A Prisoner in Turkey

by John Still

It was not long before the pear trees came into blossom, and the white acacia. The sentries had kept us rigorously to the flagged path at first, while they used the garden space beneath the pear trees to grow a narrow bed of potatoes. But, either the potatoes failed, or they tired of the effort, for long before the end of our time there we used to walk freely to the outer edge, from where we could look down upon the town below. The Squire had received a drawing-book and a box of paints, and he used to make pictures there.

While we were in the church, before the potatoes had been abandoned, there was quite an exciting episode connected with an attempt at escape. The hero was a cheery Irishman, whom I will call Bart, the owner of one of the dogs, a beautiful Persian greyhound that he had acquired in Angora. He made up a bundle of food-stuffs and concealed it behind one of the Armenian tombs, where it would be handy when he required it, and so that he could come out of the church empty-handed and unsuspicious in appearance. But one of the guards noticed it, and a special sentry was put on to keep it under observation. It was obviously impossible to start like this, and for the time, at any rate, the attempt had to be abandoned. But it still remained to recover the precious pack and its contents. A Turkish sentry pretending not to watch anything is the most transparent thing in the world. It was easy to see what he was at: he wanted to identify the owner so that he might be cast into a dungeon. But it was not so easy to see how he was to be got rid of while the bag was removed. Bart was prepared to remove it rapidly inside a folding deck-chair, but he wanted an opportunity to grab it unawares. The sacred potatoes gave the key to the solution. I fetched Gumush, the greyhound, on a lead, and the perverse creature ran all over the cherished potatoes. As all the guards were co-partners in the garden, they all rushed to prevent the trespass; and the deed was done. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, that pack was safe in the church and its contents distributed. The sentry recovered his head, gave one look at the tomb, and made tracks for the Commandant’s office. But we heard of it no more. The trap had failed, and the bait was gone.

I have mentioned the noise in the church, and it is only fair to tell of the music, real soul-stirring music. It was not made by the English; with a few exceptions they were not a musical lot as far as performance went. But the Russian sailors had a choir, and they sang like angels. It must have made the angels painted on the ceiling envious to hear them.

Their music was of a kind quite distinct from Western European music. Very sad and melancholy as a rule, in a minor key. Generally about eight of them would sing together, taking parts, but sometimes they would all join in, as when they held a sort of funeral service the night after their friend had died of typhus. And very few indeed of them could not sing. It used to put our own caterwauling concerts to utter shame. Most of them were simple, rather rough men; and though we knew them all as Russians in those pre-revolution days, I believe they really belonged to half a dozen different tribes; Cossacks, Ukrainians, Georgians, and Poles. But they could all sing. They sang the thing they called the Pan-Slav hymn. It is the forbidden national anthem of Poland, proscribed, before the war, in Russia, Austria, and Germany; and with equal fervour they sang the grand national anthem of Russia. “God Save the King” they sang, too, and made it sound magnificent. But for the most part they sang folk-songs. The song we liked the best was a beautiful Cossack lullaby. A fellow-prisoner has kindly written it out for me, and it is printed at the end of this chapter. The words given are some I wrote for it while in the church.

The singing of the Russians was the best thing there was in that church.

There were several Indians in Afion at that time, survivors of the Bagdad consular guard; and while we were in the church the last, or one of the last, died. When war broke out there was a guard of two Indian officers and about four-and-thirty soldiers attached to the Consulate. They were interned by the Turks. When disarmed they had all their kit complete, and they were in perfect physical condition. They were not half-famished when captured, like the garrison of Kut. They were not taken near the fighting line, where feelings ran high, as the rest of us were; on the contrary, the fighting line was hundreds of miles from them. But before the war ended every single one of those men was dead. They died of cold, calculated ill-treatment, starvation, and over-marching.

As I tell this tale, as I thread this rosary of months and years, there runs throughout a strand of the blackest tragedy, and it will come out, do what I can.

I am trying to put in all the funny things that happened, too, for there are things too sad to be serious about. But the tragedy is there, and it must be seen.

Still, it is a bad note to end a chapter on. As a crowd we were not downhearted, so I will pass to the tale of the frightened sailor man.

There was a certain sailor man who had heard strange tales about the Turks on his journeys round the world. He had heard how they bastinado men for small faults, and he had probably seen it, too; for at the time of which I write he was a captive in Turkey. In course of time, it happened that this sailor man, who was not a highly-educated person, was smitten with disease, as people in Turkey very often are. And, being at that time in a city, he was sent to a hospital. Now he did not know that typhus rages in the hospitals of the Turks, nor is it probable that he knew that this disease is conveyed by the bite of lice. If he had known this he would perhaps have been even more frightened than he actually was, and with far better cause. One thing is quite certain, and that is that he did not know that all persons admitted to Turkish hospitals are clean-shaved all over. But he bore in mind many horrible stories, most of which were true, and, when a hospital orderly approached him with a razor in his hand, the sailor man’s mind was invaded by the most terrible fear, for he had heard dreadful tales of the mutilations that Turks were said to practise upon their enemies. So he cried aloud with a great voice that it should not be done. And as for the explanations of the man with the razor, he heeded them not at all, for he knew no Turkish. Sooner would he die all at once, he cried, than be done to death piecemeal. And his cry was heard, for he prepared to fight, and the man with the razor did not want to fight him, nor did the doctor, nor did the assistant doctor. So in the end they sent to us for his own officer, who soothed his troubled mind until he allowed himself to be shaved.