LEMNOS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4402, 14 March 1941, Page 7

LEMNOS

BRITISH AIR AND NAVAL BASE.

MEMORIES FOR THE DIGGERS. i The cable message stating that British forces are establishing an air and naval base at Lemnos will, writes Mr Arthur Lusk, 8.E., in the Christchurch Press, awaken memories in the minds of many men who took part in the Gallipoli campaign. Lemnos was an important base then, and those who saw the ships gathered in Mudros harbour are not likely to forget that impressive sight. While trans-shipping, we saw little of the harbour, and almost nothing of the island itself, until the fortunes of war brought us there later on. MANY TIMES CONQUERED. It is an interesting, mountainous island, with houses clustered in a number of small villages, probably for mutual protection, because the island has been assaulted and sometimes conquered on at least seven occasions, from the conquest by Darius of Persia, up to its siege by the Russians in 1770.

The villagers are mostly farmers. There is some good pasture for sheep, and some agriculture of the kind that you may see pictured in an illustrated copy of the Old Testament. A man “ploughs” a field with a wooden plough which scratches the surface, but has no mould board to turn any sod. The two bullocks which draw the plough make two slows steps forward, then stop, and the driver prods them with a sharp-pointed stick. They take two or three more steps, and stop again, and so on. Nobody is in a hurry. It is a peaceful, happy life—except for the bullocks. PRIMITIVE AGRICULTURE. On the ridges one may see a line of fine old windmills, and near them, also on the ridge, an old stone threshing floor, probably of the same type that was used in the days of Abraham. It is made on the ridge, so that the wind may winnow the husks from the grain. Most of the stones have random jointings, but some threshing floors have some stones arranged in a pattern, to the extent of having a few pairs of parallel lines of stones worked into the floor, across the circle. One floor had near it a wooden runner, with the under side studded with sharp flakes of stone, and the slightly-raised front end pierced with a hole, apparently for the runner to be drawn by a bullock. The windmills had gear-wheels with wooden teeth, to drive the mill stones, but all timber has to be imported, as there are practically no trees on the island. The men’s work seemed to be mainly agriculture (apparently almost at a standstill) and fishing in the harbour when the weather was good. Beyond this, the women seemed to do all the work. They were up at

dawn, to go to wells outside the villages, and draw their day’s supply of water. This was carried home in stone jars in the same picturesque but laborious way that was used 5000 years ago. The limited supply was also drawn upon by many New Zealanders, but we heard no complaints from the Women. After getting the water, they apparently proceeded with all the other jobs. One strange one, to us, was their custom of beating pieces of octopus upon the rocks, apparently to make it tender. I saw one family moving house, the man and the gods heaped on to two small donkeys, which were almost incredibly overloaded. The wife, of course, had to walk. WOMEN REBEL. There are risks in this idea of making women do all the work: people endure things to a point, and then they rebel. Few have rebelled quite so thoroughly as the women of Lemnos, for there have been two traditional occasions when they performed what were called “Lemnian deeds” and slew every man on the island! This would be no small job now, as the present population is about 4000 people. Mudros is the largest town, and is distinguished by having a tree growing near it—l hope it is still there. From Mudros, a road leads across the island to Therma and to Kastro. At Therma are warm springs and baths, and a warm bath was an important event to a soldier just back from Anzac. The bathroom was all of stone, even to the arched roof, pierced for ventilation and light. There was a fine large bath, sunk below floor level, and full to the edge with warm spring water. When one got in, the displaced water went all over the floor, a joyous plan whose attractions are more appreciated by small children than by their mothers in this country. The dressing room was a step higher, so shoes did not have to float about until the flood subsided. AN ANCIENT TOWN. At Kastro there is an old town, with a street built somewhat after the fashion of old London before the Great Fire. The street is narrow, and roughly paved with stones, sloping to a single channel in the centre. This should discourage centre-line driving, but there seemed to be only donkeys to be driven. On each side of the street are two -storey houses, with overhanging upper storeys, leaving a narrowed strip of sky above the street. The design may look archaic, but the idea is sound. The overhanging part balances part of the upper floor, near the supporting wall, and so enables the timber beams of the upper floor to carry their load over a much wider span. The same principle is used in some of the welldesigned and modern reinforced concrete buildings in Christchurch today, with the difference that the overhanging part has below it fine big plateglass windows, well clear of the supporting columns that stand back in the shop. It would be interesting to know how these primitive people in Lemnos arrived at the same idea so long ago. A NOTE FOR RAIDERS. Kastro stands on a bay, with a high fortified rock at the centre of the shore line. I had no opportunity to inspect the fort, but thought quite credible the report that the defences included chain shot. Any prospective raiders who like to make a note of this are welcome to do so. By Way of contract, the waterfront had one modem hotel, with an amenity suggesting the existence of a drainage scheme more complicated than a single channel in the middle of a street.

Lemnos is a quiet, out-of-the-way spot, from the viewpoint of anybody going to Britain via Egypt, in peace time. But there is no accelerator of shipping to compare with a reported submarine. When we left Alexandria for Lemnos, we had extra firemen standing by, and within an hour the ship was quivering as she went through the water at a speed that must have been better than she had done on her speed trials, because in peace time you can’t screw down safety valves very much. We didn’t lose any steam, and we got to Lemnos in just 48 hours! After the Gallipoli campaign, the return trip took us five days.