Throughout the day I remained in a state of high tension. Yet my principal concern was for the lack of self-control shown by George, who walked about with shaking knees and unsteady hands and anxious face.
"For God's sake don't show yourself like that to the Turkish officer," said H.
"My dear, I am not brave, and fortune never visits me." His fear was pitiful.
"Pray for fortune then."
And George prayed, melodramatically and in all solemnity: "God what is in heaven, take us quickly to the Arab with horses."
The thermometer of hope quicksilvered up and down every few minutes, throughout the pregnant hours of afternoon. For the ninety-ninth time I examined the packets of raisins, the bread, and the water bottles. For the hundredth time I reviewed the details of our plan.
Between tenP.M.and midnight the Druse was to wait by the station, with long headdresses which should be disguise enough for the moment, because in the darkness a passerby could only see us as silhouetted outlines. Soon after ten George was to take H., R., and me through the side door, as already described, and lead us to the Druse. Then we would slip out of Damascus to the spot where an Arab was waiting with the horses. We must ride over the plain all night, and hide the next day in a certain Druse village, where a hut had been prepared for us. We could buy arms in the village. We would travel without rest throughout the following night and just before dawn reach the mountains outside Deraa, when the second Arab was to take back the horses.
Once in the mountains and among the Druse tribesmen an army could scarcely retrieve us. We should run more than a little danger from the nomads, but these might be friendly, and in any case the guide would be our protector and mouthpiece among his fellows.
For weeks we should be trekking over the mountains and desert east of the Turkish lines in the Jordan valley and the hardships would be very great. Eventually we should arrive among our allies of the Hedjaz.
Having reached "X" and paid off the Druse, we could be taken on board one of the British war ships in the Red Sea. We might well meet a raiding party of the Emir Feisul's Bedouins near Amman, in which case safety would come much sooner, and we might travel by aeroplane to the British army in Palestine.
After dinner the Turkish signal officer invited us to his room for coffee. Having no legitimate excuse for declining, we chafed under his small talk until nine o'clock. Then Nahed Effendi and the quartermaster visited us, and again we were forced to sit still and deliver, from time to time, in response to the translations of George, a fretful "Yes" or "No" or "Good" or "Thank You."
Ten o'clock came and went, and two suggestions that we should retire to bed were brushed aside by our visitors. By now the Druse would be waiting for us outside the railway station.
Eleven o'clock arrived, and still Nahed continued to draw from his endless store of tales and similes.
"My officer say," translated George, "that Arabian poet compare the breasts of a fellow's beloved to—please, my dear, say you must sleep. I shake and feel I must chuck sponge. Soon it is too late, honest to God."
Ourselves almost desperate with annoyance, we performed a series of lifelike yawns, and declared ourselves to be very tired. Thereupon, to my great relief, the Arab officers withdrew, with George in attendance.
I followed to the doorway, and spoke to George when the officers had entered their own room.
"In three minutes you must come back."
"I will try. But I have so little courage."
"Think of the job in Australia, and of the money."
"Mon cher, I have thought of them all day long, but my heart is saying,boum, boum!and a voice tells to me 'Quittez ça!' But I will come back."
He did not come back. Before George had left me, evil chance sent the Turkish deputy-commandant along the passage for one of his rare visits of inspection. He looked hard at us; whereupon George's overwrought nerves snapped, and he broke down utterly.
"Aa-ee!" he called.
Next he grasped instinctively at my arm. Trembling visibly, he lowered his head and waited. I backed into the doorway, while the deputy-commandant took George to Nahed's room.
What followed we could deduce from the noises that swept the corridor. George was bullied into a complete betrayal. We heard furious talk, shouted orders, and the unmistakable sound of blows with the bare hand. Nahed ran to our room, and counted us feverishly. Then came the corporal of the guard, puzzled and scowling. Finally, six Turkish soldiers replaced Jumbo outside the door, which Nahed locked.
Disgusted with George, disgusted with ourselves, and above all disgusted with fate, H. and I paced up and down or lay sleepless on the bedstead through hours of utter despair. R., the only one of us to make a show of indifference, took a pack of cards, played patience, and said not a word.
The door remained locked until the following mid-day, when the commandant arrived with Nahed and George, both of whom showed reluctance to enter.
"My officer knew," declared George, with eyes averted. "You are to collect the clothes and go to railway. They send you to Aleppo I guess." I noticed that one of his eyes was discoloured and swollen.
The commandant searched our kits very carefully, but confiscated nothing, not even the store of food. Then he demanded why we had wanted to escape, and who had been helping us.
"Tell him we refuse to say anything," H. answered. And with that he had to be content.
Surrounded by no fewer than twelve guards, we carried our few belongings to the railway station and entrucked for Aleppo. The interpreter stayed with the Turkish lieutenant in charge of us until the train left.
We took care not to look at George, but I could sense his misery and shamefaced discomfort. At length, for the first time since the betrayal, he showed sincerity with an agonized sentence in French, spoken from the steps of the truck:
"I am mad with sorrow. I ask pardon."
Obviously he expected and hoped for an answer, but nobody took the least notice. It was as if we had not heard.
"My officer has beaten me, and he will beat me again. My face is big with hurts—see."
Still no reply. Then, faintly, as the Turkish officer called him down from the steps: "I have so little courage. I ask pardon."
The appeal went home, and I half turned my head. But the bitterness of betrayal was too great, and thinking that a few beatings were not punishment enough, I could offer no comfort, and continued to ignore him.
