"No, it don't seem likely as those things over there'll fly fer a long time."
It certainly didn't seem likely. Besides ripping open the fuselage fabric and cutting some of the longerons, the Tommies had hacked at the struts and clipped some bracing wires. They had prised open the wooden cases, and, before replacing the covers, had snapped spars, bent elevators and rudders, and been generally unpleasant to the planes. Similar wrecking was being done, in greater or lesser degree, at Belamedik and other points on the railway where prisoners were forced to work.
The ill-treatment of those six aeroplanes at Bosanti had a peculiar sequel. When the British entered Nazareth (the Turco-German headquarters in Palestine) during General Allenby's final advance, they captured most of the staff documents. Among the aviation papers was a letter from the O.C. German Flying Corps on that front to Air Headquarters in Germany, complaining bitterly about the bad packing and the bad handling in transit of aeroplanes sent to Palestine. As an instance it mentioned these very machines (my comparison of dates and details established that point)—single-seater scouts of the Fals type—and declared that not one of them was fit to be assembled for flying. Enclosed was a photograph of some queer-looking débris that had once been a wing. The protest ended with a request that the men who packed the six craft should be punished.
Boches are Boches, but Justice is Justice; and with memories of what I saw at Bosanti, I hope that the packers were not punished.
Having waved good-bye to these men who, though prisoners, were helping the British armies so effectively, we passed on toward Konia. And even as we moved westward from Bosanti the Aeroplanes That Never Would Fly moved eastward, through the Taurus tunnel that never would be a link in a great chain of railways from Berlin to Bagdad.
CHAPTER VI
CUTHBERT, ALFONSO, AND A MUD VILLAGE
If, at midnight, you were comfortably asleep in a railway carriage, and some Turkish guards dragged you out of it and led you along a puddled track to a mud village in the most god-forsaken part of Anatolia, while the skies rained their damnedest on you and your one spare shirt, you might be annoyed. Possibly you would cry: "To hell with the Turks!"
Such, at any rate, was H.'s comment, shouted at intervals every few seconds, while we watched the train move Constantinople-ward, leaving us at a small village called Alukeeshla.