NAZARETH--AND THE CHRISTIAN CHARITY OF A JEW
"The Englishman!" he repeated, gripping my arm harder than ever. Then,
after a puzzled pause: "Where have you been?"
"For a walk. I was upset by the air raid. My head has been very bad
since the smash, and sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. But I'm
better now, and I give my word of honour that I will stay quietly in
bed. Only say nothing to the Turks."
This Austrian had always seemed a good fellow; and now, on hearing the
word "_Ehrenwort_"--word of honour--he dropped his attitude of anxiety
and suspicion, and became his usual friendly self. A wounded Turk came
into the passage to see what was happening, but the orderly sent him
away. He withdrew with a look of surprise at my disordered appearance.
"Good," replied the Austrian. "I shall say nothing to the Turks. But
when the corporal comes I shall have to tell him, and he will tell the
_Herr Doktor_. But I shall ask the corporal not to mention it to the
others."
He led me back to the ward, and there noticed, for the first time, how
a rolled-up blanket underneath the discoloured quilt made my bed seem
as if it were occupied by a man.
"_Na, Na_," he said as he straightened the blanket. "This doesn't look
as if you only went for a walk. Well, I have your word of honour that
you will keep quiet, and the _Herr Doktor_ must decide what is to be
done."
Tired out, and so despairing as to care nothing of what might happen, I
fell asleep. In the heat of mid-morning I was awakened by the corporal,
who told me to come with him to the doctor's room. As I limped
painfully along the corridor I was still tired and but half awake, so
that while I remembered an unpleasant failure I could not define
exactly what had happened.
"_Herr Hauptmann_" said the corporal with a grin, "your injured leg was
not improved by the night walk"--and only then did I remember fully the
bitter happenings of a few hours earlier.
Charming and decorative as ever, the blue-uniformed, much-medalled
doctor rose from his chair, and shook hands with exaggerated ceremony.
The priest stood, silent and bowed coldly, as if to imply that my
misdeeds were exactly what one would expect from a friend of Másaryk.
"Night walks," said the doctor, "are bad for people with injured legs
and faces. As your medical adviser, I should advise you to remain in
bed for the future."
"I hope I shall be permitted to follow your advice, _Herr Doktor_."
"That being so, perhaps you will tell us exactly where you went, and
why you did it."
Well knowing that with so many indications of an attempted escape
anything but frankness would be futile, I admitted having tried to
return to the British Army.
"_So!_ And now, what do you expect?"
"If I may presume on your kindness, I ask that I may stay here until
sent away in the normal course of events. I hope you will let me remain
in hospital on the understanding that I give my word of honour to be
good so long as I am in Tul-Keran."
"That will be difficult. I myself have no objection, and the word of
honour is guarantee enough. But if the news of your escapade got beyond
the hospital I should have to make a full report."
The doctor learned from the corporal that, apart from the four of us
present, the one person who knew the story was the night orderly, who
could be trusted to keep quiet. After a low-voiced discussion with the
priest he gave instructions that nobody else must be told. He then
promised not to make a report, unless the news leaked out and his hand
were forced thereby. I thanked him and withdrew.
But the story did leak out. Either the orderly told it, or the Turkish
patient who had seen me in the passage, after my return, formed his own
conclusions and communicated them to other people. At any rate, several
Turks came into the ward and discussed (according to the Syrian's
whispered translations) my adventure of the early morning. One man even
went so far as to say that I had gone out and signalled to the British
aeroplanes.
The Syrian was greatly concerned about whether anybody knew he had been
privy to the attempt; but I was able to reassure him.
Evidently the story became so widely known that the hospital authorities
had to make their report. Late in the afternoon I was told to dress and
collect my belongings, as the Turks were taking me from the hospital.
Having obeyed, I was handed over to an escort of two Turkish soldiers
with drawn bayonets.
"Adieu," said the Syrian. "I shall pray for you, and for happier
times."
The doctor shook hands ceremoniously when I left; and the
priest--affable once more--gave me a heavy stick to help support my
thigh, saying that he hoped we should meet as friends after the war.
