made by the three Tommies and myself in a closed horse wagon. At any
rate I had the companionship of some stout-hearted Englishmen, who bore
their troubles nobly and showed that unselfishness and cheerfulness in
adversity which is perhaps the greatest asset of the British Tommy. The
nights were very cold, and we slept huddled together for warmth on the
bare boards of the filthy truck. I begged a log from the engine-driver
as a pillow, and managed to get a good deal of sleep in spite of the
cold. The days were pleasantly warm, and to a certain extent I was able
to forget my troubles in the struggle to get food and to obtain medical
aid for our wounded man. It was only after several days that I got a
doctor to attend to him. I managed it at last by hailing some German
soldiers whilst we were halted at a station. They promised to do their
best for us, and also brought us good food. A little later a Turkish or
Armenian doctor turned up and dressed the man's arm, fairly skilfully it
seemed to me. He told me that the arm was in a bad condition, and that
the man should go to a hospital at the earliest opportunity. I kept on
trying to get medical attention for the poor fellow, but with little
result, until we left him behind at some wayside hospital at a place the
name of which I have forgotten. I have never heard whether his arm or
his life was saved. Throughout that journey the Germans without
exception were good to us and did all they could for us, and meeting
them was like meeting civilized men in a savage land. The German
privates several times--whenever they had an opportunity, in
fact--brought us food, good hot stew, and expressed their contempt for
the Turk in no measured terms.
Our escort and the other occupants of the horse truck were rather a
grotesque crew. An Arab in full Arab costume seemed to be in command. He
was extremely suspicious of me, and objected strongly when I talked to
the Germans, which I did at every opportunity. In the day time, when it
was futile to think of escaping, he watched my every movement, and at
night slept peacefully, often with the door a few inches open, so that a
night seldom passed when I could not have escaped if I had wished. It
was grudgingly that I was allowed sometimes to sit in the sun or walk up
and down for exercise at the numerous and prolonged halts. When I
pointed out that my feet hurt me and that I had no boots on, he
explained by signs that he suspected me the more for having taken off my
boots, and made movements with his hands to show that a man could run
all the faster without boots. That made me so angry that I nearly hit
him, and a little later I managed to get hold of an interpreter to tell
him that, as I could escape any night I wished to while he slept, he
might give me a little more liberty in the day time when escape was
hopeless. Our relations remained, to the end, rather strained. Then
there was a big lout of a Turkish sergeant, a kindly sort of fellow,
whose main diet seemed to be raw onions, lemons, raisins, and almonds.
There was also a particularly dirty Turkish soldier who was seen and
smelt but not heard. The most curious member of the party was a filthy,
ragged Arab beggar. He possessed only two garments, both unbelievably
dirty. One was a coarse linen nightshirt, and the other a large
irregular-shaped piece of black cloth, which he wore over his shoulders
in the day time, while at night, sitting huddled up into a small ball,
he covered himself completely with it. He had no hat, boots, stockings,
money, or possessions of any sort. I was under the impression that he
had been arrested as a spy by the Turks, but never found out for
certain. He seemed to be on very friendly terms with my escort, and
appeared to enjoy the journey, depending for food on bits that other
people did not want. The Arab gave him all the liberty he wished for,
and he was most useful in fetching water and buying food for us. He was
just a cheeky, cheerful, ragged street-arab, who seemed to know how and
where to beg, borrow, or steal the cruder necessities of life. He seemed
to take a special interest in me, and sometimes used to brush down the
place where I slept with his outer garment. He also liked sleeping close
to me, but I could not stand that, and, though I felt rather ungracious
about it, insisted on him removing himself to a decent distance. For
some time I thought he might be one of our spies who wished to
communicate with me; but I don't think that was the case, as he could
have found endless opportunities of speaking to me in private if he had
wished to. I was very curious at the time to know who he was and where
he was going, and always had a feeling that he was not quite what he
seemed. I never found out anything about him; I wish I could, as I am
still curious.
After a couple of days' journey from Tulkeram we reached Afule, the
place from which I had escaped. Rather an angry crowd collected round
the carriage when it became known that I was there, and one or two
Turkish soldiers put their heads in at the door and cursed me; for I
believe the sentries from whom I had escaped had received rather severe
punishment. I have little doubt that they had been cruelly bastinadoed,
poor brutes.
Some German flying men and also some Turks came to see me; the former
from curiosity, and the latter to question me about my escape. Had I
bribed the sentry? "Of course not," I said, "why spend money
unnecessarily? Any fool can get away from a Turkish sentry whenever he
wants to. I had had heaps of opportunities since my recapture, but my
feet were sore and I could not walk." This statement gave them something
to think about, the more especially because it coincided with statements
which had been made by Austin and Lee when they had been questioned.
Their statements and the belief that Austin, Lee, and I would repeat our
opinions as to the incompetence of all Turks, and especially of those at
Afule, alone prevented, as I now feel sure, any word of my escape being
forwarded to Headquarters. I received no special punishment for my
escape, which is perhaps just as well, as I much doubt if I should have
lived through it.
Of the rest of that tedious journey to Damascus I remember only a few
incidents, of which the following is an example. At Deraah, the junction
of the Damascus and the Mecca lines, the train halted for about ten
hours and I was put in charge of the station-master. He was a
dirty-looking blackguard but not so stupid as most Turks, and gave me to
understand that he was very friendly. He invited me to share his lunch
and we ate together, dipping our fingers into the same dish and fishing
out lumps of meat. There is nothing like real true hunger to tide over a
little squeamishness. When we had finished, he asked me to write him a
note to say that he had been kind to British prisoners. He was
convinced, he said, that the British would soon be in Damascus, and that
perhaps he would be taken prisoner. I wrote on a piece of paper, "This
fellow, Station-master at Deraah, gave me food when I was hungry--A. J.
EVERARD," and gave it to him: I had been his guest, and was grateful
for the meal. I should like to know if he ever used my chit.
We arrived at Damascus very early one morning, and were marched through
the streets to the courtyard of a hotel. They pushed the Tommies into a
room absolutely packed with stinking, filthy, crawling human beings.
