We were travelling in comfort now. Our second night had been passed in a truck, rather hilariously, I am afraid, for three of us celebrated an Old Wykehamist dinner and sang “Domum” most of the night through. For the last few hours of the journey we had the company of a Roman Catholic priest, a quiet, gentle, young man from Austria, very sad about the condition of his country and very much concerned at all the excesses of the Turks. He found his hard life a very hopeless struggle against corruption and cruelty of every kind. I had not up to then met so thoroughly pro-British an enemy.
We reached the Point station at Smyrna early in the afternoon. Where we were to be lodged we did not know. The Turkish officer in charge of us had treated us well; he was the only member of the staff of Maslûm Bey who had come through the inquiry without a single charge against him. But he had no influence, and he was very junior; moreover, he laboured under unjust suspicion of having assisted the three officers who escaped the day we left Afion. We heard their fate later on, and it may as well be recorded here. They had only got two or three days’ journey into the hills when they were captured by brigands, who debated for some time what to do with them. At last one of them thought he saw a chance of escape, and made a dash; but he was shot, and the others two were released and driven away. They were not allowed to assist their companion, and he was last seen wounded and in the hands of the brigands. His two companions gave themselves up to the nearest Turkish authorities and succeeded in getting a search party sent out. They tried hard to be allowed, on temporary parole, to accompany the party, but were refused permission and their friend has not been heard of since. Earlier in the war, after the fall of Antwerp, he had been interned in Holland, but had escaped, and eventually joined the R.N.A.S. It was indeed hard luck that he should die in an unsuccessful second escape only seven weeks before Turkey went out of the war.
Guided by the Turkish officer, we walked through the streets of Smyrna to the military headquarters, a large building that faced a public garden, where the band played in the afternoons and children disported themselves with their nurses.
Our reception was very chilly. Our friendly officer was a very small person here, and could do nothing for us; and we could not find anyone who knew anything about us. They had never heard of any Berne Convention or of any arrangement for exchange of prisoners, and they suspected us all of having escaped and been sent there for punishment. For a long time we waited in a passage, wondering what would be the upshot of it all, and then the usual thing happened, for we were cast into gaol. After all our visions of a week or two of absolute liberty while waiting for the ship, this was a terrible anti-climax. We were thrust into the military lock-up, and two sentries with fixed bayonets were placed at the door.
It was a dark and very dirty room, with a broken wooden floor that long experience warned us against lying on, and there were no chairs or furniture of any kind. Five Indian officers were thrown into it with us, and were as indignant as we. There was no one to appeal to. Our senior officer, the only one who spoke Turkish, had remained at the station to watch our baggage, and the officer who had escorted us had gone back to him. After a while an interpreter came to us, and we urged him to fetch a senior officer who could hear our complaint. A long time after this a very hard-faced and thoroughly Prussianised Turkish colonel came in with the interpreter, and we explained that we were sick men sent down for exchange. He listened coldly, and said he knew nothing about that, and that we were very well where we were. Afterwards the interpreter told us he was in a bad temper because seven hundred of his regiment had deserted to the hills, and he had only discovered it that morning.
We looked out through the bars rather dolefully, and watched the rank and fashion of Smyrna in the garden. There seemed little hope of getting out, or of getting any food in, and our bedding was at the station.
Again a typically Turkish thing occurred. There was a privy just outside the door, the other side of the sentries. One officer was compelled to ask permission to go to it. The request was passed out by the sentries, and the officer was led out into the garden, before all the women and children. This was the more unnecessary because the proper place was there, just across the passage. It may be that Turks do not consider this sort of exhibition objectionable, but to an Englishman or to an Indian officer it is more humiliating than any private cruelty. It was a studied policy of the Turks to play upon our sensitiveness to indecency. The unspeakable Turk: with all our languages and vocabularies we never found a phrase to rival that: unspeakable he was and unspeakable he is.
Suddenly the “strafe” ended. The British chaplain had got to know of our plight, and had gained the ear of someone in authority. After having paced the streets of Smyrna as comparatively free men on the way from the station, we were taken in close marching order between guards with fixed bayonets to a very dirty Turkish officers’ hotel and given rooms. A sentry with a fixed bayonet sat on a chair at the end of the passage. We of the Old Wykehamist dinner shared a room, and I slept like a top: the others tossed and moaned, and in the morning slew a vast number of intruders, many hundreds. But this hotel was our very last experience of these pests, for life, I hope.
The next day the Vali came to see us, Rahmy Bey, the governor of the province of Aidin. After his visit all the frowns turned to smiles, for he was known to favour good treatment of the subjects of the Entente.
A day or two later we moved once more, this time in the greatest comfort. Can you but gain one gesture of protection from a great man in an Eastern country, you may go in peace, for the underlings are but looking-glasses to reflect his mood.