Chapter 36

46. In point of fact, they did not get away until the night of August 7th-8th, and at the end of July, when the Spook’s guarantee expired, the plotters got a bad fright. The authors of “450 Miles to Freedom” say: “Unfortunately the Turks also appeared to have got wind of it (i.e., the intention to escape). For the last week of July, sentries were visited and awakened with unheard-of frequency. Even the Commandant himself occasionally visited the different houses after dark. In the case of one house an extra sentry was suddenly posted in the garden.” The intention to escape was really known to the Turks from the moment the Changri men arrived at Yozgad. Moïse informed me at Constantinople that the tunnel at Changri had been discovered and reported after our departure from Yozgad. I believe the sudden activity which alarmed our friends in July was due to the expiry of our guarantee. Hill and I apologize for not making the period four months—we did our best!

47. The performance was so amusing that I repeated it at every possible opportunity on our 120-mile road journey to Angora, and the poor Pimple was in and out of his cart like a Jack-in-the-box. To his credit be it said that he succeeded in getting back most of the notes I distributed so lavishly, and he was perfectly honest in returning them to us in Constantinople.

48. From the point of view of the professional medium the slower methods have another advantage. Very little ground is covered at a single table-rapping séance, and at the end of the allotted hour the sitter has usually a number of questions he still wishes to put. So he is likely to come back for a second guinea’s worth.

49. I apologise to the inhabitants of Togoland for comparing their music (whatever it may be) to the abominable noises made by our sentries.

50. Before leaving Yozgad we had come to an arrangement with Price. If questioned he was to say that while digging in the garden at the spot mentioned above he had come on a tin with a false bottom, on opening which he found a gold lira and a circular piece of paper with curious hieroglyphics on it. The lira he had kept (we gave him one to produce), but he had lost the paper.

51. A type of nomenclature common amongst Turkish peasantry. “Hassan’s boy Ahmed” was a very incongruous name for a Pasha.

52. I gave the name of a well-known Scottish expert on nervous diseases—an old college friend of mine. It had the effect I desired. Whether they looked him up afterwards in some medical list or whether, as is more probable, they already knew of his writings and his reputation in the treatment of nervous diseases, I do not know. But some days later the chief doctor, Mazhar Osman Bey, tried to question me about “the Doctor Bey, M——, of Glasgow.” The “of Glasgow” showed me my friend was known to them, so assuming as cunning a look as I could, I denied ever having heard the name before. The Chief smiled to himself and went away.

53. A pamphlet of his (later, when I had become his favourite patient, he presented me with an autograph copy of it) was entitled,Spiritism Aleyhindé(Against Spiritualism). So far as I could understand it (it was written in very technical Turkish), he sought to prove that the proper abode for spiritualists is a private asylum, and the so-called “subconscious” replies to questions given in automatic writing, table-rapping, etc., and similar phenomena, are as much due to nervous derangement as are the conversations with spirits indulged in by sufferers from G.P.I. He challenged me to write a reply to his pamphlet from the spiritualist point of view. Perhaps this book will do instead.

54. On the strength of Mazhar Osman Bey’s suggestion to learn Turkish I promptly ordered “a hundred books on the Turkish language,” and gave nobody any rest until I was provided with one (at my own expense, of course). It was Hagopian’sConversation Grammar—a most excellent book. I had plenty of teachers—every patient in the hospital and most of the doctors were delighted to give me a lesson whenever I asked for one—and to the delight of Mazhar Osman Bey I made rapid strides in Turkish. Needless to say, a sane occupation of this sort was of the utmost value to me, and my only regret was that, as a madman, my study of this most interesting language had to be spasmodic and irregular. Still, I learned enough to become something of a “show patient,” and to gain from the Dutch Embassy at Constantinople, whose medical representatives visited us about July, the following quite unsolicited and rather amusing “testimonial.” It was sent as a “Report” by the Embassy, and reached my family through the India Office:—“Haidar Pasha Hospital.—We found here Lieut. Henry Elias Jones, Artillery Battery (volunteer). The 10 of May, 1918, he was sent down from Yozgad with mental disturbance. He was quite content and we had a long talk with him. He wants to be a Turk, and mistrusts all English, and will not take anything if it comes from his parents or from England. He wants a Turkish uniform and will settle down in Turkey. Intelligent as he is, he learnt Turkish with an astonishing good accent in an exceedingly short time. He will probably be sent back to England with the first exchange.”

