"Kronprinz—jabber jabber jabber—Sarajevo—Jabber jabber jabber—automobil—Jabber—Pouf! pouf! pouf! pouf! pouf!—Kronprinz automobil halt boum!—Jabber jabber jabber—Kronprinz aa-ee!—Damen aa-ee! aa-ee!—jabber jabber—aa-ee!—Jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber."
"Kronprinz—jabber jabber jabber—Sarajevo—Jabber jabber jabber—automobil—Jabber—Pouf! pouf! pouf! pouf! pouf!—Kronprinz automobil halt boum!—Jabber jabber jabber—Kronprinz aa-ee!—Damen aa-ee! aa-ee!—jabber jabber—aa-ee!—Jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber."
"Kronprinz—jabber jabber jabber—Sarajevo—
Jabber jabber jabber—automobil—
Jabber—Pouf! pouf! pouf! pouf! pouf!—
Kronprinz automobil halt boum!—
Jabber jabber jabber—Kronprinz aa-ee!—
Damen aa-ee! aa-ee!—jabber jabber—aa-ee!—
Jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber."
Lifting his arm as if aiming with a revolver.
We passed a vote of thanks to Alfonso, together with a cigarette and a fig.
The departure from the mud village was as absurd as the rest of our experiences in it. On my ninth visit to him the commandant announced with pride that he had arranged for us to leave by the evening train, and that the station-master at Bosanti would leave an empty truck for us.
Twenty minutes before the train arrived we trudged through the rain to the station, carrying our parcels of disreputable kit. All three gates leading to the platform were guarded by sentries, who offered to bayonet any one who tried to pass without papers stamped by the local gendarmerie. To each sentry in turn Cuthbert explained frantically who we were and what the commandant had said, only to be met with an invariable "Yassak!" and a fingering of the rifle.
Thebimbashihimself was absent, and so was the Armenian interpreter—the only other person, apparently, who knew our orders. Alfonso, despatched to the commandant's house, returned with the news that he could not be found. We stood in the rain puffing at damp cigarettes and cursing. H. returned to his old refrain, "To hell with the Turks!", to the great wonder of the tatterdemalion men and boys gathered round us.
When the train steamed away from Alukeeshla, taking, no doubt, the empty truck reserved for us, we startled the guards and sentries with yells of uncontrollable laughter.
M. and I opened next morning's visit to thebimbashiwith bitter protests, but had to end it in helpless acquiescence before his suave lies. He had given strict orders that the sentries were to let us pass, he pretended, and they would be punished severely for their failure to do so. Meanwhile, he was charmed that we were to accept the hospitality of the village for one day longer. He himself would be present to see us off by the next train that same evening.
For once the commandant kept his promise. He led us to the station himself. But this time no accommodation had been provided for us on the train. The trucks were full of Germans, the first- and second-class carriages of Turkish officers, the third-class carriages of Turkish soldiers. As it would be difficult to crowd the Turkish officers and impossible to dislodge any Germans, the only alternative was to clear out some of the Turkish privates.
Thebimbashiselected a carriage, entered it, and ordered its occupants to descend to the platform. There were only nine of us, with the guards, while the soldiers numbered more than forty. Yet thebimbashiturned them all out. He hurled their packs through the open windows, and by candlelight drove them before him to the doorway. Some, who were reluctant to leave, he struck. It was astonishing to see the little man smacking and kicking burly brutes twice his size; though he knew well that they would never dare to hit back.
When the carriage was quite empty he took us inside and placed us in a corner. The Turkish rabble, swearing and grumbling, returned with their packs and their rifles, and scowled at us as they packed themselves into the remaining seats. The whole matter could have been arranged, with a twentieth of the fuss, by merely moving nine Turks from one end of the carriage to the other.
"Good?" asked the commandant, proudly, after we were seated.
"Magnificent!" I replied, while we tried hard not to let our self-control be blown over by gusts of laughter.
"Then, au revoir, my friend."
"Adieu, mister the commandant."
He strutted down the platform; and we passed from Alukeeshla to whatever weird experiences might be waiting for us elsewhere.
This chapter is but an amplification of an inscription signed by H. and myself before we left our mud home. When passing toward Alukeeshla from the station, take the second turning to the right beyond the gendarmerie, then the first to the left, and enter the fifth house in a row of buildings that stare at you from the bottom of a blind alley. Climb some rickety stairs to the back room on the first floor, and you may still find these words on one of the walls:
"In memory of some bad days and good yarns, spent and told in this dirty room of this verminous hut in this God-forsaken village. To Hell with the Turks!"
