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_ON ACTIVE SERVICE SERIES_
A PRISONER IN TURKEY
_By the Same Author_
POEMS IN CAPTIVITY
_THE BODLEY HEAD_
[Illustration: THE KARA HISSAR
The Armenian Church appears just to the right of the large white
building in the centre of the picture, at the foot of the crag]
A PRISONER IN TURKEY
BY JOHN STILL
[Illustration]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, W.
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXX
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD.,
BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. 1, AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
FOREWORD
This book, like most books, consists both of facts and opinions. In
order to fortify the facts, and so that it may be clearly seen that the
opinions are justified, a number of extracts from the "Report on the
Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Turkey," which was presented to
Parliament in November, 1918, are included here by the special
permission of the Controller of His Majesty's Stationery Office. So few
people read Government publications that this course seems necessary.
In this official report it is stated that out of 16,583 British and
Indian prisoners "Believed Captured," 3,290 are dead, and 2,222 untraced
and almost certainly dead. But this report was compiled before the end
of the war and is admittedly incomplete. I do not know the actual
statistics, which must by now be available, nor do I know where to
obtain them. But, as stated in the book, we in Turkey believed that
about 75 per cent. of the British rank and file perished within two
years of being captured. It may be that we were unduly pessimistic; it
is very sincerely to be hoped that we were, and on the whole it seems
probable. But I leave the figure unaltered in the text, for it was our
sincere belief after very difficult and laborious enquiries made
secretly. In the official report the figures show that of a total of
4,932 British believed captured, no less than 2,289 are either dead or
untraced. This amounts to 46 per cent. It would be interesting to know
the final figures.
The extracts taken from the report have been selected because they are
either general in character or have special reference to Angora or Afion
Kara Hissar, the two camps I knew personally.
I am indebted to three fellow-prisoners for the photograph reproduced as
a frontispiece to this book, for the piece of music, for reading the
MS., and for reading the proofs.
EXTRACTS FROM A REPORT ON THE TREATMENT OF BRITISH PRISONERS OF WAR IN
TURKEY.
The history of the British prisoners of war in Turkey has faithfully
reflected the peculiarities of the Turkish character. Some of these, at
any rate to the distant spectator, are sufficiently picturesque; others
are due to the mere dead-weight of Asiatic indifference and inertia;
others again are actively and resolutely barbarous. It has thus happened
that at the same moment there have been prisoners treated with almost
theatrical politeness and consideration, prisoners left to starve and
die through simple neglect and incompetence, and prisoners driven and
tormented like beasts. These violent inconsistencies make it very
difficult to give a coherent and general account of the experience of
our men. Almost any unqualified statement can be contradicted again and
again by undoubted facts; and the whole subject seems often to be ruled
by nothing but pure chance.
Yet on the whole there are two principles which may be detected as
influencing the behaviour of the Turk in this matter, first and last,
one being an affair of deliberate policy, the other instinctive and
customary. Mixed in with a good deal of easy-going kindness, there is
always to be found the conviction that it can matter little what becomes
of the ordinary mass, so long as compliments are paid to the great. It
has doubtless been a real surprise to the Turkish mind, even in high
places, to learn that the rights of the common soldier are seriously
regarded by western opinion--the rights, moreover, of a few thousand
disarmed men who could be no longer used in battle. This principle has
not always been effective, it must be added, in its application to
prisoners of higher rank, as some of the following pages will abundantly
show; but it has seldom failed in the treatment of the rank and file.
These have had small reason in their helplessness to regard the Turk as
that chivalrous and honourable foe of whom we have sometimes heard.
It need scarcely be said that the level of surgical and medical skill is
low in Turkey. There are good doctors, but not many of them, and it is
only in Constantinople that they are to be found. In the provincial
towns the hospitals are nearly always places of neglect and squalor,
where a sick man is simply left to take his chance of recovery, a chance
greatly compromised by Turkey's total indifference to the first
rudiments of sanitation. Such hospitals are naturally the last to be
provided with adequate stock or equipment of any kind; and even if some
modern appliance is by fortune forthcoming, it will probably be beyond
the local talent to make use of it. In a very horrible Red Crescent
hospital at Angora, for example, there was at one time seen an excellent
German disinfecting apparatus standing idle amidst the filth, because no
one could tell how it was worked. It is fair to say that in such places
there is no distinction between the treatment of prisoners and that of
Turkish sick or wounded; all suffer alike by reason of a state of
civilisation centuries out of date.