Bareheaded in the searing sun (for my friends had forgotten to include
a hat in my kit) I was led through a gaping crowd to the railroad
station.
There my guards joined forces with another Turk who had in his charge
the dirtiest Arab I have ever seen. His sole dress was a pair of
tattered trousers and a faded overcoat from the left side of which a
filthy arm protruded, naked. His headdress, a much-torn strip of dingy
rag, seemed to have lain for a long time in some stagnant pool. Clots
of dirt dotted his face, his feet, and the lower part of his legs,
which were bare. His moustache and straggling beard were powdered with
sand and gravel; and on looking closely at his middle, where the
trousers tops gave place to uncovered flesh, I saw two lice on the
inner surface of the rough cloth.
The Arab and I looked at each other curiously, after the manner of
fellow-prisoners seeing each other for the first time. Then an
interrogation, interrupted by our arrival, was continued. This
consisted of a Turkish officer shouting menaces at the Arab, who
replied, whenever he was given a chance, with cringing explanations and
pleading gestures.
Presently a German interpreter, who spoke Arabic well, joined the
group. He also threatened the Arab, and I saw him place thumb and
finger on his wind-pipe, as if to suggest strangling.
This badgering of the poor brute continued, until finally the Arab
opened his hands and said something in a resigned tone; whereat a
thrill of excitement passed through the gathering. The Turkish officer,
before leaving us, wrote several lines on some official papers carried
by the Arab's guard.
The Unteroffizier then turned his attention to me, and finding that I
could speak German, talked of many things, from Hindenburg's advance in
France to his own home in the former German colony at Jaffa.
"You have a pleasant companion," he said, nodding toward the Arab.
I asked who the pleasant companion might be and heard in reply a
strange tale. The Arab, it appeared, had been found wandering in the
rear of the Turkish trenches. The garment he wore was found to be a
relic of what was once an overcoat of Turkish military pattern; so that
he was arrested as a deserter, and possibly a spy. He told a rambling
tale of how he had been a soldier in an Egyptian battalion fighting for
the British, but, after being tortured by his officers, had escaped
across the lines.
Even the Turks could not be convinced that British officers tortured
their men; and the Arab having shown himself to be a liar, they were
more than ever convinced that he was also a spy.
The Turkish officer, in the conversation I overheard, had threatened to
hang him unless he confessed to being a spy. Finally the Arab (who, in
my opinion, was not a spy, whatever he might be), terror-stricken at
the threat that he could only save himself from hanging by a
"confession," let himself be badgered into a declaration--true or
false--that he was a spy. So they hanged him, as I learned afterward,
at Damascus.
For several hours we remained on the platform, where the Arab and I
were rival attractions for general curiosity. Then, late in the
evening, we were hustled into a truck, marked in German: "12 horses or
40 men." As a matter of fact, more than fifty Turkish soldiers must
have crowded into the truck before the train started.
Our party kept together in one of the corners, where we found just room
enough to sit down without being trampled upon. I placed the kit bag
between myself and the Arab, as a barrier against lice; although, for
that matter, most of the Turkish soldiers were verminous.
That night I performed the first of many nightmare journeys on Turkish
railways. Although each side of the truck was open for about three feet
the atmosphere was intensely stuffy, so that it was difficult to
breathe when seated on the floor. The crowd of Turks spat all over the
place, and exuded dozens of different smells. The train jolted
unevenly, with many a bump and halt, up the badly kept track. Sleep was
impossible; and by the time I was hauled on to the platform at Afuleh,
nine hours later, I was heavy-eyed and faint with wakefulness,
weakness, and disgust.
Afuleh is but a few miles from Nazareth (then the Turco-German General
Headquarters on the Palestine front); and to Nazareth we trudged. This
beautiful little town is on a high hill around which the road to it
winds upward at a steep angle. With its white buildings and its
pleasant setting Nazareth offers a magnificent view as one climbs the
hill. But really to enjoy it the conditions should be other than, when
weak and ill and scarcely able to walk by reason of a bad leg, one must
climb painfully up the steep slope under an oppressive sun and with a
retinue of half-savage guards.