CHAPTER VII
IN THE SHADOW OF THE BLACK ROCK
Moored under a willow tree, we were clearing what was left of the cold chicken and salad from the middle of a punt. I filled the Chambertin bottle with water and dropped it overboard. It plashed and sank noiselessly to the bottom of the Thames. From the far side of our island came the metallic strains of a gramophone, made less blatant by the soft atmosphere of the river. A passing punt-pole clacked, rose from the surface, stabbed the water and clacked again. Flies danced from the hot sunlight into the shade of the willow, and hovered over the remains of our lunch. I composed the cushions and lay down, opposite Phyllis.
But the cushions became harder and harder, and the breeze merged gradually into a stuffy, dark oppressiveness. I opened my eyes, and sat up. The head cushion, it appeared, was a sackful of kit, my white flannels were a uniform in creased and dirtied khaki, Phyllis was Alfonso the Turkish guard, and the Thames the military baths at Afion-kara-Hissar, in the centre of Anatolia.
Some ragged Turks arrived through the stone passage that led to the hot room, and began undressing. Cuthbert was talking to the bath attendant, while Alfonso lay opposite me and snored. H. and W. also snored in dissonant notes. R. was sorting out his kit. The rest of the party still slumbered silently, stretched out in twisted attitudes on the stone floor.
Then I remembered how we were dragged from the train in the early hours of the morning, and had wandered through the streets of Afion-kara-Hissar, looking for the prison camp. Finding it closed to night arrivals, Cuthbert and Alfonso led us to the Madrissahhammam, in the courtyard of a mosque. Weary with want of sleep and the hardships of a long journey, we had slept for several hours on the floor of the outer bath-room.
Only R. had risked taking off his boots; and these had evidently disappeared, for as he searched his loud curses echoed from the domed roof. As was to be expected, all the Turks in the room disclaimed volubly any knowledge of the missing boots, so that when we moved to the prisoners' camp R. clattered along the streets in a pair of wooden sandals borrowed from the bath attendant.
A Turkish officer met us at the barrier which divided the street of prison-houses from the rest of the town, and sent us to meet the British adjutant of the camp. Cuthbert and Alfonso waved a good-humoured farewell and disappeared. With them they took our cooking pots—although we did not discover this fact until later in the day. By that time they had left Afion-kara-Hissar. We swore long and loud at the memory of the two guards, for in those days any sort of a cooking utensil was in Turkey worth at least two pounds.
Passing up the narrow street we were greeted by groups of weirdly clothed Britishers. Some wore torn and creased uniforms and a civilian cap or a much-dented billycock; some a military hat and ill-fitting suits of shoddy mufti; some were in khaki shorts surmounted by shirts of violent colours open at the neck; some wore heavy boots, some wore bedroom slippers, some wore sandals.
Many of them were survivors of the Kut-el-Amara garrison and had been prisoners in Turkey for two and a half years. Their uniforms had long since become scarecrow relics of better days, since when they had depended for clothing on the supplies forwarded by the Dutch Legation at Constantinople. The productions of the Turkish tailors and shirt-makers, as issued to the prisoners at Afion, were entertaining but rather anarchic.
Afion-kara-Hissar contained the largest prison-camp in Turkey, although there were others at Yozgad, Broussa and Geddós—the last-named being for the fifty or sixty of his Majesty's officers who had been persuaded to give parole not to attempt an escape. When the first batch of British officers arrived at Afion the Turks turned some Armenian families out of their homes, confiscated the furniture, and told the captives from the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia that they were to live in the empty houses.
"Beds? Furniture?" said the commandant. "We have none, and it is impossible to supply any."
"Food?" he said in reply to another demand. "It is well known that all British officers are rich. You have money enough to buy food for yourselves."
And so it had to be. At first the British officers lived on their pay as captives; which, according to rank, was at the rate of seven to ten Turkish pounds a month. But food prices soon expanded to extraordinary proportions, while the exchange value of the Turkish pound continued to decrease. By the beginning of 1918 it was worth less than two and a half dollars; while sugar, for example, was four dollars a pound. Tea was fifty dollars a pound, and real coffee was unobtainable. Under these conditions, it became almost impossible to obtain even a bare subsistence on seven Turkish pounds a month without outside help. The Dutch Legation, therefore, supplemented each captive officer's pay to the extent of five, then fifteen, Turkish pounds a month, taken from the Red Cross funds at their disposal.
Even thus the food difficulties could not have been solved without the help of parcels from home. These arrived either seven or eight months after they left England, or never. Many were delivered only after the Turks had looted from them such articles as were scarce, including boots, clothes, and good tobacco. Letters from England needed from two to five months for transit.
The lack of furniture was overcome by amateur carpentry. With string, nails, and planks of wood each newly arrived prisoner constructed a bed, a table, and a chair. Profiteers in the bazaar naturally took advantage of the demand for wood, and, by the time of which I write, the price of it had soared to two Turkish pounds a plank.
Besides the officers there were at Afion about two hundred Tommies shut up in a Greek church. Their daily rations from the Turks were one small loaf of bad bread and one basin of thin soup. For the rest, they existed on the tinned food which they received from time to time in parcels.