As the train chugged across Syria toward Aleppo, we wondered often what our own punishment would be. But still more often I called to mind a futile little figure with bent shoulders, a greasy face, an absurdly long nose, and an eye that was discoloured and swollen, saying, with despair in his voice: "I have so little courage. I ask pardon." And I regretted not having turned my head to look George in the face and answer him.
CHAPTER V
THE BERLIN-BAGDAD RAILWAY—AND THE AEROPLANES THAT NEVER FLEW
A soldier out of the combat is not necessarily a soldierhors de combat.
Ambition often translates a great dream into great achievement. Misapplied ambition often loses the benefits of such achievement.
Four thousand miles of dislike, distrust, and disorganization separate Berlin from Bagdad. Four thousand miles of friendship, and (except for one short distance) continuous railway communication join London to Bagdad.
All of which diverse and disconnected statements shall be linked together in the tale of the Tunnel, the Tommies, and the Aeroplanes that Never Flew.
Before the train left Damascus two more prisoners joined the party—W., who had been in hospital at Nazareth for five months, and P., recently captured in the Jordan valley.
Made desperate by our failure to escape, we were ready to try without forethought any impossible plan that was suggested between halts, as we journeyed toward Aleppo. H. and I decided, if the train slowed down, to jump from it and make for the mountains. Then, at evening, we would find the German aerodrome and try to steal a machine, chancing such possible odds as alert sentries, well-guarded hangars, and empty petrol-tanks. Once aboard the aeroplane we could fly southeastward to the Palestine front. But the train continued at a speed which made any leap from it impossible, so that we abandoned the scheme.
Two rather better opportunities were provided by the officer in charge of our guards, a young Turk who was fanatical and unbelievably stupid. The party occupied two compartments, one containing three prisoners, the officer, and a Turkish soldier, and the other the remaining four prisoners, a corporal, and a third guard. The officer paid us not the least attention, whether to guard against a possible escape, to provide us with food, or even to count his prisoners from time to time. At sunset he turned eastward and murmured his prayers, and at odd moments throughout the day, with head on breast, he muttered what I supposed to be passages from the Koran. Nobody but Allah, Mohammed, and his fanatical little self seemed to interest him.
The fanatic had a basket of bread and dried meat for his own needs—but for his own needs only. After ten hours of foodlessness we stopped awhile at Homs, and in broken Arabic we demanded food. He pointed to a man on the platform who was selling bread and hard-boiled eggs, and resumed his meditation. We left the train without hindrance, and mingled with the people who surrounded the hawker. Two of us, at least, could have slipped away, with the crowd as screen. But the nearest point on the coast was far distant, and, with neither compass nor a supply of food, to make the attempt in our uniforms would have been madness.
On this station I got into conversation with a Maronite woman, who talked of the dreadful conditions in her native province of Lebanon. The crops had been commandeered, the cedars and the fruit trees cut down by the Turks for fuel, the people systematically starved. Already thirty per cent. of Lebanon's pre-war population had died of destitution, she declared, including her father and her two children.
"The people of Lebanon perish, and neither God nor anybody else helps us." This in a tone of dull hopelessness, as if she were beyond even despair. And even as she said it, many a consignment of Syrian and Anatolian grain wasen routefor Germany.
The second chance came at Hamah, where we halted at dusk for half an hour. A little restaurant faced our compartment, and, still being hungry, we made for it. The Turkish officer ordered us to stop, while a guard, running from the train, clutched at H.'s arm. H. shook him off, like a horse shaking off a fly, said "mungaree" (his version of the Arabic for food) and proceeded toward the restaurant. The young officer continued to protest, but, when we took not the slightest notice, he joined us at the buffet, where, for the price of three dollars, one could buy a plate of goat's meat and beans, with bread and coffee. Afterward, while the Turk went outside with four of our number, H., M., and I stayed behind to buy bread.
When we returned to the platform not a guard was in sight. Moreover, our train had shunted backward. To reach it we should have to walk fifty yards. Ahead of us we could see the little fanatic, stupidly unconscious as ever of our location, walking between the rails with the remainder of the party.
"You're the linguist," said H. to me. "Hop back quickly and buy all the grub you can find. Get enough to last us to the coast."
"Twelve loaves of bread, some hard-boiled eggs, and some raisins," I demanded of the waiter in the buffet.
He disappeared into the back room. I waited, uncomfortable under the curious glances at my faded uniform.
"A German aviator," I heard one man tell his woman companion; at which I was much relieved, although scarcely pleased.
The waiter could supply only three small loaves and a dozen eggs; and with these tied in a bundle I returned to H. and M.
The military guard of the station was at the farther end of the platform. To avoid him we had to walk along the line, in the direction of our own train. We intended to dodge behind some waiting trucks about twenty yards ahead, slip over the siding in which they stood, and so to open country.
Then, as we were moving up the line, the adventure was made impossible. Two of the guards came running toward us. We continued calmly in their direction, so that they showed no suspicions, and evidently thought we were alone as a result of misunderstanding.
"Saa-seda," said H., blandly, as he offered them cigarettes; and this greeting disposed of whatever doubts they may have had. Yet the state of fright into which our absence plunged the Turkish officer had the effect of a shower-bath upon him. He roused himself from the torpor of unintelligent disregard; and for the rest of the journey we were never allowed outside the carriage.
Thus, once again, a mad plan fell through at the outset; for with no guide, no compass, no water, and the necessity of buying more food, the odds would have been a hundred to one against our reaching the coast. And even if we had reached the coast it was improbable that we should have found a sailing-boat waiting to be stolen.
