OF HILL’S TERRIBLE MONTH IN GUMUSH SUYU HOSPITAL
Hill and I braced ourselves for the six weeks of acting that lay between
us and July. We were under no delusions as to the cause of our success
so far. Our acting had no doubt been good, but we knew quite well that
by itself it would have availed us little. The decision of the doctors
had been based on our “medical history,” as edited by the Spook and
presented to them in the reports of the Commandant, the Pimple, the
sentries Bekir and Sabit, and the two Turkish doctors of Yozgad.
We have no desire to injure, by our story, the deservedly high
professional reputation of Mazhar Osman Bey. We would very much regret
such a result, and it would indeed be a poor return for the unfailing
courtesy and the gentlemanly consideration that was always shown us by
him and indeed by nearly all the doctors of Haidar Pasha Hospital. For
to them we were not enemy subjects but patients on the same footing as
Turkish officers, to be tested for malingering and treated in exactly
the same way as their fellow countrymen. It is only fair to them to say
that we attribute our success not so much to our acting as to the manner
in which, under O’Farrell’s directions, and with the aid of the Spook,
our case was presented.
The evidence Mazhar Osman Bey had to consider was the following:
1.—The reports of Major Osman and Captain Suhbi Fahri of Yozgad.
(Chapter XXI.)
2.—The telegraphic and written reports (dictated by the Spook) from
Kiazim Bey, Commandant of Yozgad, in which he stated as a fact
that we had been regarded as “eccentric” by our comrades for two
years, and that our illnesses had been gradually developing
throughout our captivity. (Chapter XXII.)
3.—Our spiritualistic and telepathic record.
4.—The attempted suicide at Mardeen, which was vouched for by the
magistrates and police of the town, by the hotel-keeper and by a
number of independent witnesses in addition to Moïse and the
sentries, but denied by me, and only very reluctantly admitted
by Hill.
5.—The Pimple’s diary of our conduct, apparently a straight-forward
record of events kept by order of his superior officer, Kiazim,
for the use of the doctors, but really a record of our acting,
edited by the Spook.
6.—The answers of the Pimple to questions set him. Owing to
O’Farrell’s help, the Spook had been able to foresee every
single question that was asked, and the Pimple had been
thoroughly tutored in his replies.
7.—Our mad letters to the Sultan, Enver Pasha, etc., the mad drawings
of the Island Uprooter, and of the gigantic aeroplane, and the
other documentary evidence of insanity found (apparently
concealed) in our possession.
All this evidence was brought forward by the Turkish authorities
themselves, who had apparently no motive for seeking to prove us insane.
Mazhar Osman Bey was told that the English doctor at Yozgad (O’Farrell)
had tried to prevent us being brought to Constantinople and that he
refused to admit we were suffering from anything more serious than mild
neurasthenia. This certainly did not look like collusion between us and
our own medical man. We ourselves strenuously claimed to be quite well
and contradicted many of the assertions the Pimple made against us. My
resolute denial of the hanging and Hill’s very reluctant admission of it
particularly impressed the doctors. So did my apparently inadvertent
admission of previous incarceration in an asylum under M—— (another
suggestion of O’Farrell’s), and subsequent denial of all knowledge of
M——.
The position, so far as Mazhar Osman Bey could see, was that the Turks
were trying to prove us mad while we were both anxious to be considered
sane. He had not the vestige of a reason for disbelieving any of the
statements made by the Pimple and the Turkish officials of Yozgad. For
while, in our speech with the doctors, we sought to deny the salient
points in the evidence against us, the whole of our conduct in hospital
was aimed at corroborating the Pimple’s story. The fact that Hill’s
behaviour was so absolutely different from mine was another point in our
favour. The only theory that could hold water at all was that we had
bribed the Turks, but against such a theory was first the large number
of people who had given evidence against us and second the Commandant’s
apparently hostile conduct towards us at Yozgad—Mazhar Osman knew we had
been “imprisoned on bread and water” for telepathy.
Only a medical man can decide whether or not the evidence of the Turks
and our answers in the preliminary examinations justified Mazhar Osman
Bey in being predisposed to a belief in our insanity. We ourselves
believed then, and we still believe, that so long as we could avoid
traps and keep up our acting on the lines O’Farrell had dictated, no
doctor on earth could prove we were malingering. And we had one
tremendous asset on our side: Mazhar Osman was too busy a man to be able
to devote much of his time to observing us. We never avoided him—indeed
I did rather the reverse, and used to rush up to him on every possible
occasion—but except for what he saw of us during his morning visit he
had to depend on the reports of his subordinates. Had things been
otherwise, we think we would have been “caught out,” but as it was we
had to deal mainly with men who believed their Chief infallible, and who
knew of his inclination to consider us mad. That knowledge probably
affected their judgment and their powers of observation.
