"OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION. . . ."
We had left a sad party of prisoners behind us, alas! but we had done
what little we could for them. Confined as we had been, their sufferings
had only added to our own. The best hope for them lay in the German
Consul. He could do more, if he wished, than we could have achieved for
all our wishes. Nothing could have been more hopeless than our position
at Mosul. But now at least there was the open road before us, and hope,
and health.
The desert air is magnificent. The untamed winds seemed to blow through
every fibre of one's being, and clear away the cobwebs of captivity. The
swinging sun, the great spaces of sand, the continuous exercise, and the
lean diet of dates and bread, produce a feeling of perfect health.
Indeed, after a day or two I began to feel much too well to be a
prisoner. Under the desert stars one thought of the lights of London.
Perversely, instead of being grateful for the unfettered grandeur of
one's surroundings, one thought regretfully of the crowded hours one
spends among civilised peoples. And, oh, how tired I was of seeing
nothing but men! One of the worst features of captivity is that it is
generally a story without a heroine.
After the second day of travel I was really seriously in need of a
heroine, for my friend had developed high fever. If only there had been
a ministering angel among our party! I did my best, but am not a nurse
by nature. My friend grew so weak that he could not stand; and I began
to doubt whether he would get to our journey's end.
But although no heroine came to our help, a hero did. As he happens to
be a Turk, I will describe him shortly. Let us call him the Boy Scout,
for he did (not one, but many) good actions every day. Out of his valise
he produced a phial of brandy, tea, sugar, raisins, and some invaluable
medicines. All these he pressed us to accept. He even tried to make me
believe that he could spare a box of Bir-inji (first-class) cigarettes,
until I discovered he had no more for himself. At every halting place he
went to search for milk for my friend. Until we had been provided for,
he never attended to his own comforts. After eighty miles of travelling
everyone is tired, but although the Boy Scout must have been as tired as
any of us, for he rode instead of driving, and although he had no
official position with regard to us, no brother officer could have been
more helpful or more truly kind. From the moment of our meeting we had
been attracted by each other. At times, a look or an inflection of voice
will proclaim a kindred spirit in a perfect stranger. Something happens
above our consciousness; soul speaks to soul perhaps. So it was with the
Boy Scout. He was unknown to me when I first saw him, dark-eyed and
graceful, riding a white horse like a prince in a fairy book, and we
spoke no common language, but somehow we understood each other.
He was a high official, I afterwards heard, travelling incognito, and
had been engaged on Intelligence work for his country in Afghanistan.
But, although an enemy in theory, he was a friend in fact. The war was
far. Here in the desert we met as brothers. A finer figure of a man I
have rarely seen, nor a truer gentleman. He was an ardent Young Turk,
and if other Young Turks were cast in such a mould, there would be a
place in the world for the race of Othman. But I have never seen another
like him.
His manners were perfect, and although we discussed every subject under
the sun in snatches of French and broken bits of Persian, we always
managed to avoid awkward topics such as atrocities, reprisals, and the
like. He guessed, I think, that I often thought of escape, and said one
day:
"I shall fully understand if you try to get away, but you will forgive
me, won't you, if I use my revolver?"
I assured him I would.
"Good!" he laughed, "because I am a dead shot!"
One day we must meet again, and pick up the threads of talk.
At Ress-el-Ain we separated for a time, and my friend was carried into
the train, where he lay down and took no further interest in the
proceedings. I also lay down, exhausted by anxiety. I was glad to be
quit of the desert. Under other conditions it might have been charming,
but its glamour is invisible to a captive's eyes.
The train journey was not very interesting, except for the fact that our
guard commander (excited perhaps by the approach to civilisation, or
else because he was free from the restraining influence of our teetotal
Boy Scout) purchased a bottle of _'araq_ and imbibed it steadily on the
journey between Ress-el-Ain and Djerablisse.
_'Araq_, the reader must know, is otherwise known as _mastic_ or
_douzico_, and is a colourless alcohol distilled from raisins and
flavoured with aniseed, which clouds on admixture with water, and tastes
like cough-mixture. It is an intoxicant without the saving grace of more
generous vintages. It inebriates but does not cheer.
At Djerablisse, on the Euphrates, our guard commander supplemented the
fiery _'araq_ with some equally potent German ration rum. By the time we
got to Aleppo next day, he was reeking of this blend of alcohols. Not
all the perfumes of Arabia could have stifled its fumes, nor all the
waters of Damascus have quenched his thirst. He was besotted.