“Haidar Pasha Hospital.—We found here Lieut. Henry Elias Jones, Artillery Battery (volunteer). The 10 of May, 1918, he was sent down from Yozgad with mental disturbance. He was quite content and we had a long talk with him. He wants to be a Turk, and mistrusts all English, and will not take anything if it comes from his parents or from England. He wants a Turkish uniform and will settle down in Turkey. Intelligent as he is, he learnt Turkish with an astonishing good accent in an exceedingly short time. He will probably be sent back to England with the first exchange.”

55. This referred to a large drawing of a monstrous machine which was placed in my (Jones’s) kit for the doctors to find. The machine was designed to flatten out capes, fill up bays, and uproot all islands, thereby straightening the coastline and making the sea safe for navigation. The power was to be derived from the weight of the Great Pyramid, which was to be removed from Egypt and placed on a raft 500 feet long. The raft would rise and fall with the motion of the waves, and operate an enormous knife which would cut away capes, islands, etc. One of the uses to which the machine was to be put was to slice under the island of Great Britain. We would then turn it over and start a new England on the other side!

56. Somewhere in Hill’s kit (I don’t know if the doctors ever saw it), was the following incoherent document, written in a very scrawly hand—“I, Elias Henry Jones, Master of Arts Assistant Commissioner in the Indian Civil Service Deputy Commissioner of Kyaukse District Upper Burma and Headquarters Assistant Moulmein Lieutenant Indian Army Reserve of Officers in the Volunteer Artillery Battery born at Aberystwyth and educated at Glasgow University and Balliol College Oxford CERTIFY and PROMISE by ALMIGHTY GOD that if you will assist me in my great scheme and do everything I require of you including draw and inventions of MACHINERY I certainly will be converted by you and give up all wickedness as you say as soon as my great scheme is finished and until then you must help me with designs and drawings and inventions of NECESSARY MACHINERY.“Signed E. H. JONES.”

56. Somewhere in Hill’s kit (I don’t know if the doctors ever saw it), was the following incoherent document, written in a very scrawly hand—

“I, Elias Henry Jones, Master of Arts Assistant Commissioner in the Indian Civil Service Deputy Commissioner of Kyaukse District Upper Burma and Headquarters Assistant Moulmein Lieutenant Indian Army Reserve of Officers in the Volunteer Artillery Battery born at Aberystwyth and educated at Glasgow University and Balliol College Oxford CERTIFY and PROMISE by ALMIGHTY GOD that if you will assist me in my great scheme and do everything I require of you including draw and inventions of MACHINERY I certainly will be converted by you and give up all wickedness as you say as soon as my great scheme is finished and until then you must help me with designs and drawings and inventions of NECESSARY MACHINERY.

“Signed E. H. JONES.”

