A Prisoner in Turkey Part 7

But it was not so easy to see how he was to be got rid of while the bag was removed. Bart was prepared to remove it rapidly inside a folding deck-chair, but he wanted an opportunity to grab it unawares. The sacred potatoes gave the key to the solution. I fetched Gumush, the greyhound, on a lead, and the perverse creature ran all over the cherished potatoes. As all the guards were co-partners in the garden, they all rushed to prevent the trespa.s.s; and the deed was done. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, that pack was safe in the church and its contents distributed. The sentry recovered his head, gave one look at the tomb, and made tracks for the Commandant's office. But we heard of it no more. The trap had failed, and the bait was gone.

I have mentioned the noise in the church, and it is only fair to tell of the music, real soul-stirring music. It was not made by the English; with a few exceptions they were not a musical lot as far as performance went. But the Russian sailors had a choir, and they sang like angels. It must have made the angels painted on the ceiling envious to hear them.

Their music was of a kind quite distinct from Western European music.

Very sad and melancholy as a rule, in a minor key. Generally about eight of them would sing together, taking parts, but sometimes they would all join in, as when they held a sort of funeral service the night after their friend had died of typhus. And very few indeed of them could not sing. It used to put our own caterwauling concerts to utter shame. Most of them were simple, rather rough men; and though we knew them all as Russians in those pre-revolution days, I believe they really belonged to half a dozen different tribes; Cossacks, Ukrainians, Georgians, and Poles. But they could all sing. They sang the thing they called the Pan-Slav hymn. It is the forbidden national anthem of Poland, proscribed, before the war, in Russia, Austria, and Germany; and with equal fervour they sang the grand national anthem of Russia. "G.o.d Save the King" they sang, too, and made it sound magnificent. But for the most part they sang folk-songs. The song we liked the best was a beautiful Cossack lullaby. A fellow-prisoner has kindly written it out for me, and it is printed at the end of this chapter. The words given are some I wrote for it while in the church.

The singing of the Russians was the best thing there was in that church.

There were several Indians in Afion at that time, survivors of the Bagdad consular guard; and while we were in the church the last, or one of the last, died. When war broke out there was a guard of two Indian officers and about four-and-thirty soldiers attached to the Consulate.

They were interned by the Turks. When disarmed they had all their kit complete, and they were in perfect physical condition. They were not half-famished when captured, like the garrison of Kut. They were not taken near the fighting line, where feelings ran high, as the rest of us were; on the contrary, the fighting line was hundreds of miles from them. But before the war ended every single one of those men was dead.

They died of cold, calculated ill-treatment, starvation, and over-marching.

As I tell this tale, as I thread this rosary of months and years, there runs throughout a strand of the blackest tragedy, and it will come out, do what I can.

I am trying to put in all the funny things that happened, too, for there are things too sad to be serious about. But the tragedy is there, and it must be seen.

Still, it is a bad note to end a chapter on. As a crowd we were not downhearted, so I will pa.s.s to the tale of the frightened sailor man.

There was a certain sailor man who had heard strange tales about the Turks on his journeys round the world. He had heard how they bastinado men for small faults, and he had probably seen it, too; for at the time of which I write he was a captive in Turkey. In course of time, it happened that this sailor man, who was not a highly-educated person, was smitten with disease, as people in Turkey very often are. And, being at that time in a city, he was sent to a hospital. Now he did not know that typhus rages in the hospitals of the Turks, nor is it probable that he knew that this disease is conveyed by the bite of lice. If he had known this he would perhaps have been even more frightened than he actually was, and with far better cause. One thing is quite certain, and that is that he did not know that all persons admitted to Turkish hospitals are clean-shaved all over. But he bore in mind many horrible stories, most of which were true, and, when a hospital orderly approached him with a razor in his hand, the sailor man's mind was invaded by the most terrible fear, for he had heard dreadful tales of the mutilations that Turks were said to practise upon their enemies. So he cried aloud with a great voice that it should not be done. And as for the explanations of the man with the razor, he heeded them not at all, for he knew no Turkish. Sooner would he die all at once, he cried, than be done to death piecemeal. And his cry was heard, for he prepared to fight, and the man with the razor did not want to fight him, nor did the doctor, nor did the a.s.sistant doctor. So in the end they sent to us for his own officer, who soothed his troubled mind until he allowed himself to be shaved.

