CONSTANTINOPLE
We were rather thankful to reach Constantinople. We crossed the Marmora
by night in a rickety little torpedo-boat with something wrong with her
screw, and we hoped to escape being sunk by one of our own submarines.
The danger was a very real one, for it was only a few weeks after this
that a Turkish transport with a number of British prisoners on board was
sunk by one of our E-boats. But in that case they all escaped to barges
alongside. We were sealed up like bully beef in a tin, and would have
had no chance.
At the quay, our escorting officer left us. He bore the euphonious name
of Fa'at Bey, but was not a bad fellow. And, unlike the majority of
Turks, he had travelled and picked up a little English. Many Turkish
officers speak French, and a few German; but knowledge of English is
rare. What strikes one as very curious when first encountered is to find
a Turk speaking English with a strong American pronunciation. The reason
is that several very fine American colleges have been founded in Turkey,
where first-class education is to be had cheaply. Later in our captivity
we were so fortunate as to get to know the staff of one of these
colleges very well, and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to pay
some small tribute to their wonderful, unselfish work. But of that in
another place.
From the quay we were driven in carriages through the streets of
Stamboul, up the hill to the Ministry of War, and there confined in a
fairly large room with blue-tiled embrasures and a very dirty floor.
Heretofore we had lived in tents; we were now to begin our painful
studies of Turkish domestic fauna.
Various Turkish officers came to see us; one tremendous swell,
apparently made up to take a leading part in "Arms and the Man," was
very impressive. He had the most complete appearance of gilded villainy
that I have ever seen. He was the first, so far as I recollect, to play
the favourite Turkish confidence trick upon us. It is a simple
performance, and we were simple enough to be taken in by it--once. The
procedure is thus:
_Scene_: Dirty room. Dirty prisoners in dirty clothes. Dirty beds. Dirty
walls, covered with stains where former captives have squashed bugs. (Is
that a filthy thing to write? I believe it is. But this is a history,
and I shall have to write worse things than that.)
_Enter_: Gorgeous official, Interpreter with a mean, shifty face, and
other incompetent perverts who look as though they were "walking on" for
five piastres a performance. Probably they actually are.
_Interpreter_: "His Excellency wishes me to tell you that you are not
prisoners, your country and mine are at war, but we are all soldiers.
You are our honoured guests; is there anything that you require? All
will be given you; in a few days you shall have complete liberty."
_Senior Prisoner_: "Please thank the--General, Pasha, Excellency, Bey,
Effendi, or whatnot; the title does not affect the procedure--We should
like to write letters, to have a bath, to have the beds disinfected, and
to be able to purchase soap, tooth-brushes, underclothes, etc., etc."
_Interpreter_ (after collusion with the great man): "Certainly, all
these things will be allowed. Is there anything more you require?"
_Prisoners_ make various suggestions.
_Interpreter_: "Yes, of course. You are our honoured guests. In one
hour, perhaps."
_Exeunt omnes_, except prisoners.
And that is all. That is the whole trick. The keynote is the
interpreter's final word "perhaps." Nothing whatsoever happens. The one
hour spins out to many hours, to days, to months, to years. Nothing
whatever comes of the interview. But in the course of time prisoners
learn other means. Our "other means" in the Ministry of War was a
cultivated person, the editor of a newspaper, who was serving in his
country's army as a private soldier, and who had so far escaped
fighting. He was put on to do us, and he did. But he did, at any rate,
see that our meals were fairly regular, and he bought us tooth-brushes
and a chess-board. Judged by the new standard we were fast assuming, he
was not a bad fellow. I wonder to what extent it is a good thing to
alter one's standards in that manner. Degradation of principles _versus_
breadth of mind. It is one of the many undermining influences a prisoner
has to combat if he would come back to the world a decent man.