57. I think our traps were on the whole more successful than those of the medical men. The most amusing, perhaps, was what we called “the chocolate test.” Chocolate at this time was practically unobtainable in Constantinople. Indeed, anything of that nature was immensely expensive. Now one of the junior doctors, who had a room in the hospital, had a sweet tooth. Hill and I had hoped for this, and had arranged the test before we entered the hospital.I let it be known in the mad ward that we had a large supply of “stores” in the depot. (We had saved them up from parcels which arrived during our starvation period at Yozgad.) This aroused great enthusiasm amongst the other patients, who suggested they should be brought up. They were fetched by Ibrahim, the good-natured attendant who happened to be on duty at the time. When the case arrived I pretended to change my mind. I refused to allow it to be opened, because for all we knew the stores might be poisoned. A malingering epileptic, to whom I had promised some tea, said the doctor could examine them for us and find out if they contained poison or not. This was what we wanted. One of the junior doctors was then brought in, and pretended to examine the stores. He declared them all fit for human consumption. With my customary lavish generosity (generosity was one of my symptoms), I started handing tins of tea, coffee, sugar, etc., to all the patients, keeping nothing for myself. (A pound of tea in those days cost a thousand piastres—about £9.) The doctor stopped this mad act, took charge of the stores, and said he would issue them to Hill and myself little by little. He took them to his private room upstairs.A week later, with the freedom of a lunatic, I burst into his room unannounced, and found him with his mouth full of our chocolate. He blushed, said he was “testing our chocolate for poison,” and asked me if I knew how many tins I had. I said I did not know at all. “You have two,” he said, looking relieved. (We really had ten, but he had already eaten eight, I suppose.) “And here they are.” He handed me two tins, assured me they were not poisoned, and told me to give one to Hill. He also gave me a little tea and a tin of condensed milk. That was all we ever saw of the stores. I pretended to forget about them, but used to make incursions into the private room to note the rate at which our junior doctor was getting through them. Hill and I were delighted at the success of our little plot, for we knew that this man at least would be anything but anxious to prove our sanity to his Chief, and as he was more often about the ward than any other doctor, the sacrifice was well worth while.I purposely do not give his name. In the main he was a good fellow enough, and in the half-starved state of Constantinople the temptation to which he was subjected was very severe, while he was very young. But I hope that, like a good Mohammedan, he thoroughly enjoyed the tins of “Pork and Beans,” and that he suffered no indigestion from the bacon.Later, when fresh parcels arrived, we tried the same trick with Chouaïe Bey, a new doctor whose attitude towards us we wanted to know. It failed utterly, I am glad to say, not because he suspected us, nor yet because his mouth did not water over the dainties, but because he was an exceedingly fine man in every way. It was only with immense difficulty that I got him to accept a tin of cocoa as a gift, and he insisted on repaying us by sending us delicacies from his private house. He was also the only doctor amongst them all who tried hard to induce me to send a note to my wife and relieve her anxiety by saying I was quite well. (I refused, because my wife knew this already.)We tricked Chouaïe Bey in another way—I had kept up the old pretence of knowing no French, and had the pleasure of listening with a wooden face while he described our diseases to a friend.

I let it be known in the mad ward that we had a large supply of “stores” in the depot. (We had saved them up from parcels which arrived during our starvation period at Yozgad.) This aroused great enthusiasm amongst the other patients, who suggested they should be brought up. They were fetched by Ibrahim, the good-natured attendant who happened to be on duty at the time. When the case arrived I pretended to change my mind. I refused to allow it to be opened, because for all we knew the stores might be poisoned. A malingering epileptic, to whom I had promised some tea, said the doctor could examine them for us and find out if they contained poison or not. This was what we wanted. One of the junior doctors was then brought in, and pretended to examine the stores. He declared them all fit for human consumption. With my customary lavish generosity (generosity was one of my symptoms), I started handing tins of tea, coffee, sugar, etc., to all the patients, keeping nothing for myself. (A pound of tea in those days cost a thousand piastres—about £9.) The doctor stopped this mad act, took charge of the stores, and said he would issue them to Hill and myself little by little. He took them to his private room upstairs.

A week later, with the freedom of a lunatic, I burst into his room unannounced, and found him with his mouth full of our chocolate. He blushed, said he was “testing our chocolate for poison,” and asked me if I knew how many tins I had. I said I did not know at all. “You have two,” he said, looking relieved. (We really had ten, but he had already eaten eight, I suppose.) “And here they are.” He handed me two tins, assured me they were not poisoned, and told me to give one to Hill. He also gave me a little tea and a tin of condensed milk. That was all we ever saw of the stores. I pretended to forget about them, but used to make incursions into the private room to note the rate at which our junior doctor was getting through them. Hill and I were delighted at the success of our little plot, for we knew that this man at least would be anything but anxious to prove our sanity to his Chief, and as he was more often about the ward than any other doctor, the sacrifice was well worth while.

I purposely do not give his name. In the main he was a good fellow enough, and in the half-starved state of Constantinople the temptation to which he was subjected was very severe, while he was very young. But I hope that, like a good Mohammedan, he thoroughly enjoyed the tins of “Pork and Beans,” and that he suffered no indigestion from the bacon.

