Anna Mela-Papadopoulou was a Greek volunteer nurse who became known by the name "The Soldier"s Mother" for her activity on the war front during the Greek wars of the decade 1912– 1922.
Background
Her father was a Greek nobleman and a merchant by trade, an ardent patriot, proud of his descendance from Epirus, that was still under the Turkish rule. Her mother was a noble and devout Christian lady, dedicated to her duties that derived from her social privileges and her Christian faith.
Career
The honorary title "The Soldier"s Mother" was also attributed, in later years, to other distinguished nurses of the Greek Red Cross as a medallion, to commemorate her. Anna Mela-Papadopoulou was one of Michail Melas and Eleni Voutsina"s 7 children. He loved The arts and encouraged Anna"s talent in painting.
Anna was brought up to care and work hard for the relief of her fellow sufferer.
These two activities were her main preoccupations all her life. He became a folk hero when, in 1904, he was killed in action, fighting in Macedonia as an undercover officer, during the guerrilla war, between the Greeks and the Bulgarians, for their territorial influence, still under the Turkish rule.
She left her husband"s village in Euboea, where he was the local landlord and where she had devoted herself to welfare activities and she returned to Athens to work in larger charity schemes. Firstly she organised a First Aid Polyclinic in Omonia Square and secondly a shop, called "The Progress", where women could sell their handicrafts and earn an income.
Her work and personality are noted by Mabel Moore, an English traveller, in her book "Days in Hellas", in the chapter "Maids and Matrons of Athens" pages 49–51.
When the First Balkan War broke out on September 11 in 1912, she enlisted as a volunteer nurse She was honored with 28 medals in total. She was also awarded with the Silver Medal award for virtue and self-sacrifice by the Academy of Athens.
Her daughter"s Memoirs, her, her Diaries and her Correspondence are the testimonies to her humanitarian activity and prolific personality.
She dedicated her post-war life to the struggle against tuberculosis from which the refugees from the Asia Minor Disaster suffered. She raised funds for the construction of a wing at the Sotiria (Salvation) Hospital for Thoracic Diseases in Athens.
In 1927 she travelled to Egypt and the United States of America and visited the Greek Communities there, to raise funds for the construction of a Sanatorium in the Peloponnese at Korfoxilia, in Arcadia, near Vytina and Magouliana. Eventually she succumbed to tuberculosis herself.