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[Page 50]
& make their own clothes from it. There are some very pretty girls there they are snow white, & very shy. They have the same old methods of farming here as they have in Egypt the same old piece of wood with an iron toe for the plough, lots of the men dress in a sort of skin clothes cut from goats & sheep, & nearly all wear skin shoes, they look tricks I can tell you, they grow a lot of grapes & figs on these islands, when we lobbed there the 3rd Brigade had been there a month, & were heartily sick of the place we were laying off Lemnos" for 13 days & the day before the fleet sailed we were all drawn up & General Birdwood spoke to us, among other things he warned us to be careful of our water food & ammunition, & told us that
the eyes of the whole world would be on us, to see how we fought.
They must have made cocksure of breaking right through, for they told us that there would be no haggling in the villages we were to pass through as all the prices would be fixed we were paid on the 22nd with notes which had Turkish writing on them. The fleet set picked up their anchors & slowly steamed out of the harbour & what a mass of ships there was as we slowly steamed out of Lemnos, we could hear some of the warships belting away at the forts as we went along, we got a certain distance out & anchored for the night, we were then given each man 300 rounds of ammunition, & his rations enough for 3 day's, that night everyone