After being eaten by bugs for some time, one feels infected with their contamination. It is almost impossible to rise superior to them. In one night a man can live through the miseries of Job.
It may be imagined therefore that our confinement in that little house was not amusing. My companion in misfortune and myself lived in that box for a week with the bugs, without once going out of the door. Now, to stay in a room for a week may not seem a very trying punishment (I was later to spend a month in solitary confinement); but when the punishment is wholly undeserved, and when, moreover, one is wrongly suspected of something one would like to do but has not done, and when one is bitten all night, and when from confinement one sees other officers walking about in comparative freedom, one naturally begins to fret.
There were compensations, however. Firstly, a friendship grew between my companion and myself which I hope will endure through life. Secondly, as a prisoner, any sort of change is welcome. And, thirdly, we felt we were doing something useful. The Commandant did not dare to force us to sign parole. Neither could he keep us permanently in special restraint. It is rarely that one gets the chance, as a prisoner, of putting the enemy on the horns of such a dilemma.
This Commandant, an ugly, drunken beast, who is now, I hope, expiating the innumerable crimes he committed against our men, caused a search to be made one day amongst the effects of all the prisoners at Afion-kara-hissar. One of the most interesting things he found was a diary kept by a senior British officer, with the following entry:
"New Commandant arrived. His face looks as if it was meant to strike matches on."
No better description could possibly have been written. He was a vain man, and it must have cut him to the quick to see himself as others saw him.
After a month of "special treatment" the Commandant learnt that Turkish Army Headquarters, fearing reprisals, no doubt, would not support his bluff in punishing us if we did not give parole. He had to climb down completely.
We were transferred to another house, in the Armenian quarter, already occupied by some R.N.A.S. officers, who were all determined to escape if opportunity arose. A very cheery house-party we made.
The time was now the year of grace 1917, and our life was organised to some extent. Once or twice a week we were allowed to play football, or go for a walk. On Thursdays we used to troop down in a body to visit the officers in the other houses, and on Monday mornings we were sometimes able, with special permission, to attend the weekly fair of coke and firewood held in the market-place. All this gave an interest to our lives, and money, so long as one was prepared to write cheques, was not a source of difficulty. The Turks, in fact, encouraged us to write cheques, exchanging them for Turkish notes at nearly double their face value (190 piastres for a pound was the best I myself received), because they rightly thought that our signature was worth more than the guarantees of the Turkish Government. I heard afterwards that our cheques had a brisk circulation on the Constantinople Bourse. But one was loth to write many. Five pounds is five pounds—and in Turkey it represented only a packet of tea or a kilogram of sugar. . . . I saved as much as I could for bribes when escaping.
A microscopic, but not unamusing, social life was in full swing. There were parties and politics, clubs and cliques. Each prisoner, according to his temperament, took his choice between grave pursuits and gay.