At Aleppo we came upon some Indian prisoners. We were trudging along the hot, uneven road from the railway station when three white-turbaned figures in khaki saluted, from the balcony of a hospital. One of them placed a crutch under his left armpit as he stood to attention. This simple salute warmed the heart, with its reminder that we were not altogether outcasts. We returned it with gusto; as did a passing German officer, who thought it was meant for him.
We were taken to an hotel where transient Turkish officers halted on their way to Palestine and Mesopotamia. Fresh from the failure to escape from Damascus, we were not surprised at never being allowed to leave the building. Indeed, I was astonished at not being sent to some prison, and presumed—rightly, as it turned out—that punishment must be waiting for us farther down the line. For the rest, we spent several by no means uncomfortable days at Aleppo, helped thereto by sight-seeing from the balcony.
The market-place fronting the street corner below was used as a food bazaar. Each evening Arab and Syrian hucksters arrived with flat barrows, or erected rickety stalls. Then, from baskets and panniers, they produced their wares, which they laid out for inspection—loaves of bread, bowls of soured milk, basins of stew, cooked potatoes, roasted meats, vegetables, cakes, nuts, or lengths of flexible candy. Some of them roasted meat or vegetables over metal bars placed across a charcoal fire.
As the crowd began to gather the policemen circulated among the vendors, looking for such as had not paid policebaksheeshfor their pitch. Having found a victim the gendarme would lead him around the corner to settle accounts. Afterward the stall-keeper was at liberty to trade for the rest of the evening. Any who could not or would not pay were hustled from the market-place.
Then, until about midnight, was acted a succession of minor comedies, amusing or pathetic. Trial by taste was evidently the custom; and since Allah had provided hands and mouths, why use forks and spoons? Intending buyers dug their fingers into the steaming dishes, pulled out a chunk of meat or a potato, and chewed reflectively. Then they either purchased or passed on to the next stall, while somebody else stuffed a hand into the dish. I traced a few men and women who, by tasting meat at one stall, potato at another, and bread at a third, must have eaten quite a meal for nothing. This was rare, however, for the hucksters had an instinct forbona fidebuyers, and kicks for such as were not.
Over there is a seller of vegetables who has dodged his police dues, apparently because his ready cash is insufficient. A gendarme approaches, whereupon he picks up his basket, with the wooden box on which it rests, and fades into the crowd. When the policeman has gone he reappears and resumes business. Twice more must he shut up shop, for a quarter of an hour at a time. Finally his takings allow him to pay the bribe. His wife guards the stall while he confers with the policeman round the corner. He reappears, and, no longer obliged to shun overmuch attention cries his wares loudly and does a roaring trade.
The candy-barrows are mostly kept by small boys comically dignified in apron and fez. Useless to think that their youth makes them easy game, for they are sharp as pawnbrokers, and can tell in the fraction of a second a bad note or coin. Most of them seem to have a working arrangement with some gendarme whereby if an adult tries to swindle they shriek invectives. The gendarme then strolls toward the stall, and the would-be cheat wishes he hadn't.
One or two seedy ruffians hang around the rim of the crowd, awaiting the chance of some petty villainy. Presently, out of the crush comes a little Syrian girl, carrying a bowl of milk. A much-moustached, dirty-robed Arab follows her into the entrance of a narrow street where he suddenly grabs the milk, drinks it, pushes the bowl back into her hands, and strides away. The little girl attracts a certain amount of attention by shrilling her protests; but the wolfish milk-drinker has vanished. A gendarme spectator makes no pretence at interference, not having been bribed to protect stray children.
Soon afterward a similar outrage is perpetrated by a similar ruffian, who snatches a chunk of meat from an old woman's basin of stew. In this case retribution comes swiftly and suitably. The Man who Grabs Meat has failed to notice that the weak old woman is attended by a strong young man, who has lagged behind to talk to a friend. The strong young man leaps at the thief, kicks him in the stomach—hard, knocks him down when he doubles up helplessly, and proceeds to beat him. The old woman shrieks her venom. The gendarme is much amused.
Through the changing crowd pass the drink-sellers, clanging a brass cup against a brass can, but neither washing nor rinsing the cup after somebody has drunk from it. From time to time a stall-keeper slips away for a glass ofárakin the near-by café, while a wife or a friend guards his barrow.
Between eleven o'clock and midnight most of the traders run out of stock. They pack up their kit, and before leaving bargain with each other for an exchange of surplus foodstuffs for personal use—two loaves for a dish of vegetables, a can of milk for three slices of meat. The streets empty, the cries cease, the gendarmes disappear with theirbaksheesh; and we retire to join the little things that hop and crawl in our bed.
Always there was something to distract us. A Mohammedan official of the Indian Postal Service, for example, provided much interest. With only a fez differentiating his uniform from that of most native officers of the Indian Army, we accepted him at first as a fellow-prisoner. But when, at table, he asked leading questions about the Palestine operations, H. winked at me and fingered his lips as a signal. We took the hint, and answered vaguely.
"Don't like the look of the little blighter," said H., after dinner; "let's watch him."
He was worth watching. Every day, we found, he walked about the streets of Aleppo without a guard. Moreover, he was living by himself in a comfortable room. While this exceptional treatment of a prisoner did not prove treachery, the circumstantial evidence was fairly damning. We became as unopened clams when he talked to us.
This was the right attitude, for later, when at a concentration camp, we heard of an Indian official who was an out-and-out traitor. Sometimes he was at full liberty in Constantinople, sometimes he talked in railway trains to newly captured prisoners, sometimes he talked with them in hospitals. Once, at a hospital at Mosul, he was placed next to a wounded officer taken in a recent battle. His assumed complaint was influenza. Yet he was given full diet, and his temperature remained normal, while he lay in bed and asked questions about the Mesopotamian campaign.
