CHAPTER V
THE LONG DESCENT OF WASTED DAYS
Afion-kara-hissar means "Black Opium Rock" in Turkish, but it is not as interesting a place as it sounds. The only romantic visitors are the storks, who use it as an aerodrome on their bi-annual migrations. They blacken the sky when they come, in flights a thousand strong, swooping and circling over the plain and alighting finally near the black rocks that give the town its name. With one leg tucked up, and pensive beak back-turned, they form arresting silhouettes against the sunset. And curiously enough, the Turkish children know that they bring babies to the home.
We lived in four cottages, connected by a common garden. They were quite new—so new that they had no windows or conveniences. We fitted frames and panes, we erected bathrooms, installed kitchen ranges, made beds out of planks and string, and tables out of packing-cases. We made everything, in fact, except the actual houses.
I daresay that at this time we were better treated than the officer prisoners in Germany. Not so the men. We officers had plenty to eat, though it cost a great deal, but the men were always half starved when for any reason they could not supplement their ration from Ambassador's money, or private remittances from home. Every month the American (and later the Dutch) Embassy used to send a sum of money to our prisoners to help them buy something more nourishing than the black bread and soup provided by the Turks. When this relief did not arrive in time, or the Turks delayed in distributing it, our men suffered the greatest hardship. Treatment in Turkey was all a question of money. The officers could, and did, cash cheques while in captivity, and were able to pay for the necessities (and sometimes also the minor luxuries) of existence, but the men were entirely dependent on what was given them. Although some had bank balances, no one except an officer was allowed to write a cheque.
Here it is fitting to say a word in praise of those organisations who sent out parcels to our prisoners. No words can express our gratitude to them. To us officers, parcels were sometimes in the nature of a luxury, though none the less welcome. But to the men, who starved in dungeons of the interior, they came as a very present help in time of need. The prisoners' parcels saved many lives, and I hope the kind people who worked so hard at home against all sorts of difficulties and disappointments realise how grateful we are, and what a great work they did. Besides the material relief of provisions, the moral effect of a parcel from home on the mind of a sick prisoner cannot be over estimated. To open something packed by English hands was like a breath of home to him.
We were allowed no communication with the men, so it was very difficult to help them. Whether the worst done to our prisoners in Germany equals the worst in Turkey I do not know. To compare two horrors is profitless. But I do know something of the sufferings of our men, and when I write of my own petty amusements and comedies of captivity I do not for a moment forget the tragedy of their lives.
Light and shade, however, there must be in every picture, else it is not a picture at all. And there must be colour in the canvas, however grim the subject.
The poppy fields, which give the town the first part of its name,[1] lay right underneath our windows, across the station road. In June, when they were white with blossom, and the farmers' wives came out to drain the precious fluid from the buds, I used to gaze and gaze at the beauty of the world, and long for freedom. To be cooped up in a little room when the world was green and white, and the sky a flawless blue, and summer rode across the open lands, was miserable. It was unbearable to be growing old and immobile, like the hills on the horizon, when one might be out among the poppy blossoms. Of what use to be alive, if one did not share in the youth of the world?
But we were closely guarded in our cottages and rarely allowed out, except into the back garden—a bare space some hundred yards by thirty, which was the scene of most of our small activities, from early morning skipping to the mid-day display of our washing, and from the occasional amateur theatricals of an evening to the rare but tense moments of an attempted escape.