THE RUSSIAN LULLABY

Shadows come a' creeping; Little stars are peeping; Church bells distantly sound.

Lie still, my babe, in your cot gently sleeping, Dreaming while the world spins round.

Dream of your mother, her watch gladly keeping, Smiling while the world spins round.

Through the curtains gleaming, Moonlight comes a' beaming; Hush! My Baby, we're found.

Deep in the night the old moon sees you dreaming, Sleeping while the world spins round.

Bright kind old face, like a sentinel seeming, Smiling while the world spins round.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Russian Lullaby]

CHAPTER IX

The Lower Camp

Towards the latter end of May the great "strafe" ended. The Turks informed us that our punishment was fulfilled, and that we were to return to normal times again. For several days the senior officers of the different nationalities were very busy examining our new quarters and arranging matters generally, and then we began to move by ma.s.ses out of the church. The French went first, to an Armenian house in the town.

Soon afterwards the Russians followed to other houses in the same part of the Armenian quarter. And then the British officers, of whom there were now about forty, moved into a completely new block of jerry-built houses down by the station road. So new were the houses that the one I was in had no doors or windows when we went into it, and was not really completed the whole time we were there.

This block of four houses was known as the Lower Camp, for the Armenian quarter, or Upper Camp, was on higher ground and about a mile distant from it.

The Lower Camp consisted of a row of four houses under one continuous roof. Each house contained a kitchen and two rooms on the ground floor, as well as an open s.p.a.ce in the centre, and three bedrooms upstairs, grouped round a central landing which served as a mess-room. The orderlies lived downstairs, and the officers upstairs, two in one small room at the back, and four in each of the two larger rooms in front.

Behind the houses was an open s.p.a.ce, of rather over a quarter of an acre in extent, bounded by the backs of the houses on one side and by walls on the other three. This was known as the garden; for, when first we got there, it contained a couple of dozen cherry-trees about as big as walking-sticks. But these did not long survive, for a quarter of an acre is not a large playground for forty active officers and a dozen equally active orderlies, to say nothing of dogs and Turkish guards.

From the upper rooms we had wide views in both directions, out across the plain and far away into the distant hills. The front faced approximately south-east, and thirty miles away we could see the fine range of mountains known as the Sultan Dagh, capped with snow until far on into the summer. From the back windows we could see the Kara-Hissar, and a number of other rocky hills, like islands in the plain; and, in the distance, rolling hills and mountains one behind another. A good deal of the plain visible between the rocks was saline, and in early summer was blue with ma.s.ses of a wild flower we knew as sea lavender.

It was really a beautiful view, especially in the spring, when the land was not so colourless as at other times. The soil of the plain was very soft and friable, and much dust used to hang in suspension, giving very vivid colours to the sunsets; sunsets of golden pheasants and peac.o.c.ks'

tails, and sunsets of red-hot copper. I have seen every shadow on the wall in the evening as blue as the bluest sea.

In the late summer great dust-storms used to roll up across the plain.

We could see them gather on the distant hills, and come speeding towards us like banks of fog. And, as we hurriedly closed all the windows and fixed them tight, the storms would break upon the rocks, towering up high into the air in waves of brown, while the main body drove furiously towards us and lashed at the windows. A high wind would blow furiously for a few minutes, and then the storm would pa.s.s on across the plain, and rain would sprinkle the dust.

Some day that plain will be a great natural aerodrome, where people will halt on their way from Europe to the Far East.

The inhabitants of the house I was in, No. 3, were practically the same as in the house by the city wall in Angora. No. 1 was princ.i.p.ally Mesopotamian, No. 2 chiefly the old Afion crowd, and No. 4 largely composed of the second Angora house. During the next two and a-half years many new prisoners came, and the old inhabitants had periodical times of restlessness when they shifted round, but the nuclei of the houses remained more or less constant, and the characteristic tone of each house remained practically unalterable. It is a very curious thing this tone or soul of each small subdivision of a community. I suppose every home in England has its own personal tone. Certainly each house in a public school has. Each ship has, and each regiment; and, in a larger way, each nation has, and will retain it despite Bolshevism.

We had not long been in the Lower Camp when new prisoners began to arrive. I cannot pretend to remember the order of their coming, for I kept no diary and have not a single note to help me; it does not, in any case, matter.

