A Prisoner in Turkey Part 3

Why do these people hate the Armenians so much?

I think it is partly because the Armenian is usually a successful merchant, outcla.s.sing the Turk in commerce, competing on more than equal terms with the Greek, and at least rivalling the Jew. But it is chiefly because the Armenian race has been ground under the heel of a people naturally their inferiors for so many centuries. It is a survival of the fittest, and it is the Turks who have made the conditions which the survivors have had to fit. The whole race has been moulded by the hand of the Turk. For centuries he has slain all those who displayed the more manly virtues. He has been like a breeder of sheep who hated black sheep but feared white. For centuries he has slain the white but contemptuously allowed many of the black to survive. Unconsciously he has been a selective breeder on a very large scale; and he has bred the modern Armenian. If we ourselves, we British who are so proud, had pa.s.sed through those dark centuries with the Armenians, we too would be like they are, or not much otherwise. If the Armenians are protected; allowed to be successful and to enjoy their success themselves; allowed to be independent and not suffer for their independence; allowed to be brave and not to die for their courage; allowed, in a word, fair play, they will grow into a fine people.

When the great ma.s.sacres took place there was, among the Armenians, one strange exception to the universal peril. Most Armenians belong to the Armenian Church, but a certain number of them are Roman Catholics. I do not know what happened elsewhere, but in Angora the Roman Catholic Armenians were not killed, or deported, which is the same as being killed only slower. They were not well-treated, but they did survive.

It is a very remarkable thing to find the power of Rome exerted in so wonderful a way in a Mohammedan country. And were this the only example of it one would be inclined to attribute the influence to some local predilection. But there are two other instances. One was a division of the prisoners, French and British, by which the Roman Catholics were sent to a camp where there was at that time considerably more liberty.

The other was quite extraordinary: it was the repatriation of a British officer who happened to be the nephew of a cardinal. We did not grudge him his good luck. He stole no march on us. But it certainly was a most wonderful piece of fortune for him. He was not ill or injured, and he was not exchanged, but simply repatriated. He gave his parole, and that was all.

In contrast to the present-day power of the Pope in Turkey it is interesting to remember that a large percentage of the Jews who are subjects of the Ottoman are the descendants of Spanish Jews who fled into the Sultan's dominions to escape from the Spanish Inquisition. Many of them still speak Spanish. They are not often ill-treated by the Turks, I believe, though how they manage to avoid it is a miracle.

We reached Angora long after dark and were met by a Bimbashi who conveyed us in carriages to our new quarters. The men marched, but to the same destination, and it was after our arrival there that we were able for the first time to talk with them freely. This was seventeen days after capture.

We drove through the squalid streets of a corner of the town, and out about a mile into the country. I think we all shuddered as we drew near a large barrack and remembered Taxim, and breathed more freely when we had left it behind. Our destination was not a particularly sweet place, but it was better than that.

We crossed a bridge, pa.s.sed a mulberry plantation, and the carriages halted at the foot of a slope leading up to a group of buildings surrounded by a high wall. A small, low, iron-studded door, guarded by a sentry with a fixed bayonet, was opened. We stooped through it, walked beneath an arched gateway, and came out in a paved courtyard surrounded by buildings black against the starry sky. As we came in heads popped out of the windows, and we heard people speaking in French. That sounded civilized at any rate. Have you who read this ever considered what the word "civilized" means? It means a good deal when you are in the middle of Anatolia. Through a door to the left and up a flight of steps we went, and at the top we were met by three French naval officers, headed by Commander Fabre, who welcomed us so courteously and kindly that my heart warms to think of it to the present day.

Everything that a fellow-prisoner could do they had done. And when the Turks had gone and the gate was locked once more, we sat down with them to an excellent meal.

Our friends were the officers and crew of the submarine "Mariotte," sunk in the Dardanelles rather more than a month before. Two of the officers spoke English fluently, and the third was a dogged striver who had mastered a great deal of our language before the end of the war.

From them we learned what this strange building was. It was called the w.a.n.k (p.r.o.nounced Wonk) and was an Armenian monastery, half farm, half stronghold. What had happened to the monks they did not know, save that they had been turned out. As a matter of fact they were dead. Very nearly everything they had had been moved by the Turks, looted by officials and officers, but we came into joint possession with the French of a few beds; enough for the officers, the men were not allowed beds; a divan round three sides of a fairly comfortable room, a shower-bath, and some framed photographs of various high dignitaries of the Armenian Church. There were also lamps and a stove. This was a very great advance on any home we had yet had in Turkey; for, although a European housekeeper would have been disgusted at the vermin, they were not sufficiently numerous to keep one awake all night.