The Arab and I were led through the old, winding streets to the Turkish
Platzkommandant's office. The Platzkommandant--a swollen balloon of a
man--asked a question, and the Arab's reply drew all eyes in my
direction. Having understood only a few words of the Arabic I wondered
how I could be concerned in the charge of spying.
The Platzkommandant glared at me, and after examining my papers, spoke
with somebody on the telephone. Then, although not a word had been
spoken to me, we were both led outside and through some narrow streets
to a stone building. Not until we were inside it did I hear, from a
police officer who spoke a little French, why I was there.
Having noticed that rather more consideration was given to me than to
him, and thinking he might obtain better treatment by hanging on to my
coat-tails, the Arab had elaborated his story by saying that I brought
him from the British Army in my aeroplane. Evidently the
Platzkommandant, without giving me the chance to deny this fantastic
tale, had telephoned to Turkish General Headquarters which had ordered
that the spy and I, as accomplices in crime, should be kept together.
And here we were, inside what I learned was the civil criminal jail.
I protested with vehemence and ridicule against belief in the Arab's
absurd statement. I pointed out that as my machine was a single-seater,
his story must be impossible. The police officer promised to forward
these protests to military headquarters; but as for him, his orders
were that the Arab and I were to remain together. In any case, he
added, I was probably being punished for having tried to escape.
Remain together we did, in a superlatively filthy cell. I would rather
live in an American jail than in most of the poorer dwellings of the
Turkish provinces, where donkeys and dogs and hens and men and women
and children herd together in mud huts. As for most Turkish jails, I
would rather live in an American pigsty.
Even after my experience on the train from Tul-Keran I was surprised by
the first sight of that cell. The walls were neither stone nor wooden,
but of hard earth, with holes and cracks all over the surface. The
various kinds of dirt that crusted the stone floor, which must have
been left uncleaned for years, had mingled and intermingled until they
became a thin layer of slime, which gave forth a dank odour. The room
was partly underground, although the small, iron-barred window, on a
level with the floor of the yard and two feet below the stone ceiling,
let in a certain amount of light. Through it crawled all sorts of
insects. Hundreds of vermin were to be seen moving in and out of the
fissures in the walls.
Unadulterated bravery, without any trace of suppressed or subconscious
fear, does not exist; wherefore, if a man who fought in the war tells
you that he never felt the least bit afraid, call him a liar of the
goriest. But my experience has convinced me that ordinary bravery--the
sort of bravery which is self-control in the face of danger--is one of
the most ordinary of qualities, possessed by most people of every race,
sex, and age. But endurance is another matter. To all but the
lion-hearted there comes the point at which the will to endure breaks
down under abnormal strain.
Being far from lion-hearted, this now happened to me. When the gendarme
banged and bolted the door I became morally dead, and past caring about
surroundings or events. Physical weakness, mental agony, a terrible
dizziness that resulted from having been bareheaded in the Palestine
sun, the succession of privations and revolting surroundings--all these
combined to break my spirit.
I grabbed the shrinking Arab, who evidently had not reckoned on being
left alone with me, and flung him across the cell. I then sat down in
the nearest corner, and, physically and mentally sick, remained inert
for many hours.
The next three days I remember as a semi-conscious nightmare. Yet a
dreadful nightmare is easier to bear than a dreadful reality, because
the horror of it is confined to subconsciousness, and does not touch
the surface brain. I sat through hours of inertia, without
comprehension, energy, or a sense of my surroundings; so that I cared
little for the dirt, the stench, and the general beastliness of the
cell, because I scarcely realized them.
Three times I tried to pass the door, so as to protest to the police
officer; but each time I was pushed back by the guard, who made
frequent use of the words that every prisoner in Turkey knew so
well--"_yok_" and "_yassak_" ("not," and "forbidden"). I gave up the
attempt, and relapsed into a state of moral lethargy.
The changes from night to day, from stuffy heat to damp cold, passed
unnoticed, and I cared not whether I lived or died. I felt no hunger
and very little thirst. This was fortunate, for hunger could not have
been satisfied.