As for the Russian soldiers, who were herded into the Madrissah buildings, they were literally starving, and most of them had sold part of their clothing to buy extra food. Weak and ragged, they passed the time in walking round and round the courtyard. During the bitter months of winter scores of them died from hunger and cold.
Conditions in the prison camp varied according to the character of whoever happened to be the Turkish commandant. For a time the officer in charge was one Muslum Bey, who was reported to have committed several executions for Enver Pasha during the turbulent days of the Young Turkcoup d'étatin 1908. He was a brute, a swindler, and a degenerate, and during his reign unspeakable outrages were committed. He himself gave a Russian officer who had committed some minor offence more than a hundred strokes of the bastinado. When his arm was tired he made his sergeant-major continue the flogging until the Russian fainted. The unconscious body of the victim was then thrown into a cellar, where a part of his face was burned by contact with quick-lime.
Muslum Bey not only stole food parcels from England but made a practice of deducting part of the monthly pay which helped to procure for the British Tommies a bare existence. In addition, he made an arrangement with bazaar traders whereby a monopoly in certain articles of food came into being, so that the prisoners had to pay incredible prices, or go hungry.
It was not until the visit of a Swiss Commission that was investigating the prison-camps of Turkey that the British officers at Afion-kara-Hissar heard of Muslum Bey's worst outrage. The brutal commandant had taken great care that there should be no communication between the captive officers and the captive men, and severe punishment was inflicted if a Tommy tried to speak with a British officer whom he chanced to pass in the street. Scenting that something was wrong the officers induced members of the Swiss Commission to take with them the senior British doctor when they visited the Tommies in the Greek Church. Almost the first words that Colonel B., the doctor in question, heard on entering the building were the equivalent of "I've been outraged, sir." He then learned the story of how two British soldiers, thrown into jail for some trivial offence, had been forcibly outraged, first by the commandant and then by his sergeant-major.
The Swiss Commission itself was not immune from Muslum Bey's criminality. An Australian officer took a member of it aside, and told him the full story of the awful death-march from Kut-el-Amara, on which the captured garrison, already reduced by hunger, were forced to trek over 800 miles of desert and mountain, being left to die in the scorching sun if they fell out owing to weakness—a death-march which is responsible for the fact that less than 25 per cent. of the men captured at Kut-el-Amara are alive to-day.
"Yes, we know all about it," said the Swiss, "and we had it in our notes. But most of our papers were stolen the other day."
When I reached Afion, in May, 1918, the conditions had improved. As a result of a secret report by the senior British officer, smuggled to the headquarters at Constantinople of the Ottoman Red Crescent, Muslum Bey had been removed from his position and imprisoned. He was put on trial for his many crimes; but owing tobaksheeshand to political protection the sentence was but a few months' imprisonment. He had already served this period while awaiting trial, and was therefore released immediately after sentence. He went into business as a shopkeeper, and sold among other things tinned food bearing British labels—tinned food of the kind that anxious people in England and India lovingly bought and lovingly packed for their husbands, sons, and relatives who were prisoners of war.
Meanwhile, although Muslum Bey had been given only the travesty of a punishment by the Turkish judges, instructions were sent from the Turkish War Office that life at the prison-camps of Afion-kara-Hissar was to be made more pleasant. We were, for example, allowed the run of a portion of the hillside. In cold print such a concession seems unimportant enough, but to men who had become staled and unspeakably bored by months of captivity during which their only exercise was to walk up and down a narrow street, it was a godsend. Cricket and football matches were also allowed, and two or three times a week long walks were arranged.
Members of these walking parties would study the flat plain that surrounded Afion-kara-Hissar and the succession of hill-ranges beyond it, and would dream of an escape to some point on the coast.
From this town in the centre of Anatolia, however, escape seemed an impossibility, for the nearest point of the coast was 150 miles distant, and the intervening country, wild and almost trackless, was full of brigands and starving outlaws of every description, who would cheerfully kill a chance traveller for a pair of boots, a loaf of bread, or merely for practice. In any case, a tramp to the coast must extend over at least five weeks, and it was difficult to see how food for this long period could be carried.
Several officers were carrying on a secret correspondence with friends in England by means of code, and were trying to prepare wild schemes whereby a boat was to be waiting for them at some specified part of the coastline between specified dates, or whereby an aeroplane was to pick them up during the night. Most of us gave up the idea of making a dash for freedom from Afion, and schemed to be sent to Constantinople, where the chances of success would be greater.
When a recently captured prisoner first accepted the fact that escape from Afion-kara-Hissar was impossible, and when the monotony of captivity had permeated him, he would as a rule pass through a period of melancholia and the deepest depression. A black rock—huge, gaunt, and forbidding—overshadowed the little town from its height of 2,000 feet of almost sheer precipice. For hours at a time one would stare at its bare blackness, and at the crumbling ruins of the fortress, built by the Seljak Turks, which topped the rock; and the blackness and bareness would enter into one's soul and plunge one into a swirling vortex of morbid thoughts. For me the rock was a symbol of captivity—bleak, inexorable, and unrelenting.