They were mostly Turkish soldiers, military criminals I should think,
and only once in my life, at the main jail at Constantinople, have I
ever seen such a miserable, famished, filthy crowd. I absolutely refused
to enter the room in spite of all threats, and at length they gave in,
and put a guard over me in the courtyard. Later in the day all four of
us were marched up to the main barracks and I was lodged in a room with
barred windows--I call it a room, because it was on the second floor and
had a wooden bedstead and a mattress in one corner, but no other
furniture. The place was comparatively clean, and I might have been much
worse off. I asked that the Tommies should be put into my room, but this
was refused, though I obtained permission to visit them. They were in a
long, narrow stone cell. The walls had at one time been whitewashed, but
now the whole place was filthy. From the long side-wall boards sloped
down to the center of the room, leaving a narrow gangway. The boards and
the stone floor were filthy, and all over the room a thick crowd of
still filthier Turks slept or played cards. What the place was I don't
know, but it is just possible that it was the Turkish guardroom, though
it is hard to credit it unless you have spent a little time in Turkey as
a prisoner. I did what I could for our poor fellows, who were
wonderfully cheerful; but it was little I could do to make their
existence a little more tolerable.
Twice every day I was conducted by George, a miserable little Armenian
with the fear of death on him, to a hotel in the town, where I had my
meals with Turkish officers, and paid at reduced and very reasonable
rates. The meals were quite good and satisfying. I also found a small
library in the hotel in which there were several English books which I
borrowed from mine host--an Armenian, of course. All business men of any
description seem to be Armenians in Damascus, and they one and all
seemed to be praying for and expecting daily and hourly the coming of
the English.
After a couple of days in Damascus, I felt so much better that I began
to turn my attention once more to escaping. I broached the matter first
to some Armenians in the hotel, but soon saw that they were too
frightened to be any use. Next I tested my conductor, George, and found
that for years he had had the desire, but never the courage, to escape.
I cheered him on with promises of prosperity if we succeeded, and two
days later he told me that he had got into touch with some men who would
guide us to friendly Arabs outside the town. We were to escape disguised
in two days' time; but, when questioned, George was unable to produce
any details or any connected scheme of escape. I continued to press for
details, but when the day came he went dead lame, and was so obviously
in a blue funk that I called the matter off. I don't believe for a
moment that he had ever made any arrangements for escaping. In any case
I feel sure I was right not to trust myself blindly to this miserable
little cur of an Armenian. Before I had time to discover any more
suitable conspirator--the next day, in fact--I was moved off by train
together with the Tommies in a cattle truck, with about thirty other
human beings, all as dirty and smelly as possible, and all, I have no
doubt, covered with vermin, as I was by that time. Whilst at Damascus I
had a good opportunity of looking round the town, with George as my
conductor. The Arab thinks of Damascus and the waters of Damascus as a
sort of heaven upon earth. Although it does not quite accord with my
idea of heaven, the place has for me a certain fascination. The sight of
water in plenty in a thirsty land is in itself a pleasant sight. The
shops too are exceptionally good for that part of the world. Altogether,
making due allowances for the circumstances, I have quite pleasant
recollections of Damascus. The last day I was there I tried to change
some money, for curious as it may seem, I had never been robbed of my
money. I was unable to come to an agreement with a robber of an Armenian
about the rate of exchange. George came in, in the midst of the
argument, and told me that he could arrange things better for me. He led
me by side streets to an insignificant-looking little shop and
introduced me to an old man in rich clothing, who spoke French. This old
man was an Armenian, with French blood in his veins, I should think, and
offered to give me gold for my Egyptian notes. He refused my thanks,
saying it was a small thing to do to help one who had risked his life on
the side of the Allies against the Turks.
Of the journey from Damascus to Aleppo I am pleased to say I remember
absolutely nothing. We made a particularly bad start, as I have said,
being crowded at night with from thirty to forty nondescript human
beings into a dirty cattle truck, so that I have no doubt it was as
unpleasant as the rest. At Aleppo the Tommies and I were marched through
the town to a big white stone fort or barracks which stands on a hill
above it. Here we were separated, and it was not till some months
afterwards when one of them came as my orderly at Afion that I heard of
those good fellows again. They had had an awful time, but I believe
survived to the end, being strong men. Of the fate of the wounded man
they knew nothing. I was brought up to the Commandant's private room.
After the polite formalities of introduction, together with cigarettes
and coffee, I was given a seat on a divan whilst the Commandant
submitted himself to be shaved. When this operation was concluded, he
politely offered me the services of his barber, which I gratefully
accepted. Feeling much refreshed, I was led away and deposited in a very
bare and unpleasant cell. Just as I was preparing to kick up a fearful
row and give my celebrated imitation of an indignant demi-god by kicking
at the door and cursing the sentry, the only method I found to be of the
slightest use in getting food or washing materials out of the Turks, an
officer appeared who conducted me back into the town. After sundry
intensely irritating vicissitudes, and after losing my temper
intentionally and unintentionally a number of times, I slept that night
in a passable imitation of a hotel, and in a bed which was the cleanest
thing I had seen for weeks.
CHAPTER III
TO AFION VIA CONSTANTINOPLE
From this point onwards I don't intend to attempt to give a day-to-day
account of my sojourn in Turkey. I will try to recall only those few
events which seem to me of special interest, and confine myself, as I
have done with few exceptions throughout this book, to those events of
which I was an eye-witness. For there never was such a country for
rumors and stories as Turkey, where few can read and news is passed from
mouth to mouth.
I stayed for two or three nights in the hotel at Aleppo, and while there
was visited by a representative of an embassy--Dutch, I think--which had
charge of British interests in those parts. I asked for shoes, socks,
vest, pants, and a bath--particularly for a bath. He sent me some
nondescript but most welcome articles of clothing, together with bright
red Turkish slippers of the genuine Aleppo brand, which I still
treasure.
The bath was a much more difficult business. He advised me most strongly
against the public baths, in which, he said, one was much more likely to
catch typhoid than get clean, and as for a bath in the hotel, such a
thing simply wasn't done. He was a Greek, I think, and seemed to find
it difficult to sympathize with my desire. I stuck to my point, however,
with obstinacy, although I knew I was already beyond the stage when a
bath could cleanse me. When he left me he gave instructions in the hotel
that I was to have a tub of warm water. What a request! The hotel was
shocked, and most properly refused to countenance such an outrage on its
premises. I waited for an hour or two in my dormitory, for there were
half a dozen beds in the room, and Turkish officers used to drop in at
odd hours for a sleep; but as no bath appeared, I started to forage for
one. There was no sentry to be seen, and I made my way into the
backyard, commandeered a bucket, and amidst universal protest went back
with a pail of water to my room. Then, in the middle of the floor,
watched the while through the half-open door by the outraged members of
the hotel staff, I proceeded to wash myself section by section. It was
as I had suspected. A bath in cold water was precious little use to me.