Each morning the guards gave each of us a small loaf of bad bread in
which pieces of straw, string, and wood were plentiful. A carafe was
filled with bad water once a day. In the evening a basin of thin soup,
with mysterious chunks floating on the surface of it, was placed
between us. Without being influenced by its unsavouriness, I felt not
the least desire for the greasy liquid, the small loaf of bread being
quite enough food for the day in my then state of unreal detachment
from bodily needs and sensations.
As for the Arab, as soon as the basin was brought he squatted on his
haunches, dug his hands into the soup, and having grabbed some floating
morsel, stuffed it into his mouth. Afterward he lapped up the liquid
itself, after the manner of a dog.
On the morning of the third day we were led from the jail to be
interrogated at Turkish Headquarters. Although my ferocious headache
still remained, the change from the dimness and closeness of the cell
to the bright sunlight of the street revived me, and I sniffed the
fresh air in gulps.
I was passing through Nazareth, watched with evident sympathy by the
sad-faced crowd, when I saw an officer of the German Flying Corps. He
looked at my pilot's badge and stopped, whereupon I broke away from the
guards and approached him. In violent language I protested against the
outrageous treatment, and asked the German as a fellow-aviator and a
fellow-European, to see that the Turks moved me from the criminal jail.
The aviator happened to be a friend of Oberleutnant Wolff, who fired
the shot that brought me down near Shechem; and, having already heard
the details of my capture, he recognized at once the absurdity of the
Arab's story that I had brought him across the lines to spy for the
British. He himself was furious at my bad treatment, for apart from
their air combats the relations between German and British aviators in
Palestine were of the best. He promised to go straight to German Air
Headquarters and enlist its influence for me.
I left the German and was led by the guards to Turkish Headquarters.
For two hours we waited in a corridor; and then, before I had been
interviewed, there arrived my friend the German pilot with two staff
officers, a monocled major and a lieutenant. I shook hands--and was
offered apologies for the brutalities I had suffered. It would all be
right now, said the major, as the trio disappeared through the doorway
of an office.
They returned with a Turkish colonel, who likewise shook hands and
apologized. Finally, escorted by a different guard, I was sent away
without having been questioned. The last I saw of the Arab was as he
staggered and cringed under a box on the ear delivered by the colonel.
Once again I was led before the Turkish Platzkommandant. Evidently his
knuckles had been telephonically rapped as a result of my treatment,
for he scowled wickedly as he took my papers and ordered a room to be
prepared for me in the barracks.
At first this room seemed a paradise after the slimy cell; but after a
few days of utter loneliness its tiny dimensions--ten feet long by six
feet wide--seemed to be closing in to crush me. The furniture was a bed
with one greasy blanket and a rickety little table on which stood an
earthenware jar.
Next morning I was again taken to Turkish Headquarters for
interrogation. The Intelligence Officer who questioned me was very far
from intelligent in his methods. He began by saying outright that since
I had been moved to better quarters he expected me to show gratitude by
giving information. I replied that instead of showing gratitude, I
ought to receive compensation. He hinted that it was in his power to
move me back to the criminal jail.
"Do as you like," I replied. "But since it is obvious that you are
highly civilized, you will do nothing of the kind." Whereupon he smiled
fatuously, and proceeded to ask leading questions, speaking in French.
"Is the report true that General Allenby has left Palestine for
France?"
"I really don't know. Possibly. Possibly not."
"Have you seen General Allenby lately?"
"No. But I have a friend who once saw him driving along a road in
France. But that was two years ago."
"Are the British preparing an attack near the coast?"
"Possibly. Possibly not. I really don't know."
These illuminating replies were noted down, word for word, by the
Intelligence Officer. His desire for details about myself was
inexhaustible. I did my best to satisfy it by telling him that I was
aged eighteen; had been an aviator for five years and a soldier for
six; had come from England on a ship named the _Hogwash_; had been
flying the type of aeroplane known as the Jabberwock; had belonged to
No. 1 Training Squadron, the best fighting squadron in Palestine; and
thought the war would continue for fifteen and a half years longer.
