsula. He contracted acute meningitis and was sent to the 2nd Australian Stationary Hospital on Lemnos. Here he would have been cared for by the Australian medical staff, including its Australian nurses. He sadly died on 15th September 1915.

Photograph Jim Claven 2015

He was buried on the same day at Portianous Military Cemetery on Lemnos, the Reverend E.C. Kemp officiating, in plot 4, Row C, Grave 245.. In September 1917 his mother was granted 30 shillings per fortnight as a war pension.
His personal effects included a wristwatch, some cards and letters – presumably from home.
At the end of the war, his family were sent his medals - Victory Medal, 1914-15 Star and the British War medal – along with his Memorial Plaque. In 1922 his father was sent photographs of the temporary cross erected on Percy’s grave at East Mudros.

Example of the Next of Kin plaque - the same as the one awarded to Percy's family. AWM image

As Janet McCalman records in her history of Richmond - Struggletown - Percy was one of the 63 Richmond men to die at Gallipoli – along with 16 missing and 232 wounded or sick. They included the first Australian life lost at the peninsula, Capt J.P .Lalor, grandson of the Eureka Stockade’s Peter Lalor.
Lest we forget
Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee

Lemnos Discovery - Photographs Held at State Library of Victoria

Village and windmills [Lemnos], 1915. Collection of Nurse Kathleen Gawler, SLV

The State Library of Victoria is a treasure trove of photographs and archives relating to WW1. As well as well known diggers and nurses, the collection throws up interesting new finds.
Today I discovered photographs compiled by Australian Nurse Kathleen Gawler that depict Lemnos in 1915. Taken by an unknown photographer they are listed as location unknown. But anyone familiar with the Lemnos archive held across a range of collections will recognise these as almost certainly Lemnos.
Reproduced here are two of the photographs she collected during her war service.

Children in Town street [Lemnos], 1915. Collection of Nurse Kathleen Gawler, SLV

Nurse Kathleen Gawler (on the right) with other nurses. Alexandria, Egypt. c 1916. AWM image P10636.032.001

Nurse Kathleen Gawler - A Short Biography
Kathleen served with the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Nursing Service, her collection depicting images of Egypt and Turkey, including Gallipoli. Ivalided to England in January 1920, she returned to Australia.
However she appears to have returned to Egypt, working with the CMS Hospital in Menouf. There she met and married Herbert Hayes, an Anglican Clergyman who had served with the Royal Army Service Corps in WW1. They married on 15 June 1923 at the British consulate, Cairo.
Before the war Hays had joined the Egypt General Mission in Cairo as a genuine missionary (but where he also as an observer for British military intelligence). Hayes had returned to Egypt on19 December 1920, with the Church Missionary Society and took charge of the church and school at Menouf, near Cairo, where he also resumed his undercover work as a political agent.
After their marriage, they both returned to Australia.
Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee

Lemnos Hero - Bendigo's Nurse Mary McIlroy

Stephen Lee showing me Mary's wonderful WW1 photographic album.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of meeting a descedent of one of our Lemnos Nurses - Nurse Mary McIlroy.
Over lunch with Sandra and Stephen Lee we talked about the serivice of Stephen's great auntie, the sister of his paternal grandmother.

Mary's RVTNA Nursing Certificate.

Born in Bendigo and trained at Bendigo Gold District General Hospital, Mary sailed on the SS Mooltan with the other nurses of the 3rd Australian General Hospital. She served on Lemnos, then Egypt, Western France, England and then on the Italian Front. She was famously present at the wedding of fellow Nurse Clarice Daley and Sergeant Ernest Lawrence on Lemnos in 1915 - signing the wedding certificate.

Nurse Mary McIlroy, second left rear, at the Clarice Daley's wedding on Lemnos, 1915. AWM image.

While on service Mary took a number of photographs and wrote a series of postcards home which document her service and experiences in WW1. Viewing these fragile images at our meeting, I was moved by their survival and yet again more records of life on Lemnos in 1915.
These records are cherished by Stephen and his family and has shared them with me.
More to come on this unique story.
Thanks to Stephen and Sandra Lee.
Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee

Invitiation - Lemnos Commemoration Dawn Service - 6am, 4th March 2015, Sydney Cenotaph

On 4th March 1915, the first Anzacs landed on the Aegean Island of Lemnos to prepare for the  landings at Gallipoli.