But how could it be otherwise, since for the last fortnight I had been
in close contact with people who live year in and year out covered with
lice? It is disgusting to have to refer to these things, but it is not
possible to appreciate life in Turkey unless one realizes that
ninety-nine out of every hundred people one meets are crawling with
these loathsome vermin. I was told one very good tip, which is to "keep
them on the move." The louse lives and multiplies inside the shirt or
vest and next the skin. The scheme is to put on your shirt inside out.
Then he has to make his way back again to the inside, and just before he
has got comfortably settled down you turn your shirt back again and
"keep him on the move." Of course it is considered rather eccentric to
change your shirt inside out every day or two instead of every month or
two, but I disregarded this and, I must own, found the method most
efficacious. They were lean, owing to too much exercise and too little
nourishment, and it certainly interfered to some extent with breeding. I
apologize for the foregoing, and will try to keep off the subject in
future. When one is condemned to be unclean with these pests, one can
either shudder with disgust and shame, or try to laugh.
The journey from Aleppo to Constantinople lasted a fortnight or more,
and I traveled the whole way in company with Jews. Just before this,
orders had been issued for the arrest of all the Jews in Palestine,
whatever position they might hold. This was a result, I believe, of our
declaration that after the war Palestine should once more be the
national home of the Jewish race. Very many of the best doctors in the
Turkish army are Jews; many of these posts in the censor's office and in
the commissariat department where efficiency is necessary, but the hope
of honor small, were held by Jews. They were all arrested, on no charge
whatsoever, and dispatched under armed guards to Constantinople, being
treated, in some cases, on the same footing as prisoners-of-war--in
other cases as spies or rebels. There was one officer who traveled part
of the way with me. He was filled with shame and bitterness at his
treatment. He had fought at Gallipoli and most of the battles in
Palestine. He had been twice wounded, twice decorated by the Turks, and
once by the Germans with the Iron Cross, and now he was returning as a
suspect, with a sentry with a fixed bayonet at his heels whenever he
moved. They had made a rebel of an efficient servant, for he prayed
night and day for the downfall of the Turks.
The Jew with whom I traveled most of the time had been for some years in
the censor's office at Haifa on the Palestine coast. He was an
inoffensive, clever, and kind little fellow, and I last caught sight of
him in the most unpleasant section of the Constantinople jail. Poor
fellow! I am afraid he found me a bad traveling companion. He was all
for conciliation, and advocated judicious bribery to increase our
comforts, while I was as irritable and unreasonable as only a tired,
ill, and disappointed man can be.
In the early days of the war there was only one bad road, which
zigzagged through the Taurus Mountains. Later, the Germans organized an
efficient motor lorry service with German drivers and mechanics, for
machinery of any sort is quite beyond Turkish intelligence. When we
passed through, the narrow gauge railway had been working for some time
and they were making good progress with the broad gauge line, which
would improve enormously the Turkish efficiency on the Mesopotamia and
Palestine fronts. Thousands of men were working in the cuttings and
widening the tunnels. In particular, I remember one great bridge, with
four huge stone pillars rising 200 to 300 feet from a gorge below. It
seemed a marvel of engineering in that wild land. It was three parts
finished, and I believe the whole line was completed just about the
time of the Armistice. It must have been not the least of the many
bitter blows this war has brought to Germany, that after so much labor,
ingenuity, and money expended on the Bagdad line, they abandoned the
work to their enemies at the moment of its successful conclusion.
We traveled through the Taurus in open trucks on the narrow gauge line,
and on the passengers an incessant shower of sparks descended from the
engine, which burnt wood, as do nearly all engines between Mecca and
Constantinople. The scenery is wild and wonderful. Great peaks, grim and
ragged with straggling pine trees, tower to the clouds, while the train
crawls round the edge of precipices where a stone dropped from the
carriage window would fall a sheer thousand feet or more into the gorge
below.
At one point on the journey over the Taurus the line passes through an
extremely long tunnel, where all passengers would inevitably have been
asphyxiated by our wood-burning engine. Owing no doubt to the fact that
Germans and not Turks were in charge, this had been foreseen, and
steam-containing engines, much on the principle of the thermos flask,
had been substituted. They had no boilers or furnaces, but were filled
up with sufficient steam before each journey.
I met many of our men on the way through. They were wonderfully cheerful
and optimistic, and many had an amused and pitying tolerance for the
inefficiencies of the Turk, though when one had heard their tales, one
realized that they were just survivors and that 75 per cent. had died
under the treatment.
To live with the Turk one must laugh at him, for otherwise one would go
mad with rage. They complained of malaria and lack of food. Incredible
as it may seem, many of them occupied posts of considerable
responsibility, being in charge of power stations and repair depots on
the route.
On the whole, the Germans whom they had met had treated them well. There
were certain damnable exceptions: no mitigating circumstance could here
be pleaded, for calculated and intentional brutality and not national
inefficiency was here the cause. A moderately civilized Turk was once
accused by an English officer of allowing English prisoners under him to
die in thousands. "We treated your men," answered the Turk, "exactly as
we treated our own soldiers." Exactly! The food and treatment that will
kill Turkish peasants by tens will kill Europeans by thousands. As well
expect a bulldog to thrive on a jackal's fare.
With the German rank and file, the motor drivers and mechanics, our men
made friends quickly. They had a common bond of friendship--hatred and
contempt for the Turk. At one station where our train was standing after
dark a man entered my carriage. I was alone for the moment; for my
guard, who irritated me beyond endurance, being stupid even for a Turk,
and who only kept strict watch on me every other day and never at night,
had gone in search of food. The man had on a very dirty but
German-looking uniform, and surprised me when he addressed me in good
English. He was an English Tommy and asked me if I would like some food
in his mess. He was spare man on one of the German lorries, and his
fellows would be delighted to see me. It was only a couple of hundred
yards away. In a small dark hut, by the light of a candle, four German
motor drivers and an English Tommy offered me hospitality, and I have
never met more generous or cheery hosts. Our Tommy seemed on excellent
terms with them, and swore to me that they were topping good fellows. We
cursed the Turks together, swopped yarns, whilst partaking of most
excellent German rations--tea, soup, German army bread, cheese, and
butter. I went back to my carriage feeling much cheered and once more in
possession of my temper. Only for a moment, however, for my blithering
fool of a Turkish guard, who was hunting wildly for me under the seat,
grabbed me as I entered with a cry of triumph.
