We were kept in a tent for three days at the Turkish G.H.Q., and were not troubled with many questions. Our interrogation came later. Various officers came to see us. To look at us, I think. For we were samples, and on their valuation of us would depend their reports on Kitchener’s Army. The four of us aggregated about twenty-four feet four inches in length, and about fifty-three stone in weight, but I do not suppose they went much on that. General von Sanders had said to our youngest, “Eton? and Oxford?” and seemed pleased to find that his conjecture was right. He knew England well, and said that he had been in Ireland not long before the war. But the Turks were different. They looked at us a good deal, but ventured no overt guesses as to our antecedents. One Turkish officer, an Arab rather, and a descendant of the Prophet, as he told us, had lived in London, and spoke English perfectly. Indeed, he boasted that in his veins there ran some drops of English blood, and told me the well-known family that had lent it. Being ignorant of the law of libel, I will not mention it here. He was a curious being. A violent Moslem, but not unfriendly to us personally. Indeed, he did me a real good turn, for he somehow or other sent a telegram for me to my wife and saved her from that awful anxiety that so many women have had to bear after receiving notice that their menkind were “missing.”
I liked to listen to this friendly enemy’s conversation. He had an idea that we had two submarines in the Sea of Marmora based upon the islands and supplied by the Greeks there.
It was impossible, he said, that our submarines should pass up and down the straits through all their nets and mines. But was it? Ask the E 7 or the E 11. Another favourite topic was the recuperative power of Islam. After this war, the Arab maintained, Turkey would recover much more quickly than the Western nations. “For,” said he, “we are polygamous. We use the whole breeding power of our race, which resides in the women. Women are not being killed. They will all find husbands and bear children. We shall build up again our full power while you are still suffering from the deaths of your young men.” There may be much truth in this. I think that all the enemy staff were very anxious at that time. They thought the Greeks had come in without declaring war, and one of my signallers, a short, dark man, a glass-blower from Yorkshire, had some difficulty in proving to the Turks that he was not a Greek. “Yok! Yok!” said the Turkish officer, “yok” being the Turkish for “no”; but he accepted the evidence of a pocketful of letters with English post-marks, and it probably saved the man’s life—for the time—for he died of hard treatment two years later. I remember that this man said to me, “They say ‘Yok, yok,’ sir; they know they have got the East Yorks!” “Yok” was at that time the only Turkish word I knew, and that and “Yassak,” meaning “forbidden,” were the words I heard most often in Turkey.
The Turkish staff officers, even as the Germans, told us how hard they found it to get their allies to take prisoners. The fact was that they only went in for taking prisoners when they wanted to study our newly-landed forces. At all other times they murdered them. It is easy to demonstrate, as I think the following facts will show. On Gallipoli, I believe something like 700 officers and 11,000 men were posted as missing. Many of these were dead, of course, but certainly nothing like all. Of the 700 officers only 17 were taken prisoner, one in every forty-one; of the 11,000 men about 400 were taken prisoner, one in every twenty-seven. The details regarding the men I do not know, but the officers were taken as follows:—
| At the first landing at Anzac | 2 |
| At Anzac when the August landing at Suvla Bay took place | 2 |
| At Suvla Bay from the 11th Division | 5 |
| Between Anzac and Suvla, at the same time, from the Ghurkas | 1 |
| At or in the region of Cape Hellas at the same time, from the 29th Division | 3 |
| At Suvla Bay, a few days later, when the Territorials landed | 2 |
| At Suvla Bay, again a few days later, from the Yeomanry | 1 |
| And one officer of the Australian forces was taken at the Anzac front when no new landing was on | 1 |
| — | |
| 17 |
That clearly shows that the prisoners were taken only to gain information as to the types of our new forces. But I have further evidence. I was one of four British officers who crossed the Sea of Marmora in a Turkish torpedo-boat, six days after we were captured. In the engineers’ quarters with us was a sick Turkish officer, a Circassian, who spoke French. Of the four British, I happened to be the only one who could converse with him. He seemed pleased to see us, told us what a good time we should have in Constantinople; society, women, fine hotels, and other joys. We were extremely surprised. Then he told us that an order had come to take some prisoners, “and we have got some.” We were again surprised, but polite, and conversation continued. Suddenly he said, “Who are you?” “British officers,” I replied. “Oh!” he said, “I thought you were invalided Germans!”
Major-General Sir Charles Townshend has stated publicly since returning to England that the Turk is a sportsman and a clean fighter. This must have been said in complete ignorance of the whole series of damning facts which are now in the hands of our Government. I have brought out one of these facts, and others will appear as the book proceeds. Major-General Townshend is to the best of my belief singular on this point among those officers, non-commissioned officers and men who were his fellow-prisoners in Turkey. The Turk is a master of the game he plays. A hospital-ship lying off the coast is secure from his artillery, because of the publicity, not because it is a hospital-ship. A wounded soldier behind a ridge, hid from the eye of the world’s Press, has about as much chance with the Turks as he would have with a pack of wolves. An article I once read in a Turkish paper published in French, an article upon the damnable wickedness of the Entente, ended in these words: “C’est nous qui sommes les ‘Gentlemen.’” They wish to play to the gallery of neutrals, and to pose as humane fighters. But they expected to win, and they thought the prisoners’ stories would have to wait until after the war. We managed to evade this last wish of theirs; but of that later. It has been pointed out that the Turks did not use gas; indeed, they laughed at our respirators. I have heard, and I believe, that the true explanation of their reluctance was that they were found too unhandy and stupid to be trusted not to gas themselves.
There were good Turks; there are good wolves, for I have known one; but their rarity was above that of rubies.
There is one other question concerning Gallipoli which may fitly come into this chapter. I do not ask the question, but one of us four was asked it by General Liman von Sanders, and we did not then, and we do not now, know the reply. Von Sanders asked, “Why did General Hamilton send a handful like yours to attack the great hill that commands all my position. Did he think that I could be so blind as not to defend it against even a much stronger force?”
On the early morning of the 16th of August we reached the Quay of Stamboul.