Escape would have been possible then. We had become separated from the
rest of our party and were in charge of one old, sleepy, and rather
friendly soldier. There seemed to be some doubt in his mind as to where
we should pass the night, but we eventually arrived at a small and clean
Turkish hotel, where we were told, rather mysteriously, that we should
be among friends.
I looked for friends, but as everyone was asleep, it being then two
o'clock in the morning, I decided to have a good night's rest before
making any plans. Our dainty bedroom was too tempting to be ignored. The
curtains were of Aleppo-work, in broad stripes of black and gold. The
rafters were striped in black and white. The walls were dead white, the
furniture dead black. Three pillows adorned our beds, of black, and of
crimson, and of brilliant blue, each with a white slip covering half
their length. The bed-covers were black, worked with gold dragons. It
was like a room one imagines in dreams, or sees at the Russian Ballet.
After a blissful night, between sheets, and on a spring mattress, tea
was brought to us in bed, and immediately afterwards, as no guards
seemed to be about, I rose, greatly refreshed, and dressed in haste. My
idea was to order a carriage to drive us to the sea-coast at Mersina,
from which place I felt sure it would be possible to charter a boat to
Cyprus.
But these hasty plans were dispelled by finding the Boy Scout waiting
for me in the passage.
"Your guard commander was ill," he explained, "so I arranged that you
should be brought to this hotel, where you are my guests. And I want you
to lunch with me at one o'clock."
My face fell, but of course there was no help for it. And the Boy
Scout's hospitality was princely indeed.
After delicious hors-d'oeuvres (the _meze_--as it is called in
Turkey--is a national dish) and soup, and savoury meats, we refreshed
our palates with bowls of curds and rice. Then we attacked the sweets,
which were melting morsels of honey and the lightest pastry. After
drinking the health of the invalid (who could not join us of course) in
Cyprian wine, we adjourned to the Boy Scout's room for coffee and
cigarettes. Here I found all his belongings spread out, including
several tins of English bully-beef and slabs of chocolate, which he said
was his share of the loot taken after our retirement at the Dardanelles.
He begged us to help ourselves to everything we wanted in the way of
food or clothing; and he was ready, literally, to give us his last
shirt. After having fitted us out, he telephoned to the hospital about
the patient, and made arrangements that he should be received that
afternoon.
Some hours later, accordingly, I drove to the hospital with my friend,
accompanied by two policemen who had arrived from district headquarters,
no doubt at the Boy Scout's request.
We were met at the entrance of the hospital by two odd little doctors.
"What is the matter with him?" squeaked Humpty in French.
"Fever," said I.
"Fever, indeed!" answered Dumpty, "let's look at his chest."
"And at his back," added Humpty suspiciously.
My friend disrobed, shivering in the sharp air, and these two strange
physicians glared at him, standing two yards away, while the Turkish
soldier and I supported the patient.
"He hasn't got it," they said suddenly in chorus.
"Hasn't what?"
"Typhus, of course. Carry him in. He will be well in a week."
I doubted it, but the situation did not admit of argument. We carried
him in, through a crowd of miserable men in every stage of disease, all
clamouring for admittance. No one, I gathered, was allowed into that
hospital merely for the dull business of dying. They could do that as
well outside. Thankful for small mercies, therefore, I left my friend in
the clutches of Humpty and Dumpty, and even as they had predicted, he
was well within a week.
There is something rather marvellous about a Turkish doctor's diagnosis.
Such trifles as the state of your temperature or tongue are not
considered. They trust in the Lord and give you an emetic. Although
unpleasant, their methods are often efficacious.
It was now my turn to fall ill, and I did it with startling suddenness
and completeness. I was sitting at the window of the house in which we
were confined in Aleppo, feeling perfectly well, when I began to shiver
violently. In half an hour I was in a high fever. That night I was taken
to Humpty and Dumpty. Next morning I was unconscious.
I will draw a veil over the next month of my life. Only two little
incidents are worth recording.
The first occurred about a week after my admittance to hospital, when my
disease, whatever it was, had reached its crisis. A diet of emetics is
tedious, so also is the companionship of people suffering from _delirium
tremens_ when one wants to be quiet. An end, I felt, must be made of the
present situation. Creeping painfully out of my bed, I went down the
passage, holding against the wall for support. It was a dark, uneven
passage, with two patches of moonlight from two windows at the far end.