A prisoner of war in the Orient, far more than the traveller, senses the spirit of his surroundings. Temporarily he is of the Orient. Of necessity his captors regard him as somebody more intimate than the transient Westerner who, while moving freely among them, lives according to Western custom and tradition; and of necessity the man who is in the power of Easterns, and forced to live according to Eastern customs, is more likely to realize the mental attitude whereby the crooked road is chosen in preference to the straight, to-morrow never comes, anything unexpected may happen at any time, and—to repeat an illustration of my friend Jean Willi the dragoman—a man may get married in the morning, and be a solitary fugitive for his life in the evening.
So it was with us. The continuity of impressions and experiences reacted on me till I forgot to remember that I was an ordinary Englishman, and became as fatalistic and unsurprised as the Turks and Arabs themselves. Somewhere or other, I knew, we should be punished for having wanted to escape. Of what the punishment might consist we guessed nothing, except that it would probably find us quite unprepared. Meanwhile, it was of absorbing interest to sit on the balcony at Aleppo, and watch the crowd in the bazaar.
On leaving Aleppo we knew neither the next stage of the journey nor our ultimate destination; and we were content that it should be so, for a future that is certain to be unpleasant is better indefinite than definite.
This time our escort consisted of two gendarmes and two soldiers. First we were herded into a third-class compartment, windowless and filthy. Already, before we arrived, unwashed and unkempt peasants had crowded into it; so that our party of eleven was able to occupy seven seats only. One of the gendarmes, who could murder French, advised us never to place our few belongings out of reach.
"Or," said he, "we meet darkness and—pouf!—everything vanish."
We liked the looks of neither the carriage nor the fellow-passengers, and thought how much more pleasant a goods truck would be. R. and I persuaded a gendarme to take us to the office of the station commandant in the hope of being allotted different quarters. The commandant was polite, but pretended that he could offer nothing better.
Then, as we passed along the platform, I saw a clean, covered-in truck, with a few German soldiers inside it. One man leaned idly against the entrance, and him I asked politely if, since there was so much room to spare, they could lend us a corner.
"Ausgeschlossen!" he growled. "Wir wollen keine Englander."
We were about to move on, when—"Was gibt's?" called a Feldwebel as he stepped from the truck.
I explained that seven British officers, two of them wounded, longed for floor-space, so that they would not be herded with odorous Turks.
"Perhaps we can manage it," said the Feldwebel.
"What's Paris like now?" he asked suddenly, and went on to explain that before the war he was a bank clerk there. With one eye on the space in the truck, I admitted to having lived for a time on therive gauche, discussed peace-time and war-time Paris, and even—for one will put up with a lot to avoid travelling in a Turkish third-class carriage—listened patiently to the German's reminiscences of a love affair with a French singer.
This patience was rewarded. He took a referendum of his five companions; and all, except the surly brute to whom I had first spoken, agreed to cede half the truck. The Feldwebel asked permission of a German major to ask us inside, and the major agreed.
"But only because you happen to be fellow-Europeans," he explained, "while the Turks are not."
A small bribe to the gendarme, and we moved thankfully from the Turkish compartment. There was room enough for all, prisoners and guards, to lie on the floor of the truck, so that by comparison we travelledde luxe. The Germans were friendly; and the Feldwebel, after I had pretended to be interested in more tales of hisaffaires de cœur, offered us a supply of tea, with the loan of a spirit-stove for boiling it.
So, with poker and talk, we travelled across Asia Minor. On three of the next four evenings a certain amount of excitement was produced by Turkish soldiers' attempts to desert when the train halted. They ran toward the hills, sometimes fired upon and sometimes chased. Several were captured, several got away and went to swell the huge total of brigands.
In that part of 1918 the number of brigands all over Turkey was enormous. Hundreds of thousands deserted from the army, and of these scores of thousands took to the mountains and wild places, there to become robbers. Travelling on foot, on horseback, or on donkey-back across Anatolia was unsafe in the highest degree. In every fastness one would be certain to meet a band of armed ruffians, destitute and utterly merciless, who would cheerfully kill for the sake of a pair of boots or a shirt. More than a few German soldiers who had walked a mile or two from the beaten track were killed by brigands. Many of the gendarmes sent to deal with the robber band were found dead, with their heads battered in. Many others were hand-and-glove with them and gave information of possible plunder. Sometimes a gang would descend on a village, kill a few inhabitants as a warning to the others, and proceed to steal everything worth the stealing before they retired.
We detrained on the eastern side of the Taurus Mountains and were transferred to the narrow-gauge line that traversed the Taurus tunnel before the broad-gauge railway was completed. For eight hours, on a swaying little train with miniature engine, we moved through the tunnel's half-light, with an occasional interval of sunlight at gaps between the mountains.
The great Taurus tunnel was the solution of the worst obstacle to the Berlin-Bagdad Railway. With Serbia overrun and Bulgaria and Turkey as Germany's puppets, the line from Berlin to Constantinople was straightforward. Already in 1915 the Anatolian Railway linked Constantinople to Konia. At the eastern end of the Berlin-Bagdad chain the line from Bagdad—once Turkey should have regained it—could be extended across the desert to Mosul; and the stretch of country from Mosul to Aleppo would offer no difficulties. Between Konia and the line from Aleppo, however, was the natural barrier of the Taurus Mountains.
