In the early days of the war there was only one bad road, which zigzagged through the Taurus Mountains. Later, the Germans organized an efficient motor lorry service with German drivers and mechanics, for machinery of any sort is quite beyond Turkish intelligence. When we passed through, the narrow gauge railway had been working for some time and they were making good progress with the broad gauge line, which would improve enormously the Turkish efficiency on the Mesopotamia and Palestine fronts. Thousands of men were working in the cuttings and widening the tunnels. In particular, I remember one great bridge, with four huge stone pillars rising 200 to 300 feet from a gorge below. It seemed a marvel of engineering in that wild land. It was three parts finished, and I believe the whole line was completed just about the time of the Armistice. It must have been not the least of the many bitter blows this war has brought to Germany, that after so much labor, ingenuity, and money expended on the Bagdad line, they abandoned the work to their enemies at the moment of its successful conclusion.
We traveled through the Taurus in open trucks on the narrow gauge line, and on the passengers an incessant shower of sparks descended from the engine, which burnt wood, as do nearly all engines between Mecca and Constantinople. The scenery is wild and wonderful. Great peaks, grim and ragged with straggling pine trees, tower to the clouds, while the train crawls round the edge of precipices where a stone dropped from the carriage window would fall a sheer thousand feet or more into the gorge below.
At one point on the journey over the Taurus the line passes through an extremely long tunnel, where all passengers would inevitably have been asphyxiated by our wood-burning engine. Owing no doubt to the fact that Germans and not Turks were in charge, this had been foreseen, and steam-containing engines, much on the principle of the thermos flask, had been substituted. They had no boilers or furnaces, but were filled up with sufficient steam before each journey.
I met many of our men on the way through. They were wonderfully cheerful and optimistic, and many had an amused and pitying tolerance for the inefficiencies of the Turk, though when one had heard their tales, one realized that they were just survivors and that 75 per cent. had died under the treatment.
To live with the Turk one must laugh at him, for otherwise one would go mad with rage. They complained of malaria and lack of food. Incredible as it may seem, many of them occupied posts of considerable responsibility, being in charge of power stations and repair depots on the route.
On the whole, the Germans whom they had met had treated them well. There were certain damnable exceptions: no mitigating circumstance could here be pleaded, for calculated and intentional brutality and not national inefficiency was here the cause. A moderately civilized Turk was once accused by an English officer of allowing English prisoners under him to die in thousands. "We treated your men," answered the Turk, "exactly as we treated our own soldiers." Exactly! The food and treatment that will kill Turkish peasants by tens will kill Europeans by thousands. As well expect a bulldog to thrive on a jackal's fare.
With the German rank and file, the motor drivers and mechanics, our men made friends quickly. They had a common bond of friendship—hatred and contempt for the Turk. At one station where our train was standing after dark a man entered my carriage. I was alone for the moment; for my guard, who irritated me beyond endurance, being stupid even for a Turk, and who only kept strict watch on me every other day and never at night, had gone in search of food. The man had on a very dirty but German-looking uniform, and surprised me when he addressed me in good English. He was an English Tommy and asked me if I would like some food in his mess. He was spare man on one of the German lorries, and his fellows would be delighted to see me. It was only a couple of hundred yards away. In a small dark hut, by the light of a candle, four German motor drivers and an English Tommy offered me hospitality, and I have never met more generous or cheery hosts. Our Tommy seemed on excellent terms with them, and swore to me that they were topping good fellows. We cursed the Turks together, swopped yarns, whilst partaking of most excellent German rations—tea, soup, German army bread, cheese, and butter. I went back to my carriage feeling much cheered and once more in possession of my temper. Only for a moment, however, for my blithering fool of a Turkish guard, who was hunting wildly for me under the seat, grabbed me as I entered with a cry of triumph.
From the Taurus to Constantinople, about a ten days' journey, we traveled in very dirty and extremely crowded second-class carriages, and all that time we had to sleep sitting up while I longed above anything in this world to lie down, for I was very tired, and my bones ached with sitting. The coach next to ours was occupied by a German general and his retinue. Some of the smart young A.D.C.'s condescended to speak to me once or twice; and once, when we had been traveling a week together, the general sent one of them to me with food. I thanked him, but refused it, saying I had sufficient money to buy what I needed.
The haughty and insolent attitude of those Germans towards their Turkish allies gave me the greatest pleasure from every point of view. I was no longer surprised that the Turks hated the Germans. Success and efficiency was the Germans' only claim to respect, and when the débâcle came small mercy was shown by the Turks to starving and beaten German battalions and none to stragglers. After the victory of Allenby in Palestine, trains full of starving Germans came through Afion Hissar, with hundreds clinging to the roofs and buffers and not daring to get down to beg or buy food, for fear either of being murdered or of losing their places on the train. They actually sent a message to the English prisoners-of-war in the town of Afion, asking for safe conduct to buy food. I had left the prison camp by that time, but I believe the Germans were told that if a good party came they would be quite safe. Of course by that time, October 1918, English officers took no further notice of their Turkish sentries and wandered about where they would. The whole position was Gilbertian beyond the wildest dreams of that genius.
During the four years that the Teuton was lord in Asia Minor, whenever a German saw a Turk in close proximity he kicked him, either metaphorically or actually, usually the latter, and the Turk submitted—partly because he admired the German efficiency and fighting powers, but chiefly because he had to. "He who would sup with the devil needs a long spoon," and it's precious little soup the Turk got out of that unholy alliance.