Near one of these pools of light I caught my foot in a stone, and
slipped and fell. I was too weak to get up again. I cooled my head on
the stones and wondered what would happen next. Then I began to think of
seas and rivers. All the delightful things I had ever done in water kept
flitting through my mind. I remembered crouching in the bow of my
father's cat-boat as we beat up a reach to Salem (Massachusetts) with
the spray in our faces. And I thought of the sparkling sapphire of the
Mediterranean and the cool translucencies of Cuckoo-weir. . . . No one
came to disturb my meditations. The moonlight shifted right across my
body, and slowly, slowly, I felt the wells of consciousness were filling
up again. I was, quite definitely, coming back to life. It was as if I
had really been once more in America and Italy and by the Thames, living
again in all memories connected with open waters, and as if their solace
had somehow touched me. Their coolness had cured me, and I was now
flying back through imperceptible ether to Aleppo. I was coming back to
that passage in a Turkish hospital. . . .
Did I draw, I wonder, upon some banked reserve of vitality, or were my
impressions a common phase of illness? Anyway, when I came to, I was a
different man. The waters of the world had cured me.
Later, during the journey to Afion-kara-hissar, I had a relapse. This
second incident of my illness was a spiritual experience. Having been
carried by my friend to the railway station, I collapsed on the
platform, while he was momentarily called away. So dazed and helpless
was I that I lay inconspicuously on some sacks, a bundle of skin and
bone that might not have been human at all. Some porters threw more
sacks on the pile and I was soon almost covered. But I lay quite still:
I was too tired to move or to cry out. As bodily weakness increased, so
there came to me a sense of mental power, over and beyond my own poor
endowments. I thrilled to this strange strength, which seemed to mount
to the very throne of Time, where past and future are one. Call it a
whimsy of delirium if you will, nevertheless, one of the scenes I saw in
the cinema of clairvoyance was a scene that actually happened some three
months later, at that same station where I lay. . . . I saw some hundred
men, prisoners from Kut and mostly Indians, gathered on the platform.
One of these men was sitting on this very heap of sacks; he was sitting
there rocking himself to and fro in great agony, for one of the guards
had struck him with a thick stick and broken his arm. But not only was
his arm broken, the spirit within him (which I also saw) was shattered
beyond repair. No hope in life remained: he had done that which is most
terrible to a Hindu, for he had eaten the flesh of cows and broken the
ordinances of caste. His companions had died in the desert without the
lustral sacrifice of water or of fire, and he would soon die also, a
body defiled, to be cast into outer darkness. For a time the terror and
the tragedy of that alien brain was mine; I shared its doom and lived
its death. Later I learnt that a party of men, coming out of the great
tribulation of the desert, had halted at this station, and a Hindu
soldier with a broken arm had died on those sacks. I record the incident
for what it is worth.
Without my friend I should never have achieved this journey. My
gratitude is a private matter, though I state it here, with some mention
of my own dull illness, in order to picture in a small way the
sufferings of our men from Kut. When some were sick and others hale, the
death-rate was not so high, but with many parties, such as those whose
ghosts I believe I saw, there was no possibility of helping each other.
So starved and so utterly weary were they, that they had no energy
beyond their own existence. Many men must have died with no faith left
in man or God.
* * * * *
On arrival at Afion-kara-hissar, we were shown into a bare house. For a
day I rested blissfully on the floor, asking for nothing better than to
be allowed to lie still for ever and ever. But this was not to be. On
the second day of our stay we noticed signs of great excitement among
our guards. They nailed barbed wire round our windows, and they watched
us anxiously through skylights, and counted us continually, as if
uncertain whether two and two made four.
Presently the meaning of their precautions was divulged. Some English
prisoners had escaped, and our captors were engaged in locking the
stable door after the steeds had gone. All the prisoners in
Afion-kara-hissar were marshalled in the street, and marched off to the
Armenian church, situated at the base of the big rock that dominates the
town. Hither we also marched, with our new companions, singing the
prisoners' anthem:
"We _won't_ be bothered about
Wherever we go, we always shout
We won't be bothered about. . . .
We're bothered if we'll be bothered about!"
greatly to the astonishment of the townsfolk, who connected the Armenian
church with massacres rather than melody. The leader of our band was a
wounded officer, in pyjamas and a bowler hat (this being the sum of his
possessions) who waved his crutch as a conductor's baton. (Alas! his
cheery voice is stilled, for he died in hospital a year later. R.I.P.) I
can still see him hobbling along--a tall figure in pink pyjamas, with
one leg swinging (bandaged to the size of a bolster) and his hat askew,
and his long chin stuck out defiantly--hymn-writer and hero
_manque_--fit leader of lost causes and of our fantastic pageant to that
church.