It was characteristic, too, that until the end of 1916, or even later,
the only clearing-station that existed in the city, where the men
discharged from hospital were collected until they could be sent into
the interior, was apparently the common civil prison, a most vile and
filthy place, in which many of our men lay for weeks until the
convenient moment happened to come for removing them. At first they were
lodged there in ordinary cells; later they would occupy the gallery of a
large hall, where their tedium was relieved by witnessing the vociferous
floggings of the criminals on the floor below. This would seem to be
the same prison as that in which certain British naval officers have at
different times undergone most barbarous punishment (in the name of
"reprisals"), by being confined for many weeks underground, without
sight of day, in solitude and severe privation. As a collecting place
for prisoners from hospital it was superseded in 1917 by a camp at
Psamatia, a suburb of the city, installed in a disused Armenian school
and church. This was at first a dirty and disagreeable place; though
supposed to be in some measure for convalescents, it was always a
struggle to get so much as a wash there; but under a better commandant
it was improved later on.
But before going further we may give what is in effect the substance of
our whole report--the epitome, in unmistakable terms, of the story of
the prisoners' treatment. The officially announced figures of the
mortality among them, so far as are known up to the present date, give
the exact measure of the meaning of captivity in Turkey. The total
number of officers and men believed to have been taken prisoners by the
Turks from the beginning of the war is 16,583. Of these 3,290 have been
reported dead, while 2,222 remain untraced, and we must believe that
they, too, have almost all perished unnamed, how or where we cannot tell
in any single case. They all belonged to the force which surrendered at
Kut, and it is therefore certain that they passed living into Turkish
hands, but not one word was ever afterwards heard of any of them. The
story we shall now tell is the only light that can now be thrown upon
their fate.[1]
Afion, indeed, has a hideous record for the flogging of
prisoners--punishment which was habitual there, for the most trifling
offences, while the place was under the control of a certain Turkish
naval officer. This man ruled with a cow-hide whip, from which the
offender received a given number of lashes on his bare back. Many
specific instances are known and noted. Fortunately the man's behaviour
became notorious, and the Turkish Government, under pressure, removed
him early in 1917. He had had time, however, to add to the burden of the
unhappy men from Kut, whose appearance when they reached Afion is
vividly remembered by the prisoners who were already there. Some of them
naked, many half out of their minds with exhaustion, most of them rotten
with dysentery, this band of survivors was received with deep sympathy
by the rest, who did all they might to restore them, small as their own
resources were. In very many cases it was too late. The sick men were
placed in the camp hospital; but this was a hospital in not much more
than the name, for though there was a Turkish doctor in attendance, with
some rough Turkish orderlies, medicines were non-existent, and a man too
ill to look after himself had a very poor chance. Deaths were frequent;
the dead were buried by their comrades in the Christian cemetery of the
town. All this time, close at hand, there was a party of British
officers imprisoned at Afion, two of whom were officers of the medical
service. Yet all communication between officers and men was flatly
forbidden, under heavy penalty, throughout the bad time of 1916 and even
later. English doctors had thus to wait inactive, knowing that the men
were dying almost daily, a few yards off, for mere want of proper care.
Angora is another camp which began very badly. In the spring of 1917 (it
had already been in use for a year and a half) there were seventy-five
prisoners lodged here in two rooms of a very insanitary house, which
caused outbreaks of typhus. There was a brutal sergeant-major in
charge and a free use of the whip. Conditions have improved as Angora
has become the centre of the working groups engaged in laying the
narrow-gauge line towards Yozgad. By May, 1917, the chief settlement was
under canvas, in a healthy position about twenty miles from the town,
moving forward as the work progressed. A little later we hear of kind
treatment on the part of the Turkish officers. By the end of the year
there was rather a large concentration of British prisoners in this
district; and although they were short of clothing and suffered much
from the winter cold--snow was thick in December--the general treatment
was considerate. The men appear to have considerably impressed the Turks
by their power of bearing up and adapting themselves to hard
circumstances.
