HOW GREECE HONOURS AUSTRALIA’S FORGOTTEN HEROES OF THESSALONIKI
Peter Adamis 7 February 2026
At my age, I spend evenings among the bookshelves at home, searching for the stories we’ve forgotten—stories of Australians and the migrants who embraced this country. C.E.W. Bean’s histories sit alongside Homer’s epics, bridging my Greek heritage with my adopted homeland’s military past. Both speak of sacrifice. Both deserve remembering. This is one of those forgotten stories. HOW GREECE HONOURS AUSTRALIA’S FORGOTTEN HEROES OF THESSALONIKI
In the heart of Thessaloniki, along Langada Street, stands a testament to sacrifice most Australians have never heard of. The Zeitenlik Allied Military Cemetery holds over 20,000 graves from the First World War—Serbian, French, Italian, Russian, and among them, 1,648 Commonwealth burials including Australians who died far from home on the Macedonian Front, a campaign history has abandoned.
While Gallipoli dominates our national consciousness, nearly 400 Australians served in and around Thessaloniki between 1916 and 1919. Australia’s official war historian, C.E.W. Bean, documented their contribution in meticulous detail. Yet Greece, not Australia, has faithfully preserved their memory.
The Nurses of Thessaloniki. The Australian presence was overwhelmingly medical. Between July 1917 and February 1919, approximately 270 nurses from the Australian Army Nursing Service arrived in three contingents to staff British General Hospitals at Hortiach and Kalamaria, villages outside Thessaloniki. Principal Matron Jessie McHardie White led these women through challenges as brutal as any faced in the trenches.
They endured freezing Macedonian winters in unheated canvas tents. Malaria struck repeatedly—some nurses were hospitalised multiple times with the disease they’d come to treat. Primitive wooden huts offered no protection from mosquitoes that swarmed in plague proportions. Dysentery and typhus killed patients faster than they could be replaced.
Staff Nurse May Hennessy arrived with the first contingent on 30 July 1917. She survived carbon monoxide poisoning from makeshift heating, treated patients whilst battling her own recurring malaria, and watched young men die from diseases that had nothing to do with bullets or shells. The celebrated Australian author Miles Franklin served nearby with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals at Lake Ostrovo, working first as a cook’s assistant, then as a matron’s orderly. Her experiences in Macedonia’s harsh landscape would profoundly shape her later writing.
These women had volunteered expecting to nurse Australian troops. The reality disappointed them. They treated British, French, Serbian, Italian, and Greek casualties—men from every corner of the Allied effort except their own country. One nurse captured the paradox: “We had come so far, expecting to care for Australians, but instead treated British, French, and Serbian soldiers. Still, they needed us just as much.”
The Forgotten Front. By early 1917, Thessaloniki had become the main Allied base for the Balkans campaign. Some 600,000 French, British, and Serbian soldiers were entrenched across Macedonia in what British troops mockingly called “the world’s largest internment camp.” The front barely moved for two years. German and Ottoman archives at London’s Imperial War Museums confirm what Allied commanders knew: Thessaloniki’s strategic importance lay not in dramatic battles but in its role as supply depot, hospital centre, and evacuation point.
Disease killed more men than combat. Malaria devastated entire divisions—infection rates exceeded 80 per cent in some units. The Australian nurses treated malaria cases by the hundreds, knowing many patients would relapse, knowing some of them would catch it themselves. Staff Nurse I.O. Shepherd later recalled: “The heat in summer was unbearable, the mosquitoes drove us mad, and in winter we froze in those wooden huts. But the work had to be done, and we did it.”
Greece Remembers. Today, Greece honours this sacrifice with a dedication that shames our national forgetfulness. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission, working with Greek authorities, maintains the Commonwealth section at Zeitenlik and the nearby Mikra Cemetery—which holds 1,810 Commonwealth graves—to immaculate standards. Fresh flowers adorn the graves year-round. Manicured lawns stretch between white headstones that catch the Mediterranean sun. Information panels in English and Greek explain the Australian contribution—panels no Australian government paid for.
The broader Zeitenlik complex tells the story of a truly international effort. Over 8,000 Serbian soldiers rest in their national section, having fought to liberate their homeland. Some 8,000 French graves mark their sacrifice in this distant campaign. Italian, Russian, and Greek sections complete this vast necropolis—a silent testament to the war’s global reach.