The month was August, still warm, but with autumn and winter ahead of
us. ONE autumn and winter, we thought. We had been captured in
khaki drill, thin stuff only suited for tropical wear. So we were most
agreeably surprised when our ex-editor caterer produced next day a
Nubian person, a deserter of sorts from Egypt, who told us that he would
procure us any clothes we required. Our total resources in actual cash
were very small indeed, but the Nubian explained that our credit was
enormous. Seldom have I felt such affinity to the international
financiers. The lists we compiled were comprehensive and well chosen.
The Nubian was as one taking an order from Rockefeller or Rothschild.
The result was the usual one in Turkey. Nothing of all we had ordered
ever appeared. I forget how many times this farce was repeated. If not
four times it was at least as many as three. At this distance of time I
will not affirm that the lists were identical each time; but at any rate
the result was. So naked as we came into the world of official Stamboul,
thus naked did we depart from it. And perhaps we were lucky to retain
the clothes we had. Other prisoners at different times were robbed of
their uniforms, more frequently of their boots, and among the men, poor
fellows, many had at one time and another to sell their clothes to buy
food. We did, at any rate, get out of that place with all we had brought
in.
On the second day our numbers were doubled, for two officers of the
Worcesters and two from the Australian Division joined us. They had
been captured three days before our own misfortune, but had come the
long way round from Gallipoli by road and rail. I know we looked at them
as the bears in the Zoo might be expected to greet a new companion, but
we soon settled down. About this time a batch of some 150 N.C.O.'s and
men arrived, but we were not allowed to see them for several days. They
were housed in very uncomfortable quarters below the level of the
ground; bad enough, but not so bad as the awful room three naval
officers occupied about a month later.
On one side of the Ministry there was a long, narrow garden, and as our
room was a corner one we looked out both over the garden across the city
and through the end windows. The view over the garden was magnificent.
We could see a corner of the Bosphorus, and the buildings of Pera
stretching away up the opposite hill-side. From the end windows there
was a prospect in two stories, typical of the land of the Turk, a
mixture of squalor and display. The upper storey was a very handsome
grey stone mosque with four slender and very beautiful minarets,
reaching up into the blue sky where birds for ever circled as emblems of
the liberty we longed for. The lower storey was a paved courtyard with
barred windows all along the side that faced us. From behind the bars
came the voices of prisoners and the clank of chains, and through them
we could see a mass of unfortunates either undergoing sentences or
awaiting them; probably the latter; it is mostly waiting in Turkey. We
used to see arms thrust out with small nickel coins in the hands to
bribe their gaolers to fetch their owners food or cups of coffee. I
remember one poor miserable wretch of an albino, with a face like a
very, very thin Angora goat, who used to gibber through the bars all day
long. He looked to me as though he had gone mad, and perhaps he had.
Long afterwards I met a British prisoner who had been thrust in there
among those ghastly creatures for a night, and from his account they
were a queer lot.
In the garden there used to promenade a number of Turkish officers who
apparently had nothing else to do. We thought, of course, that they were
government servants passing away the time until pay-day came along once
more. It was only a natural supposition; but it was completely wrong.
They were, as a matter of fact, prisoners like ourselves. People who had
infringed the Turkish military code, or had been convicted of swindles
sufficiently considerable to entitle them to preferential treatment. In
Turkey, an officer may be convicted of theft, but unless his sentence
exceeds six months he suffers neither loss of his commission nor even
loss of rank. And this is wise, for you could not have an army
consisting of private soldiers only. Even in Russia they do not do that.
So many of them were but biding the time until a benevolent system
should again loose their energies to prove once more that charity begins
at home. But some were of other categories. There was one who
subsequently was so kind as to admit an Englishman into his confidence,
and to explain how to remain an officer, with all its prestige and
honour, while yet avoiding the more distressing features of war, such as
wounds, danger, or even death. This officer, most meritoriously, had
become a master of his country's military laws. A thing wholly to be
admired in an officer. So skilled was he, and so fertile of resource,
that he knew to a nicety the value of each crime. When war broke out he
promptly committed one, was accused, awaited sentence, served it, and so
escaped that tedious campaign in the frozen Caucasus. On being released,
he selected from his repertory another crime, and bravely committed it,
this time avoiding martyrdom in the Dardanelles. Similarly, he escaped
the perils of that ill-judged attack on the Suez Canal, and, for aught I
know, may at the very present moment be avoiding the infamy of seeing
his country's capital city occupied by the infidel.
