Eastern Nights - and Flights Part 13

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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.s.sa.s.sinated, 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 G.o.ds 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 a.s.syrians, 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 work _pour pa.s.ser 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 pa.s.s 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 ma.s.sacres 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 to _arak_, 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 eyegla.s.s.

"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, the _arak_ bottle pa.s.sed 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, "is _vertige_. Melancholia and loss of memory and nervous breakdown and all that'll be helpful, but play up _vertige_ for 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 b.e.s.t.i.a.l 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 pa.s.s 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 preeminently 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 acharnes_," he a.s.sured 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 through _baksheesh_, 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 pa.s.sed 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 from _vertige_, from periods of utter forgetfulness, from maddening melancholia, and from nervous outbreaks. Above all from _vertige_.

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 word _vertige_, and after a second repet.i.tion 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 Pera. 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 the _vertige_, 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, and _vertige_, 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 the _vertige_ is 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 and _vertige_, 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 att.i.tude to adopt afterward.