It was a gay and motley crew of prisoners of all nationalities and
conditions of life who entered its solemn and rather stuffy precincts.
We were all delighted to be "str[-a]fed" in a worthy cause. Three good men
had escaped, and more might follow later.
To anyone in decent health the month we spent in the Armenian church
must have been an interesting experience. Even to me, it was not without
amusement. Imagine a plain, rather gloomy, church, built of oak and
sandstone, with a marble chancel in the east. Two rooms opened out on
either side of the altar, and there was a high gallery in the west. In
the body of the building the English camped. One of the small rooms was
taken by the French, the other we reserved for a chapel. The Russians
chiefly inhabited the space between the chancel and the altar, but the
overflow of nationalities mingled. Our soldier servants were put in the
gallery. When everyone was fitted in, there was no space to move, except
in the centre aisle. There was no place for exercise nor any
arrangements for washing or cooking. During our stay in the church two
men died of typhus, and it is extraordinary that the infection did not
spread, considering the lack of sanitation. During the first night of
the strafe, the Russians, accustomed to pogroms in their own country,
thought there was a likelihood of being massacred, and kept watch
through the small hours of the morning by clumping up and down the aisle
in their heavy boots. All night long--for I was sleepless too--I watched
these grave, bearded pessimists waiting for a death which did not come,
while the French and English slept the sleep of optimists. At last dawn
arrived, and lit the windows over the altar, and a few moments later the
sunlight crept into the northern transept. Then the Russians gave up
their vigil, dropped in their tracks, and at once began snoring in the
aisle, like great watch-dogs.
The noise the two hundred of us made in sleeping was remarkable.
Probably our nerves were rather queer. The church was never silent
through the night. Some cried out continually in their slumbers, others
went through a pantomime of eating. Some moaned, others chuckled. One
sleeper gave a hideous laugh at intervals. One could hear it deep down
in his throat, and mark it gradually bubbling to his lips until he grew
vocal like some horrible hyena. But it is small wonder that the
prisoners in the church were restless. The marvel is that they slept at
all. Nearly all of us had lived through trying moments, and had felt the
hand of Providence, whose power makes one tremble. We knew the shivers
of retrospection. One officer, for instance, wounded in an attack on
Gallipoli, had been dragged as a supposed corpse to the Turkish trenches
and there built into the parapet. But he was none the worse now for his
amazing experiences, except that he suffered slightly from deafness, as
his neck had formed the base of a loophole. Then there was a man, left
as dead after an attack, who recovered consciousness but not the use of
his limbs, and lay helpless in the path of the Turkish retreat. For an
hour the passers-by prodded him with bayonets, so that he now has
twenty-seven wounds and a large gap in his body where there should be
solid flesh. From the very brink of the valley of the shadow this boy of
nineteen had returned to life. Again, there was a young Frenchman, who
lay four days and nights between the lines, dying of the twin tortures
of thirst and a stomach wound; but by a miracle he survived, and now at
night, sometimes, when will lost its grip on consciousness, he would
live those ninety-six hours again. Then there were the submarine crews,
out of the jaws of the worst death conceivable. One crew had lived for a
whole day struggling in a net at the bottom of the Dardanelles while the
air became foul and hope waned, and the submarine "sweated," and depth
charges exploded so close to them that on one occasion the shock knocked
a teapot off a table! Hemmed in and helpless, the clammy agony of that
suspense might well haunt their sleeping hours.
But on the whole our psychology was normal. Only, at nights, if one lay
awake, did one realise the stress and stark horror through which the
sleepers had lived. Out of four hundred officers "missing" at the
Dardanelles, only some forty were surviving at Afion-kara-hissar. This
fact speaks for itself.
By day we wandered about, so far as the congestion permitted, making
friends and exchanging experiences. To us, lately from Mesopotamia, the
then unknown story of Gallipoli stirred our blood as it will stir the
blood of later men.
I ate and drank the anecdotes of Gallipoli as they were told me. I loved
the hearing of them, in the various dialects of the protagonists, from a
lordly lisp to a backwood burr. The brogue, the northern drawl, the
London twang, the elided g's or the uncertain h's, had each their
several and distinct fascination. There is joy in hearing one's own
tongue again after a time of strange speech and foreign faces.
