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[Page 63]
weren't game to face them although we were so hungry. So we went well clear of the town and selected a spot to spend the night after eating half the raw onion between us we lay down to sleep. the weary night away, footsore, ravenously hungry and dead tired. I don't think either of us will ever forget the night we spent just outside the old city of Tarsus when we shared half a raw onion, the remainder we kept for breakfast. At daylight we were awake and ate the remaining half onion. Very few people in Australia know what it is to be properly hungry. I know I did not until that occasion and I never do want to again. We had not gone far when we sighted the Tarsus river, (The Seihun R.) a small rapid running stream. The next thing that troubled us was how to cross it. However we found a place where we thought we would be able to cross. It was the widest part and for this reason we thought it would be the shallowest We shipped off and waded into the stream. The water was bitterly cold. We were just able to wade over without being swept off our feet. A little higher up the river we could see soldiers with pack horses drawing water from the river so we knew there was a camp close. We passed well clear of them. We knew that we would soon have to cross the main Bozanti to Tarsus Road. There was a tremendous amount of traffic on this road as all the war munitions for the Mesopotamian and Palistine fronts had to pass along this road as the railway was not yet completed.
About 10.a.m. we came to the road and crossed it without any trouble. We knew now that we would not have far to go to the railway where we would meet some of our own people for we had heard news of Townsends surrender at Kut-el-amara and we heard later that his men were working on the Bagdad railway just below us. The Turks were very particular that none of us should meet for what reason we could not find out. It was a party of these men that we wanted to find for we knew that we would get food of some kind. We made off in the direction which we thought the railway was. We had not gone far when we came to a small creek and we noticed three men sat down. They were drying some clothing on the bushes. Immediately they saw us one of them came towards us. He asked us who we were. On this occasion I don't know why, we replied that we were Austrians. He said he was a Greek and his two friends were Austrians. Naturalised Turks having lived in Turkey all their lives. We thought that at last we had made a blunder, we decided to tell the Greeks who we were, which we did. He was greatly surprised and so were we when he commenced speaking to us in fairly good English. He said he would not tell the others who we were. He said they were great friends of his. They had been working on the railway for sometime together. They had just been on a visit to Tarsus. The first thing we did was to ask the Greek for some food. He said he had plenty just having left Tarsus that morning. He gave us a big piece of bread each and a good portion of cheese. I will