E C Cramp: photograph album

This photo, taken during Ark Royal’s five day stay at Mitylene on the Greek island of Lesbos between November 3 and 7, shows boatloads of Greek refugees who had fled the mainland of Ottoman Turkey, which lay just a few miles away.

According to the British author Compton MacKenzie, who served on the headquarters staff of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in a number of roles, including as an intelligence officer in the latter part of the campaign, by August there were some 80,000 Greek refugees on the island, many suffering extreme hardship.

“But round every corner, in every small open space, by the roadside, in the fields, beneath the olive-trees, even on the beach by the water’s edge there were the refugees… There was nowhere one could walk but a small emaciated hand would pluck one’s sleeve and point mutely to an empty hungry mouth.”

— Compton MacKenzie, Gallipoli Memories.