Returned Servicemen Give £162 To Wartime Heroine

Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 12

Returned Servicemen Give £162 To Wartime Heroine

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, April 23. An elderly woman living in poverty on the island of Skiathos, off the coast of Greece, will become comparatively wealthy overnight early next month. Her good fortune will be the direct result of the thoughtfulness and appreciation of many New Zealand returned servicemen and women. Twenty years ago Mrs Syraino Kalliarina organised and directed an escape chain which assisted many New Zealand and other Allied servicemen to evade the Germans after they overran Greece. The German and Italian invaders placed a price on her head, she was betrayed and captured, and taken to the island of Scollos and i later to Italy where she suffered extreme privation. Mrs Kalliarina received a special letter of commendation from Field-Marshal! Viscount Alexander. In the years since the end of the Second World War she has fallen on hard times and is living in a hovel. News of her plight reached New Zealand late last month and since then some of the men she helped to escape have joined with other returned servicemen and women from both world

wars in contribution to an appeal fund organised by the N-Z.R.S.A. official newspaper, "Review."

The £162 already contributed will be handed to Mrs Kalliarina next month when representatives of the R.S A. attend the unveiling of the Athens War Memorial. Though small by New Zealand standards, the sum of £162 is equal to 13.386 drachmas at the present rate of exchange, and will represent a small fortune to peasants of the island of Skiathos. as it can buy Mrs Kalliarina a two-roomed cottage.