1. The Spook would “control” Hill and myself into a nervous breakdown of sufficient severity to induce the Turkish doctors at Yozgad to recommend our transfer to Constantinople.
2. The Spook would draft a letter to Constantinople from the Commandant reporting our sickness, enclosing copies of the Turkish doctors’ recommendations, and stating that he would seize the first opportunity of sending us to a Constantinople hospital. Office copies of this letter would be kept by the Yozgad office in the usual way. The original would be signed, sealed, and put in an envelope addressed to the Turkish War Office. But it would never be delivered. It would be “lost in the post” for the simple reason that it would never be posted, though the office staff would think it had gone.
3. As soon as news arrived that the Changri Commandant had left Angora en route for Yozgad, Kiazim was to telegraph to Constantinople about his own health, quoting the opinion of the doctors already obtained, ask for leave, and suggest that he hand over charge to the Changri Commandant. By the time the Changri man arrived, the answer should have come from the War Office, and, in view of his influence at headquarters, Kiazim had already told us he could (with the aid of the doctors’ recommendations) get leave at any time.
4. A day or two before the arrival of the Changri Commandant Kiazim was to give the Pimple leave of absence. The Pimple would join the Afion party as far as Angora (railhead) in order to avail himself of the Government transport. (Note.—We modified this later, and the Pimple was actually sent on duty to look after the “nervous breakdowns.”)
5. The Cook was to be detailed as one of the escort of the Afion party, but was to be under orders to accompany it only as far as Angora, where he was to stay behind “to make purchases for the Commandant’s wife.”
6. In handing over charge of the camp Kiazim would point out to his successor from Changri the office-copy of the letter about us (which had not been sent), and suggest we be added to the Afion party. This we could accompany as far as railhead at Angora, where there was a prisoners’ camp and a hospital in which we could wait till an opportunity arose for sending us on to Constantinople. (Note.—We would arrange, as we eventually did, to be taken not to the camp or the hospital, but to a hotel in Angora; but Yozgad would know nothing of this.) Had we been really “nervous breakdowns” this would have been the natural thing to do. The Changri man would thus take over the camp two officers short, but would report the numbers as “complete and all correct.” We did not know if it was customary for the newcomer to report to headquarters the exact number of prisoners taken over by him, and the Spook intended to get Kiazim to dodge such a definite statement if possible. But we did know that the report, if sent, would be sent in writing (taking a week to ten days), and what with 20 officers and 10 orderlies going to Afion, and 44 officers and 25 orderlies coming in from Changri, with possibly some sick dropped en route, headquarters would either not notice the shortage or think it an arithmetical error. If they did happen to make any enquiries about it, the new Commandant would refer them to the letter about us, which they had never received, and we were quite sure that the result would be an ordinary inter-departmental wrangle as to the correctness of a set of figures, and possibly a post-office enquiry about a missing letter. I had not spent a dozen years in Government service without learning how easy it is for the real point at issue to be obscured. And long before the War Office and Yozgad had got beyond the stage of arithmetical calculations, we hoped to be in Cyprus or Rhodes. As to Colonel Maule’s monthly letter to H.Q., we intended asking him, as a favour, to continue saying nothing about us.
7. The Commandant, when going on leave, would travel with us. It would be the natural thing to do, because he would thus get a free passage by Government cart as far as railhead, and also, the country being full of bandits, he would have the advantage of an armed escort.
If all went well, then, the effect would be that Hill and I would be on the road with the Pimple, the Cook, and the Commandant, and once the Afion party had left us behind in the hotel at Angora, nobody would know anything about us. Yozgad officials would not worry because we had set out for Constantinople; Constantinople would not worry because they would not know we were coming. Angora prisoners’ camp would not worry because we would be under our own escort, and not “on their strength.” It is an exceptional Turk who is a busybody—they are too lazy to interfere with affairs that are not their concern—and the gold epaulettes on Bimbashi Kiazim Bey’s uniform would be guarantee enough of our respectability. To make ourselves as inconspicuous as possible Hill and I would dress in the rough Turkish soldiers’ uniform which had been issued to the British orderlies at Yozgad—we each had a suit of it—and discard all badges of rank. There was no reason why anyone in authority should question two British prisoners who looked like miserable and half-starved privates—the sight was too common. We might go anywhere in Turkey with Kiazim Bey, and before we left Yozgad Kiazim Bey would know that his job was to take us to the Mediterranean seaboard.
Our first task was to introduce the Turks, as carefully as possible, to the idea of taking us to the coast. Once that was accomplished we could tackle the Matthews problem.
We worked at tremendous pressure, and developed all our main points simultaneously. During the five days when we held up Constantinople’s order to release us. Doc. O’Farrell visited us daily and secretly instructed us in the symptoms of nervous breakdowns. He told the Pimple he thought our minds were affected, and the Pimple thought the Spook had “controlled” him into believing this. When we had thoroughly mastered the Doc.’s instructions, the Spook caused Kiazim to tell the camp we were free. The object of this, the Spook explained quite frankly to our Turkish confederates, was to enable us to have visitors, so that when visitors came we might be “controlled” by the Spook into most eccentric behaviour. The result, as the Spook pointed out, was that the camp thought us crazy. The Turks came to the conclusion we hoped they would reach—that the Spook intended to get the doctors to recommend our removal from Yozgad. Kiazim was greatly pleased with the idea, for the doctors’ recommendations would relieve him of all responsibility.