“We lost everything, and almost lost our minds in Syria, we are in shock about what is happening.”

One pointed to a small object, a bundle floating on the current no more than fifty yards out.

“It could be the body of a child, a baby,” someone said, their voice along with the hiss of waves lapping onto the shingle of the beach breaking the solemn silence.

No sooner had the capsized boat drifted further away into the darkness, than the faint buzz of an outboard motor could be heard.

Within moments a small ramshackle wooden launch appeared, seemingly from nowhere, running into the shallows right in front of us.

A handful of men, women and youngsters all wearing fluorescent orange lifejackets and already soaking wet began dropping into the water. Some lugged small bags containing their only belongings.

One man frantically waded back and forth between boat and beach helping his family ashore.

A few of the European volunteers here to help refugees went into the water as the man struggled to carry his wife who had collapsed from a mixture of seasickness and trauma after the terrifying night time crossing from the Turkish coast.

“Welcome, welcome”, the volunteers repeated over and again hugging children and adults alike trying to allay the fear so evidently etched on the faces of the refugees.

For myself this was the closing chapter of an assignment that had taken me from the Syrian border through Turkey to this the Greek Island of Kos.

For these refugees wading their way on to the shores of Europe this was only another leg on their long hazardous journey to their final destinations in the heart of Europe.

The morning following that encounter on the beach with the new arrivals I could find no reports of any dead from the upturned boat we had seen.

But the night after that yet another capsized.

This time the Hellenic Coast Guard confirmed that while many had been pulled from the water nine others had drowned. Among the victims were four children, four women and one man.

These people had fled the threat of death in Syria only to find death a few miles off the coast of Europe in the cold of the winter Aegean.

Just a few days earlier I had made the crossing myself albeit aboard a safe and comfortable passenger ferry in broad daylight and calm seas.

It was enough though to imagine what it must be like crammed into an improvised inflatable boat with as many as forty or more people in the dead of night a swell rising on the sea slowly filling the craft with water as all around you in the darkness people are throwing up.

As our ferry boat slowly made its way out of the harbour I watched a Turkish Coast Guard vessel slip past returning from a night time patrol. Cowering on deck were a group of soaking, cold refugees, their tiny deflated rubber raft lying like a symbol of their own punctured hopes. So near and yet so far from Europe.

In the Turkish port of Bodrum the quayside is lined with elegant yachts and motor launches that are the playthings of the rich.

Many who holiday or stay here as semi resident members of the ex-patriot community are British.

Just a few yards back from Bodrum’s picturesque harbour with its castle are backstreets lined with yacht chandlers and sailing shops. Here too can be found the cottage industries that have sprung up making ‘fake’ life jackets for those refugees about to make the perilous crossing to the Greek island of Kos.

Selling at 300 Turkish Lira (TL) - £70 - a time the owners of these workshops deny such a trade even if all too often the tell-tale cuttings of material and bubble wrap strewn on the floors suggest otherwise.

Those refugees who can’t afford such extras make do with inflatable tyre inner tubes or kit their infants out in the armband water wings you most often see used at public swimming pools.

On the beaches of Kos and other islands these ‘jackets’ are discarded the moment people are ashore.

Everywhere from remote coastal coves to the waterfront running through Kos town these heaps of fluorescent vests lie in a multi-coloured montage, testimony to the desperate and dangerous times in which so many Syrians and others now live.

“The most difficult thing is to put your feet inside the boat knowing the danger,” says Bassem a Syrian grandfather who fled his village home northwest of Hama with eight of his family.

This fear comes from a man who has seen other members of his family killed in airstrikes carried out by the Syrian regime and more recently by Russian warplanes around his home region.

One of Bassem’s sons was helping at a field hospital that was hit by missiles and lost an eye from his injuries.

The other, Mohammed, who is 17-years-old still has a piece of shrapnel in his chest that needs removing. Standing listening nearby as we talk, he yanks up his shirt to show the scar tissue and lump where the metal is lodged.

“We used to have a good life, but no longer,” Bassem continues.

“We lost everything, and almost lost our minds in Syria, we are in shock about what is happening.”

The family like many others here in Kos are housed in a run-down hotel. They wait there for their registration process to be completed before they continue on their journey by ferry to Athens.