The rock stratum in the Taurus is among the hardest in the world. For many months it resisted all ordinary drills. The German engineers caused various special drills to be made; and then, after infinite labour and experiment, began boring slowly through the rock. The natural difficulties—precipices, steep slopes, chasms, and gorges—were tremendous. Nobody who has passed through the hollowed rock can deny that the tunnel is a magnificent piece of engineering, especially the suspension bridge across a giant gorge on the western slope.
Trains began running through the Taurus, along the broad-gauge line, just before the Armistice; and the Berlin-Bagdad Railway, including this wonderful tunnel, then became the London-Bagdad Railway. Already the rails stretch eastward to Mosul, while the westward rails from Bagdad are fast moving from Samarra to Mosul. These, when completed, will be the last links in a railway chain from Boulogne to Bagdad. When—and if—a Channel tunnel is constructed the chain will reach, without a break, from London to Bagdad.
Throughout the war this work on the Anatolian Railway was largely done by British and Indian soldiers, mostly from among the survivors of the captured garrison of Kut-el-Amara. With them were a few German technicians, some Turkish guards, and many Turkish labourers. As workmen the Turks were hopeless, except when set to tasks that required no intelligence; and even then they shirked. The Tommies, who were better paid and fed by the Germans than were the prisoners working for the Turks, established a curious ascendancy. When it suited them they did four times the work of the Turks. They had initiative, they could be trusted. It was not long before some of them were in charge of Turkish gangs. Several filled positions of importance, with good salaries and plenty of freedom.
Having left the tunnel and halted for a few hours at Belamedik, we were met by groups of these prisoner-officials eager for news of the war. They wore civilian clothes, furnished by the Dutch Legation at Constantinople. Such as had clean collars and hats were greeted respectfully with the title ofeffendiby the Turkish labourers. One Tommy—a Glasgow warehouseman—had charge of all the office staff, with Greek clerks under him. Another—an Australian—was actually paymaster of this section of the construction department. Thousands of dollars passed through his hands each week, and the German officials trusted him implicitly. It was an extraordinary position—British prisoners of war, in the wildest part of Anatolia, as valued officials on the Berlin-Bagdad Railway.
From Belamedik we proceeded to Bosanti, where, in those days, the broad-gauge line ended and the narrow-gauge line began. There we stayed for a night and a morning. At Bosanti, also, there was a band of British prisoners, some of whom took us to their hut and demanded the latest war news. At that time we had little that was good to tell. The German drive toward Amiens and Paris was in full swing, the Italians had been badly beaten on the Piave, the tonnage sunk by submarines was enormous. Our one bright item of news was that thousands of Americans were pouring into France daily. This greatly surprised the isolated prisoners, who, from what they had been told by the Germans or had read in the Turkish papers, thought that no American troops could have arrived on the Western front.
Having distracted the guards' attention by giving them cocoa in a far corner of the hut, the Tommies revealed a plan of escape. A party of five—two Australians, two Englishmen, and a French petty officer from a captured submarine—had built a collapsible boat. In three weeks' time they would apply for twenty-four hours' rest from work, a privilege allowed by the German supervisors every three months. Carrying the boat in sections, and enough food for a fortnight, they would then slip away and begin tramping toward the coast, near Mersina. They expected to be walking for about ten days. Afterward they would assemble the boat at night and put to sea, in the hope of either being picked up by an Allied vessel or rowing to Cyprus. Five months had passed in building the boat, the work being done inside the hut at odd moments, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, but always with a man on the look-out for intruders. Tools, strips of metal, and a huge sheet of canvas had been smuggled out of the German workshops.
After making sure that the guards were unsuspicious, an Australian lifted the tip of a plank beneath his bed, and extracted one of the steel ribs. It was beautifully made, with folding joint in the centre and clasp and socket at either extremity. He also produced a compass and a revolver bought from a friendly Austrian. Both these articles would be necessary, the compass because without it they would be unable to follow the road, and the revolver because they would be certain to meet brigands.
One can imagine the determination and perseverance that made possible these long hours of secret work on the collapsible boat, during months of designing, of filching the required materials, of odd-moment construction under great difficulty, always with the fear of discovery.
I wish it were possible to tell of their success. About a month after we left Bosanti they slipped away, according to plan. Carrying the boat in sections, besides food and the oars, they walked in night marches across the mountains and down the wild slopes fronting the coast. Three times they met brigands, but the revolver enabled them to bluff their way through.
And then, when already within sight of the sea, a gendarme found them. Four of the plucky five were captured, while the fifth managed to hide in a cleft between two rocks with the complete framework of the boat. That night he dragged it down to the deserted part of the beach. On the following night he pieced it together. He put to sea, and for eight hours made a desperate effort to leave the coast. But the shoreward currents were too strong for him, and the weak little craft drifted back. He was recaptured, and sent to join the other adventurers in prison.
In the morning, while waiting for our train, we watched the Tommies at work. Six aeroplanes were on their way to Palestine, and the prisoners were told to transfer them to the small-gauge railway. The men seemed listless and unhasteful as they carried the machines to a secluded siding for the reloading, but I was puzzled to find that when they began packing the aeroplane sections on the small trucks they showed keenness and even enthusiasm. In the distance we could see them grouped around each truck in turn, as they worked steadily throughout the morning.
"You always as keen in handling Hun war material?" asked H. of a burly Londoner of the old Regulars, who strolled toward us from the siding.
"Sometimes we are, sir; sometimes we ain't."
"You couldn't have done a better morning's work in a munitions factory at home."
"That's right. We done a good mornin's work."