We found, too, that the French had managed to establish the custom of taking in a newspaper, "The Hilal," a German edited, Levantine rag, which did, at any rate, publish the German _communiques_. So we began once more to look upon the war and the outside world through that dim gla.s.s which was our only window. Later on we had various other means, but not up till then.

In addition to the large central sitting-room, where four of us had to sleep, there were three small bedrooms on the same floor, also a kitchen, a latrine, and a tiny paved room where the shower-bath hung.

This was an amateur one made out of a kerosine oil tin, and its existence argued virtue in one Armenian at least. The Turks had not stolen it. It was of no use to them.

Derrick and I, who had been taken together, were now in a mess of eleven persons, quite a sizeable community. We began to wake up and make plans to learn French and to teach English; but that night we slept like logs.

CHAPTER IV

THE w.a.n.k

We had now a breathing s.p.a.ce. We had reached the place where the Turks meant to keep us, and though we had yet to learn that Turks never continue to follow the same policy for very long, we now had time to settle in as comfortably as circ.u.mstances permitted.

Our s.p.a.ce was strictly circ.u.mscribed. There was the series of rooms already described as belonging to the officers, and there was the paved courtyard, perhaps thirty yards square. This was common to the officers and about 150 N.C.O.'s and men. Officers were not allowed to visit the men's dormitories. On the east side of the courtyard was a church, locked up and sealed. Through its windows we could see that a quant.i.ty of books were stored there. On the north were further monastic buildings in two stories. We were not allowed upstairs, but the men were allowed the use of a kitchen on the ground floor. The western side consisted of a few sheds and a high wall, and the southern side held all the rooms occupied both by officers and men. These were all two-storied buildings.

The w.a.n.k being built on a hill-side with the ground falling away to the south, the officers' quarters got no sunshine, for their only window which looked in that direction was in the landing at the head of the stairs. From there we could see the town of Angora covering its steep hill, and crowned by a great rambling castle. Below the southern window there was a second courtyard, into which a wide gate opened, which was apparently used as a pen for the monastic flocks at night; and below that again was a third yard, probably used as a pound for their cattle.

The whole group of buildings and yards was surrounded by a high wall.

One very marked feature of the w.a.n.k was its awful smell. In Turkey there are drains, but they are perhaps worse than none at all. I shall not attempt to describe this disgusting feature of all the houses in Asia Minor I have ever been in, further than to mention that the cesspool is invariably buried underneath the house itself, preferably beneath the kitchen floor. It is, as a rule, ill-made of rough stone masonry.

Further comment is unnecessary.

There were several curious relics of antiquity in the courtyard we frequented: a Greek inscription on one of the stones of the pavement; the carven tombs of several abbots, with mitres on their heads and croziers in their hands; and a very large stone head of a man or a G.o.d with thick, curly hair and a beard. It might have been a head of Jupiter, and probably came from one of the old Roman temples of Angora; unless, as is not improbable, the w.a.n.k itself stood upon the site of some more ancient religious foundation. The buildings we lived in were less than a century old, but the church appeared to be very much older.

The men had little to complain of while they were here. Their food was not particularly good, but it was not inadequate for men who could get no exercise. The only ill-treatment they had received was being robbed of their boots while on the peninsula, and they now appeared in every form of Turkish footgear, from rough army boots to thin slippers. When they began to travel again those were lucky who had boots.

The Turkish Government fed the men, but the officers were supposed to cater for themselves. One of the French officers who had already picked up a few words of Turkish acted as mess secretary, and a chaous, or Turkish sergeant, used to make purchases in the town for us. We had orderlies to cook and clean up.

Things were extraordinarily cheap then. The war had not yet affected country places like Angora, and paper money had not yet come into circulation. When it did so, gold and silver first, and copper and nickel next disappeared entirely from the shops and bazaars; and before I left Turkey a golden pound would purchase six paper pounds, while the exchange for silver was little lower. But at first things were cheap, and we managed quite well on our four shillings a day.

Some explanation of the system of supporting officer prisoners is necessary. The British Government refused to pay Turkish officer prisoners at the rate of pay given to equivalent British ranks. This was the old convention, but it could not be carried out with a country like Turkey, where the rates of pay were so much lower than ours. So Turkish officer prisoners were given 4_s._ a day for subalterns and captains, while field officers got 4_s._ 6_d._ But, in addition to this, Turkish prisoners were catered for at wholesale contract rates, were given firing, light, beds and bedding, as well as all necessary furniture.

