THE LAST YEAR IN AFION
An accurate description of all our ups and downs, of liberty enlarged
and liberty snatched away again, and of all the fluctuating fortunes of
the camp would be as dull as our lives were, and as little likely to be
voluntarily undergone as was our captivity. That gem of time cannot be
polished in all its facets, lest the observer should be dazzled. All
that will be attempted here is some account of the main events. Another
man, looking at that time from a different angle, might write a book
that would hardly parallel this upon a single point, and yet be as true
a picture.
We were all growing very weary indeed of being prisoners. Prices had
continued their inexorable rise, and frequent mass meetings were held to
discuss ways and means, for of course there were poor among us who could
not afford to get money sent from home, and the pace of the convoy had
to be that of the slowest ship. The only alternative would have been to
break up into houses where men lived by bread alone, and houses where
plutocrats resided who were able to import money at the disastrous rates
obtainable. For it cost a very large sum to import money. A cheque on an
English bank for L20 would produce a draft of LTq.26. This would be paid
in paper, and to find its true value must be divided by six; so by
spending L20 a prisoner could obtain the value of L4 6_s._ 8_d._[2]
Of course we did import money, whatever it cost, even the poorest of us
practically had to, unless he would freeze in the winter. The actual
necessaries of life, food, fuel, and clothes of sorts, were always
obtainable in Turkey; at a price. The country was so completely
unorganized, and the railway so congested that food-stuffs might be
plentiful in one district and almost unobtainable in another not far
away. But where the food was grown it was always obtainable, and
fortunately for us, Afion was in an agricultural district.
The winter of 1917-18 was a very severe one. Late in November the street
that was our only playground and space for exercise was filled with
snow. It ran east and west, overhung by a steep hill on the south, and
deprived of sun by the opposite row of houses. No sunlight at all
reached that street for quite three months, and during the whole of that
time it was paved with snow that had been trodden hard.
There were refugees in the town that winter, people of strange
appearance to us who were used to the Turks. They were said to be Kurds
mostly, but there were certainly several tribes represented. For some
reason or other they had been evacuated from some part of the Turkish
Empire further east, and dumped down at Afion. Their clothes were those
of a warm climate, and many of the little children had but one thin
garment apiece. Nominally, I expect, they were supposed to be fed by
their predatory Government: actually they were on or over the verge of
starvation. We used to see them from our windows, and on our
comparatively rare passages through the town.
There is no sanitation in a Turkish town. All refuse is cast upon
middens, which in the course of ages become great mounds. Houses do not
last long in Turkey; they are but flimsily built and fires are very
frequent. They decay or are destroyed by fire, and they are rebuilt upon
these middens. I picked up a Roman coin once where a midden had been
disturbed, for they are very old.
And one of the uses of these middens is to provide food for the utterly
poor. These poor refugees used to haunt those hideous piles of decaying
matter and pick food from them. Dogs and donkeys, children and buffalo
calves, old women and cats, used to scramble and scrape for the last
pieces.
We had a Rugby football that winter, and in a field by the river,
another of the wide threshing floors, we began to play when the snow
melted. There were some very good players, and we had one new prisoner
who held, and I believe still holds, the 'Varsity record for both the
100 yards and the quarter-mile. There were several matches, and one very
great triumph, when The Dardanelles played The World and beat it. There
were so few to pick from that I played for the Dardanelles. Until that
winter, the last game I had played was in Ceylon in 1902; and I went to
bed for three days after the match. But we, the old-timers, beat the
World and rejoiced exceedingly.
One other thing that happened that winter must be told, though it is
painful to write it. There was a Russian named Constantine B., who had
become estranged from the other Russians for a fault of his own. He was
afterwards forgiven, and taken back, so it would not become me to say
anything about it. For the time, however, he lived separately in a small
house with a Russian anarchist and a Russo-Armenian thief, and the three
of them were outlaws. Also they hated each other, and used to quarrel.
One of their quarrels became acute enough to attract the attention of
the Turkish Commandant, the infamous Maslum Bey, who visited their house
to make inquiries, and there lost his temper and struck Constantine B.
