THE BERNE CONVENTION
After hanging fire for a very long time, the Berne Convention between
Great Britain and the Sublime Porte was signed, and in the course of
time copies reached Afion-Kara-Hissar.
It seemed to us to be framed so that a coach-and-four could be driven
through every one of its clauses. But, we were winning the war, and a
great many of its provisions were applied. It was our Magna Charta.
Under this convention a large number of prisoners were to be exchanged
at once, 300 British and 700 Indians against 1,500 Turks, as far as I
can remember.
Of course we all wanted to be included. We had not known how mad we were
to be included until that ray of hope appeared. It seemed as though we
suddenly saw ourselves as we were, as new prisoners saw us when they
arrived, men grown listless and almost hopeless, with brave words on
their lips and chill in their hearts. Of the 300 British we could not
all hope to be, but for the others there was a further hope, for,
according to the Convention, periodical medical boards were to be held,
and all those suffering from any of a given list of disabilities were to
be exchanged too.
There was a great deal of heart-burning, and the camp was the prey of
winged rumours, most of them discouraging ones. I can scarcely bear to
think of that time even now.
The Kut prisoners thought that their five months' siege ought to be
included in the period of their captivity. It was only natural that they
should. But even so, we old-timers had been far longer confined than
they had. Then there was the question of age, and the older of us did
boast of our years, and wish inwardly that we had added to their number
when first registered by the Turks. Were married men to have, other
things being equal, any consideration? That was another question, and
men added to the number of their children, if not of their wives.
These are but a few of the questions that troubled us.
But, in the end, the Turks ignored much of the Convention, and began to
hold medical boards to sort out those who were incapacitated for
further fighting.
On the 8th of August, 1918, the first board sat in Afion. There were two
Turkish doctors on it, and one British, Capt. Startin, R.A.M.C. But as
one of the Turks made his own decisions, and the other merely said
"peki," which means "I concur," and as the decision went by a majority
of votes, the British member did not have much chance. Still, he did
succeed in steering most of the really deserving cases through, and he
did his very best for all of us, seizing every slightest opportunity and
displaying both diplomatic skill and doggedness to a high degree.
Of course everyone wanted to be tested. "You can't win a lottery unless
you take a ticket," as someone put it. And when the day came, and the
board assembled in a room at the Medrisseh, there was far more of us
than could be got through in a day. We sat in the shade of the poplar
trees, in front of the mosque, and when each officer who had been
examined came out he was bombarded with questions, and surrounded by an
anxious crowd. But no decisions were announced, and the British
representative was sworn to secrecy, which oath he kept. How he managed
to I am sure I don't know, for the excitement was intense. British
excitement, hardly admitted at all, but gnawing at the vitals, like the
Spartan boy's fox. So no one knew whether he had been passed or not,
though all were agreed that the senior Turkish doctor was an unpleasant
creature, jocular and offensive, and very hard to satisfy. The fact was
that he knew little or nothing of his job, found difficulty in
understanding the terms of reference, hated the British, and distrusted
everyone in the world.
That day passed in hidden agony.
The next day, the third anniversary of my capture, my turn came. I did
not think there was much chance, but had faint hopes that some hidden
doom might reveal itself to the trained skill of a doctor. Really the
only things wrong with me were that I had lost three and a half stone in
weight and had lumbago. So when asked to strip and to state what my
claim was based on I said lumbago. The senior Turkish doctor never
glanced at my lumbago region at all. But he laid me down and performed
some of the mysteries of his craft. And all the time he kept on talking
to me. We had quite an argument in French. He asked me why I knew no
Turkish, and I replied that it was too dangerous, that Maslum Bey had
sent officers to gaol for knowing Turkish; and this was perfectly true,
though it was not my reason. I did not want to lumber my brain with
Turkish. Also, as a writer of codes, and in order to avoid suspicion
generally, it had never been my object to display much intelligence to
Turks. It was too dangerous, as I said. Not that I pretended to be mad,
as did two officers of another camp who were successful in bamboozling
the best Turkish doctors, on the contrary I pretended to be sane. I did
not "wangle," to use the term in vogue, one particle. The doctor further
cross-examined me. Whey did I wish to leave Turkey? he asked. I said I
wanted to see my wife and daughter. We came to a little bickering, and,
in spite of my deficient French, repartee came to me quicker than to
him, and I won.