"But these areHunaeroplanes, man. What the——"
"Asyewremark, sir, they're 'Un airerplanes. But I doubt if they'll ever fly."
Then we guessed. He amplified the guesses with details.
"Yus; we does er bit er wreckin'—sabbertage, as yer might say. We carry things across to that 'ere sidin', and nobody can say as we don't bee-avebeeyewtifultill we gets there. Then we open er box er two, see what's inside, and proceed according to reggerlations. Crimernul, I calls it….
"That 'ere sidin's useful place. Aht er the way, yer know. The Boches don't go there. 'Course, if any Boches er near, we resoom ligitimite operations till they've 'opped it. Turks? We don't let 'em see neither if we can 'elp it. Wuncertwice Turkishaskas've seen us at play, but they only larf. They 'ate the 'Uns a blurry sight more'n we do. Why, I remember when a coupler Turks 'elpedin the good work one mornin'.
"Guns and airerplanes is 'andiest," he continued. "Yer see, when we 'ave the breech-block uv a gun it don't need long to take aht some gadget or other, accordin' as the gunners with us sez. Airerplanes we attack mostly on the longeerongs—those ribs o' wood that runs dahn the length uv the body, ain't they? English pilot 'oo passed dahn the line some months ergo giv' us the tip. 'Course, we give the other parts a bit uv attention—wires and sechlike….
"No, it don't seem likely as those things over there'll fly fer a long time."
It certainly didn't seem likely. Besides ripping open the fuselage fabric and cutting some of the longerons, the Tommies had hacked at the struts and clipped some bracing wires. They had prised open the wooden cases, and, before replacing the covers, had snapped spars, bent elevators and rudders, and been generally unpleasant to the planes. Similar wrecking was being done, in greater or lesser degree, at Belamedik and other points on the railway where prisoners were forced to work.
The ill-treatment of those six aeroplanes at Bosanti had a peculiar sequel. When the British entered Nazareth (the Turco-German headquarters in Palestine) during General Allenby's final advance, they captured most of the staff documents. Among the aviation papers was a letter from the O.C. German Flying Corps on that front to Air Headquarters in Germany, complaining bitterly about the bad packing and the bad handling in transit of aeroplanes sent to Palestine. As an instance it mentioned these very machines (my comparison of dates and details established that point)—single-seater scouts of the Fals type—and declared that not one of them was fit to be assembled for flying. Enclosed was a photograph of some queer-looking débris that had once been a wing. The protest ended with a request that the men who packed the six craft should be punished.
Boches are Boches, but Justice is Justice; and with memories of what I saw at Bosanti, I hope that the packers were not punished.
Having waved good-bye to these men who, though prisoners, were helping the British armies so effectively, we passed on toward Konia. And even as we moved westward from Bosanti the Aeroplanes That Never Would Fly moved eastward, through the Taurus tunnel that never would be a link in a great chain of railways from Berlin to Bagdad.
CHAPTER VI
CUTHBERT, ALFONSO, AND A MUD VILLAGE
If, at midnight, you were comfortably asleep in a railway carriage, and some Turkish guards dragged you out of it and led you along a puddled track to a mud village in the most god-forsaken part of Anatolia, while the skies rained their damnedest on you and your one spare shirt, you might be annoyed. Possibly you would cry: "To hell with the Turks!"
Such, at any rate, was H.'s comment, shouted at intervals every few seconds, while we watched the train move Constantinople-ward, leaving us at a small village called Alukeeshla.
Cuthbert and Alfonso (as we named the two soldiers who brought us from Bosanti) had told us we were going to Afion-kara-Hissar. So we went to Alukeeshla. Being unable to read or write, they failed to notice that the composite ticket given them for seven prisoners and two guards was valid only as far as this village. Their surprise was therefore as great as ours when the conductor turned the whole party out of the train. Certainly, said he, while reading a paper produced by Cuthbert, we were bound for Afion-kara-Hissar; but, according to these written instructions, there was to be an indefinite halt at Alukeeshla. It was typical of Turkish official methods—guards not knowing what must be done with the prisoners under their charge.
Cuthbert woke the sleepers, and began throwing luggage on to the platform. In his flurry he dropped a kit-bag on W.'s badly wounded arm. The sight of W. in pain, following upon our many discomforts and annoyances, sent H. berserk. "To hell with the Turks!" he yelled, then stepped one pace backward, swung a long leg, and shot his size eleven foot at Cuthbert. The kick lifted the greasy little guard from the floor, and sent him hurtling through the door of the compartment, outside of which he fell on all fours.
Far from showing resentment he was obviously cowed. Having picked himself up he asked us, humbly enough, to leave the train. Not wishing to make a bad situation worse by inviting violence, we complied, while trying to soothe H., who continued to consign all Turks to flaming perdition. Evidently Cuthbert and Alfonso thought they had to deal with a madman, and kept out of his way.
Nobody in Alukeeshla had heard of our existence; and no quarters, of course, had been allotted. The wretchedness of our midnight search in a mud village for somewhere to rest was so complete as to be humorous; and as we trudged through the rain and the darkness, and fell into the deep puddles that filled every hole in the narrow, badly kept street, we laughed from sheer misery, so that the guards must have thought we were now all mad.
We disturbed the inmates of four hovels before finding the two-roomed building that served as gendarmerie headquarters. Clearly, the policeman whom Cuthbert then roused from his sleep on the floor of the front room disliked us, and above all disliked going out into the night. After grumbling and protesting for five minutes he lit a lantern, scowled his ugliest, and led the party through more puddles to a barn. With many a creak the door of it was unlocked by means of a rusty key.