They were, for prisoners, exceedingly well off. I know this for a fact, for on my release I went over the P. of W. camp near Alexandria and saw their arrangements. The Turkish followed suit in refusing to give us the Turkish pay of our equivalent ranks, subst.i.tuting for it the same rates as were given by the British, viz., 4_s._ 6_d._ and 4_s._ a day. But they did not give us any of the other necessaries of life. While in the w.a.n.k, it is true, we made use of the Armenian furniture, but that was for a very short time; and elsewhere in Turkey, for the next three years, British officer prisoners had to make or purchase every single thing they required--beds, tables, chairs, blankets, firewood, lamps, oil; everything. My share of fuel alone for the last winter in Turkey cost me Tq.40 in a mess of twelve. Very, very rarely we got Government issues of raisins, sugar, and soap at Government rates. Sometimes we got bread at Government prices, and occasionally firewood. But the general rule was that we fended for ourselves on our four bob, and competed in the open market. Had it not been for the help extended to us by the protecting Amba.s.sador--first American and later Dutch--things would have gone very hard with us. As I mentioned a page or two back, the metal money disappeared and paper sank to one-sixth of its face-value. At the same time, prices soared to such a pitch that, at the end, a suit of clothes cost Tq.100 (the Turkish sovereign is nominally worth about 18_s._ 6_d._), a pair of boots cost Tq.40, a quilt cost Tq.15, tea about Tq.16 per lb., and everything else in like proportion. But our income remained unaltered in nominal value. For the first three months we were paid in gold, and thereafter in paper. And at the end of the war we were receiving the same number of pounds _per mensem_ in paper as we had received at the beginning in gold. It follows that a deduction of four shillings a day made in England by the paymaster produced for us a sum of four shillings a day divided by a factor which gradually rose to be six. One-sixth of four shillings is 8_d._ It was fortunate for us that our Government and the protecting Emba.s.sies realized the position.

Even as it is, the loss has been not inconsiderable.

This excursion into the realms of finance is not meant as a complaint, but it seemed to me necessary to explain how we managed things.

For the first few weeks in the w.a.n.k we had no further glimpse of the outside world. In Angora one night there were a number of shots fired, and the next day two or three people were buried in the graveyard outside the walls. That is about the only event I can remember. Probably it was the aftermath of the ma.s.sacres. The Turkish officer in charge of us used to come nearly every day. He had been a prisoner himself once, in Russia, for he had taken part in the famous defence of Plevna about thirty-six years before. He was of the old school, and found it rather hard to understand why prisoners taken in a holy war should be kept alive at all. Certainly he failed to understand that they had any further rights or privileges. He was irksome to deal with, and abominably pigheaded, also he swindled us, but I don't think he disliked us personally. His extraordinary and characteristically Turkish denseness of perception was his worst fault, and he was a great deal pleasanter than the slimy rogue who succeeded him. His att.i.tude was simply this: "What! the prisoner demands something! d.a.m.n the prisoner, he is lucky to be alive! If I feel like being kind, I will." And he not infrequently was kind. But with an omnipotent person of this kind in charge of one, possessing life only, it takes some time and much friction to gain a few privileges to make that life worth having.

The old fellow had a fad of teaching us Turkish at one time. He used to call us into the room with the settees round it, sit down at a table, and begin to exchange languages with us. As we knew nothing of his, and he nothing of ours, while there was no common tongue to bridge with, this was slow work. "Ben," he would shout, and prod his chest with his finger. "Ben," we would all reply, and point at him. Then he would go off into something infinitely complex, shouting louder than ever, and by the end of the lesson we would have learnt, not that his personal name was Benjamin, but that "Ben" is the Turkish personal p.r.o.noun, first person singular. But these lessons did not endure for long. We all got sick of them.

I have racked my brains to think what else we did in those dull weeks, but almost in vain. The gramophone records in my convolutions were so badly scratched that I can hardly decipher a line of them. Chess I remember, for Fabre and I used to play most evenings, and we taught some of the others. I remember reading the paper to the men in the yard. I also remember two awful rows, things inevitable among prisoners, one English and one French. The English row was personal and particular, it culminated in a friendship that will endure. The French row was political, about Caillaux, and they talked so fast that there was a distinctly visible rainbow round the two princ.i.p.als. It did not culminate at all.

Those few things, and stinks, are actually all that I can call to mind.

How wonderful a siren is memory! As a boy at Winchester I suffered untold pangs. This much is an intellectual conviction to me. Yet it is all set in a golden haze of distance, and there are few pleasures I prize more than to return there. And if I have a son he shall go there, where his father, and my father, and his father and grandfather went.

And he will suffer the same pains that they all suffered, and will remember as little of them as I do and they did. To-day is the 15th of April, 1919, and already memory has weeded out the pains of that dolorous year, 1915, to a very great extent. In course of time, in second or third childhood, I shall look back to Angora with tears of joy, and wonder why I did not settle there.