Later, when fresh parcels arrived, we tried the same trick with Chouaïe Bey, a new doctor whose attitude towards us we wanted to know. It failed utterly, I am glad to say, not because he suspected us, nor yet because his mouth did not water over the dainties, but because he was an exceedingly fine man in every way. It was only with immense difficulty that I got him to accept a tin of cocoa as a gift, and he insisted on repaying us by sending us delicacies from his private house. He was also the only doctor amongst them all who tried hard to induce me to send a note to my wife and relieve her anxiety by saying I was quite well. (I refused, because my wife knew this already.)

We tricked Chouaïe Bey in another way—I had kept up the old pretence of knowing no French, and had the pleasure of listening with a wooden face while he described our diseases to a friend.

58. I learned at Haidar Pasha that Hill’s medical history was never sent to Gumush Suyu, nor did the Gumush Suyu doctors ask for it, although they knew Hill had been two months under Mazhar Osman Bey. Hill’s transfer was made in obedience to an administrative order from the Turkish War Office, without the knowledge or concurrence of our own doctors, who were off duty when the order arrived. I was sent to Gumush Suyu at the same time as Hill, and was subjected to similar treatment. (My temperature on admission was 103° due to influenza.) By dint of making a thorough nuisance of myself to everybody, I succeeded in getting myself sent back to Haidar Pasha after thirty-six hours of Gumush Suyu, but failed to get them to send Hill with me. The reason for sending me back was stated in a note from the head doctor which said that Gumush Suyu hospital had neither the trained staff nor the accommodation necessary for mental cases. It amounts to this: The bold experimenters at Gumush Suyu were quite ready to practise their prentice theories on Hill, who was harmless and passive under their treatment as befitted his malady, but they had no desire to try their tricks on a lunatic who was active and possibly dangerous, like myself. When I pretended to take a violent dislike to one of the doctors, and tried to buy a knife from the sentry, they thought discretion the better part of valour. This was the sole reason whyIwas a “case for specialists,” while Hill was not.

59. Colonel F.E. Baines, I.M.S., the British medical officer who saw Hill at Psamatia, at once put in a strong protest in writing about Hill’s condition and treatment. It stated that Hill was suffering from dysentery and acute melancholia, and that he was dying through neglect, and that he should be sent to England at once. It ended with the threat that if Hill did die, Colonel Baines would hold the Turkish Government responsible for his death, and do his best to bring the responsibility home. The letter was a gallant challenge to the Turks from a man who was himself a prisoner. It was, of course, a perfectlybona fideexpression of the Colonel’s professional opinion, and is a worthy example of the fearless way in which our medical men sought to do their duty. That Colonel Baines, too, was deceived is no reflection upon him. Another British doctor, also deceived, characterized Hill’s performance afterwards as “the most wonderful case of malingering he had ever heard of.”

60. The Embassy report was sent to my parents by the India Office in their letter M.35342 of October 30th, 1918, and is as follows:“14th August, Psamatia. We found removed to Psamatia 2nd Lieut. C. W. Hill, R.F.C., mentioned in our first report on Gumush Suyu Hospital. As he is not taking any food and his insanity growing worse every day, we advised to send him back to England instantly together with Lieut. Jones of Haidar Pasha Hospital or to put him under special treatment.”

60. The Embassy report was sent to my parents by the India Office in their letter M.35342 of October 30th, 1918, and is as follows:

“14th August, Psamatia. We found removed to Psamatia 2nd Lieut. C. W. Hill, R.F.C., mentioned in our first report on Gumush Suyu Hospital. As he is not taking any food and his insanity growing worse every day, we advised to send him back to England instantly together with Lieut. Jones of Haidar Pasha Hospital or to put him under special treatment.”

61. There were other portraits of Enver in the hospital, and when his Cabinet fell, about a month before the armistice, they were all taken down—except mine. On that occasion a Pasha—named, I think, Suliman Numan Pasha—came to the hospital, took down a life-size portrait of Enver, put his foot through it and danced on the fragments. His object was to try to dissociate himself from his former chief, and keep his job; but I believe he too “crashed.” Still, to me his object did not matter. How I secretly longed to join him in his dance!

62. A mistake. The charge on which we were convicted was “communication by telepathy.” See Major Gilchrist’s account of the trial, p. 107, Chapter X. There is nothing about “telepathy” in the Turkish Regulations.

