A Prisoner in Turkey

by John Still

We drove in carriages to the station, and travelled first class a few miles by rail to the suburb called Paradise. That is its name since Roman times, and it was Paradise indeed to us.

We were established in the fine buildings of the International College, an American foundation with a Canadian in charge of it as principal. Dr. Maclachlan was his name, and he and Mr. Reed, an American gentleman who is second in command, gave us the warmest, kindest welcome in the world. They and the ladies of the staff had a sumptuous tea awaiting us, and everything that man or woman could do they did. We had not known the like for many years.

There is a little colony of British and Americans at Paradise, and everyone of them deserves to be there. The whole great building was at our disposal: dormitories for the men, small rooms for the officers, a school conduit to wash in, shower baths, electric light, a fine library, and perfect cleanliness. It was the cleanliness of the building and the kindness of their hearts that appealed to us. I confess without any shame that it almost broke me down. And there were children to play with, bright, merry, little American and English children. As our men came in, some on crutches, some limping, all of them thin and weary, I saw one of those kind hosts of ours pick up a crippled Indian sepoy on his back and carry him up the stairs. They nursed our sick, they mended and washed our clothes, they cooked dainty little dishes for the convalescents, and they gave us all heart once more. We were unclean and uncivilized, queerer perhaps than we knew, and they brought back to us the knowledge that the world as a whole is good.

It must not be imagined that all our troubles were over. We were still in Turkey. The officer who had charge of us was a Cretan Turk, a kind-hearted but rather diffident man. He received his orders from one army corps, and the officer in charge of the guard from another. The result was chaos: for while the Cretan gave us very considerable privileges, his plans were defeated by the officer of the guard, a conceited little puppy of about nineteen, who did nothing but swagger about with a sword. He was wholly malicious and possibly a little bit wrong in the head. He tormented the good lady who nursed our worst cases by telling her the bloody deeds he itched to do; the finest sensation on earth, he said, was to feel your steel pass through an enemy’s body. But she turned upon him and told him that in a few months he would be selling melons on the street for a living. When the Cretan, who was a senior captain, gave us leave to go out into the ample grounds of the college, this little squirt ordered the guard to prevent us; and in like way he made himself so intolerable that Dr. Maclachlan spoke to a higher power and got him removed. After that things went quite smoothly.

There was a very large playing field attached to the college, twenty acres, I think it was; there was a chapel with an organ in it, an auditorium with a grand piano, and a large, well-equipped gymnasium. We began by using a few rooms of the main building, and ended by filling the whole establishment, even the chapel. For parties were coming in almost daily from all over Turkey. At first they were nearly all sick men, some of them at the very point of death. We lost sixteen men in Smyrna, who died before they could be exchanged, almost within sight of home. But later on, when the Turks found they could not make up the thousand in any other way, all the camps were combed through again, and a great many of the later arrivals had nothing whatever the matter with them except the awful disease of prison weariness: a disease that, fortunately, few people know, but which none who have known it will ever forget.

It was astonishing at first to realize how few really sick men there were, but the explanation was not far to seek: the sick had died. Some of those who passed medical boards were almost ludicrous. One, I remember, had an abnormally rough and thick skin, had had it all his life. Another had complained that he felt tired. Another had been late for the medical board, in fact, he had only gone up for a joke, and at the last moment; but he pleaded that he had rested so many times by the way that he could not get there in time. He was one of the best football players in Turkey, but he was passed.

Another large contingent came from Afion, others from Broussa, Constantinople, Gedos—the parole camp, where officers who chose to give their parole could go and enjoy almost complete liberty; from Angora, and from all the camps in the Taurus mountains. These last were the weakest of the whole. They were the survivors of a terrible slavery.

The European community of Smyrna, save for about a week near the beginning of the war, had been allowed to live in their own houses and to go where they pleased in Smyrna and its widespread suburbs. They will perhaps disagree with me when I say that they had been very well treated. This was due to the political sagacity of the Vali, Rahmy Bey, who seems to have realized from the beginning that Turkey was on the wrong side. He has been accused of vast speculations, and he certainly tolerated massacre and wholesale deportation of the Greeks; but he protected the Armenians in his province, and spread his cloak over the subjects of the Entente. For that we must be very grateful. I met him several times and found him clever, strong, and amusing. He is a very notable Turk, and may rule Turkey some day.

Many of the French and British subjects came to visit us, and, later, when we were free, we enjoyed much hospitality at their hands. One of them told me that the dearth of news was so great during the beginning of the German retreat that smuggled copies of the Times newspaper had commanded the enormous price of one pound per hour of perusal.

We waited on and on. The college was filled to overflowing, and another camp was started in another part of Smyrna. Nobody knew when the ship would come, or even where it would come to. But the resistance of the enemy was crumbling. Turkish officers told us that their armies were mere skeleton forces. They estimated that there were six hundred thousand deserters in the hills. A story was told of a battalion ordered from Smyrna to the Palestine front, which melted on the railway journey until there was only one man left besides the C.O. Bulgaria gave way. The Palestine front gave way, and a Turkish staff officer told me that their estimate of losses there alone was ninety-two thousand men. It was plain that the war was coming to an end.