The day we started for Smyrna, for we did start, a party of three escaped; and the escape was not discovered by the Turks until we were in the train. There were thirteen officers, and I forget how many men, and we were counted and recounted several times. Then all the luggage vans were searched through and all the large boxes opened, and the train was searched from end to end. But the three were not found, they were far away in the hills. So we left Afion under suspicion, and with armed guards in every carriage to prevent anyone from boarding the train.
Our last view of the camp was most affecting. There was a spontaneous outburst of noble good feeling and unselfish gladness, unmixed with any envy of our good luck. None of us thought the end of the war was near, yet those who stayed behind cheered those who went, with never a sign of an afterthought. It was not just a few, it was everyone; and we literally had to struggle through the crowd in the street with our arms aching from hearty handshakes. It is a very splendid last memory of Afion.
I had been there two years and seven months.
CHAPTER XIV
SMYRNA
Our first night in the train was rather uncomfortably crowded, but we would not have minded being piled in heaps on that journey. In the morning we reached a place called Ushak, and there had rather a shock, for all thirteen officers were ushered into a dirty shed and informed that it was a hospital, and that we were all to be examined for cholera. This was more serious than appears on the face of it, for two of our party were rather out of sorts, and a Turkish doctor would be quite liable to mistake this malady for cholera. Then good-bye to hope for them. They would have been put in some disgusting place with all manner of afflicted people, and it is by no means improbable that they would have died. The Turkish doctor had an assistant with a microscope, but we didn’t trust either of them one bit: so we refused to be examined. I can’t enter into details, but we refused unanimously to do what they required. There was an impasse. We could not proceed without health certificates, for there were quarantine regulations in force. Of course, we could, in the last resource, bribe the doctor, but we preferred not to. We stood fast upon the dignity of British officers, and said they did not do that kind of thing. It was much cheaper to bluff than to bribe, and we wanted all our money. I suggested to the Turkish officer in charge that he should hire a peasant to be examined on our behalf, and offered to pay the man ten piastres for his courtesy. But that obviously sound suggestion was ruled out as being unscientific. The honour of the medical profession and the prestige of the microscope had to be upheld. It ended in a compromise. The doctor agreed to accept three delegates as representatives of the whole party. Three strong men volunteered to be examined, and we threatened them with all manner of revenge if they proved to have any obscure disease that would hold us up. But they passed the ordeal safely and we were solemnly granted thirteen clean bills of health and allowed to proceed.
The men were detained for examination, despite all we could do, but they reached Smyrna a day later without mishap. As it turned out, they were lucky to be late.
The approach to Smyrna from inland is a very beautiful journey. The railway runs through the fruitful valley of Magnina, flanked by great hills, and full of vineyards and groves of figs and olives.