Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom. Kenneth Darlaston Yearsley
length of platform was allotted to a group of three or four officers, who were then at liberty to beautify their new homes as ingenuity might suggest. Planks were hard to come by, so for the most part old valises, blankets, and curtains were strung from post to post to screen the "rooms" from the passage, and thereby gain for the occupants a little privacy.
As the severity of the winter increased, caulking floor-boards became a profitable occupation, for an icy draught now swept up through the gaping cracks. By the time the financial difficulties to which we have referred were at an end, it was no longer possible to obtain in the bazaar a sufficient quantity of firewood for anything except our kitchen stoves. It was not, however, until snow was lying deep upon the ground that Sami Bey could be prevailed upon to let us cut down a few of the neighbouring willow-trees, for which it need hardly be said we had to pay heavily. Apart from the exercise thus obtained—and it was good exercise carrying the wood into the barracks—an odd visit or two to the bazaar, and a few hours' tobogganing as a concession on Christmas Day, were the only occasions on which we saw the outside of our dwelling-place for three long months. Nor was there anything in the way of comfort within. The number of trees allotted to us was small, and the daily wood ration we allowed ourselves only sufficed to keep the stoves going in our rooms for a few hours each day. The fuel, moreover, being green, was difficult to keep alight, so that we spent many hours that winter blowing at the doors of stoves; and the stoker on duty had to give the fire his undivided attention if he wished to avoid the sarcastic comments of his chilled companions. It was a special treat reserved for Sundays to have our stoves burning for an hour in the afternoon. For over a month the temperature remained night and day below freezing-point, and the thermometer on one occasion registered thirty-six degrees of frost.
An officer who used to fill up an old beer-bottle with hot water to warm his feet when he got into bed, found one morning that it had slipped away from his feet and had already begun to freeze, although still under the clothes!
But enough of the miseries of that winter: in spite of such unfavourable conditions, the camp was a cheerful one. We were all good friends, and united in our determination not to knuckle under to the Turk. Our senior officer, Colonel A. Moore, of the 66th Punjabis, was largely instrumental in making our lot an easier one. This he did by fighting our many battles against an unreasonable and apathetic commandant, and in all our schemes for escape he gave us his sound advice and ready support.
Compared to his two predecessors, this commandant, Sami Bey, was a very difficult person from whom to "wangle" anything. Although he could lay claim to no greater efficiency for his task of commanding a prisoner-of-war camp than they, he made himself very obnoxious to us by his policy of pure obstruction. If we applied for any sort of concession, however reasonable, he safeguarded himself by saying he would have to wire to Constantinople for orders, and of course no orders ever came. With the two commandants we had had in Kastamoni, a threat by our own senior officer to report any matter under discussion to the Turkish Headquarters was enough to make him give in over any reasonable request without further ado. Sami, however, would look the question up in his Regulations. On one occasion we bombarded him from every quarter with demands to be allowed to go out tobogganing. Finally the answer came back: "The Regulations do not mention the word 'toboggan'; therefore, I cannot allow you to do so." Even the Turk, then, though he uses sand instead of blotting-paper, has his office "red tape"!
The average Turkish officer is an ignoramus, and the following story of Sami Bey will serve to show that he was no exception to the rule. At the time that the German gun "Big Bertha" was bombarding Paris at long range, he was very proud to produce a picture of it in a German paper. It was one of those semi-bird's-eye views, showing Paris in the left-hand bottom corner, and along the top the Straits of Dover and the English Channel. The gun was about half-way down the right-hand edge, and the curved trajectory of the shell was shown by a dotted line from the moment it left the muzzle to the moment when it entered Paris. To a British officer to whom he was showing the picture, Sami explained at great length how the shell passed through St. Quentin, Cambrai, Douai, up to one of the Channel ports, and then down again viâ Amiens, until it finally arrived at its destination in Paris and exploded! This Turkish brigadier-general believed this to be a solemn fact, and his "ignorant" British hearer was polite enough not to undeceive him.
Ours claimed to have been the first party formed with a view to escape, but it was not long before there were several others, and it became evident that some plan would have to be devised by which a large number might hope to make their way out of the barracks fairly simultaneously. Since these had been designed for Turkish soldiers, every window was already barred. But we were in addition a camp of suspects, who had refused to give their parole; so at night, in addition to sentries being posted at every corner, visiting patrols went round the building at frequent intervals. Three or four fellows, of course, might cut the bars of a window and slip through, but hardly five or six parties.
At this moment an old magazine came into our hands containing an article which described how thirty or forty Federal officers had escaped from a Confederate prison by means of a tunnel. This was at once recognised as the ideal solution of our problem if only we could find a suitable outlet and the means of disposing of the earth.
While the general plan was still under discussion, we were reinforced by the arrival of three officers from Geddos. They had refused to give their parole in spite of the Turks' threat that they would be moved to Changri if they did not change their minds. Here then they arrived one cold December morning, looking very racy in their check overcoats, supplied to them by the Dutch Legation. These coats were doubtless the last word in Constantinople fashions, and in the shop windows had probably been marked "Très civilisé," for it is the highest ambition of the Turk to be considered civilised.
Nothing hurts his feelings more than to be the object of ridicule on account of any lack of up-to-dateness, as the following story will serve to illustrate. While we were at Kastamoni, a chimney in one of the houses occupied by the prisoners of war caught fire, and, with a great flourish of trumpets, the town fire-brigade was called out to extinguish the conflagration. Let not the reader, however, picture to himself even the most obsolete of horsed fire-engines. In this town, with a pre-war population of something like 25,000 souls, and with houses almost entirely built of timber, dependence in the event of a fire was placed on what can best be described as a diminutive tank carried on a stretcher, and provided with a small pump worked by a lever, seesaw fashion. The tank was kept filled by buckets replenished at the nearest spring. The sight of two men in shabby uniform solemnly oscillating the lever by the handle at either end, and of the feeble trickle of water which resulted at the nozzle of the hose, was too much for the sense of humour of the British officers who happened to be present at the time. At this moment the commandant, then one Tewfik Bey, appeared on the scene. Horrified at such ill-timed levity on the part of the onlookers, he seized upon a major standing by and had him escorted to his room, there to be confined till Tewfik's anger should abate. To the Turk this tank was the latest thing in fire-engines.
To carry the story to its happy ending, we may add that, after three days of confinement, the major addressed a letter to H.E. Enver Pasha through the commandant, which ran somewhat as follows:—
"Sir—I have the honour to report that, owing to the close confinement in which I have been kept, my health has now entirely broken down. I therefore request that, with a view to providing some slight possibility of recovery, I may be allowed to go to England on one month's sick leave, and that as far as the port of embarkation I may be accompanied by posta[5] 'Ginger,' as he alone in all Turkey really understands my temperament.—I have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient prisoner of war,
X."
Whether this letter ever reached His Excellency we shall probably never know. From our knowledge of the Turk's total lack of humour, however, we should say that it is more than probable that Tewfik Bey solemnly forwarded it on through the proper channel. That no answer was received proves nothing; for it is a matter of years to get a reply to an application like this from the authorities at Constantinople, and the letter was only written three years ago. At least it had this good effect, that the major was released from confinement forthwith.
But we must