May | General Vasilios Kourkafas was the first high ranking officer of the Greek military to visit Australia. Since then a delegation of the highest ranking officers of the Hellenic Military have visited various cities around Australia annually to commemorate the Battle of Crete and the Greek Campaign. They visit Australian Military establishments such as Lamia Barracks and exchange dialogue with Australian Military personnel as well as visiting schools and many other Australian communities including Anzac families.

Anzac Geoff Edwards OAM of the 2/11th Battalion’s Carrier Platoon remembered the bravery and sacrifice of the Cretan people who helped him avoid capture. In 1979 he built a Greek Orthodox Church on the hill above his seaside community and named his home in Western Australia, Prevelly Park, after the monastery at Preveli, Crete. The Monastery was instrumental in harbouring and assisting Anzacs to evade capture and eventually escape.

The Hellenic Sub Branch of the RSL was first formed in Melbourne following meetings with Victoria’s longest serving RSL President Mr Bruce Ruxton MBE OBE AM and Greek Australian ex-servicemen. The sub branch promotes the contribution of Greeks to the Australian War Effort over the 20th century and beyond. The current President is Mr Steve Kyritsis, a Vietnam War veteran who has written two books highlighting the contribution of Greek Australians that fought as part of the Australian Military forces in WW1, WW2 and the Vietnam War.

The Royal Australian Corps of Military Police (RACMP) complex adopted the name of Lamia on the 12th June 1983. Lamia is a small town in central Greece through which the 16th Australian Infantry Brigade, 6th Australian Division conducted a fighting withdrawal in April 1941.

The Australian Hellenic Historical Society was established in 1984 to collect and research Hellenism in Australia and has been instrumental in discovering the Greek migrant families’ contribution to the Australian war effort.

24th May | The Australian Ambassador to Greece unveiled a memorial at Preveli, Crete, recognising the debt the escapers in the Preveli area owed to the local people. On the memorial are these words: “This tablet commemorates the deep gratitude of British, New Zealand and Australian servicemen befriended by the monks of Preveli Monastery and Cretans from surrounding villages, who, at great personal risk, helped them to escape by British submarines, HMS Thresher and Torbay, in July and August 1941.”

Mr Marcos Polioudakis OAM born in Rethymnon, Crete in 1928, acted as a runner between the Anzacs and the Cretan people during the Battle of Rethymnon. He dedicated his entire adult life to research and collecting material that related to the Cretans and Anzacs, producing a three-volume account of the Battle of Crete.

During the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Crete and the Greek Campaign and since then also, the Greek government issued certificates of appreciation and the Greek Campaign War Medal to Anzacs for their service in Thrace, Macedonia and Crete .

The Australian Hellenic Memorial Melbourne was unveiled on the 2nd September 2001 and was dedicated to the Australians and the Greek people that fought in the Battle of Crete and the Greek Campaign.

17 May

The Kalamata War Memorial was dedicated by the veterans of the Kalamata campaign with the inscription “In memory of the Allied Forces and the Greeks who fell at the Battle of Kalamata on the 28th of April, 1941, or who were taken prisoner or who escaped to fight again that the world might be free.” Surrounding the memorial are native Australian Trees.

The Hellenic-Australian Memorial Park at Rethymno, commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Battle for Crete was dedicated on 19 May 2001.The design for the memorial symbolically represents the Greek people fighting side by side with Australians during the battle for Crete in 1941.

June | The Hora Sfakion War Memorial in southern Crete was expanded with a bronze plaque donated by The Greek Australian International Legal and Medical Conference and commemorates the largest evacuation of allied soldiers from Crete over three nights in May 1941. About 15,000 retreating soldiers were taken out on British and Australian warships. Still another 5,000 did not manage to escape.

Dr Michael Bendon, a Sydney archaeologist working in the ancient site of Phalasarna, in North Western Crete begins the research and documenting of the remains of the sunken Landing Craft Tank (LCT) A6 and LCT A20 the type of that saved thousands of ANZAC lives in the evacuation from The Battle of Crete and the Greek Campaign.

Dr Maria Hill, a military historian with Honours, Masters and a PhD in History spent eight years researching and writing about the Australian campaigns in Greece and Crete. Her aim in writing Diggers and Greeks was to highlight the human relations between Anzacs and Greeks in the Battle of Crete and the Greek Campaign making her book a unique contribution.

The Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee was formed in Melbourne to ensure the Anzac connection to the Aegean island of Lemnos is commemorated. A memorial was erected on August 2015 in Albert Park, Melbourne as part of the Anzac Centenary and was designed and created by one of Australia’s best known commemorative sculptors, Peter Corlett, OAM.

Australia and Greece contributed 110 and 63 personnel to United Nations Peacekeeping Missions.

May | Anthropologist Dr Ian Frazer, along with 50 Australians and New Zealanders (Anzac Descendants) erected a memorial at the Tripiti Gorge in southern Crete, as a tribute to the Greek people and the Anzacs who managed to evade capture some two years after the Nazi occupation until rescue in 1943.

14 May | The Royal Australian Mint unveiled as part of an Anzac Centenary Coin series vivid designs commemorating the Battles of Greece and Crete in two 50c Uncirculated Coins . The coins tell the story of the Anzacs involved in costly actions in defence of Greece and Crete in 1941, capturing their courage and commitment to the cause against insurmountable odds. The coins connect the Anzacs and Ancient Spartans who both fought at Thermopoly and the Minoan Civilization of Crete at Knossos with the Battle for Heraklion.

Anzac Centenary Commemorations on Lemnos and Athens

The Centenary of Anzac events were held in Greece and were the most extensive ever held. They included many events held on the Island of Lemnos - the forward base of the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, where Australia’s nurses served throughout the campaign and where 148 diggers remain buried - as well as on Anzac Day itself in Athens. The Melbourne-based Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee (LGCC), along with the NSW-based Lemnos 1915 group, assisted organizing and actively participated in many of these events. They collaborated with the Australian Embassy in Greece, the Embassy of Canada, the Royal Australian Navy and HMAS Success, Commonwealth War Graves Commissions, the Athens War Museum, Hellenic Navy and the Lemnos Friends of Anzac.

• Panayiotis Diamadis ‘Gallipoli before and beyond Anzac’ Honest History 22 May 2014
• Panayiotis Diamadis ‘Australian Responses to Hellenic Genocide in 1910-1930s with additional references to Responses to theAssyrian Genocide and to the Shoah’ Genocide Prevention Now Issue 11, fall 2012
• Hugh Gilchrist Australians and Greeks (three volumes)
• Steve Kyritsis Greek Australians in the Australian forces WWI and WWII
• Steve Kyritsis Greek-Australians in the Vietnam War 1962-1972
• Dr Maria Hill Diggers and Greeks
• Dr Michael Bendon the Forgotten Flotilla
• Tas Psarakis, Australian Hellenic Historical Society
• Socrates Tsourdalakis Pancretan Association of Melbourne the Cretans of Oceania from the 19th Century
• Sean Damer, Ian Frazer on the Run Anzac Escape and Evasion in Enemy-occupied Crete
• Australian War Memorial www.awm.gov.au
• Jim Claven The Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee
• Liz Kaydos Lemnos 1915
• John Azarias Th e Lysicrates Prize 2015
• Dr Peter Alexakis (photographs of Kokoda 2015)
• Cheryl Ward and Bernard DeBroglio’s “Then and now” images of the A W Savage photos from 1915