Having presented the Turk with this medley of misinformation, and
watched him transfer it to his notebook, I grew tired of invention and
protested a lack of knowledge in reply to every question.
That chat and backchat with the wooden-headed Intelligence Officer was
my only conversation, except a few whispered words, with a fellow-human
for nearly a week. The Platzkommandant took his revenge for my
complaints in two ways--by feeding me very badly, and by inflicting
solitary confinement upon me.
Solitary confinement makes a man utterly wretched. Left all alone, and
with nothing to distract his mind, a prisoner can only think and think
and think--and all his thoughts are morbid.
I had six matches in my pocket and with these I invented all sorts of
games and puzzles. But after a few hours my brain, refusing to
concentrate on them, drifted back to the sea of bitter despair. At
night-time the great difficulty was to keep my mind, not from drifting,
but from _racing_.
After four days of solitary confinement I was fast losing all sense of
balance and normality. At times I regretted not being back in the
criminal jail with the repulsive Arab for company.
The few words I managed to exchange with the Christian woman who tidied
my room each morning were an unspeakable joy. This woman--ragged,
bootless, and gaunt--would whisper fierce questions in broken French as
she threw water on the dusty floor, or stabbed with a hairpin some of
the bed-bugs, while a guard watched through the open door to see that
we did not conspire.
"Why come not English? We hungry. Pigs of Turks!"
And I had to whisper back that the English would come and drive the
pigs of Turks out of Nazareth.
When she had taken her stooping back and her patchwork clothes out of
the room, I would probably not have the chance to speak with anybody,
even in a whisper, for the next twenty-four hours.
Apart from the furniture I had nothing to look at but a green hillside,
seen through the tiny window. For hours at a time I paced the few feet
across the room and back again, then sat on the bed and looked through
the little window at what little I could see of Nazareth.
Several times I noticed men, women, and boys walking in a huddled
group, with guards around them. Some had their hands shackled, some had
a chain linking one arm and one leg, others were chained by the arm to
the next person. They moved aimlessly over the hillside, presumably for
exercise, while Turkish soldiers pushed or beat any who struggled or
straggled.
On my sixth morning in the barracks I was visited by the
Platzkommandant's aide-de-camp, just after such a party had disappeared
from view. I asked if these shackled and browbeaten prisoners were
Christians.
"My dear sir," said the aide-de-camp, with all the blandness of the
educated Turk when telling a lie, "we never put chains on anybody, and
our Christian criminals are as well treated as Mohammedan criminals.
You must be mistaken in what you think you have seen."
After this conversation I never again saw these groups of civilian
captives at Nazareth; and I began to think that the strain of solitary
confinement had focussed my sick brain on sights that my eyes never
met. Possibly, however, the aide-de-camp had taken care that the
chained prisoners should be taken for exercise on the far side of the
hill.
Next day the same officer paid me another visit, as he was learning
French and wanted practice. When he was in my room I noticed from the
window a strange procession. A few banners were carried at the head of
it, then came some Turkish soldiers, and finally a mass of men and
women shambling along with bowed heads. Somewhere a band was blowing
out the horrible whining discord that the Turks call music. Nothing
more melancholy and unenthusiastic than the people's attitude could be
imagined.
"What's that?" I asked.
"Two days ago the Turks gained a great victory over the British in the
Jordan valley, between Es-Salt and Amman. The Governor has organized
this procession to celebrate it. The population is showing its joy."
I looked at the sad-faced rabble below, and remarked that they looked
more like mourners at a funeral than celebrators of joy. The
aide-de-camp had spoken, however, without the least suggestion of
irony.
Next day he left Nazareth for Tul-Keran. He paid me a farewell visit,
and, to my great joy, gave me "an English book," which he had bought in
the bazaar. The "English book" proved to be a copy of a magazine for
children, dated 1906. It was even more consciously educative in its
exposition of elementary principles, and more condescendingly inept in
its milk-and-water stories, than the general run of such publications.
Yet in my state of solitary confinement I revelled in every word. That
magazine for children gave me as much pleasure as have the finest books
in the world under normal conditions.