Three sorry scarecrows rose up and blinked at the lantern, then sank down again resignedly. The atmosphere was indescribably musty and dusty. Revolting garbage of every species covered the earthen floor. The wooden walls were clotted with dirt: something with wings could be heard flitting about near the high roof. The three prostrate scarecrows were disgusting, not because of their rags and their filth, but because of their general suggestion of bestiality.
"The prison," explained the gendarme grandiloquently, as he waved his hand and moved toward the door.
Now Cuthbert and Alfonso shared our indignation at the dumping of British officers into such a place, for it would be their duty to stay with the said officers. They protested volubly, but the gendarme shrugged his shoulders, and said not a word as he half opened the door. Thereupon H., still far from calm, grabbed his shoulder, spun him backward, and began explaining the situation in lurid Australian.
An inspiration was given me by the sight of W.'s bald head. W., although a second lieutenant, was a very old man—in the neighbourhood of forty, I believe. He looked venerable enough to be a temperance lecturer, although as a matter of fact he was a first-rate fellow. Knowing the Turkish reverence for the higher military ranks, I pointed to the bald patch on his head and said, "kaimakam!" (colonel), then indicated the unpleasant surroundings as if in protest against the indignity of putting a colonel in such a place.
The policeman, already in fear of H.'s violence, was obviously of opinion that akaimakam, even an English one, should have better quarters. With a "haidee-git!" to the guards he led us back into the rain, and so to the gendarmerie. There he woke the police officer and explained our presence. Fortunately the officer was too drowsy to read our papers for proof of the presence of akaimakam. Finally, at his orders, the gendarme took us to a room on the first floor of a two-story mud building. It was dirty and utterly bare; but there, at any rate, we had privacy. We laid out claims to floor-space and fell asleep, while Alfonso remained on guard by the door.
That little room in a mud hut was the home for ten days of seven British officers and two Turkish guards. Side by side, and with bodies touching each other, there was just space enough for eight people to lie on the floor. Already, when we arrived, one could sense the presence of Cuthbert and Alfonso without seeing or hearing them; and with each washless day their natural odour became more and more intensive.
We had nothing to read, and—worst misfortune of all—somebody had left our pack of playing-cards in the train. We wandered round the walls like beasts in a cage.
Nobody in the village knew or cared why we were there, or what was to happen to us. We could only surmise that this was the punishment for the plot to escape from Damascus.
Cuthbert took our papers into the village on the morning after arrival, but returned at midday with no information and many shoulder shrugs. Although none of us knew Turkish we understood enough to realize that if the matter of obtaining instructions were left to this stupid illiterate we might stay in the village for ever.
A council of war decided that I, as being the linguist, and W., as being the most imposing of us, with his bald head, his bushy moustache, and his South African ribbons, should drag Cuthbert into the presence of whatever officials we could find, and make ourselves a pluperfect nuisance until we were sent away.
"Commandant!" I said, going toward the door, this word being common to most languages.
"Yassak!" (forbidden) said Cuthbert, barring the way.
"Commandant! Come!" I insisted, brushing him aside.
He was ready to yell for help when Alfonso came forward as an unexpected ally, and persuaded Cuthbert that it would be better to let us try to clear up the situation. He led us to the station, where, with a French-speaking Armenian in tow as interpreter, we forced our way into the military commandant's office.
The commandant—a slight, dapperbimbashi—claimed to be desolated at our unfortunate position. But what could he do? he inquired. Only yesterday he had not heard of our existence, and then—clack!—we arrived without warning in this Anatolian village. Doubtless, if we waited a week or so, the authorities would send orders for a transfer to some prison camp. Meanwhile, he would gladly help us in any way possible, except give us food or allow us to take walks or move us into a better house or, in fact, do anything that I suggested. Twenty minutes of argument and bluster was necessary before W. and I could even induce the soft-spoken hypocrite to telegraph to Bosanti for instructions about our disposal.
Next day, when I took Cuthbert to the station for news, no reply had come. Nor was there any message on the third morning. Ten o'clock of the morning became known as "commandant time," so that on the fourth day the guards took the visit as a matter of course, Cuthbert showing his watch by way of reminder. Thebimbashi, worried by our importunities, took to dodging from his office when he saw us coming; but always we waited until he returned, and talked insistently until he promised to send yet another telegram. He showed surface politeness, and never uttered threats; which in any case would have been more or less futile, for the fighting force of the village comprised but one police lieutenant and four gendarmes.
We had arrived hungry, and we continued hungry. The law of supply and demand, as applied to eggs, together with the local brand of profiteer, was the cause. On the first morning a bearded peasant visited the hut with a basket of hard-boiled eggs, which he sold at the current rate of two and a half piastres each. Next day, when it became known in the village that the prisoners were buying eggs, the rate was four piastres each. Afterward it leaped to five, and next to seven and a half piastres. Finally, the supply of eggs all but gave out. It was then possible to buy only one apiece every morning, whereat we became more hungry than ever, for eggs were our mainstay.
The commandant had given reluctant permission for each prisoner to buy one small loaf of bread a day at the military rate of two and a half piastres a loaf. For the rest, we managed to supplement the bread and eggs with an occasional supply of figs or raisins bought in the village bazaar as I returned from my importuning of the military commandant.
