We stayed with them so many hours that, at last, I began to fear I was expected to make the first move. At three o’clock I asked the cheik when we were going to continue our journey, and he quickly answered: “When you please”—confirming my suspicions.
I was now informed that we should probably be too late for the one train in the day, and have to face a journey of many hours in bullock-wagons, drawn perhaps by mules. No one even hinted that I was to blame; yet no one would have dreamt of being so rude as to tell me that it was my place to break up the party!
The line from Smyrna to Angora had been cut at Gunhani, as had the line from Haïdar Pasha at Bilidjik and Kara-Keuy.
From Gunhani we had to reach Afioun-Karahissar as we best could, partly by Deacoville, then by ox-wagon and luggage trains to Ouchak and on to Afioun. The railway bridge destroyed at Gunhani was a fine example of French engineering, which went right over the mountains, from eight hundred to a thousand feet high. It will take years to rebuild. The Turks do not complain, and have cheerfully accepted the terrible discomfort to passengers and goods traffic, with their usual philosophy. “The destruction of an important railway,” as they calmly remark, “is legitimate warfare and first-class strategy.”
We could realise, however, what the disaster really meant, as we climbed down, without the help of any kind of pathway, from the commandant’s little house on the steep hills. Once on the road we took an ox-wagon, drawn by mules, for what was still little better than a mountain track, to the nearest point of the railway that was in order, in the direction of Afioun-Karahissar. Unable, like the cheik or any Oriental, to sit on my legs, I had to let them hang over the side of our wagon.
This scurrying down from the commandant’s house was not “a picnic!” Our fearless drivers and their marvellously sure-footed beasts, could not prevent our being flung from side to side of the springless cart, holding on for dear life. Sometimes the officer had to spring out and push from behind to save us from falling backwards.
The telegraph wires, of course, were also cut; but the rapidity with which messengers are able to run and leap over these ragged mountain ways enabled them to bring news back to us, of the quickest way to find a train, in an incredibly short time.
In an Ox Wagon.
“Unable to sit on my legs, I have to let them hang over the side of our wagon.”
I had found it a herculean task to reach, and return, from our resting place on the hill-top. The bullock-cart seemed to find it scarcely less difficult to manipulate the narrow and broken roadway. Yet the Turkish soldiers had somehow found means and strength to heave their heavy artillery over these awe-inspiring passes, from which one slip of the foot meant instant death.