My mind stopped racing and wandering and retrospecting while I learned
all about wireless telegraphy, in twenty lines; how Joshua smote the
Canaanites hip and thigh (with an illustration of the walls of Jericho
falling rhythmically before the Israelite trumpeters); How to make
lemonade and seed cake; How not to make trouble among one's
schoolfellows; The birth and life of jelly-fish; and How to Set a Good
Example, being an instalment of the History of Little Peter, the Boy
who Feared God, Kept His Hands Clean, and Was Always Cheerful and
Respectful and Fond of Chopping Wood for His Mother.
The magazine also showed how to make hats, sailing-boats, houses, and
whatnots out of a plain sheet of paper--all of which I practised
assiduously through a night of bug-biting sleeplessness.
Best and worst of all was the five-page summary, in schoolmistress
English, of "The Newcomes." This had nothing in it but colourless
statement of incident; and the sentiment of the book was churned into a
welter of flabbiness. As a final insult "_adsum_" was misspelt
"_adsem_" in the subjoined monstrosity with which the unliterary
procureur completed his (or more probably her) prostitution of
Thackeray's almost-masterpiece:
When the roll call of the pensioners was made the dying Colonel,
hearing his name, lifted his poor old head and said: "_adsem_" Then
he fell back dead. "_Adsem_" is a Latin word signifying that a
person is present.
Yet the protest and anger inspired by this outrage were useful in
taking my mind from its lonely bitterness; and I read the child's
magazine version of "The Newcomes" many times over, until its power to
irritate was expended.
After a few more days my confinement became less solitary. The German
major whom I had already seen visited me, with the Turkish
Platzkommandant, and asked if I had any more complaints to make. I
looked at the Platzkommandant, and said that the food was not only bad,
but scarcely sufficient to keep a man alive. The fat Turk scowled his
wickedest, but made no comment. The German major expressed regret, and
promised that meals should be sent from the General Staff's mess.
Evidently the German Staff in Palestine made a careful study of its own
comfort. For the rest of my stay in Nazareth I fed better than I could
have done, under war-time conditions, in any London hotel. Meat, fish,
vegetables, every kind of fruit, butter, sugar, pastries, good coffee
and wine, all were sent in profusion--to the great disgust of the
Turkish officers, who were fed rather worse than the German privates.
This diet was a very welcome change from bad bread and water varied by
thin soup. Sickness made me far from hungry, however, so that I found
it impossible to eat many of the meals. The corporal of the guard, the
sentry outside my door, and several of their friends would hang around
in the corridor until the tray was taken from my room, then stuff their
hands in the dishes and snatch at pieces of meat or vegetable.
For me the food from the German mess was chiefly welcome in that it
brought me a good friend--the dragoman who came with it. He was a Jew,
originally from Salonika, with a long, tongue-twisting name impossible
to remember, so that I called him Jean Willi, French being our
conversational medium. He was well-to-do, had been an official of the
Ottoman Bank in Constantinople, and spoke seven languages. For the
first two years of war he kept out of the army by means of _baksheesh_.
Finally he was taken for service because he offended an influential
officer; but his knowledge of languages, together with bribes placed in
the right quarters, procured for him the safe appointment of a dragoman
to the German Headquarters at Nazareth.
Three times a day--with breakfast, lunch, and dinner--Jean Willi
visited me. He tried to come oftener, but the Turks would not admit
him.
Everything I wanted he would move heaven and earth to get. He
"obtained" a German soldier's cap for me, on discovering that I had no
hat. He persuaded the German barber to bring the lunch one day, so that
he might cut my hair. A comb, a tooth-brush, soap, books, and a dozen
other things were brought by Jean Willi; and, having learned that my
ready cash amounted to three and a half dollars, he pretended that the
articles were sent by the German officers. Afterward I discovered this
to have been a benevolent untruth.