From the Taurus to Constantinople, about a ten days' journey, we
traveled in very dirty and extremely crowded second-class carriages, and
all that time we had to sleep sitting up while I longed above anything
in this world to lie down, for I was very tired, and my bones ached with
sitting. The coach next to ours was occupied by a German general and his
retinue. Some of the smart young A.D.C.'s condescended to speak to me
once or twice; and once, when we had been traveling a week together, the
general sent one of them to me with food. I thanked him, but refused it,
saying I had sufficient money to buy what I needed.
The haughty and insolent attitude of those Germans towards their
Turkish allies gave me the greatest pleasure from every point of view. I
was no longer surprised that the Turks hated the Germans. Success and
efficiency was the Germans' only claim to respect, and when the
_debacle_ came small mercy was shown by the Turks to starving and beaten
German battalions and none to stragglers. After the victory of Allenby
in Palestine, trains full of starving Germans came through Afion Hissar,
with hundreds clinging to the roofs and buffers and not daring to get
down to beg or buy food, for fear either of being murdered or of losing
their places on the train. They actually sent a message to the English
prisoners-of-war in the town of Afion, asking for safe conduct to buy
food. I had left the prison camp by that time, but I believe the Germans
were told that if a good party came they would be quite safe. Of course
by that time, October 1918, English officers took no further notice of
their Turkish sentries and wandered about where they would. The whole
position was Gilbertian beyond the wildest dreams of that genius.
During the four years that the Teuton was lord in Asia Minor, whenever a
German saw a Turk in close proximity he kicked him, either
metaphorically or actually, usually the latter, and the Turk
submitted--partly because he admired the German efficiency and fighting
powers, but chiefly because he had to. "He who would sup with the devil
needs a long spoon," and it's precious little soup the Turk got out of
that unholy alliance.
The Turk cannot understand how a man by shutting himself in an office
and writing on pieces of paper can cause all the trains to run to time
and armies to be equipped or fed. It is beyond his intelligence, and he
can but wonder. The English, French, Germans, and Americans not only
have these wonderful powers, but in a scrap they fight like the devil.
In the Greek and the Armenian the Turk recognizes this same power of
organization, at closer quarters this time, for the Greek and Armenian
rob and out-manoeuvre him in his own bazaar. This is intolerable to him,
for he knows he is a better man than they are in a fight. If he meets
them in the open with a sword instead of a pen they will go on their
knees to him and squeal for mercy. This strikes me as pretty reasonable
from a Turkish point of view. The Turks' commercial methods are rather
crude: "Let some one else make money, then murder him and take it." If
we stop them from murdering Armenians, the Turks will starve.
On arriving at Constantinople we crossed to the European side. Our
escort, as I might have expected, then spent several hours, to my
intense annoyance, wandering about the streets, not having the faintest
idea of where to go or what to do. At length, after many weary waits,
and after an interview with Enver's chief executioner and torturer, who
looked a real devil, I parted company with my escort (I think the relief
was mutual) and found myself in the great military prison. I was put
into a room with two flying men from the Mesopotamia front and an
Italian count, who expected to be hanged every day for spying, but was
most cheerful nevertheless. The room was about 9 feet square, but as it
had four beds in it, there was not much room to walk about. However, as
far as I am concerned, I have no complaint to make of my treatment at
Constantinople. It was a blessed relief to be left in peace after that
train journey, and we were quite decently fed. The Dutch embassy sent me
in clean clothes and bedding, for which may they ever be blessed! Also I
had a Turkish bath in the town, and by burning my old clothes got rid of
the lice. But if we, considering that we were prisoners-of-war, were
tolerably comfortable in that place, there were many poor devils who
were not. Every day we were allowed an hour's exercise in the prison
yard, a not unpleasant sunny place where there was ample room for
walking exercise. From here there was a perfectly gorgeous view of Pera
and the Golden Horn. Our room was on the second floor, and, as we passed
through the lower portions to reach the yard, starving, ragged,
lice-covered wretches yammered at us from behind bars. Turkish military
criminals, we believed they were. Poor devils! A friend of mine, an
officer and usually a truthful man, who had been imprisoned in a
different part of this building, swore to me that Thursday was torture
day, and every Thursday he used to hear the shrieks of the victims. I
believe him myself.
After a week in this prison nearly all the British prisoners were moved
to Psamatia. I was very pleased to come across Lee and Austin once more.
They gave an amusing account of the court of inquiry which was held at
Afule after my escape. They had made the journey in comparative comfort,
having come across Kemal Bey, the military governor of El Karak, who had
been so good to us when we were first captured. He was once more
extremely good to them, but took a gloomy view of what would happen to
me if I were recaptured. Why I was not punished for my escape I have
never found out for certain.
At Psamatia I found means to send a private and uncensored letter to my
people. Even in these days I think it as well to draw a veil over the
methods employed to this end. It was not a route by which military
information could be sent. To this letter I added a note to my bankers
telling them to cash my cheques drawn under my assumed name of A. J.
Everard. If I had known the Turks as I know them now, I should have
realized that such a precaution was unnecessary. They usually recorded
our names phonetically, in Turkish characters, and to the last expressed
surprise and incredulity when a prisoner stated that his name was the
same as his father's name. Of course the difference between Christian
names and surnames was quite beyond them, and it was useless to attempt
to explain.
During the ten rather interesting days which we spent at Psamatia we
visited St. Sophia and explored the old town. A small bribe enabled one
to wander with the sentry almost where one would on the European side,
and to buy in the bazaars a number of small things which greatly added
to the comfort of our lives. At the end of that time nearly all of us
were moved to camps in the interior. Half a dozen other officers and
myself, after a three days' train journey, arrived once more at
Afion-Kara-Hissar, which I had passed through three weeks before on the
way up to Constantinople. It is here that the Smyrna line joins the
Constantinople-Bagdad railway, and it was here that I remained for the
next six months, till about a fortnight before the Armistice.