The Turkish Government has announced that in its zeal for the comfort of
the British officers in its hands, the finest situations in Asia Minor
have been chosen for their internment; and if a prisoner of war were in
the position of a summer tourist in peace-time this consideration would
be admirable. Yozgad, Kastamuni, Afion-Kara-Hissar, Gedis, are places of
interest and beauty; the mountain scenery of Central Anatolia is very
striking, the summer climate excellent. Unfortunately this attractive
landscape is buried deep in snow throughout the winter; the cold is
intense, the places named being from three to four thousand feet above
sea-level; communication with the outer world (Afion alone is on the
railway) becomes difficult or almost impossible; and the picturesque
towns, with their streams and valleys and mediaeval citadels, have none
but the most primitive provision against the rigour of the season. This
would be so even in the time of peace. The difficulties of life under
such conditions in war-time can hardly be imagined--difficulties partly
due to the general scarcity of necessities, but also much aggravated by
Turkish incompetence and disorganisation. With each winter the officers
have had to face the prospect of something like famine and destitution,
well knowing that they must rely on their own hampered efforts, if they
were to get through.
In writing of them one must, in fact, put aside all idea that the care
of prisoners is the business of their captors. In Turkey it has amounted
to this--that British officers have been sent to live in places where at
least it is very hard to keep body and soul together--have there been
put under various restrictions and disadvantages--and have then been
left to support themselves as best they might. They have had to pay for
practically everything they needed beyond bare housing, and sometimes
even for this.
After Broussa the most conveniently placed camp, so far as officers are
concerned, is Afion-Kara-Hissar, though its direct communication with
the capital by railway did not save the prisoners from severe privation
in the winter of 1917-18. The few things there were to buy were then at
prohibitive cost; and the general state of affairs may be judged by the
fact that on Christmas Day, there being no firewood and twenty degrees
of frost, the officers took their dinner in bed, as the only place where
they could keep a little warm. Afion was one of the earliest formed
prison camps in Turkey. In the spring of 1918 there were 100 British
officers here, and 120 Russians. This is too large a number for the
accommodation, and still more for the resources of the town.
They are lodged in a number of empty houses between the town and the
station, which is about two miles away. These houses are in two groups,
forming the so-called upper and lower camps, though they are not camps
in the sense of being enclosed in any sort of compound. They seem to be
fairly satisfactory in good weather, but they are very primitive. In the
buildings, more or less unfinished, of the lower camp there was at first
no provision for heating and no glass in the windows. By the early part
of 1917 the officers had arranged a routine for themselves which the
vexatious, sometimes maddening, inefficiency and caprice of the Turk did
not seriously interfere with. They had books and games indoors, fixed
hours of study, and a flourishing run of amateur theatricals. Out of
doors they were cramped, but there were some limited chances of
cricket. Once a week the two camps could visit each other, under escort,
and there was another weekly outing when they could go for country
walks.
The constant trial was not bad treatment, but the stupid and irritating
notions of the commandant and his subordinates on the score of
discipline. The natural indolence, the want of organisation, the dirty
habits and customs of the Turks, their inveterate and irrational lying,
all meant a wearisome wastage of time and temper. The commandant had the
mark of the typically incompetent manager--a fondness for imposing
sudden and teasing regulations, without the will to enforce them
consistently. Thus at one time it was decreed that everyone must be
fully dressed for the 8 a.m. roll-call, at another that all lights must
be out by 9.30 in the evening, at another that no officer should rest on
his bed during the day; such rules would be rigidly insisted upon for a
few days, till the novelty wore off, and then helplessly abandoned. It
is recorded, indeed, that soon after the "lights out" rule was started,
the commandant himself dropped in at 11 p.m. one night to visit the
officers of the lower camp; he found them all up, stayed for a talk and
a glass of Greek brandy, and made no further allusion to the matter.
This is the amiable side of the Turkish misrule. It is the other that
has since become prominent at Afion, till the place compared badly with
other camps for the stupid tyranny of its control. It is not surprising
if the officers have felt themselves back in an ill-managed nursery,
with its rotation of indulgence and random severity.
