Escape from any prison camp in Turkey was difficult. From Yozgad it was regarded as practically impossible. Here the Turks sent Cochrane, Price, and Stoker, who had made such a gallant but unsuccessful attempt to get away from Afion Kara Hissar in 1916; and here, later on, came the Kastamouni Incorrigibles—some forty officers who had refused to give their parole. Yozgad was the punishment camp of Turkey.
Escape was not a question of defeating the sentries. The “Gamekeepers” who preserved our numbers intact were nearly all old men, and were very far from being wide awake. On fine days they snoozed at their posts; if it was cold, or wet, or dark they snuggled in their sentry-boxes. As several officers proved by experiment, it was no difficult matter to get out of the camp and back again without detection.
“ON FINE DAYS THEY SNOOZED AT THEIR POSTS”—A “GAMEKEEPER” ON GUARD IN YOZGAD
The real sentries were the 350 miles of mountain, rock and desert that lay between us and freedom in every direction. Such a journey under the most favourable conditions is something of an ordeal. I would not like to have to walk it by daylight, in peace-time, buying food at villages as I went. Consider that for the runaway the ground would have to be covered at night, that food for the whole distance would have to be carried, and that the country was infested with brigands who stripped travellers even within gunshot of our camp; add to this that we knew nothing of the language or customs of the people and had no maps. It is not difficult to understand why we were slow to take advantage of our sleeping sentries.[[10]]
There was another factor that prevented men from making the attempt. It was generally believed that the escape of one or more officers from our camp would result in a “strafe” for those who remained behind. We feared that such small privileges as we had won would be taken away from us—the weekly walk, the right to visit one another’s houses in the daytime, and access to the tiny gardens and the lane (it was only 70 yards long) for exercise. We would revert to the original unbearable conditions, when we had been packed like sardines in our rooms, day and night, and our exercise limited to Swedish drill in the 6ft. by 3ft. space allotted for each man’s sleeping accommodation. A renewal of the old conditions of confinement might—probably would—mean the death of several of us. Such, we believed, would be the probable consequences of escape.[[11]]
The belief acted in two ways in preventing escapes. Some men who would otherwise have made the attempt decided it was not fair to their comrades in distress to do so. Others considered themselves justified, in the interest of the camp as a whole, in stopping any man who wanted to try. And the majority—a large majority—of the camp held they were right. The general view was that as success for the escaper was most improbable, and trouble for the rest of us most certain, nobody ought to make the attempt. For we knew what “trouble” meant in Turkey. Most of the prisoners in Yozgad were from Kut-el-Amara. We had starved there, before our surrender: we had struggled, still starving, across the 500 miles of desert to railhead. We had seen men die from neglect and want. Many of us had been perilously near such a death ourselves. We had felt the grip of the Turk and knew what he could do. Misery, neglect, starvation and imprisonment had combined to foster in us a very close regard for our own interests. We were individualists, almost to a man. So we clung, as a drowning man clings to an oar, to the few alleviations that made existence in Yozgad possible, and we resented anything which might endanger those privileges.
It is easy enough for the armchair critic to say it is a man’s duty to his country to escape if he can. As a general maxim we might have accepted that. The tragedy in Yozgad was that his duty to his country came into conflict with his duty to his fellow-prisoners. I thought at the time, and I still think, that we allowed the penny near our eye to shut out the world. But it was only a few irresponsibles like Winfield-Smith who shared my view that the question of whether a man should try or not should be left to the individual to decide, and if he decided to go the rest of us ought to help him, and face the subsequent music as cheerfully as might be. And I must confess, in fairness to the officers who undertook the unpleasant task of stopping Hill when he was ready to escape in June 1917, that though in principle I disapproved of their action, in fact I was exceedingly glad, for my own sake, that he did not go.
I suppose every one of us spent many hours weighing his own chances of escape. For myself I knew I had not the physical stamina considered necessary for the journey. If the camp stopped a man like Hill, they would be ten times more eager to stop me. Secrecy was therefore essential. Believing, as I did, that the War might continue for several years, I had made up my mind in 1917 to make the attempt and trust to luck more than to skill or strength to carry me through. But because of the feebleness of my chance, and the extreme probability that my comrades would not have the consolation of my success in their suffering, it behoved me more than anyone else to seek for some way of escape which would not implicate my fellows, and not to resort to a direct bolt until it was clear that all other possibilities had been exhausted.
My plan was to make the Turkish authorities at Yozgad my unconscious accomplices. I intended to implicate the highest Turkish authority in the place in my escape, to obtain clear and convincing proof that he was implicated, and to leave that proof in the hands of my fellow-prisoners before I disappeared. It would then be clearly to the Commandant’s interest to conceal the fact of my escape from the authorities at Constantinople (he could do so by reporting my death); or, if concealment were impossible, he would not dare to visit his wrath upon the camp, as they could retaliate by reporting his complicity to his official superiors. By these means, I hoped, not only would my fellow-prisoners retain their privileges, but by judicious threatening they might even acquire more.