But things did begin to happen at last, and the first of them was that we obtained the privilege of promenading for an hour in the afternoon along the bank of the little stream that flowed in the bottom of the valley. There were willow trees there, and we used to peel their branches and make walking sticks carved with snakes, regimental badges, and other rivalries to Grinling Gibbons.

We used to watch the ants, too, and I regret to say that we used to feed them to the ant lions. Fabre was a notable athlete, a Hercules in miniature, and he used to run and jump. But all the time sentries stood round, armed to the teeth, and we were not really free. How the w.a.n.k did smell when we got back!

Then something really important occurred, for a new Army Corps Commander came to Angora, and he was a gentleman. His name was Chukri Bey, and I remember it as that of a man of honour. He was an Arab, not a Turk.

The first time he came it was in state, and he made a personal inspection of that awful drain and gave orders to abate the nuisance.

The second time he came it was alone on a surprise visit. Again he made a personal inspection, and great was his wrath that nothing had been done.

After this we got much more liberty and better treatment all round, but that I will describe later.

And soon after this another important thing happened, for some more prisoners arrived, six officers among them. They were established higher up on the hill-side, in a temporarily disused agricultural college; and after a few days we met.

Rather an amusing incident occurred on their journey up, which I am sure they will forgive my repeating. They had been kept separate in Constantinople, the three naval officers in an underground dungeon, and the three military officers elsewhere. The first time they were brought together was in the train; and evidently the Turkish authorities expected them to unburden themselves to each other. Fortunately, they were too wise. Among their escort was the one-eyed ruffian I have already described, and their interpreter was a guileless youth who spoke French fluently but not a word of English. To wile away the time, they proceeded to teach this youth English verses, which he repeated after them. By considerable endeavour he became word perfect in a rhyme all about a ruddy sparrow and a ruddy spout together with the sparrow's adventures therein. Reasonably ribald people will perhaps recognize the schoolboy doggerel. All this the interpreter faithfully recited, and they told him it was one of the best known works of the famous William Shakespeare. When they were safely housed in their new quarters the interpreter came to see us, and he spoke the most perfect English! He had been planted on them as a listener. It is hard justly to apportion the honours. But I think that interpreter should have a future on the stage.

It was not long after this that we lost two of the French officers. The Turkish Government used, about twice a month, to make laborious lists of us, and presumably to lose them again. In these were entered our names, our father's names, our birthplaces, our religions, and some dozen other useless details. It was a slow business, and the transliteration of English names into Turkish script was not always quite satisfactory as will be conceded when I mention that a French speaking Turkish doctor once transfigured my name into TCHARLISTRI. But in it all there was some idea which we had not grasped; for suddenly they informed us that all Roman Catholics were to be transferred to a place called Afion-Kara-Hissar, a place stated to be more desirable than Angora. One of the French officers was a Protestant, but he was torn ruthlessly from the bosoms of the others, and the R.C.'s were dispatched to Afion. We were very sorry to lose them, and the unfortunate Protestant was exceedingly miserable at having to stop behind.

A few days later all the Protestant non-commissioned officers and men were ordered off to a place two days' march over hills to the north, Changri by name. Many of them had only thin slippers to walk in, and their bad times began from then, poor fellows. Their bones lie along the highways of Asia Minor, where they built roads and tunnels for their captors, yoked in a slavery as complete as any could be.

We could do nothing at all to help. We gave them what we could to set them forth, and never saw most of them again.

At the last moment, just when they were starting, it was discovered that they were two short. They had been counted wrongly. Turks find it hard to count beyond the number of their fingers and toes which number is the same as with human beings. This was a horrible dilemma. Red tape demanded _x_ men, and the officer in charge could only produce _x_-2.

But even as a ram in a thicket was sent to Abraham when about to sacrifice Isaac, so did the G.o.d of Anatolia provide even for this emergency. At this time two sick French sailors returned from hospital.

They were only just convalescent: they were Roman Catholics; they were expected at Afion-Kara-Hissar. But all this was of no avail, and the poor protesting fellows were sent off with our poor British.

After they had departed the w.a.n.k seemed empty and lonely. We now explored it through and through, but found nothing of interest. The trees were changing their colour; the evenings drew in and grew cold. We became acutely aware that on this upland, winter would be very severe, perhaps terrible. Firewood became a problem, and, to feed the stove, we began to pull pieces off the more easily detachable parts of the w.a.n.k. It had to be done quietly, and long planks had to be dodged past the sentries; but we managed to have fires.