Here for the present ceases our information with regard to the officers'
camps in Asia Minor. There are others--Eskichehir and Konia--which are
reserved for Indian officers only; but of these little is known beyond
the fact that the prisoners enjoy complete local freedom. Eskichehir was
supposed to be the "depot modele" of the empire, and the late Sultan
even ordained that the officers there might keep their swords. But so
far as the British officers are concerned, our sketch will have
indicated the main lines of their daily routine, its security on the
whole from the worst forms of coercion, and on the other hand its
exposure to grave risk and hardship. Fully to understand what their
existence is like, one must of course amplify the picture in many ways,
the chief of which is perhaps the deadly monotony of its isolation. All
communication with the world outside is endlessly uncertain and broken.
Between these prisoners and their friends at home, who only ask to be
allowed to send them the help they need, there lies a mass of corrupt
and torpid inefficiency, a barrier almost impossible to overcome because
incalculable and irrational. The due and punctual censoring of the
prisoners' mails, for example, has apparently been beyond the resources
of the Turkish Empire. The authorities have never been able to establish
any system by which parcels, letters and books, might be regularly
scrutinised at the various camps. These are all dealt with at
Constantinople, with long and exasperating delays. A novel for an hour's
reading, say, is delivered to an officer in Asia Minor; it will
instantly be taken from him, returned to the Capital, and there lost to
sight for months before it is discovered to be inoffensive and allowed
to proceed. For a long while the prisoners' letters were cut down to the
barest minimum both in number and length, because the censor at
headquarters could not deal with more. It appears that it has not been
possible to carry out this work in the camps for the highly Turkish
reason that the various authorities concerned mistrusted each other too
deeply.
The housing, feeding, and medical care of the prisoners, the delivery
of their parcels and correspondence, their pay, the exchange of invalids
and others, the inspection of internment camps, and the thousand and one
details of the treatment of prisoners, have been the subject of constant
attention and voluminous correspondence, hampered not only by the
callous obstinacy of the Turkish Government, but by the failure of
Turkish officials even to read the communications addressed to them.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE DARDANELLES 27
CHAPTER II
CONSTANTINOPLE 41
CHAPTER III
THE ARMENIANS 57
CHAPTER IV
THE WANK 72
CHAPTER V
ANGORA 91
CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST WINTER 109
CHAPTER VII
AFION-KARA-HISSAR 127
CHAPTER VIII
THE ARMENIAN CHURCH 144
CHAPTER IX
THE LOWER CAMP 162
CHAPTER X
THE SECOND YEAR 179
CHAPTER XI
THE LAST YEAR IN AFION 195
CHAPTER XII
OUR ALLIES 208
CHAPTER XIII
THE BERNE CONVENTION 220
CHAPTER XIV
SMYRNA 229
CHAPTER XV
THE SHIP 249
A PRISONER IN TURKEY
CHAPTER I
THE DARDANELLES
At dawn on the 9th of August, 1915, the 6th Battalion of the East
Yorkshire Regiment received an order to attack the great hill that
towers above Anafarta. The order was late, hours too late, for the
messenger had lost his way; so, although we did not know it at the time,
we had already forfeited our chance, and were launched upon a forlorn
endeavour.
The rampart of hills to the east of us was black against the chill, pale
sky as we moved out across the grey flats that led up to the foot of
Teke Tepe, towering up to nearly 1,000 feet ahead of us. And we came
under fire from our right flank almost from the very start.
The foot-hills of the range were rough with boulders, and deep cut by
rocky ravines. As we moved on and on, up and up, men got lost in the
prickly scrub oak, holly they called it, and it became increasingly
difficult to maintain any sort of formation. But the enemy's fire grew
in volume as we mounted, poured into us at ever decreasing range from
the right and from the front.
In that hour my admiration for the splendid courage of the men rose to a
pitch of exaltation. They were Yorkshire miners for the most part,
dogged, hard men of the sturdiest breed on earth. Those who were hit
stayed where they fell, and those who were whole climbed on. The only
complaint heard upon that hill-side was that no enemy could be seen to
fire upon. So there was but little reply from our rifles as we went on
up.
About thirty of us reached the top of the hill, perhaps a few more. And
when there were about twenty left we turned and went down again. We had
reached the highest point and the furthest point that British forces
from Suvla Bay were destined to reach. But we naturally knew nothing of
that. All that we knew was that the winding ravine down which we
retreated alternately exposed us to rifle fire from the enemy above and
protected us. Hid us and revealed us. A sapper major who walked with me,
after a long silence said, "Are you married?" "Yes," I replied. "It it
were not for that this would be good fun," said the major. So we agreed
that if one of us got out he should go and see the other's wife. And it
fell to me to do it; for he was shot through the ankle soon after that,
and an hour later was bayoneted in cold blood by a Turk.