The wayside fallings of a roving life have brought me several Very Good
Samaritans, but none other who did as much for me, under great
difficulties, as Jean Willi. Before meeting him I was altogether broken
in spirit; and with hopelessness filling my mind I had actually begun
to fear for my reason. He understood all this and, to the limit of his
powers, did his best to remedy it, well knowing that such action would
bring him the enmity and suspicions of Turkish officers. His friendly
conversation and his invariable kindness were splendid tonics, taken
three times a day, at each visit.
When he was away my mind was prevented from slipping back into the
stagnation of despair by the books he smuggled into my room. The first
of these was a German war novel--"_Der Eiserne Mann_"--procured from a
Boche soldier. It purported to show how loyal were the Alsatians to the
German Fatherland. It was untrue, stupidly sentimental, and often
farcical; but, after all, so were most of the war novels published in
England at that time.
Then, in some dark recess of the house where he was billeted, he found
a copy of "_Les liaisons dangereuses_"--an altogether extraordinary
book to be salvaged from a little house in Nazareth. This was my first
introduction to Barbéry d'Auréville; and joy and interest in his
magnificent characterization completed the rescue of my mind from the
slough of despondency.
It was Jean Willi who first gave me an outline of Turkey's spiritual
history during the war. The sudden savage onslaught of the Turks
against their Christian subjects; the horrible character of the
Armenian massacres; the murder of prominent Syrians, the deportation of
Ottoman Greeks; the gradual starvation of the rotten old empire,
whereby scores of thousands died of hunger, while the Germans were
sending trainload after trainload of foodstuffs from the country; the
ruthless execution of all who stood in the way of Enver and Talaat; the
amazing bribery and speculation; the hundreds of thousands of
deserters, and the scores of thousands of brigands--all this was
described in such vivid detail by Jean Willi that I scarcely believed
he could be relating fact.
Two-thirds of the population, he said, were pro-Entente--not only the
Christians and Arabs, but the very Turks themselves--although none
dared oppose the violence of the Young Turk party. As for himself,
although he had never been to England, this Jew without a country
claimed to have a frantic love of the English which he could not
explain, like the love of a man for a mistress whom he very greatly
respects--his own words.
One day there arrived four Australian aviators who had been captured in
the Jordan Valley. R., the pilot of a Bristol Fighter, had landed
behind the Turkish lines after his petrol tank was hit. H. had tried
very pluckily to pick him up. H. made a splendid landing and--with R.
and R.'s observer seated on the lower planes, one on each side of the
pilot's cockpit, attempted to take his two-seater into the air with a
load of four men. He might well have succeeded if R. had not jerked his
body backward, to avoid a hot blast from the exhaust outlet; with the
result that the equilibrium was upset, and the craft swung round and
hit a pile of stones. The four officers burned their machines before
they were captured.
The Australians and I were taken for interrogation to German
Headquarters. We had agreed that our best plan would be to claim
complete ignorance of everything, and the invariable answer of C., the
first to enter the private office of the intelligence officer--one
Leutnant Santel--was "I don't know." When H., the second on the list,
adopted the same tactics, Santel tried bluff.
"_So!_" he said, softly, as if speaking to himself. "How happy am I
that it is I and not another who makes the interrogation. Most people
would order bad treatment for prisoners who refuse a correct reply.
Even I may have to do this. If the Pasha says to me: 'What have you
learned from these prisoners?' and I reply: 'They say they know
nothing,' he will be very angry and order severe measures."
"_Uh-huh_"--from H.
"Ah, sorry, I forgot you, my friend," said Santel with a start....
"Your aeroplanes are useful in communicating with the Bedouins east of
the Jordan, are they not?"
"I don't know."
"But I do know."
"Why ask me then?"--the reply obvious.
"You don't know! You don't know! _So!_ Please leave the room."
H. returned to us; and none of the remaining was questioned that day.
Leutnant Santel adopted a more subtle method next morning. With
Oberleutnant von Heimburg ("brother of the famous submarine commander,"
as Santel introduced him), staff officer of the German Flying Corps at
Palestine Headquarters, he came to the barracks and invited C., R., and
me to Haifa for the day, on condition that we gave parole until the
return.