This comprised the 3rd Infantry Brigade, an engineer company, a field ambulance, a casualty clearing station, a brigades transport and part of a field bakery.
These were the first of 50,000 Australian soldiers and nurses who would come to Lemnos and Gallipoli in the ten months of this long and bloody campaign.
Lemnos would be transformed into the major base for the Gallipoli campaign - its safe and large harbour where the Allied armada assembled, one of the key supply bases, the location of key medical services, including Australian field hospitals, the great Anzac Rest Camp at Sarpi and the place were 148 Australians lie buried in its two commonwealth war cemeteries.

To commemorate the landing of the first Anzacs, a special dawn service will be held at the Sydney Cenotaph, Martin Place, 6am, Wednesday, 4th March 2015.
This is the first commemoration of the landing on Lemnos - and hopefully the first of many in Australia.
Congratulations to the Sydney and NSW Lemnian Community for organizing this important event.
If you can attend, please do.
To download the Media Release, please click here.

Jim Claven 
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee

Other Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Events planned for Sydney in 2015:
Tuesday 24 February — 24 May 2015
Photographic Display — State Library of New South Wales
Lemnos 1915: Then & Now combines images of contemporary Lemnos with eyewitness photographs taken from 1915 to reveal a unique perspective. Photographs by Cheryl Ward & Bernard de Broglio combined with images from the State Library’s First World War collection. (Free event)
Tuesday 3 March — 22 March 2015
Photographic Exhibition: Kogarah Council, ‘Life Away from the Trenches’
Venue: Kogarah Library.
Wednesday 4 March 2015
Dawn service at 6.00am, Cenotaph Martin Place, to commemorate 100 years that the first Anzacs stepped on Lemnos. Public welcome to attend the service
Thursday 5 March 2015
Art Gallery of NSW and Lemnos1915 present a lecture: “The Lemnians – Ancient Amazons of Lemnos to the Anzac Nurses of WW1”, inspired by the Sir William Russell Flint painting circa 1924 held by the Art Gallery NSW collection. A reproduction of the painting will be delivered to Lemnos by the RAN Frigate Anzac on its commemorative journey to Gallipoli. Free.
Saturday 7 March 2015
Sydney Lyceum commemorates Lemnos1915 with performances by international Lyceum groups from Lemnos and Kavala, UNSW Theatre (Ticketed event. To purchase tickets, please call 0466 217 088 or 0414 365 520)
Thursday 12 March — 22 March 2015
Photographic Exhibition: ‘Australia and Lemnos forever connected’
Venue: Rockdale Town Hall Exhibition. To honour the Anzac buried on Lemnos from Rockdale –- Alfred Smith
Saturday 14 March 2015
Lemnian Association of Australia combined Dance (Ticketed event. To purchase tickets please contact Con Havas 0410 421 943)
Close of special program
Sunday 15 March 2015
Through These Lines: Towards Lemnos 1915 by Cheryl Ward -– theatrical production about nurses on Lemnos. Venue: The Factory, Newtown (Ticketed event. To purchase tickets, please call 9550 3666)
Thursday 26 March — 25 April 2015
Photographic Exhibition: Strathfield Council. Venue: Homebush Library.
To honour the Anzac buried on Lemnos from Strathfield – Francis Reynolds Cowdery
Sunday 19 April — 29 April 2015
Photographic Exhibition: Anzac Soldiers & Nurses – Life on Lemnos images from the AW Savage Collection State Library of NSWpresented by Marrickville Council and Lemnos1915 as part of the “Marrickville Remembers” Commemoration. Stroll the streets of Marrickville where images of wwi will be displayed in Marrickville shops. In honour of Marrickville Anzac buried on Lemnos – Arthur Witt
Friday 23 October — 24 November 2015
Photographic Exhibition: Waverley Library Gallery
For additional Lemnos1915 events please see www.facebook.com/lemnos1915
Email: lemnos1915@gmail.com
Thanks to Lemnos1915, Lemnos Association of NSW’s Commemorative Program for the Centenary of ANZAC. The aim of ‘Lemnos1915’ is to raise awareness of the role that Lemnos and its inhabitants played in the Gallipoli campaign.

Jim Claven 
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee