We are still without money. One day some of those fit enough were taken to a café near by, but as they had no money "nothing happened," as they expressed it on returning. Anyway we are running up a bill here, and unless they pay us before leaving, the hotel walla will get nothing. I have a few spoonfuls of fatty rice, and lebon, and marrow soup daily. Stapleton and another officer share my room.
There is no news, except a reported Russian shove through Roumania. It is also rumoured that we may move in a day or two. A Turkish doctor has been round, and has ordered me milk, etc., with medicine. I've sent frequently for both, but neither has come so far—four days since.
And these bugs are the "Devil's own." I suggest the Inns of Court Officers' Training Corps should have a bug rampant as their crest.
Except the Bible, one has no books. I have now finished the Psalms and Proverbs to-day, and am going on. They say the second phase of the Titanic struggle (or Teutonic struggle) is beginning in France. I wish nothing better than to be fit again and in it.
July 22nd.—Oh! This wretched confined bug-eaten little café! They would not let us go to hospital, where one might have got milk. They had no carts, they said, no medicine, no room ..., and cholera was there, etc., etc. To-day the doctor brought us black draughts for colitis, which we have chanced taking, and it has already done us some good. I am bitten red with bugs, and can feel at any moment several on me at once. The bed is full. I must try to sleep and forget them, as it is no use brushing them off. Temperature 100°.
July 23rd.—We left Angora to-day in carts. Feeling a little steadier, and the hospital being so inhospitable, I decided to try and keep going with the same column, trusting my luck once again. From the money they paid us I promptly kept a lira, and left the hotel-keeper's account partly unpaid. We promised him the money when we could cash cheques or get our remittances. With some of the cash I got the interpreter to buy two tins of milk and a little sugar and tea for the journey. We did not, however, get clear of the hotel-keeper and Commandant of Angora so easily. There was a riotous scene, yelling and screaming, shaking of fists in one's face, because we hadn't paid, when the Turks themselves had not paid us since Mosul! What an awful brute that Commandant of Angora was! A vicious, spiteful, selfish, callous savage. We let him know it, too, by the time we had finished with him. For instance, a lot of us were very ill and without money, and although there were rooms full of parcels sent us from home when Kut fell, he wouldn't even look to see. We saw some marked for several officers through a chink in the door, but he wouldn't shift himself an inch to see about anything. So we had malaria without quinine, and drank wheat-coffee when tea was lying in our parcels inside.
I am glad to have left that vile café.
We went on all day very cramped, in the same carts, and that night slept in a stable full of bugs and fleas. I bought some lebon and slept. At 4 a.m. we were away again through hills and bare, treeless heights all day. The horses galloped and walked, and one's back bounced on the side of the narrow carts, which at the bottom were about two feet six inches wide, with sides sloping outwards. There were the usual upsets, and boltings, racing, and collisions. Twice our cart jambed another over the edge of a cliff, and we got rammed. There is nothing to eat except bread. It was an extra weary day. For fourteen hours we jolted and jerked onwards, and then a pretty little green village hove in sight. We saw geese and ducks and fowls, which meant eggs, and a running stream, and brushwood for fires. But we were driven on and past this into the night. An hour and a half later we reached a filthy Arab enclosure, inside which we were driven. There was scarcely room for us to lie. One could not get water or firewood or anything. There was no Turkish officer to appeal to. We were all under the orders of a choush or sergeant. The colonel was very indignant, but the choush seemed afraid we might escape unless we were shut up. The place swarmed with mosquitoes and fleas. This choush was taking no risks. It was only after a long delay, when I found a Greek youth who knew a little German, that arrangements were made for one or two of us to go to a spring and get water. We had some tea and tried to sleep. That, however, was out of the question. For the last dozen miles one of the occupants of our cart was taken suddenly ill and had to lie down, so we had to break our backs under the driver's seat while the vehicle galloped and jolted. To any one except those in our condition this would have been merely inconvenience. It was an exceptionally beautiful sunset, with pink-limbed baby clouds resting on the rolling summits of soft grassy hills.
July 25th.—We were up at 6 a.m. The horses were very done, but their drivers goaded or thrashed them with thick sticks and made them gallop, and there were no brakes to help them. To pull up they ran into the bank, or into another cart. We had, on the previous day, passed through hilly country dotted with villages and fairly well cropped. Everywhere we saw grazing the herds of Angora goats with their gaily-dressed goatherd standing over them blowing his pipes. The Angora goat is a most beautifully fleeced animal with twisted horns and snow-white curly locks of fleece. The animals are kept for their wool as well as milk, and often supply the chief means of the people's subsistence in these parts. Besides milk, butter, and cheese, and sometimes the meat, the wool is woven into various garments, and the hide, laced with string, forms their shoes. These goatherds are very picturesquely dressed with coloured jackets and caps, and a bright red-striped kummerbund, in which is stuck the eternal Turkish knife. The arms and legs are criss-crossed with coloured cord.
The hills here and there are covered with herds, and at the head of these moving white dots moves their picturesque goatherd, blowing quaint sounds from his pipes. We passed lots of these fellows marching as impressed recruits between Turkish soldiers, and shoved on to fight in the forlorn hope.