Others have already written of the life in prison camps in Turkey, and I
shall not attempt any description. We lived in houses which once had
belonged to Armenians. The Armenians had been "removed"--in nine cases
out of ten a Turkish euphemism for murdered. The houses were quite bare
of all furniture, most of them were in an advanced state of
dilapidation, and they were all very dirty and overrun with bugs.
The first thing that every prisoner must do is to buy himself tools and
wood and string, and make himself a suite of furniture, and then open
the first battle in an almost ceaseless warfare against the bugs. One
officer of the merchant service in former days said that he was too hard
an old sea dog to be worried by bugs--he would just disregard them.
After a few weeks he was very weak and pale. His bed was brought out of
doors, and boiling water poured into the crevices, and a vast quantity
of well-fed bugs were discovered who had been draining him of blood.
We bought our food in the bazaar, and our menu was very simple and
monotonous. However much I ate I never seemed to get any nourishment out
of it, and all the time felt weak and ill. For money we cashed cheques
at the rate of 13 lira for L10. As a lira was worth about two shillings
at pre-war prices, living, in spite of its simplicity, was most
expensive. To help us out, officers were given an allowance from the
Dutch Embassy of 18 lira a month.
We passed our time, like all prisoners-of-war, working, reading (for
there was a good library), carpentering, writing and acting plays, and
towards the end, when we had matters more our own way, playing hockey or
cricket.
It is hard to compare my Turkish with my German experiences as a
prisoner. The whole position was so very different. It must be
remembered that I only speak of a Turkish prison camp as I saw it--that
is to say, during the seven months which preceded the Armistice. If we
compare Afion with Clausthal, which in 1916 was one of the best camps in
Germany, I think there is no doubt whatever that any man would have
preferred to be a prisoner in the German camp. We had more freedom in
Afion, but that was more than counterbalanced by the fact that we lived
in Germany in close proximity to civilization. Our letters and parcels
came regularly and quickly, and only those who have been prisoners can
understand what that means. When, however, I think of Fort 9,
Ingolstadt, in comparison with Afion, I find that I look back on the
German prison almost with pleasure--certainly with pride--while I loathe
to write or think of the Turkish camp where there were no real
hardships, at any rate whilst I was there.
Those who had been prisoners for a long time had suffered much; and we
later prisoners had some difficulty in appreciating the attitude which
was adopted by most of the camp towards certain things. When I first
came to the camp, escaping was looked upon almost as a crime against
your fellow-prisoners. One officer stated openly that he would go to
considerable lengths to prevent an attempt to escape, and there were
many who held he was right. There is much to be said on the side of
those who took this view. Though it was childishly simple to escape from
the camp, to get out of the country was considered next to impossible.
On the face of it, it did seem pretty difficult. An attempt to escape
brought great hardship and even danger on the rest of the camp; for the
Turks had made a habit of strafing, with horrible severity, the officers
of the camp from which a prisoner had escaped. This point of view, to
one who had been a prisoner in Fort 9, Ingolstadt, where we lived but to
escape, was hard to tolerate, and I am now convinced that this
anti-escaping attitude was wrong. It seems to me to take too narrow a
view of the question; quite apart from the fact, generally accepted I
believe, that prisoners-of-war are inclined to deteriorate mentally and
morally when they settle down to wait, in as great comfort as possible,
but with a feeling of helplessness, for a peace which weekly seemed
farther off. It seems to me that we owed it to our self-respect and to
our position as British officers to attempt to escape, and to go on
attempting to escape, in spite of all hardships. It used to amuse me
sometimes to think what would have happened if the prisoners of Fort 9
could have been set down as prisoners in Afion-Kara-Hissar. They would
certainly have marched out in a body and taken pot luck with the
brigands. There would have been nothing to prevent them. To recapture
them would have been a next to impossible task. Many brigands and
deserters would have joined them. In fact, I think this would have been
quite a nice little diversion in Asia Minor. A hundred armed,
determined, and disciplined men could have gone almost where they would
and done what they chose in Asia Minor.
About the time I came to Afion, a number of young lately captured
officers, mainly flying men, were also brought in. Many of the older
prisoners, who had suppressed their wish to escape in deference to the
opinion of the majority of the camp, joined hands with the later
prisoners and made preparation to escape. I know of at least twenty
officers who had every intention of departing in the spring of 1918.
Most of the plans were to my mind rather crude, and consisted of walking
over 250 miles of almost impossible country and hoping for a boat. We
were sent from England, concealed most cunningly in post cards, maps of
the route to Smyrna and a method of getting out of the country from the
neighborhood. Tempted by this, three stout-hearted fellows tried to walk
to Smyrna--a most terrible undertaking. They met brigands, and one of
them was shot, probably in the leg, and left wounded on the hills. The
other two were stripped, driven from their wounded comrade with rifles,
and returned to the camp in a semi-nude condition. Nothing has since
been heard of the third, and to the best of my belief the Turks made no
effort whatever to save him. His two companions and the senior officers
of the camp did their utmost to induce the Turks to send a few men to
the place where he had last been seen alive. To take a little trouble on
the off-chance of saving a human life is not the sort of thing that
appeals to a Turk; so several prisoners offered to go on parole to the
place at their own risk, which to unarmed men would have been
considerable. But this was forbidden.
Bribery seemed to me the one method which had a real chance of success
in Turkey. An officer, whom I will call David, and I first of all opened
negotiations with a Greek to be allowed to take the place of the stokers
on the Smyrna train. The Greek's courage failed, however, and that fell
through. Then we got into touch with the Arabs who wished to desert.
They agreed to produce horses and arms; and four armed men on horseback
would have had no difficulty in going anywhere. When the whole thing had
been settled and it was only a question of final details and deciding
the day to go, the second commission came to the camp in order to select
sick officers for exchange. As there were very few, if any, sick
officers left in the camp, and as the examination was a pure farce,
David and I thought we should get a more comfortable journey to Smyrna
by bribing the doctor. This was completely successful, and cost me L15.
On the whole, I think if you went the right way about it, it was less
difficult to escape successfully from Afion than from most of the German
camps.
_N.B._--For a description of the life in the prison camps of
Afion-Kara-Hissar, I can recommend _A Prisoner in Turkey_, by John
Still (published by John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd.).
