Skyros - Island of Refuge - OPA Magazine

A Skyriot wedding.

The Hellenic connection to Anzac touches many parts of Greece. From its mountains, the plains and valleys, across the Ionian and Aegean, to its many Islands, the Anzac's walked across WW1 and WW2. And these stories of Greeks and Anzac's are there to be told. 
Sitting on the edge of the northern Aegean, part of the Sporades group of islands, Skyros sits on the sea-road from mainland Greece to the Bosphorus and the Black Sea beyond. And it has been a place of war and refuge. Skyros is another part of Greece's Anzac trail.

Rupert Brooke

From Homer and Achilles, down to the Anzac's across the First and Second World War, Skyros has played its part as a place of refuge. It is the Island where the famous British soldier and war poet, Rupert Brooke (above), died and was laid to rest in the days before the landings at Gallipoli. And he was buried by an Anzac burial party.

Rupert Brooke's grave on Skyros

And it is where the locals - like so many others across Greece at great peril to themselves and their loved ones - aided escaping and evading Allied soldiers in the wake of the Axis invasion of Greece. One of those was East Malvern’s Warrant Officer Thomas Milton Boulter (below) who came to Skyros in June 1941.

Warrant Officer Milton Boulter, MM. AWM

See, read and download my article on Skyros from OPA! Magazine by clicking here.
Thanks to OPA! Magazine for publishing my article. To read the full edition of the magazine, click here.

Jim Claven
Secretary
Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee