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[Page 61]
Shortly after this as we were walking down one of the lanes separating the garden, we thought we saw a Gendarme, so we thought it best to give him a miss if possible, so we started off across one of the gardens. We had not gone far when we heard somebody shouting after us to stop. A man come running after us and wanted to know what we were doing. We told him we were Germans and wanted to get out on to the main road for B Bozanti. This did not seem to satisfy him but he said we would have to follow him. We protested on the ground that we were Germans, but the bluff didn't come off here. He commenced calling out something in the direction we had seen the gendarme so we thought it would be best to go with him, which we did. He took us before a big fat Arab, sat on a mat smoking one of their favourite pipes. Judging by his appearance he was somebody of importance probably the landlord of several of the gardens. He eyed us off very suspiciously and then enquired tho we were. We told him the usual tale, he said if we were Germans we should be on the road leading into Messini, which of course was correct, but we told him we had lost our way and were looking for the main road, leading to Bozanti (The German Headquarters). He said no more but sent for the Gendarme to escort us into the main road leading to Mersina which he did. We followed the road for a short distance and when we were out of sight turned off again through the gardens for we did not want to go into a big town like Mersina as there were a number of German soldiers there and we should not have been able to bluff them. We must have been watched for the Gendarme came running after us. We immediately stopped and when we came up to us he immediately accused us of being English, which we immediately denied. I think it was only the prompt way we replied that we were Germans that saved us, However he said no more but showed us on to the road again. We followed the road for some distance this time, and then just as we were on the outskirts of the town and it was drawing into dusk which was in our favour we turned off the road again and got well clear of the town without being questioned again. We were dead tired and hungry after our exciting day, so we selected a spot to spend the night. We ate most of the fruit we had bought, just leaving sufficient for the morning and then we lay down to sleep. We had not been there long when my mate was stung with something, probably a spider or a small scorpion. However it caused him a good deal of pain. We decided we would shift a few hundred yards further on which we did, and passed the night without further mishap. We were awake at daylight and found we were on a flat stretch of country with just a farm house here and there and a small range of hills to our left about 8 miles from the sea. We knew this was somewhere about where the Greek had marked his Father's farm on our map, but we had destroyed the map when we reached the coast so that in the event of us being caught they would not know who gave us the information.