As European Union leaders prepare to gather in Brussels later for a summit at which the ongoing migrant crisis will dominate, Sky News has witnessed thousands of desperate people arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos in a matter of hours.
David Cameron will join the leaders of the other 27 member states for the fourth successive council dealing with the issue and the second such meeting in just three weeks.
If there was any hope amongst European governments that this refugee crisis would ease, they were wrong. If anything it is getting worse.
Lesbos, where the first tentative steps of the refugees entering Europe are drenched in sea water and unsteady on slippery rocks and pebbles, is in danger of being overwhelmed by the scale of the movement of people heading to northern Europe.
The arrival of the boats, dinghies packed with people, never stops.
Thousands of people paying millions of Euros to Turkish smugglers are simply piling in.
It is a dangerous journey across open sea made worse by the onset of winter weather.
We watched as thousands arrived in one morning, children crying as their boats were buffeted by the waves.
They are already freezing from being soaked during the two hour crossing.
A woman collapsed as she made the shore line, her stomach heaving with sea-sickness.
Volunteers resuscitated her as family members watched on, unable to do anything to help.
A group of 47 in a dinghy built for ten were towed to shore by a fisherman.
Their outboard motor had been smashed by what they say was a shark or a dolphin.
Powerless, their boat took on water in seconds as it was engulfed by the waves. He saved their lives.
They all have tales of struggle to get this far, many escaping fighting, looking for sanctuary, spending all their savings to make this horrendous journey that will cross, at the very least, seven nations.
The Russian bombing campaign in Syria, and the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, are conspiring to make this crisis a disaster.
"We have nothing at home," a Syrian woman told me as I gave her a lift to the reception camp 1,500ft up a steep road above the beach.
"The Russians are bombing, Daesh (Islamic State) are bombing, Assad is bombing, everyone is bombing us, there is no hope," she said, cuddling her two-year-old boy.
The threat of IS and its spread in Iraq and a new campaign around the Syrian city of Aleppo is a constant theme.
Wael and his wife Narrawan struggled off their boat and showed me pictures of his back, encrusted with scars from the whippings he received from IS in his home town of Raqqah.
His crime, for which he was also imprisoned, was smoking in public.
They were both beaten. He decided to call it a day and leave.
If the sea shore is the front line of Europe's problem, it is volunteers who are there frontline troops dealing with it.
They come from all over the world to help.
Mainly young and well educated they meet and greet the newly arrived; give them food, water and medical assistance and point them towards the official reception centres of the world's biggest NGOs.
Without these volunteers this would already be a complete disaster. They work harder and longer hours than all the aid agencies, for nothing.
Amongst them is a group from Oldham, Greater Manchester. Young Muslim men, they came to Greece because they suspected they would be arrested as terrorists if they went to their first choice country, Turkey.
With help from their local community back home they have bought vast amounts of food, clothes, tents and sleeping bags which they give to aid agencies to distribute.
They work around 19 hours a day on the beach helping people ashore, in camps at night maintaining order and helping the most needy.
It is a quite incredible effort and their enthusiasm is utterly infectious.
"We are barely scratching the surface," one of them, Saj Malik, told me as he wiped away sweat as he loaded a truck.
"What we are doing is like a pebble on the beach. It's tiny. But we are here and we are doing it," he said.
There appears to be no way of stopping this migration of refugees and the countries on the front line - Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary - are not equipped to deal with it.
It is a tide of humanity whose passage is eased because of money and profit. 40 people a boat, 2,000 Euros a head - do the maths, the smugglers have. It is staggering.
Maybe the weather will stop the migration. The crossings may become impossibly dangerous.
But for sure many will continue to try and will likely lose their lives doing so.
Even if there is a lull the movement won't stop while the wars continue to rage on Europe's door step.
(Sky News)
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