Constantine was not really a bad fellow. He had done one bad thing, but
he was out of place in that house. He was a man of about thirty, tall,
well built, with very fair hair. A brave man, and quick-tempered. He put
up his arm to protect himself, and he was lost. The Commandant accused
him of trying to reach for his, the Turk's, sword, and had him arrested.
Constantine B. was taken away from the officers' camp to the church
where were some British soldiers; in the little courtyard where we used
to box he was stripped and tied head downwards with his feet in the air.
The Commandant stood by while Constantine was beaten upon the soles of
the feet with raw hide whips until he fainted. An hour later he was
beaten again until he lost consciousness once more. As they grew tired
the Commandant called new hands to beat him; every Turk there had a turn
at beating him. And, when he could feel no more, Maslum Bey kicked and
struck him all over, everywhere on his body, and spat upon him. Then he
was taken into a dungeon and thrown upon a heap of quicklime where his
face got burnt.
Maslum's cup was not yet full. Constantine recovered in time, though he
is lame. Maslum went on to his worst offence. He had flogged our men and
the Russians. He had imprisoned British officers in filthy holes, for
little or no cause. He had lied, and swindled, and stolen, and grown
rich. He now proceeded to overstep even the line which a Turkish officer
draws. All through the writing of this book there has loomed ahead of me
the grave difficulty of dealing with Maslum Bey's greatest offence. It
ought to be recorded, but I loathe doing it. Let those who can read
between the lines. Some of the British soldiers were very young,
fair-haired Saxon boys from Wessex. They had seen a vast deal of
cruelty, and they knew how easy it was for Maslum Bey to flog them, even
to kill them, or to send them to places where they would almost
certainly die. Four of these became the victims of the abominable
wickedness of Maslum. Under the shadow of a raw hide whip, in the hands
of Turkish non-commissioned officers, they were his victims.
All these offences of Maslum Bey, from the tragedy of Constantine
downwards, were duly reported to England by code. The very names of the
offences were squeezed into that code. I had the pleasure of sending the
messages myself, and the framing of them. They got home safely, and our
Government acted at once.
In the end we got rid of Maslum Bey. He was court-martialled by a
commission of utterly corrupt Turkish officers. The British soldiers
bravely told their stories. I say bravely, for their lives hung by a
hair. A British officer who knew Turkish equally bravely conducted the
prosecution for our side; and his life hung by a hair too. But we got
rid of Maslum Bey. He was given five and a-half months' simple
imprisonment. Not six months, for that would have involved loss of
rank. His judges did not think he had deserved to lose rank.
That is why I watch the papers to see if Maslum Bey has been hanged.
We used to stick up for ourselves in Turkey. At one time I knew how many
commandants of prison camps were broken by the British in three and
a-half years. But my memory is a prison-memory. It is like fishing in a
well-stocked stream with a torn landing-net. When you have got a fish,
there you see him plain enough; but more often you see but a gleam, and
he is gone. The first Commandant of Afion was broken for swindling; the
second broke himself by letting prisoners escape; the third was Maslum
Bey; and the fourth was a gentleman. British prisoners broke one
Commandant at Kastamouni, and I believe another at Broussa, Russians
broke one at Kutahia. And down the line, in the Taurus or beyond it,
where there were no British officers, I believe our men broke more than
one.
After Maslum had gone we were very well treated. I don't think that any
prisoners could have expected to have a juster man to deal with than our
new Commandant, Zeir Bey. Just think what an opportunity of regeneration
Turkey lost in this war. Had the Ottoman Government selected men like
Zeir Bey to command each camp, they would have made friends for
themselves not only all over the British Empire, but in France and her
colonies, in Russia, in Italy and in Rumania. Instead of which they have
made bitter enemies.
Our Indians had the greatest contempt and hatred for the Turks, all but
a few who were traitors. There were some, a few, real traitors among the
Indians; but there were many more who are much more to be pitied than
blamed for some of the things they did. Their position was an
exceedingly difficult one. Very many of them died, thousands of them;
but the Turks were always trying to seduce them from their allegiance.
