Feature: One Greek coast guard's whish: boats laden with refugees cease coming

More than 650,000 refugees from war torn countries as well as migrants have reached Greece since the start of the year mainly through Turkey seeking safety and a better future in Europe.

In an international record, according to Greek Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Lagadianos on Thursday, Greek officers have rescued more than 94,000 people in about 4,800 search and rescue operations so far this year. Among them were more than 17,000 infants and children.

UNICEF Greece presented an award to Greece's Coast Guard recently for its work in the Aegean Sea, especially efforts to save children.

For Lagadianos and the men and women he represents the best present is the joy each time a life is saved. The greatest pain comes each time a dead body is retrieved. There have been more than 3,500 dead bodies in the Mediterranean this year.

Yorgos who spoke to Xinhua on condition of anonymity is a crew member on one of the 55 Greek Coast Guard vessels participating in this gigantic effort.

He serves in the force for more than a decade. Over the past five years he serves in the Aegean. He has stopped counting the numbers of people he helped to save and those who perished in the water.

"When you rush to the site of the emergency, you focus on the hands struggling to reach the rope, the eyes pleading for help from the overloaded old boat which is about to capsize. Numbers are irrelevant. I am the happiest person on earth for each live we save. I am mourning for each casualty as if I have lost a brother or my own child," he said.

Yorgos is the father of a 5-year old child. He gets particularly emotional when he recalls the dead bodies of infants and children he has retrieved - refugees younger than his son.

"Sometimes in the midst of the night when I am home next to my wife, I recall the images, the agony, the panic, the pain," he explained.

"Out in the sea we do not have the luxury to think about it and shed tears. We operate as robots acting quickly to save as many people as possible in rough seas, in darkness, erasing our feelings and fatigue. Otherwise, if you mentally collapse, you endanger the lives of your colleagues as well," the officer said.

On a typical day throughout 2015 Yorgos and his colleagues respond to a dozen emergencies involving hundreds of lives.

"When you see people struggling to stay afloat, you do not care about nationalities, religions and so on. You try to save a life," he said.

Yorgos has rescued several Turkish smugglers, although he cannot comprehend "how can they charge desperate people thousands of euros for a ticket on an old rubber dinghy without even providing life jackets sometimes."

Refugees and migrants pay on average 1,000-2,000 euros each to the traffickers they tell Greek authorities once the land on the Greek islands. The tariff has dropped to 700 euros lately, as the weather conditions have become adverse and the crossing more dangerous.

Yorgos will be on board to rescue lives throughout the winter. He only wishes that the boats laden with refugees ceased coming and he did not have to try to save more lives.

He hopes that Europeans will soon add more pressure on Turkey to help crack down on the smugglers' rings and help refugees reach European countries safely. "And of course help end the wars that are driving all these people away from their homes," he said. Endit