We accepted and agreed, but while getting ready I remembered how,
before my capture, it had been my duty to extract information from a
German pilot while entertaining him; and I warned the others not to be
drawn into friendly talk about aeroplanes and operations.
It was as we expected. While we were driving to Afuleh aerodrome for
lunch in the Flying Corps mess, Von Heimburg and Santel refrained from
mention of the war, but at table they performed the usual trick of
showing photographs of British aerodromes and pilots, in the vain hope
that on recognizing them we would say something useful.
Next we travelled along a narrow-gauge line to Haifa in a swaying
truck, the motive power of which was a tractor propellor, driven by a
160 H.P. Mercedes aero-engine. Once again, over tea at the Mount Carmel
Hotel in Haifa, the Germans led the talk to Palestine operations and
aeroplanes; and once again we led it back to shoes and ships and
sealing-wax and cabbages and kings.
When Santel betrayed a desire for knowledge of the habits and exploits
of Colonel Lawrence (who was performing such magnificent work as
political officer with the Arab army of the King of the Hedjaz) H. said
he had never heard of him, but that in Australia he knew a fellow named
Lawrence, who--who----
Santel interrupted and did not try to conceal his annoyance. Then he
began talking about Miss Gertrude Bell, an Englishwoman who had done
brilliant political work among the Mesopotamian Arabs. This time we
were able to say with truth that we knew nothing of the matter;
although Santel continued to discuss and libel the lady, whom the
Germans were going to shoot, he said.
Von Heimburg then praised the British Air Service, with many a pause
that invited comment from us. The pauses remained empty, and we managed
to exclude the war by pretending to compare painstakingly and
assiduously the respective merits of English and Australian girls.
After tea, while bathing in the Mediterranean with the Germans, we saw
a strange sight along the sea-front. A line of not less than thirty
fishing-craft were left stranded on the beach, with great holes knocked
in their sides, so that they might not be floated. This drastic
prevention of the use of small vessels, according to Santel, was
because many Greek and Syrian fishermen had spied for the British or
deserted to Cyprus.
"The same thing has happened over there," he added, pointing across the
bay toward Acre, "and at other places, too--Tyre, Sidon, Beyrout, and
every port on the coast-line of Asia Minor."
We noticed, however, that three boats were out at sea, presumably
fishing for the tables of officers and officials.
"If we could get back here some night," whispered C. as we dressed, "we
might collar one of those three boats, tow it out to sea by swimming,
and sail to Jaffa." This revived my hopes of escape for the first time
since the fiasco at Tul-Keran.
"Thank you a thousand times," I said when Von Heimburg and Santel left
us at Nazareth. "It has been a most enjoyable day."
They agreed, without showing enthusiasm.
"But not a very successful one for you, I'm afraid," I added.
They were quiet for a minute, and then both laughed.
"_So!_ You were prepared," said Santel. "Well, I shan't try again."
Neither Santel nor anybody else tried again to interrogate us at
Nazareth; and two days later we were told to prepare for a journey to
Damascus.
C. had been discussing the chances of escaping by boat; and when Jean
Willi paid me a farewell visit I asked him if a journey from Damascus
to the coast would be difficult.
"Very difficult indeed under the conditions of which you are thinking."
Then, after a pause, "But I will tell you something interesting, since
you will probably be kept in Damascus for about a fortnight. The
Armenians run secret caravans from Damascus to Akaba."
"Thank you. That's very interesting, indeed." And it was; for Akaba, at
the northeastern extremity of the Red Sea, was the base of the Arab
army cooperating with the British.
Jean Willi would not listen to thanks, when he said good-bye. I gave
him my London address, in the sincere hope of being able to pay back in
part the good deeds I owed him.
I left Nazareth under much better conditions than I entered it.
Accompanied by an Arab pseudo-spy, I had arrived half crazed by
weakness, pain, and disaster, with a damaged leg and a swollen face,
and possessing neither hope nor a hat. I was leaving it in the company
of fellow-officers, with my mind and leg and face normal again, and
having not only a German hat but renewed hopes of escape, summed up in
Jean Willi's hint:
"The Armenians run secret caravans from Damascus to Akaba."