Yet, as a rule, the period of melancholia soon passed, and gave place to resigned acceptance of the trivial and monotonous daily round of prison life. This more or less sane view of things was only made possible by improvised distractions, by reading, and by the discussion of the thousand-and-one rumours that spread from the bazaars. Time and again it would be whispered by some Greek trader that Talaat Pasha was negotiating a separate peace and had agreed to open the Dardanelles, or that war was about to be declared between Turkey and Bulgaria as a result of the Dobrudja dispute, or that Enver Pasha had been assassinated, or that the Sultan was determined to rid himself of the Young Turk government. We knew well that these reports were untrue and scarce worth even the attention of bitter laughter; but since we wanted them to be true they would be discussed with gravity over the mess-tables until the next batch of newspapers proved their falsity.
The most useful means to forgetfulness was the camp library. Many hundreds of books were sent to the prison-camps of Turkey by various societies and individual sympathizers in England. It was at Afion-kara-Hissar that I first found the courage and concentration necessary to read through each and every consecutive volume of Gibbon. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by the way, was probably more in demand than anything else in the library; for the state of mind induced by captivity needed something more solid and satisfying than the best yeller-seller. Great favourites, too, were books of Eastern travel and adventure—in particular the works of Burton and Lamartine, the "Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian," and Morier's "Hajji Baba." A copy of Plutarch's "Lives" also received the attention of much wear and tear. For the rest, many a time have I thanked the gods for Kipling; but never more heartily than when lying on the hillside at Afion and forgetting the Black Rock and all that it stood for in the company of Kim the lovable, Lalun the lovely, and The Man Who Would Be King.
Away from the ragtime blare and rush of modern life this isolation in a small town of a semi-civilized province gave the prisoners time and opportunity to "find" themselves, so that for the first time in their lives many began to think individually, instead of accepting conventional opinions at second hand. At least one book of promise was written at Afion-kara-Hissar, and four others have found publication. Several excellent poems were born there amid a welter of verse that was deathless because lifeless. Plays, paintings, and songs were produced in profusion. One man, an Australian, made a very thorough study of the ancient civilizations of the Middle East, and could supply accurate information, without reference to a book, about every phase of the rise and fall of Babylon and Nineveh, of the Medes and Persians, of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, with the extent and location and customs of the various empires. Yet he confessed that three years earlier, at a time when he was flying in Mesopotamia, he had no more interest in Babylon than in Nashville, Tennessee.
Apart, however, from the quality of this workpour passer le temps, the very fact that so many should adventure into the unknown country of creative effort proved that, when away from the preoccupations of an artificial social system, even the average Englishman turned instinctively to learning and the arts.
Meanwhile, many a lively performance was given in the garden which served as open-air theatre, with plays written and songs composed by people who, before being subjected to the isolation of captivity, had occupied themselves solely with soldiering or business. Comic relief also was provided by two youthful subalterns who set up shop as earnest-minded philosophers, and on a foundation of Nietzsche, Wilde, and Shaw built a gargoyled edifice that was perverted and extravagantly young, but withal vastly entertaining.
The social life of the camp was complex. Despite the absence of the female of the species, it resembled in many ways that of a suburb in some wealthy city of the Midlands. As was to be expected among a hundred people confined in two small streets, innumerable cliques were formed, from each of which ripples of gossip spread outward until they merged into and were overwhelmed by another eddy of gossip. Starting in the morning from a small room in a wooden house an item of scandal would, by the evening, have reached every room of thirty other houses—how X. had received a pair of pyjamas for nothing from the Red Cross supply and sold them for three liras; how Y. had climbed over several roofs at night-time and, in the shadow of a chimney, met that Armenian girl with the large eyes; how Z. had begun to smoke opium. Opium, by the way, could be had in plenty. The production of it was the chief industry of Afion-kara-Hissar ("afion" is Turkish for "poppy," "kara hissar" being "black rock"). Enormous poppy-fields spread all round the town in vivid splashes of red and white.
Yet with all the trivial gossip and light scandal there was a very real sense of comradeship. If any man were sick the remainder would fall over each other in their desire to be of help. If any house were short of wood during the bitter months of winter its inmates could always borrow from such as had enough and to spare. A new prisoner, possessing no money and a minimum of clothes—as was the case with most of us—would find himself overwhelmed by loans and gifts.