63. The original sentence was “no walks.” Later the Commandant gave it out he would allow us only the regulation number of walks—one a week. Really, of course, we could have had as many as we pleased. We had three altogether, including the two treasure-hunts.

64. A mistake. The correct date is March 20th.

65. “School House” was another name for Posh Castle.

66. A mistake. The correct date is April 2nd.

67. The interview is described in Chapter XI., pp.111-114.

68. Compare Major Gilchrist’s pæan of praise, Chapter XI. at end, and Major Peel’s laudatory comment.

69. We thought the Colonel should have reported our imprisonment and the charge against us, in his monthly letter, whether he agreed with the Commandant or not.

70. By the Spook’s instructions. See Chapter XIX., p.201.

71. We left the house on April 22nd. The notice appears to have remained.

72. In Chapter XIX., p.207, the notice is quoted.

73. “Martyrs.” The camp was a bit wide of the mark, as usual.

74. This was also by the Spook’s orders.

75. Literally, “A red sow and six very small red porklings.”

76. During our air-raids on Constantinople, which usually took place at night, I used to spot the general direction of gun-flashes, etc. For the purpose of accurately marking down these anti-aircraft gun and mitrailleuse positions (in which I was fairly successful), and especially in the hope of locating a concealed munitions factory which several patients told me was hidden near “Katikeoy” (in which I failed), I frequently broke out of hospital. I usually got back without my absence being observed. Once I was nearly shot (by the sentry guarding a mitrailleuse concealed in the English cemetery on which I stumbled quite accidentally). Three times I was captured outside, twice by sentries and once by the gendarmerie. Once I escaped again from my captors, by diverting their attention with a tin of jam—I told them it was a bomb to bomb the English—on the other two occasions I was brought back to hospital, and each time used the same trick—raved and stormed, and said I must kill Baylay. On both these occasions the doctors drugged me, with trional and morphia, to quieten my nerves and put me to sleep. They ascribed my wanderings to my madness. So far as I know my real object was never suspected.

77. This knife for which I bellowed had a history which Nabi never tired of relating to me. According to him, H.M. King George V. had been the original owner. When our King was serving his country in the Navy, his ship came to Rhodes. A shoot was organized. Nabi was one of the beaters, and at the end of the day he asked that, instead of being paid, he should be given a memento of the occasion which he could keep. He got the knife—and I was perfectly safe in bellowing for it, because Nabi is so delightfully proud of the gift that he will never let it out of his possession.

78. Hill entered the bath at 3.30—five hours earlier.

79. It was a “Turkish” bath, but not well heated at this time because of the scarcity and high price of wood. It had, however, a glass roof, which helped to keep up the temperature.

80. A second of the three negatives was unfortunately lost by my friend, Captain Arthur Hickman, who was kindly bringing it back to England for me. This accounts for the fact that only one of the three photographs appears in this book.

81. The Pimple means twenty-six.

82. For the “ease” with which it was accomplished, see “450 Miles to Freedom.”

83. A mistake of the Pimple’s. At this time Colonel Maule was no longer senior officer of the camp.

84. A typically Turkish way of getting “demobbed.”

85. A quotation from the Spook. See Chapter XXIII., p.245.

86. The Pimple means a telepathic message.

87. Spook’s orders again!

88.I.e., Kiazim Bey.

89.I.e., the Spook. The Pimple writes thus obscurely because of the censorship.

90. See Chapter XIII., #p. 136#.

91.I.e., the “Ruler of the World” story.

92. A suggestion of the Spook’s.

93. From his perusal, as censor, of my private letters to England, Moïse believed I was in telepathic touch with mediums at home. It is an amusing fact that one of my home correspondents, believing me to be genuinely interested in spiritualism (of course the letters were written forMoïse’sbenefit), went to a medium and actually got a “message” about me. But the message referred to the very distant past, before I became a prisoner, and to a fact known to the sitter and several others. Had the medium been able to communicate my plan of escape to the sitter—a plan which must have interested all intelligent spooks—the money would have been well spent and I should certainly have believed in “telepathy.”

94.I.e., the Spook.

95. Kiazim was court-martialled by the Turks themselves. I do not know the result.

96. “The Sup.” was one of the Spook names for Kiazim Bey.