CHAPTER IV
THE ROUND TOUR CONCLUDED
There is one incident in our otherwise uneventful journey to Smyrna
which seems to me worthy of record. We were passing through a
particularly wild and uninhabited stretch of country, when the train
halted just after it had passed a small bridge over a ravine. I and a
friend who spoke Turkish descended to stretch our legs, and saw standing
on the bridge a very ragged sentry, so we walked back to question him.
He had been there, the solitary guardian of that bridge, for four years.
Two years before this he had somehow seen or heard from his wife, and
had learnt that three of his four sons were dead and the other was
fighting. Since then he had had no news of his family. The only food he
received were two loaves of bread thrown out of the train twice a week,
and during these four years he had lived and slept in the clothes, now
ragged and rotten, which he was wearing. He scarcely spoke to any one
from year's end to year's end, and lived perpetually on the border of
starvation. He only prayed God to blast Enver's eyes, because he was a
year and a half in arrears with his pay of 1/4d. a day or so. Thank God
I was not born to be a Turkish territorial. In the Turkish army, I
suppose, this fellow would be envied, as having a nice quiet job on the
lines of communication.
On arriving at Smyrna we were told, to our great astonishment, for we
had given no parole of any sort, that we were free to go where we would
and do what we liked.
By the kindness of the American School Missionaries the mission school
buildings had been thrown open to the officers and Tommies. The place
was beautifully clean but rather crowded, and as I desired solitude
above all things, I packed a ruecksack and set out to test how far our
freedom extended. There was no one to stop me at the station, so I took
the train to a small village in the hills above Smyrna and spent two
most enjoyable days in a country hotel.
The population of Smyrna seems to be the result of inter-marriage
between all the nations under the sun. Perhaps there is rather more
Greek blood about than any other. They speak no language well, and
usually five or six badly. They are a timorous, effeminate community,
very immoral and untrustworthy, and seem to live in a perpetual and
perhaps justifiable fear of being massacred. They all hated the Turk
much but feared him more, and were very friendly to us. Once I had
discovered that I was really free to go where I would, it seemed to me
that I was in rather a false position. The fact that we were not guarded
in any way made me no less anxious to get out of Turkey; and the fact
that the Turks had not asked for our parole, which most of us would have
refused, in no way relieved us of the duty of escaping if we could.
There were other considerations, however. A small minority of the
British officers and men now collected at Smyrna for exchange were
really sick men; and several of us, who were ardent escapers, did not
consider that we were justified in bringing possible punishment on these
men by escaping. We therefore decided to wait for the exchange ship and
to go by that, so long as it was not necessary to give any sort of
parole not to fight against the Germans. In the meantime we prepared a
method of escape by which we could clear out of Asia Minor if ever the
Turks changed their mind and attempted to send us back to camps in the
interior. It was not so easy to find a method of getting away as one
might have expected. Nearly every one in the place would take a bribe
without hesitation; but they were more likely to betray you at the last
moment than do any job in which there was the slightest taint of danger.
That is the worst of these half-breeds; they have no morals of any sort.
The Turk has his own peculiar morals, and whatever he may be he is not a
coward. If you go the right way about it I believe all Turks can be
bribed. A good deal of intrigue and preparation is sometimes necessary;
but once he has accepted money he seems to consider it dishonest to fail
to carry out his part of the bargain. Eventually one of us got into
touch with our secret intelligence system and made arrangements for
three or four of us to get away if it became necessary. However, the
exchange ship was expected any day, so we settled down to wait for it.
When we had been there about ten days David came to me with an
extraordinary story. He said that a Turk had approached him and
suggested that there should be a revolution in Smyrna. Apparently there
were a number of Turks in Smyrna who believed that the Turkish empire
was completely done, and that the sooner peace was made with the Entente
the better. By a revolution in Smyrna they hoped to force the hands of
the Government in Constantinople. They hoped, by handing over the place
to the English, that Smyrna would be left, when peace came, as an
independent state. Above all, I think they feared that it should go to
Greece. However, I am not sure that these were the real motives, or all
the motives, of the proposed revolution. The motives were a small matter
to us. What we had to consider was--(_a_) Was it possible? (_b_) Was it
desirable from a military or political point of view? We decided to make
all preparation, but to refuse active participation till we had
information that a revolution in Smyrna was desired by the British. The
Turks who brought this proposal to David said the job the Turkish
revolutionaries would undertake would be to tie up or murder the
commander of the garrison, the military governor, the chief of police,
and a few other important personages. David was to select a party of men
from amongst the British and hold the railway with a couple of machine
guns, incidentally cutting all the telephone and telegraph wires. My job
was to capture the Austrian aerodrome just above the town, and then to
fly one of their machines to Mitylene and report events to the English.
"What about the garrison?" David had asked. "That is all right," said
the Turk; "we have a Mullah who will preach a holy war against the
Germans, and the garrison will all come over to us."
The scheme seemed pretty mad at first, but the more we considered it the
more possible did it seem. David felt certain he could do his part, and
I went up and inspected the aerodrome, and made a number of inquiries
about the personnel and the guard. It seemed that with about a dozen men
there would be absolutely no difficulty in capturing the aerodrome,
probably without bloodshed. We considered that if the Turks could do
their part--and they were perfectly confident they could--we could
capture the town and hold it for at least a fortnight. If the wires were
cut we could more or less rely on the fact that for a week or so it
would be considered only a normal breakdown of the line. The Turk said
that the nearest troops were ten days' march away, and there was no
rolling stock to bring many troops by train. Such was the rough outline
of the scheme, though I may not have got all the details quite correct.
We now refused to move any further in the matter till we got into touch
with the British and learnt that a revolution was desirable, and that
there were ships and troops to take over the town when and if we were
successful. To disarm criticism and indicate that I am now more or less
sane, I am prepared to admit now that we must have been perfectly mad to
entertain the idea for a moment.
About this time a certain English colonel turned up in Smyrna and put up
at the best hotel. He had nothing whatever to do with the exchange of
prisoners; and in order to explain his presence I must digress here to
give some account, probably rather inaccurate, of his previous
adventures in Turkey.