The Greek War Museum in Thessaloniki features permanent exhibits on the Macedonian Front, including the role of Australian medical personnel. Greek historical societies have documented the Australian presence, created walking trails connecting First World War sites, and incorporated this history into school curricula. Greek tour companies include these sites in their itineraries, explaining to tourists from around the world what Australians don’t learn in their own schools.
Walk through Zeitenlik on any given day and you’ll find Greek schoolchildren laying wreaths, Greek historians conducting research, Greek groundskeepers tending graves with reverence. A nation that has endured economic crisis and political turmoil continues to honour foreign soldiers who died on its soil, maintaining their cemeteries to standards that would satisfy the most exacting Australian inspector.
International Recognition, National Silence. In 2017, Serbia issued commemorative postage stamps honouring Australian medical volunteers, including Miles Franklin. This recognition came not from Canberra, but from a Balkan nation grateful for humanitarian service rendered a century earlier. Serbia remembered. Greece remembered. Australia remained silent.
Melbourne’s Thessaloniki Association “The White Tower” works within the Greek-Australian community to maintain these fading connections. They organise annual commemorative services, support the Lemnos Gallipoli Memorial, and fund educational programs for younger generations. These bonds, forged through shared sacrifice in the First World War, were renewed when Australian forces fought in Greece during the Second World War at the Battle of Vevi in April 1941. The Greek-Australian community remembers both campaigns. Mainstream Australia remembers neither.
The Evidence We Ignore. The documentation is thorough and accessible. Bean’s monograph “Salonika and Macedonia” sits in the Australian War Memorial library. British historian Captain Cyril Falls wrote a definitive two-volume official history. German and Turkish military archives provide the enemy perspective. Commonwealth War Graves Commission records list every Australian buried in Greek soil.
The Australian War Memorial holds Bean’s personal papers, nursing service records, hospital war diaries, and oral history interviews with survivors. Researchers can access photographs of the nurses, their letters home, their medical reports. The evidence exists in remarkable detail. What’s lacking is national will to remember.
Why We Forget. This amnesia reflects how we choose to remember war. Military history traditionally focuses on male combat, undervaluing medical and support roles. Women’s contributions are systematically overlooked. Campaigns lacking dramatic battles or iconic moments—the desperate charge, the heroic last stand—fade from national memory. The ANZAC legend celebrates Gallipoli’s cliffs and the Western Front’s trenches. Other theatres, and the diverse ways Australians served, are forgotten.
No memorial in Thessaloniki specifically identifies the Australian contribution, though Australians lie buried there. Few Australian schools teach the Salonika campaign—many history teachers have never heard of it. The nurses who saved thousands of lives whilst risking their own receive minimal recognition compared to their male counterparts at Gallipoli or on the Western Front. Their service doesn’t fit the narrative we’ve constructed about Australian military heroism.
A Debt Unpaid. Greece’s faithful stewardship offers both reproach and inspiration. Greek schoolchildren learn about the Allied medical effort while Australian children learn nothing. Greek tour guides explain the Macedonian Front to international visitors while Australian tour operators focus exclusively on Gallipoli. Greek historians publish research on this campaign while Australian historians largely ignore it.
Australia must reciprocate this respect. The approximately 270 nurses who served in Thessaloniki—along with the doctors, orderlies, and support personnel who accompanied them—deserve inclusion in our national ANZAC narrative. Their story demonstrates truths we need to hear: that Australian women played crucial roles in military medicine, that Australia’s First World War commitment reached far beyond the famous battlefields, and that heroism exists in daily dedication under difficult conditions, not just in dramatic moments of combat.
These women froze in Macedonian winters and sweltered through Balkan summers. They contracted the diseases they treated. They watched young men die from illnesses that had nothing to do with enemy action. They did this work knowing most Australians would never hear of it, never thank them for it, never remember it.
Staff Nurse I.O. Shepherd’s words deserve the final say: “The heat in summer was unbearable, the mosquitoes drove us mad, and in winter we froze in those wooden huts. But the work had to be done, and we did it.”
Greece remembers. It’s time we did too.
Peter Adamis is a journalist, author and historian specialising in forgotten chapters of Australian military and cultural history.