97. This was, of course, the photograph of the finding of the first clue, taken by Hill.

98. The incantation. The figure described is the author.

99. The Pimple, as a Spiritualist, has every right to believe the photograph was taken by OOO, but it would be interesting to know how he explained his belief to the Court.

100. Captain S.W. Miller, M.C., was a fellow-prisoner of war at Yozgad.

101. A typically spiritualistic view of an inconvenient truth.

102. Captain Forbes was one of the Kastamouni Incorrigibles. His version of the story appeared in theGlasgow Sunday Post. According to him the Spooks who guided Kiazim were those of “Napoleon” and “Osman the Conqueror.” As a matter of fact, “Napoleon” was on the side of OOO.

103. We promised in the train (on the way to hospital) that we would meet the Pimple again in Egypt so that he might become the “Ruler of the World.” (Chapter XXVI., p.284.)

104. “Those questions,”i.e., spiritualism.

Transcriber’s NoteErrors in the text have been corrected where they can be reasonably attributed to the printer or editor, or where the same word appears as expected elsewhere.The original text has unpaired double quotation marks which could not be corrected with any confidence.There are multiple references to footnotes 4 (p.36), 24 (p.140), 92 (p.341), and 96 (p.342).Corrections made to the text appear underlined ascorrectedtext.The original text appears when the mouse hovers on the underlined word or phrase.The details of each correction are noted below.p. 31as if there’s nothing[’/”]Corrected.p. 36under one name or another, pumped[,] the sitterRemoved.was the [usuall ittle/usual little] throng of spectatorsCorrected.p. 50could spot your style,[’/”]Corrected.p. 66Any fresh mud or dampness on the revolver du[e]Restored.p. 67the banisters, with [e]very appearance of weakness.Restored.p. 69ground would hav[e] to be covered at nightRestored.p. 76hands with their delicate [taper] fingersSic.p. 81and I know it’s not that grub.[”]Added.p. 160—Lieut. Spink.[’]”Added.p. 192must be “[wropped] in mystery.”Sic.p. 206our main points simultaneously[.]Added.p. 210just read something about it.[”]Added.p. 227Please protect us[,/.] The Commandant isCorrected.p. 228[“]Your obedient servants,Added.p. 231and I noticed Captain Su[bh/hb]i FahriTransposed.p. 237several British officers here know a little Turkish.[”]Added.p. 265clear recollections of [unnamable] torturesSic.p. 290paratyp[l/h]oid, dysentery,” I said.Corrected.p. 308mor[d/n]ing following the Board MeetingCorrected.

Transcriber’s Note

Errors in the text have been corrected where they can be reasonably attributed to the printer or editor, or where the same word appears as expected elsewhere.

The original text has unpaired double quotation marks which could not be corrected with any confidence.

There are multiple references to footnotes 4 (p.36), 24 (p.140), 92 (p.341), and 96 (p.342).

Corrections made to the text appear underlined ascorrectedtext.The original text appears when the mouse hovers on the underlined word or phrase.The details of each correction are noted below.

p. 31as if there’s nothing[’/”]Corrected.p. 36under one name or another, pumped[,] the sitterRemoved.was the [usuall ittle/usual little] throng of spectatorsCorrected.p. 50could spot your style,[’/”]Corrected.p. 66Any fresh mud or dampness on the revolver du[e]Restored.p. 67the banisters, with [e]very appearance of weakness.Restored.p. 69ground would hav[e] to be covered at nightRestored.p. 76hands with their delicate [taper] fingersSic.p. 81and I know it’s not that grub.[”]Added.p. 160—Lieut. Spink.[’]”Added.p. 192must be “[wropped] in mystery.”Sic.p. 206our main points simultaneously[.]Added.p. 210just read something about it.[”]Added.p. 227Please protect us[,/.] The Commandant isCorrected.p. 228[“]Your obedient servants,Added.p. 231and I noticed Captain Su[bh/hb]i FahriTransposed.p. 237several British officers here know a little Turkish.[”]Added.p. 265clear recollections of [unnamable] torturesSic.p. 290paratyp[l/h]oid, dysentery,” I said.Corrected.p. 308mor[d/n]ing following the Board MeetingCorrected.

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