A month or two before the Armistice the colonel had been a
prisoner-of-war in a Turkish prison camp about 100 miles from
Constantinople. From there he had escaped by means of a judicious
mixture of bribery and audacity and made his way to Constantinople. For
over a month he lay hid in the town, and at the end of that time had
prepared a complete plan of escape. The details of where and how he was
going is not part of this story. On the night on which he had made all
preparations to depart he received a note from the Minister of the
Interior of the Turkish Empire saying that he, the Minister, had heard
that the colonel was about to escape, and would be much obliged if he
would call on him before departing. As I said before, it is no use being
surprised at anything in Turkey; but that it should be possible that,
while one department was searching high and low for an escaped prisoner,
another department not only knew where he was but when he intended to
escape, throws an interesting sidelight on Turkish methods of
government. The only explanation seems to be that each department has an
entirely independent secret service of its own. The colonel decided that
he would go and see the Minister, as he had really not much choice in
the matter. This interview between a prisoner-of-war in the middle of an
attempt to escape and a Minister of an enemy country must be almost
unique, dealing, as I believe it did, with the probable attitude of the
Entente towards certain aspects of the coming armistice.
At the end of two hours the Minister thanked the colonel courteously
and intimated that he would not hinder him further in his attempt to
escape. "That won't do at all," said the colonel, "you have already
spoilt my plans, and it is now up to you to get me out of the country."
"I will send you out by aeroplane," said the Minister, and went to the
telephone. In a short time he returned and stated that, to his great
regret, it was impossible to obtain an aeroplane for the purpose, as
they were all in the hands of the Germans.
The Turks are notoriously incompetent as aviators, and this was only to
be expected. As an aeroplane was out of the question, the Minister did
the next best thing and wrote out for the colonel an official
"passe-partout," stamped all over and signed by the highest powers in
the land. Armed with this document the colonel was no longer a poor
prisoner-of-war. He was more than free; he was a power in the land of
Turkey. All officialdom would bow down before him. So he took the train
to Smyrna and put up in the best hotel.
Soon after his arrival David and I determined to seek his advice in the
matter of the revolution, so we introduced him to the spokesman of the
Turkish conspirators, and the three of us met one night in the colonel's
private sitting-room and discussed the question from every point of
view. The colonel viewed the proposed revolution in the same light as we
had done, as a wild but not impossible scheme, only to be put into
practice if we received definite information that such a thing was
desired by the British. We spent the next day or two in futile attempts
to find a boatman (they were nearly all Greeks) sufficiently honest,
courageous, or patriotic to be worth bribing.
Quite suddenly it was announced that the Turkish armistice commissioners
had arrived in Smyrna, whence they would leave to go either to Mitylene
or to a British battleship, in order to undertake negotiations. The
colonel and David, with the help of the colonel's all-powerful pass,
made their way to the presence of the commissioners, and somehow or
other persuaded them that it would be a good thing to take the colonel
with them when they went. They left early one morning in a large motor
boat, the colonel promising to send us back word if a revolution was
desirable. No word came through to that effect, and less than a week
later the arrival of the exchange ship was announced. On board the ship
we were once more assailed with doubts on the question of parole. Should
we be eligible to fight against the Germans? We nearly got off the ship
at Mitylene with the idea of taking a sailing boat back to Smyrna,
surrendering to the Turks, and escaping in a legitimate way the same
night, as I think we probably could have done. We decided against it,
however, after consultation with a distinguished general and the captain
of the ship. Our advisers pointed out, firstly, that as far as they knew
we had given no parole not to fight against the Germans; and, secondly,
that there seemed every prospect that the war with Germany as well as
with Turkey would be over before we could return to Europe. We left
Smyrna on November 1st, 1918, when I had been a prisoner in Turkey for
seven and a half months, so that, in Germany and Turkey together, I had
been a prisoner-of-war for under eighteen months. Quite enough.
Technically, I think I may claim to have escaped from Turkey as well as
from Germany, but I am not particularly proud of the Turkish escape.
There is one further incident which happened after I had been enjoying
the luxuries of Cairo and Alexandria for a fortnight, and then I have
finished.
It occurred to me that it would be interesting to visit the officer
prisoners-of-war camp between Alexandria and Cairo. I got on the
telephone and asked for permission, and as I was speaking something
prompted me to ask if by any chance there was a German flying captain by
name of Franz Walz in the camp. Yes, there was. This struck me as most
humorous, and also a unique opportunity of repaying some of Hauptmann
Walz's kindness to me when I had been a prisoner in his power. My visit
to the camp was extraordinarily interesting. The place was a high wire
enclosure on bare and very sandy soil. It was clean and well ordered,
and most of the wooden huts had been made to look quite pretty by small
gardens round them. For all that, it was not a place in which I should
have cared to have been a prisoner. Not that there seemed much to
complain about, except that it must have been pretty dull. The wooden
huts were well built and of the right type for the climate and the
country: the prisoners seemed to have a reasonable amount of liberty
outside the camp, with the possibilities of bathing from time to time,
and they could purchase books and clothes with few restrictions, but
discipline was a bit too strict for my liking. Quite right from the
point of view of the commandant, but I can't help looking at it from a
prisoner's point of view. When I asked Walz, he told me some of their
causes for complaint, but they seemed to me pretty insignificant,
compared at any rate with those things we had to complain about at
Ingolstadt; and I told him so. I was told that Walz had been rather
truculent when first captured, and I respected him for it. No decent man
takes kindly to being a prisoner-of-war. However, he was very friendly
to me, and gave me tea in his mess and introduced me to a number of
German officers, many of whom had been captured off the _Konigsberg_,
and three or four had been among my hosts in the German flying corps
mess at Afule. They seemed a particularly nice lot of fellows, though
there were one or two about the place to whom I was not introduced whose
looks I did not like, and the feeling was obviously reciprocated.
Walz was not unnaturally very depressed both at his own and his
country's position. The terms of the Armistice had just been published,
and the prisoners ridiculed the idea that Germany would accept them.
