Caught by the Turks

by Francis Yeats-Brown

Once, yielding to popular clamour, the police stopped and parleyed with some Arab chiefs who had arrived upon the scene. After a heated colloquy of which we did not understand one word, in spite of our not unnatural interest, the Turkish gendarmes shrugged their shoulders and appeared to accede to the Arabs' demands. Several of the more ruffianly among them seized the pilot and pulled his flying coat over his head. The memory of that moment is the most unpleasant in my life, and I cannot, try as I will, entirely dissociate myself from the horror of what I thought would happen. Even now it often holds sleep at arm's length. Not the fact of death, but the imagined manner of it, dismayed me. I bitterly regretted having surrendered my revolver only to be thus tamely murdered.

Meanwhile I had been also seized and borne down under a crowd of Arabs. We fought for some time, and I had a glimpse of the pilot, who is a very clever boxer, upholding British traditions with his fists. . . .

Suddenly the scene changed from tragedy to farce. We were not going to be murdered at all, but only robbed. And the pilot had given our ghazi friend a black eye—blacker than his skin.

At length I got free, minus all my possessions except my wrist watch, which they did not see, and saw that the pilot also had his head above the scrimmage, still "bloody but unbowed." The worst was over. That had been the climax of my capture.

All that happened thereafter, until chances of escape occurred, was in a diminuendo of emotion.

All I really longed for now was for something to smoke. My cigarette case had gone.

The gendarmes, who had stood aside through these proceedings, now returned and hurried us towards the police post, while most of the captors remained behind disputing about our loot. All this time the machine had been absolutely neglected, but now I saw some Arabs stalking cautiously up to it and discharging their firearms. Feeling the machine would be damaged beyond repair if they continued firing at it, and so rendered useless to us after our imminent capture of Baghdad, I tried to explain to the gendarmes that it was quite unnecessary to waste good lead on it, its potentiality for evil having vanished with our surrender. The impression I conveyed, however, was that there was a third officer in the machine, and a large party adjourned to investigate. During this diversion I tried to jump on to a white mare, whose owner had left her to go towards the machine, but received a second nasty blow on the spine for my pains. Again the kindly gendarme came to my rescue, seeing, I suppose, that I was looking pretty blue. He addressed me as "Baba," and—may Allah give him increase!—gave me a cigarette.

At last we got to the police post, and, as we entered and passed through a dark stable passage, the gendarme on my left side, noticing my wrist watch, slyly detached it and pocketed it with a meaning smile. As the price of police protection I did not grudge it.

Big doors clanged behind us and our captivity proper had begun: what had gone before had been more like a scrum at Rugger, with ourselves as the ball.

We examined our injuries and bruises, and I tried to dress the wounds on the pilot's head, with little success, however, for our guardians could provide nothing but the most brackish water, and disinfectants were undreamed of. We discussed our future at some length, and agreed that our best plan was to be recaptured in Baghdad on the taking of that city. To this end we decided that it would be advisable to make the most of our injuries, so that when the Turkish retreat took place we would not be in a fit condition to accompany it. To feign sickness would not, indeed, be difficult. I felt that every bone in my body was broken, and my pilot was in an even worse condition.