The verdict did not come until some days later. Several of the most
necessitous cases had been rejected; for instance, an officer with a
double hernia and an officer suffering from genuine fits. One man who
had lost an eye was included, another rejected. And several perfectly
able-bodied officers and men had been included.
I was included myself. But not for lumbago. I was passed unfit on the
score of being mad.
The senior Turkish doctor failed to understand my simple nature, and
turning to his colleague, he said, "I think he is mad." The colleague
duly responded "Peki"; the British officer, who understood Turkish and
acted as interpreter told Startin, and that best of men said I had been
very queer for some time back. He was perfectly right. We were all as
queer as queer could be. The good fellow took the first chance of
reassuring me, but it was no good. I used to get people on whom I could
rely, privately in corners (bystanders were buttonholed and prayed with,
as the _War Cry_ used to print), and ask them as man to man whether I
was really mad. They all said no. But it was no good. I thought that,
even if not mad, I must at least have very shaken nerves, and continued
to think so until, months after, at Alexandria, a kind-hearted pilot
took me up in an aeroplane, and stunted me scientifically, loops and
double loops, spinning nose dives, and side slips, and other glories of
the air. Never having been within half a mile of an aeroplane before,
this convinced me that my nerves were still fairly sound; for I came
down half drunken with the splendour of it all, ate a hearty meal, and
went through it all again the same afternoon. It was like drinking
champagne on top of a mountain; and for the first time since being a
prisoner I was glad not to have lived a century earlier.
But once I was a certified lunatic, and have never been uncertified
since.
After the medical board came a few dreadful weeks. Every day brought
forth a new rumour. We heard that the Germans had refused safe-conduct
to the repatriation ship, and it was true. We heard that the medical
board at Broussa, which had passed some of the generals there, had been
squashed, and that a new board had rejected them; and it was true. We
heard that the sickest men of all, who had been sent to Constantinople
for exchange some time back--an old R.C. padre with a bad heart, a
youngster with nearly every disability a man may have and live, and
others--had been rejected. And that was true, too, for they came back to
us again.
It was a perfectly awful time, and won't bear writing about.
At last, on the 9th of September, we received orders to leave for Smyrna
by the evening train.
There had been a perfect epidemic of escape projects recently. It was
partly caused by sheer weariness of spirit, partly by a leading mind
recently installed among us, partly by encouragement through secret
messages from England, and partly by a hope of joining the exchange
train and mixing unnoticed with the lucky ones. There were several sorts
of would-be escapers. The best sort thought things out thoroughly, kept
their mouths shut, and went. The worst sort talked about it frequently,
for years, and did not go. The first were greatly to be admired; but the
second were a pest to the whole camp in a land where the whole community
suffered for the escapade of one. All the escapers who actually started
were brave men, and I wish more of them had got through.
The day we started for Smyrna, for we did start, a party of three
escaped; and the escape was not discovered by the Turks until we were in
the train. There were thirteen officers, and I forget how many men, and
we were counted and recounted several times. Then all the luggage vans
were searched through and all the large boxes opened, and the train was
searched from end to end. But the three were not found, they were far
away in the hills. So we left Afion under suspicion, and with armed
guards in every carriage to prevent anyone from boarding the train.
Our last view of the camp was most affecting. There was a spontaneous
outburst of noble good feeling and unselfish gladness, unmixed with any
envy of our good luck. None of us thought the end of the war was near,
yet those who stayed behind cheered those who went, with never a sign of
an afterthought. It was not just a few, it was everyone; and we
literally had to struggle through the crowd in the street with our arms
aching from hearty handshakes. It is a very splendid last memory of
Afion.
I had been there two years and seven months.