They only saw our newspapers and did not believe them--prisoners-of-war
are the same all the world over--and had no conception of Germany's
desperate condition. I did not attempt to enlighten them much, as it
seemed to me tactful and generous, remembering my own experiences to
keep off the subject as much as possible. Germany accepted the terms the
next day. Poor fellows! It must have come to them as a terrible shock. I
found that Walz had been told, when first captured, of my own
experiences as a prisoner in Germany, and just before I left, he took
me aside and said, "Can I possibly escape from a place like this? What
would you do here? and if you got out, where would you escape to?" I
said that it seemed a most difficult camp to get out of, and if a
prisoner got out there were thousands of miles to cross before reaching
a friendly country. As a matter of fact, as I told the commandant
afterwards, it looked to me as if any prisoner who could learn a few
words of English could bluff himself out of the camp any day in broad
daylight. A man in English officer's uniform had only to call to the
sentry to open one of the many gates and I think it would have been
opened. I may be wrong. There would have been no harm done and ample
time to retreat, change clothes, and prove an alibi if the bluff were
unsuccessful. The second difficulty--the distance, and where to go--was
much more serious. The Aboukir aerodrome was within a couple of miles of
the camp, and Walz's thoughts as an airman naturally turned in that
direction. I was compelled to prevaricate and tell him that the
aeroplanes there were all training machines and seldom had more than one
hour's petrol on board, and also that the place was well guarded. At
this discouraging news, I hope and believe he gave up all attempts to
escape. He told me that two German airmen, who had been captured by the
English shortly after my own capture, had reported that I had broken my
parole when escaping. On hearing this Walz had taken considerable
trouble in denying it, and I am most grateful to him for that, quite
apart from the other kind things already referred to in this book which
he did for me. I count Hauptmann Walz among the many nice fellows whom
I met in this war. For his sake, and for the sake of the many kind acts
done by Germans to our prisoners-of-war in Turkey, I can never agree to
class all Germans together as brutes. Surely it will be better for the
peace of the world if we admit that the majority of Germans in this war
only did their duty and did it well. This attitude need in no wise
lessen our dislike for the German national ideals of "Might is Right,"
"Deutschland ueber Alles," or our loathing for the inhuman and
unforgivable way in which these ideals were pushed to their logical
conclusion. If wars are to cease, future generations must find a "modus
vivendi" with the Germans; and surely, having beaten them, we can afford
to encourage their good points by recognition of them. The Turk,
however, still remains to me the "unspeakable Turk."
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Hyphen removed: look[-]out (pages 216, 245), country[-]side (pages
185,260).
Page 6: "hold" changed to "holding" (holding her off).
Page 9: "It" changed to "In" (In Cambrai station).
Page 12: "aslym" changed to "asylum" (lunatic asylum).
Page 25: "deja" changed to "deja" (Ils sont deja partis).
Page 25: "captin" changed to "captain" (the captain fell on his neck).
Page 30: "Unter Offizier" changed to "Unteroffizier" (sent by an
Unteroffizier).
Page 31: "whol es ghet" changed to "wohl, es geht" (ja wohl es geht
nicht so schlimm).
Pages 37, 216: "grade" changed to "gerade" (gerade aus).
Page 44: "on" changed to "of" (till one of them).
Page 45: "place" changed to "placed" (placed a loaded revolver).
Page 54: Missing word "asked" was added to "We just banged on the wall
and asked the people next door".
Page 54: "bady" changed to "badly" (badly wounded).
Page 64: "my" changed to "me" (which had been given me).
Page 64: "temoin" changed (twice) to "temoin" (je suis temoin).
Page 66: "Nisson" changed to "Nissen" (the shape and size of a Nissen
hut).
Page 82: "prisioniers" changed to "prisonniers" (combien de
prisonniers).
Page 86: "proceed" changed to "proceeded" (proceeded to read).
Page 108: "rucksacks" change to "ruecksacks" (home-made ruecksacks).
Page 111: "durfen" changed to "duerfen" (Sie duerfen nicht).
Page 111: "Marceillaise" changed to "Marseillaise".
Page 117: "senrty" changed to "sentry" (a single sentry).
Page 120: "equiment" changed to "equipment" (ruecksacks and other
equipment).
Page 133: "Medlicatt" changed to "Medlicott" (Medlicott had finished).
Page 145: "Batty-Smith" changed (twice) to "Batty Smith".
Page 145: Errors in French corrected in the sentence: "Nous n'avons ...
un officier".
Page 147: "brueau" changed to "bureau" (into the bureau).
Page 151: "or" changed to "of" (of anchovy paste).
Page 154: "skillful" changed to "skilfull" (most skilful labor).
Page 154: "Represailles" changed to "Represailles".
Page 157: "souflet" changed to "soufflet" (where a "soufflet").
Page 160: "Frenchmen" changed to "Frenchman" (Frenchman excellently got
up).
Page 164: "a" changed to "an" (He called an N.C.O.).
Page 175: "were" changed to "was" (the guard was being changed).
Page 183: "ought" changed to "out" (train was out of sight).
Pages 183-184: The last line in the scan of page 183 "caps, and got out
our compasses and a very poor sketch" was moved to between the 3rd and
4th lines of page 184.
Page 184: "rish" changed to "risk" (to risk so much).
Page 200: "yeards" changed to "yards" (within 100 yards of us).
Page 201: "rtouble" changed to "trouble" (did not trouble to search).
Page 202: "parellel" changed to "parallel" (a few miles parallel).
Page 210: The map on this page refers to Chapter II of Part II but has
not been moved so as not to change the list of Illustrations.
Page 212: "immeditely" changed to "immediately" (immediately if
chased).
Page 249: "Ismali" changed to "Ismail" (Ismail Kemal Bey).
Pages 255, 294, 297, 299 (footnote): "Afion-Karah-Hissar" changed to
"Afion-Kara-Hisar".
Page 256: "encompment" changed to "encampment" (Turkish encampment).
Page 269, 271: "Hedera" changed to "Hedera" (village of Hedera).
Page 269: "Haky" changed to "Hakki" (Ahmed Hakki Bey).
Page 269: "slighest" changed to "slightest" (in the for slightest
degree).
Page 275: "imprenetrable" changed to "impenetrable" (impenetrable
stupidity).
Page 276: "skillfully" changed to "skilfully" (fairly skilfully it
seemed to me).
Page 278: "anrgy" changed to "angry" (an angry crowd).
Page 283: "founded" changed to "wounded" (the wounded man)
Page 284: "sojurn" changed to "sojourn" (my sojourn in Turkey).
Page 295: Missing "an" added (an advanced state of dilapidation).
Pages 299, 300, 304, 306: Misspellings of "Smyrna" corrected.
Page 301: "langauge" changed to "language" (speak no language well).
Page 306: "demtermined" changed to "determined" (determined to seek).