Our task was “to keep it up” until the exchange steamer arrived. It was
a desperate time for both of us. We were watched night and day. We knew
that a single mistake would spoil everything for both. The junior
doctors (acting no doubt under instructions from Mazhar Osman), set
traps for us, tested us in various ways, and reported the results. We
did not take it all lying down. In order to find out what they thought
from time to time, and how the wind was blowing, we in our turn set
traps for the junior doctors.[57]
In my own case the doctors began by suspecting General Paralysis of the
Insane, a disease commonly due to syphilis. I knew the diagnosis was
bound to be upset by the negative results of the Wassermann tests, and
did not feel at all comfortable until they began showing me off to
visiting doctors as a _rara avis_. What Mazhar Osman Bey’s final
diagnosis was I never discovered, because it was written on my medical
sheet in technical language, and my small Turkish dictionary did not
contain the words used; but I think from the interest shown in me by
students and strange doctors, it was something pretty exceptional. I
also think that for a long time Mazhar Osman Bey was not a little
dubious about it. Indeed I believe that out of the kindness of his
heart—for he was a kindly and humane man—he decided to risk his
professional reputation rather than do me a possible injustice, and gave
me the benefit of the doubt.
About Hill, I think none of the real experts were ever in two minds. He
was quite an ordinary case of acute Religious Melancholia. But he went
through a terrible month in Gumush Suyu Hospital, where the treatment
meted out to him by the doctors there was such as nearly killed him. To
all appearances Hill was a genuine melancholic, or he could never have
deceived men like Mazhar Osman Bey, Helmi Bey, Chouaïe Bey, and our own
British doctors, as he did. Yet, merely because he was a prisoner of
war, these doctors at Gumush Suyu jumped to the conclusion that he must
be malingering, and on this supposition they treated him not as an
ordinary malingerer is treated, but with a cruelty that was
unspeakable.[58] That they took no trouble to acquaint themselves with
the history of his case may be excused on the ground that it was
ordinary Turkish slackness, though it was slackness such as no doctor
should be guilty of. But at this time Hill was not merely a malingering
melancholic. He was genuinely ill from a very severe bout of dysentery,
and was sick almost unto death. The most ordinary microscopic
examination would have revealed the nature of his complaint. Whether the
Gumush Suyu men made it or not I do not know. But this I know: they
showed a callousness and a brutality in their treatment of Hill which
drew violent expostulations from the British patients in the hospital,
and for which the doctors deserve to be horsewhipped. Whatever their
suspicions as to the melancholia may have been, they have no excuse for
their utter neglect of a man who was _obviously_ in the throes of severe
dysentery; they cannot be pardoned for leaving him for days without
medicine or proper diet; and they should answer in Hell for sending him
back by a springless donkey cart to Psamatia Camp (the journey took Hill
five hours) when he was too weak to walk downstairs without assistance.
All these things they did. Captain Alan Bott, then a prisoner-patient in
the hospital, protested vigorously, but in vain, against the cruelty of
that journey. One thing only his protests achieved—the donkey cart.
Without Captain Bott’s assistance Hill would have had no conveyance
whatsoever, and some idea of the man’s condition may be gathered from
the fact that though his normal weight is 12 stone, at this time he
weighed less than 100 lbs.
It amounts to this: the doctors in charge at Gumush Suyu took advantage
of Hill’s sickness to try to break his spirit by mal-treatment of what
they knew was a genuine disease (dysentery) and by putting his life in
danger. No British doctor—no doctor of any nationality worthy of the
name of doctor—however much he suspected a man, would do such a thing. I
believe a genuine melancholic would have died under their hands. Hill’s
life was saved by the fact that he was not a melancholic and by the care
taken of him by Captain T.W. White, a prisoner-patient in the ward. Hill
confided in White, who smuggled medicine and milk to him, and helped him
in many ways. It was not till after the worst of the dysentery had been
mastered by these means that the Turks began to treat him for it. But
even with White’s help, Hill only just got through alive. On reaching
Psamatia after his terrible journey he nearly collapsed, but he set his
teeth and carried on. He deceived not only the Turkish and the British
doctor[59] there (both of whom were intensely indignant at the treatment
to which he had been subjected) but also the medical representatives of
the Dutch Embassy at Constantinople,[60] and was sent back to Gumush
Suyu and thence a few days later to Haidar Pasha for “proper treatment
by mental specialists” and “to await the exchange boat.” For all their
cruelty the Gumush Suyu doctors were fairly outwitted, and in sending
Hill back for “proper treatment” by mental specialists they admitted not
only defeat but their own black ignorance.
Hill and I blame no doctor for suspecting us of malingering. Every one
of them had a perfect right to his own opinion. We expected to be “put
through it” and we bear no grudge against any of the doctors—and there
were plenty of them—who tried their legitimate tricks on us. Thus, when
Hill was “fasting,” a thing he often did for days at a time, Mazhar
Osman Bey instructed the attendants to leave his meals standing on the
table by his bedside, and also drugged him to excite his appetite. What
such temptation means to a starving man (even without the drugging) only
those who have themselves starved can guess; but it was a fair, a
perfectly fair and honourable trick. Or again, when Talha Bey offered to
provide me with “an anti-toxin against the poison in my parcels” and
gave me a couple of ounces of ink to drink, I downed it with a smile and
said “I liked it, for it tasted powerful”—didn’t I, Talha? (And I
overheard Talha tell a friend about the “experiment” afterwards, and
express his sorrow for doing it, like the good-hearted fellow he was.)