We hoped that the foot of the ravine would bring us out among our own
supports at the bottom of the hill. But the enemy held it.
Five out of all those who had gone up got down again alive.
We reached the point where the ravine ended, and in the scrub ahead of
us we saw a number of men who fired upon us. For a moment we thought
they were our own, firing in ignorance. Then we saw that they were
Turks. We had run into the back of an enemy battalion which held the
lower slopes against our supports. They had crossed the range at a point
lower than that we had attacked, and had cut in behind our climbing
force. We could do nothing but surrender.
When we held up our hands some dozen or more of the enemy charged
towards us with fixed bayonets. And we began to experience that strange
mixture of nature, so characteristic of the Turks, from which we and our
fellows were to suffer much in the years to come.
The man who took possession of me searched my pockets and annexed
everything of military use except my revolver, which had fallen out of
my hand a minute before, when I had been knocked down by a bullet that
glanced off a rock on to my leg. He took out my purse and saw that it
contained five sovereigns in gold (more than I have ever seen since) and
a good deal in silver. Then he gave it back to me, and apparently told
me to keep it. The pay of a Turkish private is, or was, ten piastres a
_month_, nominally about one shilling and eightpence. My captor was a
good Turk. Later on, when I came to know how rare good Turks were, I was
filled with marvel.
Of those taken with me, one was not molested; one was fired at from five
yards' distance, missed, and quietly captured; one was beaten and fired
at. Thank God the man who fired at him hit the man who was beating him
and broke his wrist. The fourth, my Colonel, was bayoneted. Then, for
the moment their fury ceased. I was permitted to tend the Colonel. He
did not seem to suffer pain at all, only to be intensely thirsty. He
drank the whole of the contents of my water-bottle as well as his own.
They even allowed me to carry him on my back; and on my back the Colonel
died. May he rest in peace! He was a brave man, and a good friend to me.
Brief though my personal experience of battle was, it has left two
lasting convictions. One that wounds from which men die are rarely
painful, at any rate for a considerable time after they have been
inflicted. And another that men actually in action neither fear nor even
expect death. As we climbed up that hill on August the 9th; as we
dwindled down to fifty, to thirty, to twenty; as we retreated down that
winding, trench-like ravine, and dwindled to five, I was not blind. I
was not even fighting, but only being fought. There was but little
chance to fire back, and only once did I get a bead on an enemy target.
There was nothing extraordinarily exciting about it. Mostly it was hard
work, rough and prickly, and I was tired. My brain was quite clear. I
saw and realized the odds. But I never expected to be killed, though I
knew for certain that nearly everyone else would be. It was not courage,
for I have trembled with fear on other occasions. It is my fixed belief
that this is the ordinary and instinctive attitude of the normal mind.
And it is very comforting.
For a time that ranks in my memory longer than some years, and which may
have endured for an hour, we were held prisoners just behind the Turkish
fighting line. We had been joined by one other captured private and were
again five. It was not a pleasant time. Several times we were apparently
condemned to death. Once an officer took out his pistol to shoot us and
was prevented by a priest, an Imam with a turban on, who wrestled with
him and took his pistol away. Once Derrick and I, the two officers, were
put up against a bank to be bayoneted: an unpleasant, ticklish sensation
as the steel swings back. But somehow or other it did not come off. When
the Turks pushed we were fairly safe; and when our friends pushed the
guards threatened to kill us. Personally, I confess to very torn
emotions regarding that small section of that particular battle, though
it may seem cowardly to do so. I did not honestly hope the Turks would
be pushed back just then.
My slight wound was tied up, and we received at last an order to move to
the rear. An order from an Asiatic when you have lived for eighteen
years in Asia is a strange experience. I disliked it.
Two guards with loaded rifles and fixed bayonets took us back over the
hill once more. We wound wearily and painfully up a ravine more or less
parallel to the one we had come down. All the way we were meeting enemy
reinforcements hurrying to the fighting-line, most of them carrying
cardboard boxes of cartridges. Rough, brigand-like fellows they seemed,
but very fine infantry. They were the pick of the Ottoman army. Twice
our guards had to stand before us and beat off would-be assassins with
the butts of their rifles, and once I was struck heavily across the head
by a sword-bayonet, but saved by my topee. The whole thing seemed then
and still seems rather like a dream, and we walked as men detached from
our surroundings.
