Remembering the Armistice of Mudros - 30th October 1918

The great British warship HMS Agamemnon in Mudros Harbour, where the Armistice was signed in 1918.

Today - 30th October - marks the 95th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice of Mudros, which ended the war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire, the war that began at Gallipoli in 1915.

The story of the Armistice is an interesting one that has been overshadowed by the Armistice ending the war with Germany which took effect on 11th November and is annually commemorated as Remembrance Day.

Today is the day to remember this earlier Armistice. Signed on the Aegean Island of Lemnos, in Mudros Harbour, that had seen the assembly of the invasion flotilla in 1915. The British choose the warship HMS Agamemnon as the location of the signing - its classical allusions to the Achaean King who had led the attack on nearby Troy in Homer's Iliad.

The war ended in the waters that sheltered the three war cemeteries containing the dead from the campaign in 1915 - at the Commonwealth Cemeteries at East Mudros and Portianou and on the Turks Head Peninsula, where the Muslim cemetery lies containing the graves of Turkish prisoners of war who died on Lemnos in 1915.

One of the last to die in the First World War and be buried on Lemnos was the Bendigo-born Stoker John Godier, a sailor aboard Australia's HMAS Brisbane, who died of illness a few weeks after the Armistice was signed. Lest We Forget.

The grave of Stoker John Godier of Bendigo at East Mudros Military Cemetery, Lemnos. Photograph Jim Claven 2013

The Bendigo Advertiser has published my article detailing the story of the Armistice, John Godier and our memorial statue event tonight.

You can read the article from yesterday's Bendigo Advertiser by clicking on the following link:
Remembering the Armistice of Mudros - Bendigo Advertiser 29th October 2013

Thanks to Rod Case and the Bendigo Advertiser for publishing this important story.