When I was at Afion the camp was very much preoccupied with rumours of a forthcoming exchange of sick prisoners between Great Britain and Turkey. Scores of intrigues centred round the room of Major H., then senior medical officer among the British; for it would be his task to examine the "unfit" before deciding which were to be sent for further and final examinations by Turkish medical boards. Scarcely a man failed to produce an ailment. Wounds that had healed years before were bandaged and treated with unnecessary care. Limps of every description were to be seen in the street. Some claimed to be deaf. Others allowed their gray hairs to grow long, and continued to express an opinion that the old and feeble should be sent home first. Such as could produce neither old age nor some physical ailment discussed loss of memory and mental trouble.
All day long Major H. examined the claimants, smiled to himself, and compiled lists. These, I imagine, must have been subdivided something like this—(a) those who suffered from real injuries or illnesses; (b) those who were middle-aged, and had minor ailments; (c) those who were young, and had minor ailments; (d) those who might conceivably have minor ailments but could supply no visible symptoms; (e) those who had nothing the matter with them, but were good liars, and as such might convince the Turks; (f) those who were not only healthy, but bad liars.
Besides the British there were at Afion about a hundred Russian officers; for although the peace of Brest-Litovsk had been signed and Russia was at peace with Germany, the Russian was the traditional enemy of the Turk, and none knew when war might break out between Turkey and the small states which had sprung up in the Caucasus. With no money, no Red Cross supplies, no means of communicating with their relatives, and no knowledge of whether these relatives had survived the Bolshevist terror, the Russian officers among us lived miserably, and were largely dependent upon the charity of British fellow-captives. In return they taught some of us a smattering of Russian, and helped to pass the time with their interminable but entertaining talk. They also provided a really fine choir, with Captain Korniloff, a cousin of the famous general, as one of its leading members. Besides ourselves, its audience, when the choir sang on the hillside, never failed to include the dark-haired Armenian girls—the only Armenians left in the town—who had been saved from the exodus and massacres of 1915-16 that they might serve the pleasures of Turkish officers and officials. They listened from a distance, and looked their sympathy, as we looked ours.
At the beginning of each month, when the funds arrived from Constantinople, there would be a succession of birthday parties. On these occasions the rule was relaxed whereby each prisoner must remain in his own house after seven o'clock. The Turks reverence birthdays, and by playing upon this fact permission would be obtained to celebrate in a friend's room. It was necessary to claim birthdays in rotation, for even the Turks might have disbelieved if the same prisoner had three of them in three successive months.
I shall always remember a party given on the evening of my arrival by White, an Australian aviator captured in the early days of the Mesopotamian campaign. It was my first introduction toárak, a kind of a tenth-rate absinthe, which, excepting some incredibly bad brandy, was then the only alcoholic stimulant to be bought in Anatolia. Finding it far stronger than it seemed, I had almost forgotten captivity and its miseries in an unreal enjoyment of the songs, the stories, and the general hilarity—hilarity which was merely a cloak for forgetfulness. And then, amid the fumes and the shouting, there recurred insistently the thought of escape. I spoke of it to the man nearest me, a short figure in a faded military overcoat, Turkish slippers, and an eyeglass.
"Not so loud," he warned. "You can't trust half these Russians. Come over into the corner."
Yeats-Brown, the speaker, began to suggest advice about how best to escape. One's only chance, he declared, was to get to Constantinople. He himself claimed nose trouble, and having cultivated the friendship of the local Turkish doctor, he was to be sent for treatment to a hospital in the capital. If I could invent some plausible ailment he would persuade the Turkish doctor to use his influence on my behalf. Meanwhile, we would have further talks and discuss plans. The great thing was to get to Constantinople.
Although I did not know it at the time there were in that bare room several men with whom, in a few weeks' time, I was to be involved in a succession of extraordinary intrigues and adventures, when we should have met again in Constantinople. There was the host himself—Captain White—who later on joined me in a thousand-mile journey, through Russia and Bulgaria, to freedom; there was Captain Yeats-Brown, who for weeks went about an enemy capital disguised as a girl; there was Paul, who was to escape three times, be recaptured twice, and finally to marry the English lady who helped him; there was Prince Constantine Avaloff, a Russian colonel, who was to help us all by acting as go-between; there was Lieutenant Vladimir Wilkowsky, a Polish aviator, whom I was to see again on the other side of the Black Sea, in German-occupied Odessa. Meanwhile, theárakbottle passed round, and the songs grew louder and wilder, until daylight broke up the party and we returned to our rough, hand-made beds.
It now became my aim in life to reach Constantinople. My injuries had healed, and at a moment's notice I could produce no convincing illness. I decided, therefore, on some form of mental trouble. Yeats-Brown had already mentioned me to his friend the Turkish doctor; and I was to have been examined, when yet again the unexpected happened. It was ordered by the Ministry of War that the seven of us who left Damascus together were to be forwarded to Constantinople, presumably for interrogation.