Near the top of the hill the ravine grew steeper, and at last ended. An
aeroplane, one of our own, was circling round the summit of Teke Tepe,
spotting for the naval guns; and we all lay low while British shells
burst on the rocks about us. The only Turks they seemed likely to harm
were our guards. For, far below we could see that a battle was in
progress. We could see the white crusted salt on the lake, and the
pinkish-brown of Lala Baba hill, from which I had watched, three days
before, the storming of Chocolate Hill, like a scene in a theatre. There
were British transports in the bay, and outside were British warships
cruising slowly while puffs of smoke broke from their sides. These were
the last British ships we were to see for more than three years.
We had to run over the crest of the hill, and down a little way into
safety on the other side, safety from our own guns. And for the first
time I think we felt the pang of lost children. Out of sight of our
ships seemed somehow much further than did the other side of the hill
from all touch with England.
We halted in safety and sat down, out of breath, while our guards
fraternized with a small party of Turkish soldiers and smoked
cigarettes. Then we moved on again, and passed away into Turkey.
Worn and very, very thirsty, we were taken that afternoon to the
headquarters of General Liman von Sanders, Commander-in-Chief of the
enemy forces on Gallipoli; and there we found some more of our men with
one more officer. Von Sanders was looking at the samples he had drawn.
He has been accused of many things since then, for all I know quite
justly; but to us he was not unkind. His staff gave us a meal in their
quarters, and he gave two Turkish pounds to our men. But the kindness to
the men did not extend far beyond his sight. When next we saw them, some
ten days later, they described how their Turkish guards had robbed them
of their boots and made them run for several miles bare-foot over rough
ground. Still, to us the General was civil, though he did say that
International Law no longer existed. One of his staff, a German naval
officer, told us that they found it almost impossible to get the Turks
to take prisoners, or, having taken them, to keep them alive. We, too,
had observed this reluctance.
From Liman von Sanders's headquarters to the Turkish general
headquarters was about three miles by the way we went, and we arrived
there after dark. We were four officers now, all of the 11th Division,
and we did not see our men again until much later, in Constantinople.
We were kept in a tent for three days at the Turkish G.H.Q., and were
not troubled with many questions. Our interrogation came later. Various
officers came to see us. To look at us, I think. For we were samples,
and on their valuation of us would depend their reports on Kitchener's
Army. The four of us aggregated about twenty-four feet four inches in
length, and about fifty-three stone in weight, but I do not suppose they
went much on that. General von Sanders had said to our youngest, "Eton?
and Oxford?" and seemed pleased to find that his conjecture was right.
He knew England well, and said that he had been in Ireland not long
before the war. But the Turks were different. They looked at us a good
deal, but ventured no overt guesses as to our antecedents. One Turkish
officer, an Arab rather, and a descendant of the Prophet, as he told us,
had lived in London, and spoke English perfectly. Indeed, he boasted
that in his veins there ran some drops of English blood, and told me the
well-known family that had lent it. Being ignorant of the law of libel,
I will not mention it here. He was a curious being. A violent Moslem,
but not unfriendly to us personally. Indeed, he did me a real good turn,
for he somehow or other sent a telegram for me to my wife and saved her
from that awful anxiety that so many women have had to bear after
receiving notice that their menkind were "missing."
I liked to listen to this friendly enemy's conversation. He had an idea
that we had two submarines in the Sea of Marmora based upon the islands
and supplied by the Greeks there.
It was impossible, he said, that our submarines should pass up and down
the straits through all their nets and mines. But was it? Ask the E 7 or
the E 11. Another favourite topic was the recuperative power of Islam.
After this war, the Arab maintained, Turkey would recover much more
quickly than the Western nations. "For," said he, "we are polygamous. We
use the whole breeding power of our race, which resides in the women.
Women are not being killed. They will all find husbands and bear
children. We shall build up again our full power while you are still
suffering from the deaths of your young men." There may be much truth in
this. I think that all the enemy staff were very anxious at that time.