I did not mean to digress into Turkish law, but having done so I will go
one step further in order to describe the procedure which is followed
when a private soldier makes an accusation against an officer. My
authority is the official interpreter who was for a time the bane of our
lives at Afion-Kara-Hissar. On hearing the accusation, the senior
officer determines what the sentence would be for that particular
offence. Having done this justly and with an open palm, he arrests the
accused and condemns him. The accused serves the sentence, whatever it
may be--I believe one hundred and one years is the maximum for serious
charges; and at the expiration of the penalty, the case is tried. The
officer is then found either guilty or not guilty. If the former, he is
politely informed that as he has already paid the price, probably in
every sense of the word, he is now at liberty. The man who accused him
is commended. If, on the other hand, he is found not guilty, he is
reinstated in his former position, and the man who accused him
wrongfully is beaten.
I cannot say whether this is a true description, but it is true that the
interpreter told me this.
And, indeed, why should it not be true? Institutions as well as animals,
even that greatest of animals, man, must subscribe to the natural law of
the survival of the fittest. As already pointed out when describing the
way in which a Turkish officer avoids loss of rank when convicted for
theft, perhaps this arrangement is wise, in the circumstances; perhaps
it fits those circumstances. For in the majority of cases a Turkish
soldier is a more honest man than his officer, and in a high percentage
of cases the accusation must be justified: in the remainder the officer
is probably only paying the penalty of one of his undiscovered crimes.
What with the four new officers and the other ranks, we were by this
time a considerable body, quite large enough to become the living
illustrations of a national triumph. So, in due course, we were paraded
in the square on the opposite side of the Ministry to our outlook, and
were passed before a cinematograph. I do not remember how many times we
circled round that infernal machine while the operator ground the
handle, but it was a good many. By the time he had exhausted the roll of
film we must have made a very creditable appearance, several divisions
at the very least. It was unfortunate for the Turks that they had not a
captured gun to trundle round with us; but, even as it was, we have
played a great part in the world.
At the end of the square, where it abutted upon the street, there was an
arched gateway, something like a Roman triumphal arch, and in the room
above it there resided an arch-villain. We had been in Constantinople
about a week when we were commanded to his presence. He was a very great
man indeed, popularly supposed to be Enver Pasha's remover-in-chief at a
time when removals of political opponents were frequent. But we did not
know that then; we only knew that he was a magnificent, tawdry and
detestable person. That room lives in my memory as the gold and purple
room. It was hung with velvet and decked with gilt, and the man sat in
it like a frog in an orchid. We were given cigarettes, and were then
informed that the British Government was ill-treating its Turkish
prisoners so disgracefully that reprisals would have to be started. The
infamous English, we were assured, made their Turkish officer prisoners
march naked through the streets as a sport for the populace. What had we
to say about it? Of course we denied the possibility of such a thing
being true. But he remained unconvinced, of our knowledge, if not of
our good faith. The interview left a sense of possible unpleasantness
looming ahead of us.
The next day we received orders to move to a new barracks over in Pera.
When first in Turkey one is inclined to look upon all moves as
desirable. Monotony and stagnation grow upon a prisoner very rapidly,
and the first six months are much the hardest to bear. Any move rumoured
or ordered shines like a light ahead. It must be an improvement, one
thinks, it will in any case be an event, something to mark the passage
of time. But after a year the average prisoner hates moves. By bitter
experience he knows their cost and discomfort, the loss of his small,
painfully-acquired property, and the trouble of settling down again.
Also he knows that, much as he may hate the place he is in, there are
many places worse. Still, we were at the beginning of things then, and
we rejoiced in the move. We were marched down the streets of Stamboul,
with our men, across the bridge over the Golden Horn, and up the steep
street that leads to the top of Pera.
We passed on the way the small French hotel where I had stayed nearly
eight years before, and listened to the howling of the dogs at night.