I took with me high hopes and the addresses of various civilians in the capital who might be of help. As we entrained, and moved westward through the poppy-fields, the Black Rock—which more than ever seemed a symbol of the blackness and menace which overshadowed prisoners in this half-barbaric country—loomed gigantic and forbidding, so that we were thankful when the railway wound round a hill and shut it from sight. I vowed to myself that never again would I return to the monotonous death-in-life of the prison camp at its foot, on the fringe of the squalid town of Afion-kara-Hissar.
CHAPTER VIII
CONSTANTINOPLE; AND HOW TO BECOME MAD
"Your best card," said Pappas Effendi, "isvertige. Melancholia and loss of memory and nervous breakdown and all that'll be helpful, but play upvertigefor all you're worth. It can mean anything. Besides, it's impressive."
Pappas Effendi was a Roman Catholic chaplain, waiting at Psamatia (a suburb of Constantinople) to be exchanged as a sick prisoner of war. He and I were discussing how best I could be admitted to hospital, so as to remain in the capital. As my injuries had healed, and I could conjure up no physical disorder, I decided to claim, therefore, that as a result of the aeroplane crash in Palestine I suffered from nervous and mental troubles.
For the few British officers at Psamatia the accommodation was fair to very fair; but for the soldiers of many nationalities in the same camp, life must have been dreadful. Hundreds of them—Britishers, Indians, Russians, Roumanians, and Serbs—were herded together into filthy, crowded outhouses and sheds. They were allowed outside them only twice a day, when they walked backward and forward, forward and backward across the yard, by way of exercise. Most of them had done nothing else for months. Their daily rations were the usual loaf of bread and basin of unnourishing soup.
For the Britishers and Indians conditions were not so bad, because they received occasional food parcels from home, and a small monthly remittance from the Red Cross. The Russians, Roumanians, and Serbs had neither money nor parcels. Some died of weakness, some sold half their clothing to buy food, and in consequence died of cold during the bitter winters. The Tommies were also better off in that they were supplied with clothes and boots by the Dutch Legation, which administered the Red Cross funds. Prisoners of other nationalities walked about gaunt and in tatters. The British gave them whatever food and tobacco could be spared on parcel-days, but even so they could often be seen scrambling for a thrown-away stump of cigarette, or for bits of bread or biscuit. Many seemed almost bestial in their hopeless misery. Only the Serbs, stoic as always maintained a reserved dignity and scorned to beg.
Two or three times a week we were allowed into Stamboul, in parties of two or three, each with a guard. On such days the usual rendezvous for lunch was a little restaurant near the bridge across the Golden Horn. To pass over the bridge across the Golden Horn was forbidden; for Pera, the European quarter, was pro-Ally almost to a man, and a British prisoner might find many helpers there. Even in the preëminently Turkish Stamboul one often happened upon sympathizers. There was, for example, a young Armenian who, whenever he could, talked politics to us on the little suburban railway between Stamboul and Psamatia, and told us the latest false report of an imminent peace.
"Nous sommes tous des Anglophiles acharnés," he assured F. and me.
The threatened interrogation never happened; and one evening it was announced that our party of seven was to return to Afion-kara-Hissar. From every point of view it would be advisable to remain in Constantinople. I believed it to be the only Turkish town in which one might arrange a successful escape, and I knew that it contained civilians who were either British themselves or willing to help British prisoners. Moreover, it offered infinite possibilities in the way of distraction, which were always attainable throughbaksheesh, that lowest common denominator of the Turkish Empire. And if the long-promised exchange of sick prisoners took place Constantinople was obviously the place where strings must be pulled if one wanted to be sent home on the strength of some feigned weakness.
There were at Psamatia two officers who had been told that they would be among the first batch of prisoners to leave the country. One of them, Flight-Lieutenant F., claimed to be suffering from some form of tuberculosis difficult of definition and detection but strongly supported by influential friends. The other was Father M., a Roman Catholic padre who was among the captured garrison of Kut-el-Amara. It was evident that thirty months of captivity had seriously affected his well-being, mental and physical. In any case, as a non-combatant well over military age, the white-haired priest should most certainly have been allowed to leave Turkey. Meanwhile, he was well loved by all at Psamatia, even by the guards, who knew him as "Pappas Effendi." Whenever he passed down the street children from among the Catholic Christians who lived near the prison-house would stand in his way, and demand a blessing.
Unfortunately there was in the camp library no medical text-book to tell how a prisoner might feign nervous disorders. I had to be content with coaching from Pappas Effendi, and with practising before the mirror a doleful look, tempered by a variety of twitchings. Then I visited the camp doctor. Ever since my aeroplane smash, I complained with mournful insistence, I had suffered terribly fromvertige, from periods of utter forgetfulness, from maddening melancholia, and from nervous outbreaks. Above all fromvertige.
Fortunately the doctor, like most Turkish medical men, was both ignorant and lazy. His day's work was to sit in an office for two hours, always smoking a cigarette through an absurdly long holder, and having listened to the translated statements of would-be patients, either to send them away with a pill or to write out a form whereby they could be examined at a hospital.