They thought the Greeks had come in without declaring war, and one of
my signallers, a short, dark man, a glass-blower from Yorkshire, had
some difficulty in proving to the Turks that he was not a Greek. "Yok!
Yok!" said the Turkish officer, "yok" being the Turkish for "no"; but he
accepted the evidence of a pocketful of letters with English post-marks,
and it probably saved the man's life--for the time--for he died of hard
treatment two years later. I remember that this man said to me, "They
say 'Yok, yok,' sir; they know they have got the East Yorks!" "Yok" was
at that time the only Turkish word I knew, and that and "Yassak,"
meaning "forbidden," were the words I heard most often in Turkey.
The Turkish staff officers, even as the Germans, told us how hard they
found it to get their allies to take prisoners. The fact was that they
only went in for taking prisoners when they wanted to study our
newly-landed forces. At all other times they murdered them. It is easy
to demonstrate, as I think the following facts will show. On Gallipoli,
I believe something like 700 officers and 11,000 men were posted as
missing. Many of these were dead, of course, but certainly nothing like
all. Of the 700 officers only 17 were taken prisoner, one in every
forty-one; of the 11,000 men about 400 were taken prisoner, one in every
twenty-seven. The details regarding the men I do not know, but the
officers were taken as follows:--
At the first landing at Anzac 2
At Anzac when the August landing at Suvla Bay took place 2
At Suvla Bay from the 11th Division 5
Between Anzac and Suvla, at the same time, from the
Ghurkas 1
At or in the region of Cape Hellas at the same time,
from the 29th Division 3
At Suvla Bay, a few days later, when the Territorials
landed 2
At Suvla Bay, again a few days later, from the Yeomanry 1
And one officer of the Australian forces was taken at the
Anzac front when no new landing was on 1
--
17
That clearly shows that the prisoners were taken only to gain
information as to the types of our new forces. But I have further
evidence. I was one of four British officers who crossed the Sea of
Marmora in a Turkish torpedo-boat, six days after we were captured. In
the engineers' quarters with us was a sick Turkish officer, a
Circassian, who spoke French. Of the four British, I happened to be the
only one who could converse with him. He seemed pleased to see us, told
us what a good time we should have in Constantinople; society, women,
fine hotels, and other joys. We were extremely surprised. Then he told
us that an order had come to take some prisoners, "and we have got
some." We were again surprised, but polite, and conversation continued.
Suddenly he said, "Who are you?" "British officers," I replied. "Oh!" he
said, "I thought you were invalided Germans!"
Major-General Sir Charles Townshend has stated publicly since returning
to England that the Turk is a sportsman and a clean fighter. This must
have been said in complete ignorance of the whole series of damning
facts which are now in the hands of our Government. I have brought out
one of these facts, and others will appear as the book proceeds.
Major-General Townshend is to the best of my belief singular on this
point among those officers, non-commissioned officers and men who were
his fellow-prisoners in Turkey. The Turk is a master of the game he
plays. A hospital-ship lying off the coast is secure from his artillery,
because of the publicity, not because it is a hospital-ship. A wounded
soldier behind a ridge, hid from the eye of the world's Press, has about
as much chance with the Turks as he would have with a pack of wolves. An
article I once read in a Turkish paper published in French, an article
upon the damnable wickedness of the Entente, ended in these words:
"C'est nous qui sommes les 'Gentlemen.'" They wish to play to the
gallery of neutrals, and to pose as humane fighters. But they expected
to win, and they thought the prisoners' stories would have to wait until
after the war. We managed to evade this last wish of theirs; but of that
later. It has been pointed out that the Turks did not use gas; indeed,
they laughed at our respirators. I have heard, and I believe, that the
true explanation of their reluctance was that they were found too
unhandy and stupid to be trusted not to gas themselves.
There were good Turks; there are good wolves, for I have known one; but
their rarity was above that of rubies.
There is one other question concerning Gallipoli which may fitly come
into this chapter. I do not ask the question, but one of us four was
asked it by General Liman von Sanders, and we did not then, and we do
not now, know the reply. Von Sanders asked, "Why did General Hamilton
send a handful like yours to attack the great hill that commands all my
position. Did he think that I could be so blind as not to defend it
against even a much stronger force?"
On the early morning of the 16th of August we reached the Quay of
Stamboul.