The populace stared at us, but was not hostile. If any of them had seen
the film of us in our thousands they must have been bitterly
disappointed; or perhaps they thought it natural there should be so few
survivors.
At the very top of the hill, where it bends down again towards the
Bosphorus, we were led into the Taxim barracks. The men were given
several large dormitories; the officers had a small room to themselves.
This did not seem very bad. It was a smaller room than before, and it
had no blue tiles, but otherwise not much worse. Our disillusion came
with the fall of dusk.
That night we fought a battle.
We put up a tremendous struggle against impossible odds and we did not
win.
When the sun set and the light in the room turned grey, forms were seen
stealing down the walls, up the walls, out of the walls, and all over
the walls; but mostly down the walls. Small, brown, flat creatures, easy
to kill with anything hard, even with one's fingers. They began in tens,
and ended in tens of thousands. And each one of every one of those
thousands was a famished bug. Each one could wake a clean European by
crawling over him, and keep him awake long after it was dead by the
venom it injected into him. We were not very clean Europeans, but we
were clean enough for that. We had not then acquired the stock of
antibug-venene that we had in our veins later. We began by trying to
slay them. We succeeded in slaying many hundreds, but their hosts were
not perceptibly weakened, nor was their natural force abated. Moreover,
they stank. A bug at large smells very noticeably, a bug squashed
stinks. All that night we fought them unavailingly, and at dawn they
drew their undiminished tribes away.
There were three nights like that, and seven of the eight of us hardly
slept a wink the whole time. We slept a little by day. But had we stayed
there long it would have been a hard fight for sanity. As it was, our
nerves got very much on edge, and we were not the cheery companions we
might have been. It may seem childish and hypersensitive to make a fuss
about a few insects, but it was a very real horror; not only the actual
itching, or even the odour, but there is something disgusting and
degrading in being covered with beastly creatures of that sort, and I
have heard pretty rough private soldiers say they felt the same when
first afflicted by lice. "Private" was, I believe, originally short for
"Private Gentleman," and the old meaning is not infrequently brought
home to one.
Things were rather strained altogether in Taxim barracks. The Turkish
guards were apt to be brutally rough with our men, despite our vigorous
complaints. One solitary Frenchman there was too, a Corsican, and I saw
a Turk kicking him most brutally on the floor one morning. There was
very nearly a real explosion then, but the Turk stopped in time.
It was about this time that I began to realize what a very severe trial
captivity would prove. It did prove so, and in ways I had not then
foreseen. But it became apparent even then that work of some sort would
have to be done if normality of mind were to be conserved. By the end of
the war we had blossomed forth in all sorts of directions, but we were
only feeling our way then.
Without saying or meaning one word against my fellow-prisoners, or even
against myself, it must be clearly understood that first and foremost
among the trials of captivity comes the unavoidable close proximity of
other people. It is the prisoners themselves who are each other's
principal discomforts. We were all so close to each other; so
permanently in evidence to each other, and so different from one another
that weariness of spirit grew to a pitch no outsider can comprehend.
Bugs are bad, Turks are worse, but eternal neighbourhood is worse
still. _Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner_; but God alone reaches
that "Tout."
About the Taxim barracks there was one good thing. There is good in
everything: in a bug it is his squashableness; in a Turk it is his
stupidity; in Taxim it was the orchestra next door.
At the end of the narrow ground we were allowed to tread there was a
sort of public garden, and in the afternoons the band played there.
Twice we were conducted by a Turkish officer, a kindly old thing, to a
bench facing this place of joys, and were allowed to watch the Levantine
society that gathered there. We were even allowed to hail the waiter as
he passed and have coffee handed up for ourselves and our janitor. It
was a good time. We could hear music; we could watch children; and we
could feel very nearly free.
Except for this narrow space, the grounds of Taxim barracks, so far as I
observed, were a graveyard. Tall stones with carven turbans to indicate
men's graves, flat stones for the graves of women, and gloomy cypress
trees. And through the trees gleamed the Bosphorus.