"Beyond our reason's sway,
Clay of the pit whence we were wrought
Yearns to its fellow-clay."
The many voices of the many British were better than sweet music.
But we had plenty of sweet music as well. The sailors amongst us were
the cheeriest crew imaginable.
A resume of our life at that time would be that we sang often about
nothing in particular, swore continually at life in general, smoked
heavily, gambled mildly, and drank _'araq_ when we could get it, and tea
when we couldn't. Not everyone, I hasten to add, did all these things.
As in everyday life, there were some who said that the constant
cigarette was evil, and that cards were a curse, and drink the devil.
But, again, as in everyday life, their example had no effect on cheerful
sinners.
"Here's to the bold and gallant three
Who broke their bonds and sought the sea"
sang one of the poets of our captivity, and all of us French, Russians,
and English, took up the chorus with a roar. The Turkish sentries
protested vainly, and some, ostentatiously loading their rifles, went up
to the Western gallery which overlooked the body of the church. As we
were being treated like Armenians, they could not understand why we did
not behave like Armenians and herd silently together, as sheep before a
storm. Instead, two hundred lusty voices proclaimed to anyone who cared
to listen that we were not downhearted.
See us then at midnight, seated at a table under the high altar. About
fifty of us are celebrating somebody's birthday, and a demi-john of
_'araq_ graces the festive board. We have sung every song we know, and
many we don't.
"Jolly good song and jolly well sung,
Jolly good fellows every one. . . .
Wow! Wow!"
The chorus dies down, and the Master of the Ceremonies, still in pyjamas
and bowler hat, rises on his sound leg and standing (swaying slightly)
at the head of the table, raps on it with his crutch for silence.
One officer wears a soup-bowl for a Hun helmet. Others are dressed as
parodies of Turks, and have been acting in a farce entitled "The
Escape." Two Irish friends of mine are singing "The Wearing of the
Green," while others are patriotically drowning their voices. A
submarine skipper, with a mane of yellow hair over his face, like a lion
in a picture-book, watches a diplomat dancing a horn-pipe. A little bald
flying man of gigantic strength and brain, is wrestling with a bearded
Hercules. Some sailors are singing an old sea-chanty.
The rough deal table, littered with pipes and glasses, the tallow-dips
lighting the vaulted gloom, the bearded roysterers singing songs older
than Elizabeth's time, the simple fare of bread and meat, the simpler
jokes and horseplay, took one back through centuries to other men who
made the best of war. In Falstaff's time such scenes as these must have
passed in the taverns of Merrie England. Only here, there were no
wenches to serve us with sack. We had to mix our own _'araq_.
"Silence, if you please," says he of the long jowl, using his crutch as
a chairman's hammer. "Silence for the prisoners' band."
The band begins. It consists of penny whistles, banjos, castanets,
soup-bowls, knives and forks, and anything else within reach. The
_motif_ of the piece is our release. _Andante con coraggio_ we pass the
weary months ahead. Then the dawn of our liberation breaks. We smash
everything we possess, while the train to take us away steams into the
station.
Sh! Shh! Shhh! Chk! Chk! Chk! Bang! Swish!! We take our seats amid a
perfect pandemonium. Then the train whistles--louder and louder--and we
move off--faster and faster and faster and _faster_, until no one can
make any more noise, and the dust of our stamping has risen like incense
to the roof, in a grand finale of freedom.
Strange doings in a church, you say? But what would you? We had nowhere
else to go. There is a time for everything after all, and it is a poor
heart that never rejoices. I feel sure Solomon himself would have sung
with us, and proved most excellent company.
On Sunday mornings Divine Service was always well attended. Perhaps by
contrast with my usual methods of passing the time, those Sabbath hours
are set as so many jewels in the tarnished shield of idleness. The
fadeless beauty of our Common Prayer brought hope and consolation to all
of us who were gathered together. We repeated the grand old words; we
sang "Fight the Good Fight" and "Onward, Christian Soldiers." We shared
then, however humbly, in the tears and triumph of our cause. We were not
of that white company that was to die for England, but we could share
the sorrow of the women who mourned, and of the old who stood so sadly
outside the fray.
And as through a magic door, I passed from that barren room to a country
church where the litany for all prisoners and captives went up to
Heaven, mingled with the fragrance of English roses.