The yeomanry taken at Katia in the Sinai peninsula pa.s.sed through on their way to a town in the north of Anatolia. We only had a glimpse of them as they pa.s.sed; but we were able to supply them with a few books.

Other prisoners came in who stayed with us. The earliest to arrive were a very few who had been taken, one or two at a time, in the attempt to relieve Kut. One of these had been kept for several days in a small tent with a number of Arabs condemned to death. The Arabs were not allowed out of the tent for any purpose whatever.

Another had been chained to an Indian, and had dysentery while so chained. He and the Indian both got typhus, and the Indian died. After weeks in hospital the Britisher pulled through typhus, malignant malaria, and chronic rheumatism. He is now pulling through phthisis.

Before that he had had sunstroke, and he was shot through the chest; not a bad record for a const.i.tution to have pulled through.

Another British officer had been housed in the public gaol at Mosul, among the Turkish criminals, whose habits were so filthy that he asked to be allowed a privy to himself. His request was met by an order calculated to humiliate a clean Englishman in the eyes of the people of Mosul; for, after that, he was taken out each day by an armed guard and graciously permitted to make use of the street in the open bazaar. As I said before, Turks are a disgusting people.

Gradually, as more prisoners arrived, we overflowed into the Upper Camp.

The Russians were sent away to another part of Anatolia, and their houses given over to British.

One other visit we had, from a German Staff-Colonel and several subordinates. "When will the war end?" we asked the great man. "When we have taken Verdun," was his reply.

We had not much liberty at this time. A certain number of officers were allowed to go shopping on several days in the week. A piece of rocky ground was a.s.signed to us to play cricket on. Each officer was allowed to go to the Turkish bath once a week. And once a week the camps visited each other.

For the rest, we had the garden, and the Upper Camp had a part of the street between their houses.

The chief game in the garden was a sort of badminton, played over a net with tennis rackets and b.a.l.l.s made of st.i.tched-up lumps of old sock. It went by the name of Bufru, coined by a cunning forger of Turkish.

But indoors there were many activities, both mental and physical. I should be afraid to say how many people wrote books. But the number of those who wrote plays must have been even greater. Some of them were very well produced. Several officers, notably one of the Australians, showed themselves to be quite expert designers of costumes, and most efficient needlemen. And some of the youngsters made very pretty women.

The art of the female s.e.x, in dressing as they do, was borne in upon me when I saw how quite plain young men could be made to look most attractive girls. +A+ for a day, +B+ for a week, and +C+ for a life partnership, as someone wickedly compared the attractions of the three leading ladies. Some of the plays were very funny indeed, but the wit was not of that order which makes you pride yourself that you can see it. As a rule, it flew up and struck you all of a heap.

Another trial of the times was the debating society, in which all things on earth were discussed in due form, with a chairman, a proposer and seconder, an opposer and his second, a b.u.t.ter-in, and a ribald gallery.

For days afterwards I used to hear the points argued and re-debated by the orderlies in the kitchen beneath my room. And two of the officers took themselves as future Public Men so seriously that they used to practise elocution on each other, each in turn suffering himself to be addressed by the other as "Gentlemen."

There were lectures, too, some of them very good ones. The subjects dealt with were catholic and included cocoanut-planting, Mendelism, flying, submarines, Singhalese history, Greek coins, Egyptian irrigation, and a host of other matters.

Besides these public efforts, there were men studying all manner of things in little cliques, or by themselves. One officer who knew no Arabic tapped Zaki to such good purpose that he (not Zaki) wrote an Arabic grammar. One old Australian of fifty, who had always lived, and would continue to live, in the back of beyond, studied simultaneously French, Norwegian, and Esperanto. There were teachers of mathematics, teachers of German, Tamil, Italian, Turkish and Russian. There were people teaching themselves to draw, or to play musical instruments.

There were people studying law and medicine. I am sure that, at that time, we were the greatest centre of intellectual endeavour in the whole of the Turkish Empire.

In addition to the more purely intellectual occupations there were a number of really skilled carpenters, an officer who made himself an excellent little forge, where he turned out some very clever work, after having first manufactured the needful tools out of sc.r.a.p steel; among them I remember a pocket-knife with various implements in it, and a stethoscope. The latter was for Bill.

Then there were cunning adorners of rooms, and still more cunning mixers of c.o.c.ktails, in which a number of nauseous ingredients was made to taste good, as two negatives make an affirmative.