conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for a story with the title 'The Daughters of Mars'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Daughters of Mars
  They threaded between hills and exclaimed to see wildflowers on hillsides and speculate what they were. In a village of white walls and houses, Demetrios and Dankworth had a loud discussion on directions before continuing on and passing an ancient amphitheatre beyond. Before Christ? shouted Dankworth. Demetrios nodded his head emphatically. Far before Christos. Greco-Roman, he said.
  The road began to wind, and the truck stopped to allow Carradine to be sick. They all got out for the occasion and picked wildflowers and looked down the long ribs of the island towards the brilliant sea. Sally demanded that Carradine take a seat in the car, and she joined the girls on the benches at the back of the truck where the wind blew their veils horizontal. Rising up a hill now, they saw the sudden apparition of mountains beyond a whitecapped sea. For that instant they were utterly released from earth and absorbed by the company of those mountains across the water and their remnant snow. The car stopped, and at Dankworth's order Demetrios came back to the truck and pointed at the mountains for the benefit of the nurses aboard. Thrakya, he said, and ultimately the word "Thrace" was suggested and Demetrios agreed. Then earth dragged them back again and down a stony hill and into another glittering white village, where clothes blew on lines like regatta flags.
  The road beyond the town ended above a bay. They gathered their bags and their bathing costumes—borrowed from the Canadians—and accompanied Dankworth and Shaw down a pathway over which sheltering trees cast shade. So they came to a long white building with a tiled roof and a disused-looking open-air café to one side of it. The bathing party milled inside while Demetrios bought tickets from an old man in a glass booth and—in a heavy atmosphere of sulphur from the baths—feverishly distributed them while pointing to the doors for men and women. Shaw apologized for the smell. I believe, he said, it's not your normal baths. Demetrios told me it's about smearing on mud. Some Greek saint used to do it and it cured his gammy leg or some such. I suppose it all adds up to an experience, anyhow.
  An elderly woman in a scarf, with gentle, hooded eyes, smiled at the women and—holding a stack of aged but clean towels—led them into the women's baths. They were half blinded by the miasma of hot sulphur. The foreyard of the baths seemed to be dominated not by a water pool but by two pools of gently stewing mud. The old lady mimed rubbing the mud on her body and—when the women looked mystified—smeared some on her arm and then traversed the room to a small pool above which was placed a tap and its handle. She turned on the tap and rinsed her mud-streaked arm under steaming mineral water. Then she left—satisfied that all was now clear.
  There was a debate about whether they should ignore the chance of this sacred mud bath. But Carradine said that, having been brought so far by the courteous officers, a few of them ought at least to have a go. A further conference developed on the damage the sulphurous mud might do to the bathing costumes they'd borrowed from the Canadians. But Naomi pointed out that they could rinse the mud out in the surf below. Freud settled it. Still in her shift—not having changed into a bathing costume at all—she stepped forward to one of the mud pools and got to her knees. Testing it for temperature, she then lowered both her hands into the viscid muck and scooped it up and daubed it across her cheeks and forehead. Slipping off the strings of her shift, she loaded it on her shoulders and—when the bodice of the shift sank to her waist and hips—plastered her breasts. She worked fixedly. There was no cure in what she was doing.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me five more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Just above the nurses' tents—amongst the wildflowers—nurses off shift sat in deck chairs with their faces southwards towards the sun. Here Honora wrote a further letter expounding her theory to the Australian Casualty Bureau. But the same day she got one from the young woman who ran that office.
  Nothing in the letter—which Honora willingly showed Sally—seemed to affect Honora's level of belief, or—for that matter—her work. But she was more subdued and a muted presence at the mess table. The idea of her letter in the enemy's hands was something to which she returned very often.
  I don't know how I feel about my letter being read by Germans, she confessed. Oh yes, it means he will get his burial—if the woman in London's right. And I have to say she seems to be an honest woman. But there were tender feelings in there. I hope no bugger of a German intelligence officer laughs when he reads them. If he's lucky, he's had some poor German woman write similar stuff to him...
  Still, at other times her idea was the letter would be read not by some German, or once Lionel Dankworth had been respectfully buried, but rather when he lay stunned in a German general hospital and recovering from oblivion an atom at a time.
  And now, along with the leafing of the trees, the day sky over the clearing station seemed to break out in aeroplanes. They saw German biplanes flying high and tentatively westwards and grinding at the firmament. Antiaircraft guns people called "Archies"—now moved in at the crossroads outside the village—fired at them from sandbagged redoubts either side of the large crucifix which stood there with its back to the battle. Smaller aircraft called fighters came low over the slight rise. They broke on the view like birds harried out of a copse. They coerced everyone's attention and tore away with it.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Here Honora wrote a further letter expounding her theory to the Australian Casualty Bureau. But the same day she got one from the young woman who ran that office.
  Nothing in the letter—which Honora willingly showed Sally—seemed to affect Honora's level of belief, or—for that matter—her work. But she was more subdued and a muted presence at the mess table. The idea of her letter in the enemy's hands was something to which she returned very often.
  I don't know how I feel about my letter being read by Germans, she confessed. Oh yes, it means he will get his burial—if the woman in London's right. And I have to say she seems to be an honest woman. But there were tender feelings in there. I hope no bugger of a German intelligence officer laughs when he reads them. If he's lucky, he's had some poor German woman write similar stuff to him...
  Still, at other times her idea was the letter would be read not by some German, or once Lionel Dankworth had been respectfully buried, but rather when he lay stunned in a German general hospital and recovering from oblivion an atom at a time.
  And now, along with the leafing of the trees, the day sky over the clearing station seemed to break out in aeroplanes. They saw German biplanes flying high and tentatively westwards and grinding at the firmament. Antiaircraft guns people called "Archies"—now moved in at the crossroads outside the village—fired at them from sandbagged redoubts either side of the large crucifix which stood there with its back to the battle. Smaller aircraft called fighters came low over the slight rise. They broke on the view like birds harried out of a copse. They coerced everyone's attention and tore away with it.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Needless to say, no blame for any remaining errors in the manuscript attach to these generous people.
  A. G. Butler, The History of the Australian Medical Services in World War I, Volumes 1–3 (Sydney, 1938–42).
  Janet Butler, "Nursing Gallipoli: Identity and the Challenge of Experience," Journal of Australian Studies, Issue 78, 2003.
  J. M. Gillings and J. Richards (eds.), In All These Lines: the Diary of Sister Elsie Tranter, 1916–19 (Newstead, Tasmania, 2008).
  THOMAS KENEALLY began his writing career in 1964 and has published thirty-one novels since. They include Schindler's List, which won the Booker Prize in 1982, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Gossip from the Forest, and Confederates, all of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He has also written several works of nonfiction, including his boyhood memoir, Homebush Boy, The Commonwealth of Thieves, and Searching for Schindler. He is married with two daughters and lives in Sydney, Australia.