A wound or an injury he might have treated by pill; but it was plain that the very suggestion of mental trouble stumped him. He could not withstand the wordvertige, and after a second repetition of it I had no difficulty in procuring a chit ordering me to be dealt with by a hospital doctor.
That same afternoon I was led to Gumuch Souyou Hospital, in Péra. There my claims to admission as a mentally afflicted person were granted without question, so that I began to wonder whether or not I really was in my right mind. Having heard the list of pretended symptoms, not forgetting thevertige, an Armenian doctor sent me to bed for a fortnight's rest.
W., whose wounded arm was badly inflamed, already occupied a bed in the same room, as did Ms., who years before had ricked his right knee and, by reason of its weakness, managed to stay in hospital, with one eye on the possibilities of an exchange of prisoners. R., who had the same object in view, turned up from Psamatia later in the day. He had shown two perfectly healed bullet-wounds in the leg, received three years earlier in Gallipoli, and bluffed the Turkish doctor into believing that they were giving him renewed trouble.
Now clearly, if I wished to maintain a reputation for melancholia, nervous fits, andvertige, I should have to prove abnormality; and just as clearly it would be difficult to give convincing performances before fellow-prisoners who knew me to be normal. The only solution was to demand removal to a single-bedded room, for the sake of quiet.
"Pulse and heart normal," commented the ward doctor next morning. Pulses, hearts, and doctors are often unaccommodating.
"Yes,Monsieur le docteur. For the moment nothing worries me, except that I have forgotten all that has happened since the aeroplane smash. Sometimes my mind is a black blank, sometimes I am unconscious of what I do, sometimes thevertigeis so bad that I cannot stand on my feet. Above all, I hate being near anybody. I desire complete rest. Will you be so kind as to let me go to a small room where I can remain alone?"
The doctor was only half convinced; but he gave instructions for the change, while W. turned over suddenly to hide his face, and covered his head with a blanket so as not to laugh out loud.
Once again, as I lay in bed and racked my common-sense for ideas on the subject of nervous fits andvertige, I deplored the lack of any kind of medical text-book; for never before had I suffered from mental derangement.
"Pulse and heart normal," the doctor said inexorably on the following morning.
Then, some hours later, the conduct of Ibrahim, the fat orderly, suggested the required inspiration. Disregarding instructions not to worry me, he entered the room in the heat of early afternoon, sat down, leaned his head on the table, and began to snore. That really did upset my nerves, and consciously I stimulated the sense of irritation until I was furious with the Turkish orderly. Finally, blending this anger with the need of producing some sort of a fit, I considered how best to attack him, and what attitude to adopt afterward.
I jumped out of bed, opened the door, seized Ibrahim round the middle, and flung him into the corridor, while he yelled with surprise. Next I sat down on the bed, and began tearing the sheets into long strips. The corporal of the guard, with another Turkish soldier, half opened the door, cautiously, and looked inside. I stared at them blankly, then got into bed and lay down quietly, facing the wall.
Ibrahim returned presently with the doctor of the day, who entered with a surprised and quizzical "Qu' est-ce qu'il y'a?"
"Doctor," I said, "I fail to remember what I've been doing during the last five minutes. But I feel I've been through a crisis. Even now my head swims. I suffer from acutevertige."
Followed a long explanation in Turkish, with gestures, from Ibrahim. The doctor felt my pulse, which fortunately had accelerated during the calculated excitement of heaving the orderly out of the room.
"Calmez-vous, donc," said the doctor. "Tout sera bien après quelques semaines." I liked the suggestion of "some weeks," for anything might happen in that time.
Before leaving me the doctor prescribed some sort of a bromide mixture, with calming qualities. The first performance, I felt, had been rather a success. As for the bromide mixture, I poured it out of the window during the night. The bottle was filled again in the morning.
Next day was a fitless one; and by the evening I felt that something must be done to maintain my reputation. Still knowing little of how a man with my complaints must act, I thought—wrongly, as I discovered later—that somnambulism would fit in with the general scheme of abnormality.
I stayed awake until twoA.M.; and then, wearing a nightshirt, walked woodenly into the passage, with arms outstretched and head upheld. The guard was dozing on a bench that faced the door, and when I passed he took not the least notice. Feeling hurt at such disregard, I turned and passed him again, this time taking care to nudge his knee. He rubbed his eyes, shrilled an exclamation, and began running in the opposite direction. When he returned with the sergeant of the guard, a quarter of an hour later, I was in bed and apparently asleep.
During the week that followed I gave several minor performances. Soon, however, I was ousted from my single-bedded blessedness by a more worthy madman. A Turkish soldier passed into a violent delirium, and ran down the corridor on all fours, calling out that he was a horse. This was far more striking than anything I had imagined or attempted. The delirious Turk was therefore confined apart in my little room while I shared a ward with four Turkish officers.
