The battle was vital for progress on the
Macedonian front, as the Allies finally broke the Bulgarian positions after a year of unsuccessful attacks. The failure of a fresh Bulgarian counterattack to materialize in the days following the battle was one of the first significant signs of the enemy's depressed morale.
Field-Marshal Hindenburg later revealed in his memoirs that the troops detailed for a counterattack had refused to march. To the Venizelist National Army of Zymvrakakis, he was able to add, mainly through diplomatic handling of
King Alexander, 20,000 former royalist troops. The manner of the Greek army's victory at Skra boosted its confidence and won it the esteem of the Allies, drawing a telegram to Greek Prime Minister
Eleftherios Venizelos from Guillaumat telling him "This victory will fill all Greece with legitimate pride." In the words of the official British history, "Brilliant feat of arms as it was, few actions so small have made so much stir", as Guillaumat and the Greek press celebrated the success, which was a major morale boost and gave legitimacy to Venizelos and the pro-Allied cause in Greece, still bitterly divided over the
National Schism. After years of doubt, belief in an eventual Allied victory in the war took hold in Greece after Skra. The personal prestige of Venizelos rose even in royalist areas such as the Peloponnese where he had been unpopular and where there had been difficulties in mobilization. The outcome of the battle removed these hesitations. Major General Ioannou, commanding the Archipelago Division, also distinguished himself for his courage. Skra led to Guillaumat being recalled to France by
Clemenceau to be at hand to take over on the Western Front should
Foch or
Pétain fail. The Greek success at Skra later helped Venizelos persuade the new Allied commander in Salonika,
General Franchet d'Espèrey, to modify his plans so that the Greek army be allowed a greater role in the coming push. Consequentially, in the final offensive in September 1918, which breached the German coalition's defences, there were Greek divisions at five points in the broad Allied line of attack. The importance of the May battle, despite its comparatively small numbers, was appreciated by the Allies after the war. In the victory march in Paris in 1919, along with the names of
Marne,
Somme,
Verdun, and many others, appeared the name of Skra-di-Legen. The nearest village to the battlefield was called Liumnitsa at the time. 'Skra-di-Legen' appeared on the Austrian wartime 1:200,000 staff map and gave its name to the battle. The village, northwest of
Axioupoli and near the Greek border with
North Macedonia, was later renamed just
Skra. File:Lyumnitsa Skra Greece3.JPG|Monument to the fallen Greeks, Skra, 2010 File:Armoured_mobile-gun.JPG|A German cannon turret (Gruson 5.3cm L/24 fahrpanzer) captured by the Allies at Skra, held at the
Athens War Museum in Greece File:250 15 Franchet d'Espérey drapeau 5 arm.gr.jpg|Allied commander-in-chief Louis Franchet d'Espèrey decorates the battle flag of the 5th Archipelago Regiment in June 1918, with commander Dimitrios Ioannou to his left File:Greek Parade Paris 1919.jpg|Greek troops in the victory march, Paris, 1919 ==References==