These fruits were shown in open baskets on crazy little stalls, side by side with stale bread, bad sausages and meat, nuts, cotton materials, primitive haberdashery, rock-salt, rank butter, dusty milk, and the thousand and one other articles that jostle each other in the village bazaars of Anatolia. It being summer, myriads of flies buzzed around and settled on the dried fruits. The figs and raisins, therefore, could not be eaten unless washed carefully or boiled. Fortunately we possessed a cooking pot, given by the Tommies at Bosanti; and a ruffian who lived below us sold charcoal at the rate of ten piastres for a quantity just sufficient to burn for half an hour.
At its best, the crowded room was so stuffy as to be oppressive. When charcoal fumes were added to the summer closeness the atmosphere became unbearable. Another drawback that prevented much cooking was the scarcity of water. We were given just enough to drink; but any surplus, for washing or boiling purposes, had to be bought. Usually one bottle of water sufficed for the morning toilet of two of us. Cuthbert and Alfonso remained unworried by the shortage. They never washed.
Nerve-edging irritation will ever link itself to an enforced companionship from which there is no escape, however temporary; and when repulsive surroundings are the milieu for such propinquity the irritation is akin to madness. The reek, the vermin, the heat, the hunger, the confined space, the dirt, and the depression combined to stab our sensibilities, so that by the third day we almost hated each other, individually and collectively.
We could obtain no brush, no soap, no broom. The little den grew dirtier and dirtier, the floor became more and more littered, the guards were smellier and smellier. Cramped and intensely ennuied, we paced in criss-cross fashion around the twelve square yards of floor-space, getting in each other's way and brooding bitterly. Of outdoor exercise there was only the daily visit to the commandant; and but one other man was allowed to walk to the station with me each morning.
A word, a suggestion, or a nudge was enough to provoke loud disputes. Every now and then heated words only stopped short of blows because all realized that the anger had been sired, not by bad feeling, but by disgusting circumstances, and that a fight would be utterly futile. Worst of all, as most prisoners in Turkey must have realized, was the galling subjection to men such as Cuthbert and Alfonso—semi-civilized, altogether unintelligent, and regulating their actions by the crudest of instincts and axioms.
Only one of us, old W., remained reasonable; and he had the greatest cause for irritation. His wounded arm, which had not received proper treatment in the Turkish hospital at Nazareth, became badly inflamed as a result of the terrible conditions. Yet he never once complained, nor did he take part in the constant quarrels. Looking back, I can realize that his fine example was the sole redeeming feature of those miserable days in the mud village.
On one point only did we all agree. "Wish some of the pretty boys who sport their staff tabs in Cairo could be here," said H., and there followed a chorus of hearty assent.
"How about 'X'.?" he continued, mentioning the name of one of the rudest staff officers who ever sat in a swivel chair. The five aviators among us grinned at the thought of having him to ourselves in the tiny room, far away from the list of postings and from Regulations Governing the Promotion of Officers. This happy thought almost reconciled us to the discomfort.
Always it rained. How it rained! The yard below our window was oozy with mud, and the veiled women who were our neighbours lifted their robes high as they buried their thick ankles into the slush. Three of them, with an old man, a boy, and three infants, lived in a two-roomed hovel that faced our building. Other dwellers in their hut were a donkey, a dog, and several hens. Two of the women took ostentatious care to draw theiryashmakscloser whenever a prisoner showed himself at the window; but the third, rather less unprepossessing than the others, was less careful to protect her face from the gaze of the infidels. Beyond the yard was a stretch of flat mud dotted with squat, ugly buildings.
It was an Australian—I forget which one—who discovered by accident an antidote for the state of unutterable boredom and depression which was overwhelming us. He had lived in the district which for a time was the hunting ground of the Kelly gang, and he retold the vivid melodrama, as told to him by older people who had been spectators, of the bushranger brothers who wore armour and robbed so successfully, daringly, and incredibly. By the time we had listened, thrilled by wonder, to the tale of the Kellys' last great stand against a large force of police, with a burning house as background, what would have been another miserable evening had passed in tense interest.
Afterward we made full use of this means to forgetfulness. Each afternoon and evening somebody delivered himself ofchoses vuesorchoses entendues. H. told of his wanderings in Fiji; R. of sheep-farming in Queensland, I was able to relate some early-war observations on the Swiss-German frontier, in connection with German espionage. Old W. possessed both the Queen's and King's South African decorations, and for many years after the war in which he gained them had served in the Cape Mounted Rifles. His yarns of diamond-field days before Kimberley was made respectable by the De Beers monopoly, of Mafeking and the Vaal, of the Boer tribal treks, and of early Rhodesia filled many an empty hour in the hut at Alukeeshla.
When pre-1914 reminiscences ran dry, most phases of the war were described from personal experience. M. and H. had fought on Gallipoli as troopers; R. had flown in the Sinai Desert campaign; W. had been at Ypres and Neuve Chapelle in 1915; I had flown over the Somme battles in the days before the Royal Flying Corps had been provided with machines designed for warfare, instead of for inherent stability coupled with inherent unsuitability for fighting Fokkers, Halberstadts, and Rolands on equal terms.
Even Alfonso contributed to the time-killing narratives. We were discussing the war's origin, and somebody mentioned Sarajevo. "Ya Sarajevo!" he said, pointing to his chest, then plunged into a whirlpool of unintelligible talk. He knew a few German words, but mostly he spoke in Turkish or in what was either Serbian or some Bosnian dialect. I failed to gather whether he said he was a native of Bosnia or had merely lived there. It was clear, however, that he had been at Sarajevo when the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was murdered, and had seen the deed. Alfonso's excited description, containing here and there a word I could understand, reminded me, incongruously enough, of Marinetti's Futurist "verse," which I had heard recited by the poet himself at a London night club in 1913. Said Alfonso:—