This is a journey that will cost them 54 euros each for a ticket eating further into the meagre savings that forced Bassem to sell the family car in order to escape from Syria.

I ask him what fond memories he has of his village home and the old man smiles as he talks about the rich farm produce of the area, especially the honey for which the region is famous.

“Now you cannot find a tree standing in the village,” he says with a sigh. Bassem’s family are far from alone here in Kos.

Nasser his wife and young children are also in transit at the same hotel and like Bassem’s family they too come from a once prosperous farming region.

The city of al-Bukamal sits in eastern Syria on the banks of the Euphrates River and was one of the first major places in the country to fall to the fighters of the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group more than a year and a half ago.

Constantly bombarded al-Bukamal was effectively sealed off with the border to neighbouring Iraq blocked as is the road to the Syrian capital Damascus.

Nasser tells me what life was like in a city encircled and under constant bombing and shelling and with no real functioning hospitals to look after the wounded. He talks too about the fear created by the terror reign of IS.

“They have a water tower in the city, and threw two young brothers ages 15 and 17 from the top because they were reluctant to join IS,” Nasser says.

“At the beginning we were optimistic that the international community would do something, but it only got worse and worse,” he explains.

Along with this wife and four young children it took them six days to get to Turkey.

In order to do so they had to pretend that they were simply moving their flock of sheep temporarily to new pastures but were in fact fleeing for their lives.

With no way back once they had set out they ended up selling their flock for much less than it was worth.

Like so many refugees on the move they are prey to the endless profiteers making money from their plight and misery.

“Right now our youngest just a baby has been very sick for the past 12 days,” says Nasser.

Knowing they will run out of money after they pay for their fare to Athens the family urgently needs to find a push chair for what they expect will be the long walks in the weeks ahead as they move on across the Balkans further into Europe.

“Between us we cannot carry all the children every step of the way, so the chair will help us,” Nasser explains.

Later that same day, I encounter both Bassem and Nasser’s families again

at a local restaurant across the street from the hotel. The restaurant known as The Boomerang is run by a local Greek- Australian businessman who nightly has opened his doors to the queues of refugees who gather for the only main meal they can expect that day.

Like so many ordinary people here in Kos, Michael Pastrikos has also opened his heart to the refugees as have his cooks and staff who prepare food for up to 400 people nightly with families taking priority. This they do out of their own time.

Each of the meals is served up too by a small army of local, European and other volunteers who have made their way to this part of the world to help any way they can having been moved by the plight the refugees face.

In the small hours of the morning they can be seen handing out dry clothes and shoes to refugee children soaked through after coming ashore.

They can be found on the beaches offering a first friendly greeting to people who for months or even years have known only threats and rejection.

It is local volunteers and groups like this that Mercy Corps one of the biggest humanitarian agencies working with refugees in Syria and Turkey has started to collaborate adding to the huge cross –border operation with which they have been engaged in Syria for four years.

As the winter weathers deteriorate and the numbers of refugees continue to come Mercy Corps are gearing up to provide the aid these vulnerable people need right now on islands like Kos and Lesbos.

Throughout my journey following Syria’s refugees I saw for myself just how massive an undertaking this is.

In giant warehouses on the Turkey-Syria border at Gaziantep, winterisation kits are being prepared before being ferried by convoy along the dangerous routes into Syria where many more civilians find themselves displaced.

Bakeries, food assistance, water trucking, livelihood support, blankets, sleeping bags, solar lanterns the list of needs is endless with more than 250,000 people directly dependent on Mercy Corps every month and upwards of 500,000 being reached with desperately needed aid.

In rundown neighbourhoods of Turkish cities like Izmir, I was to see too the work being done to help those urban refugees who live in conditions often almost as appalling as those they left behind inside Syria itself.

Then on islands like Kos and Lesbos there is the assistance now needed to protect and provide for those in transit on their way to what they hope will be the sanctuary of Europe.

My memories of the last few weeks will stay with me forever, as will the faces and stories of those that I met. People like Ali Chadan who clung to his terrified young children in the water of the Aegean before watching one drift off yet to be found and another die shortly after he made the beach.

Or Zaina a young woman who like so many refugees longs to return to her home in the Syrian city of Aleppo, but for now is trapped in a slum with her seriously ill baby and little help. All these people so need our support and they need it now. We must not turn our backs and ignore them.