There was even a paper printed in Hindustani by the Germans and given
free to the Indians. The Sultan sent for Indian Mohammedan officers and
gave them swords. One sturdy Pathan, Kutab Gul, went to prison rather
than accept a sword. For the most part the Indians were kept at
different stations from the British, at Konia and other places where
they could get no guidance from their British officers, where no one
knew their tongue, and where they could get no news of the war except
such as was faked, and the usual bazaar rumours. And this went on for
years. As they would themselves admit, Indian officers are in some
respects very child-like people. They believe a lot of what they hear.
We had our own means of communication outside, and we knew how to read
between the lines of German _communiques_. Also we could read French,
and in Turkey there are many papers printed in French for the polyglot
peoples of the Eastern Mediterranean. But the Indians had none of these
means. For instance, if we read "The enemy attacked near Braye and was
heavily defeated. By their self-abnegation our brave umteenth regiment
of Bavarians threw the enemy back with bloody losses," we knew what it
meant. It was the obituary notice of the umteenth Bavarians, who had
been wiped out. If the _communique_ went on to say, "Our line, according
to a pre-arranged plan, now stretches from X to Y," we knew just how far
the Germans had retreated. If our maps did not show the places, someone
among the officers, either British or French, generally knew them. But
how were the Indians to know that? They learned Turkish and read the
Turkish papers, but that was no good. The Turkish method of camouflaging
news is not the same as the German. It is better. They just say nothing.
They never admitted the fall of Bagdad. They just kept on saying
nothing. So skilled were we in interpreting the German news that I
really believe we knew just as much about the war as the average officer
outside. Our naval officers reconstructed the Battle of Jutland, boomed
as a great German victory, so accurately that the real account we got at
last seemed stale news. We certainly knew more about the war than the
Turkish officers did locally; and they used to come and look at our
great war maps drawn out on a large scale by Capt. Sandes, R.E., from
innumerable scraps and pieces out of newspapers.
Sandes did three things. He wrote a book upon the Mesopotamian campaign,
now with a publisher. He made maps, and he was the bandmaster. Among the
later prisoners there were a number of musicians, and at least one
really ambitious composer who wrote many songs and an oratorio. There
were three violins and a guitar in the orchestra, and there used to be
excellent Sunday concerts in the Yozgat house at the top of the street,
which was our Albert Hall. There were also several prisoners who sang
really well. This last year saw a great renaissance in the theatrical
world too. There was a revolt against the bondage of the old border-line
jokes, and an attempt to substitute wit for wickedness. The men in the
church used to get up plays, too. Maslum Bey was a great patron of the
theatre, and would save the best actors from being sent away on working
parties. He used to bring parties of veiled Turkish women to watch their
plays from the gallery. Behind the altar were dark passages on either
side, built in the thickness of the wall, and well adapted for the wings
of the stage. What he liked best were love scenes, and he used to send
down messages in the middle of the acting commanding the performers to
make love more briskly.
With the passing of Maslum we came to the end of our worst troubles. The
new Commandant was not so incurably Asiatic. He realized that prisoners,
like other men, love life, and freedom, and the open sky. That summer we
had a wide and high hillside made free to us. We could spend the whole
day there if we liked. The Lower Camp had an even better recreation
ground in a rocky hill just beyond their houses. We were allowed out in
smaller parties and for longer distances. Smaller parties was a very
great gain, for to walk out in a "crocodile" is so unpleasant that it is
almost better to stay indoors. We used to get a sentry, and go off into
the hills with our lunch, and picnic all day. And as we could go in
several directions there was not much crowding. There was fishing in
the stream, and bathing in a big pool, and sketching along the valley
above the pipe-line. It was by far the best time we ever had in Turkey,
and all because England and her Allies were winning the war. For it
certainly was that consideration which caused them to send us Zair Bey.
Among the prisoners there were some who said, "When we win the war the
Turks will massacre us all." But those among us who knew the East said,
"When we win the war the Turks will lick our boots and feed out of our
hands." We were right. Had we _lost_ the war it would have been quite
another matter, and this history would never have been written.
It was different now from the old days when Toomy and I used to sit by a
charcoal brazier and plan revenge. Our great scheme was to introduce
rabbits into Anatolia: the country was suitable, and they were to
overrun the whole land, worse than in Australia, and eat up all the
young crops. We also thought of water hyacinth in the Tigris and
Euphrates. But we were winning the war now, and these guerilla
operations would not be necessary. But we never thought the end was as
near as it proved.