These, and many things like them, were legitimate tests enough, and all
“in the game.” But to withhold medicine from a man in Hill’s state, to
give him wrong diet, to turn him out of hospital on that wicked journey
and to put his life in danger, as those disgraces to their profession
undoubtedly did at Gumush Suyu—that was unfair and unpardonable. Hill is
twelve stone again to-day. He is not a vindictive man, but I think it
might be advisable for the Gumush Suyu doctors who “treated” him to keep
out of his reach.
Had we known that our acting was to be kept up not for six weeks but for
_six months_, I think we would have lain down and died. The delay was
not due to any mistake on our part, but to a series of postponements of
the arrival of the exchange ship, due, I believe, to Lord Newton’s
inability to obtain from the Germans a satisfactory “safe conduct” for
the voyage. No doubt the British authorities were right to hold back
until the safety of the ship was assured, but there was not a prisoner
of war in Turkey, sound or sick, who would not have voted cheerfully for
running the gauntlet of the whole German Fleet.
To Hill and myself the wait seemed interminable. Each postponement was
just short enough to encourage us to “carry on,” and somehow or another
carry on we did. Indeed we had no choice. We dared not confess we were
malingering, because it would have thrown added suspicion on any genuine
cases of madness which might crop up amongst our fellow prisoners, and
the one point in which O’Farrell had neglected to instruct us was how to
“get better” without rousing suspicion. But even had we known how to
“recover” I think we would still have kept it up, for Freedom was our
lode-star.
It would be easy to fill another volume with the things we saw and did
and suffered during those six months in the mad wards at Haidar Pasha.
My own task was hard enough. I had to be ready to “rave” at a moment’s
notice whenever anyone cared to bring up one of my half-dozen fixed
delusions; I had to suspect poison in my food; get up at all times of
the night to write the _History of my Persecution by the English_ and my
_Scheme for the Abolition of England_; form violent hatreds (Jacques,
the unhappy Jew chemist at Haidar Pasha, used to flee from me in terror
of his life), and equally violent friendships; be grandiose; sleep in
any odd corner rather than in my bed; run away at intervals; be
“sleepless” for a week at a time; invent mad plans and do mad things
without end. I refused to answer to my own name and became either
“Hassan _oghlou_ Ahmed” (Hassan’s lad Ahmed) or “Ahmed Hamdi Pasha,” as
the whim seized me. I wore a most disreputable fez, boasted of being a
Turk, cursed the English, and ran away in terror from every Englishman
who happened along. All the time I talked nothing but Turkish and to all
appearance lived for nothing but to become a Turkish officer. The
biggest criminal in Eastern Europe—Enver Pasha—was my “hero,” and I
fixed a photograph of him above my bed.[61] And every minute of the day
or night I had to be ready for a trap, and have an answer pat on my
tongue for any question that might be asked. Yes! I had a hard task and
a wearing one.
But hard as my task was it was nothing—it was recreation—compared to
what Hill had to do. For all those terrible six months my companion in
misery sat huddled up on his bed, motionless for hours at a time, crying
if he was spoken to, starving (“fasting” he called it) for long periods,
reading his Bible or his Prayer Book until his eyes gave out (as they
used to do very badly towards the end), then burying his head on his
knees, presenting to all comers a face of utter misery and desolation,
and speaking not at all except to pray. By the end he had read through
the Bible seven times, and could (and did) recite every Prayer in the
Prayer Book by heart. To him one day was exactly like another. The
monotony of it was dreadful and his self-denial in the matter of food
was extraordinary. Partly from this self-imposed starvation and partly
from dysentery, ‘flu’ and maltreatment in Gumush Suyu hospital, he lost
_over five stone_ in weight. His emaciation was terrible to look upon,
for he became a living skeleton; yet still he kept up his acting and his
courage. It was the most wonderful exhibition of endurance, of the
mastery of the mind over the body, I have ever seen. Many a time I have
returned of an evening to the ward, worn out by the unending strain of
my own heartbreaking foolery, and ready to throw up the sponge. Always I
found Hill resolutely sitting in that same forlorn, woe-begone attitude
in which I had left him hours before, and always the sight of him there
renewed my waning courage and steadied me to face at least “one more day
of it.”
But our doings and sufferings as madmen, and the adventures, grave and
gay, through which we passed when, under the cloak of insanity, we
collected information of military and political interest in the hope
that we would reach England before the end of the war—these things, and
what we learned of the Turks and the Turkish character, are another
story. I must return to the Spook and what happened at Yozgad after our
departure.