I chose melancholia for the first demonstration in the new quarters. All day I stared at the ceiling, and answered questions with a rough "oui" or "non" without looking at the questioner. Then, at threeA.M., when the four Turks were asleep, I picked up a medicine bottle, half filled with the bromide medicine, and flung it at the wall. It struck, tinkled, and scattered in fragments; while three of the Turkish officers woke and sat up in bed.
"Air-raid?" suggested one of them—for at that time British bombers from Mudros were visiting Constantinople on most moonlit nights.
"No, a bottle," said another, switching on a light and pointing to the splintered glass.
He proceeded to protest angrily in Turkish, and I caught the words "mad Englishman." He turned off the light, and all lay down again. When the night orderly arrived he found everything quiet, and dared ask no questions for fear of disturbing the Turkish officers.
Next morning, however, the senior officer in the ward protested to the chief doctor against being submitted to disturbance and possible violence from a mentally afflicted Englishman. I was then moved into a large room where were W., R., Ms., and other officer prisoners.
To sham violence before fellow-Britishers was almost impossible, I found, even though they coöperated in casting dust into Turkish eyes. I modified the fits into starts and twitchings whenever a sudden noise coincided with the presence of a doctor. The melancholia and loss of memory I retained, for these were easy of accomplishment.
In any case I should have been obliged to become normal enough for walks outside the hospital, if my hopes were to become realities. Staying in Constantinople when the rest of the party had returned to Anatolia was all very well, but it availed nothing unless I could get into touch with people who might help me to plan an escape.
Each Sunday morning such British officers as were not confined to bed attended service at the Crimean Memorial Church, off the Grande Rue de Péra. I wished to make use of this fact in my search for helpers. Besides the clergyman himself there were still a few British civilians free in Constantinople, and most of them visited the church on Sunday mornings. Above all, there would be the chance of asking advice from Miss Whittaker, a very plucky and noble lady who had taken great risks upon herself in helping prisoners. Already she had managed to visit us at Gumuch Souyou, in the company of a Dutch diplomat's wife who came with official sanction.
A fortnight of fairly mild behaviour gained me permission to attend divine service. With guards keeping a yard or so behind us we walked through the Grande Rue de Péra, with its crowd of evident sympathizers, and so to the church at the bottom of a winding side street. Then, for an hour, I was in England. Even to such a constant absentee from church services as myself all England was suggested by the pretty little building, with its floor smoothly flagged in squares, its simply compact altar, its well-ordered pews, its consciously reverent congregation, its rippling organ, and—yes, by the great truths and dogmatic commonplaces that were platitudinized from its pulpit. The very sermon—dull, undistinguished, and full of the obvious levelness that one hears in any of a thousand small churches on any Sunday—brought joy unspeakable because of its associations.
The guards, who had been standing at the back of the church with hat on head, refused to let us remain near the door when the congregation dispersed. It was inadvisable to bribe them in public; so with a friendly wave from Miss Whittaker, and sympathetic looks from unknown British civilians, we left at once. We crossed the Golden Horn to Stamboul, and lunched at our usual restaurant, where I met Pappas Effendi again.
Presently, in strolled another old acquaintance—Colonel Prince Constantine Avaloff, the Georgian. He had just arrived at Psamatia from Afion-kara-Hissar, and brought with him the latest news from that camp—the arrival of a new commandant who seemed quite pleasant, the success of the latest concert, the delivery of a batch of parcels, the increase in price ofárak, and other of the small happenings that filled the deadly life of a prisoner of war in Turkey. For me the most interesting item of news was that Captain Tom White was to be sent to a Constantinople hospital. Although he had said nothing about escaping, I rather thought he intended to try it. If he came to Gumuch Souyou he would be a useful companion, for I knew him to be both ingenious and unafraid. Meanwhile, I revealed my own hopes to the prince, who promised to help in any way possible. He was likely to be of use, for as a result of Georgia's submission to Germany, he was now free to move about the city without a guard. I walked back to Pera light-heartedly, with an instinctive knowledge that opportunity was in the offing.
A tousled scarecrow of a man was sitting up in a hitherto empty bed as we reëntered the prisoners' ward of the hospital. His long, untrimmed hair hung over an unwashed neck, his cheeks were sunken, his hands were clasped over the bedclothes that covered his shins. He never looked at us, but with an expression of the most unswerving austerity continued to read a book that lay open on his knees. As I passed I saw, from the ruling and paragraphing of the pages, that it must be a copy of the Bible.
I looked round for enlightenment, only to find myself face to face with an even stranger figure. In a bed opposite the scarecrow sat a man whose face was unnaturally white. The young forehead was divided and sub-divided by deep wrinkles; a golden beard tufted from the chin; the head was covered by a too-large fez made of white linen. He grinned and waved an arm toward the Turkish orderly; but when we looked at him, he shrank back in apparent affright, then hid under the bedclothes.