Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom

by Maurice Andrew Brackenreed Johnston; Kenneth Darlaston Yearsley

With our arrival at Yozgad was renewed many an old friendship, dating back to the earlier days of the campaign in Mesopotamia; for, like ourselves, the majority of the eighty officers whom we found there were victims of the siege of Kut-el-Amara. A few days later about twenty officers of the original camp were transferred to Afion-Kara-Hissar, leaving us now a combined total of roughly 100 officers and 60 orderlies.

The "camp" occupied six detached houses, divided into two groups of three houses each, the one on the western, the other near the south-western limits of the town. With a single exception each house stood in its own grounds, which comprised something under an acre of garden apiece. These were in most cases planted with fruit trees, and in all cases surrounded by high stone walls. The first comers had by April 1918 converted these previously unkempt areas into flourishing vegetable gardens. For our safe custody there were on the average two sentries over each house; these had their sentry-boxes in the garden or at the entrance to the enclosure wall. There was also a post on the four-hundred-yard length of road which connected the two groups of houses.

As had been our impression on arrival, the town of Yozgad could by no manner of means be called picturesque. It is squalidly built on the steep slopes of a narrow valley, surrounded on all sides by bare and rugged hills. The larger houses, it is true, have a few fruit trees in their gardens, and tall poplars line the river bank; the country around, however, is destitute of trees except for a small pine wood on the high ridge south of the town. The camp was both higher and less accessible than any other in Turkey; for Yozgad stands some 4500 feet above sea-level, and in the heart of the rugged mountain system of Anatolia, seven days' march from the nearest railway station.

The town itself is said to have had a population before the war of some 20,000 souls. At the time of our arrival it could hardly have contained one-fifth of that number; for, shortly before the formation of the camp in July 1916, most of the Armenians had been massacred; and they had formed a large proportion of the inhabitants. Their shops had been pillaged, and whenever there was a shortage of firewood the Turks merely proceeded to pull down another of the Armenian houses, which, as usual throughout Anatolia, were largely constructed of wood. The crash of falling timber as a building was demolished was a sound so common as to pass almost unnoticed by the prisoners. Of Turkish brutality, however, we had an even more constant reminder than the sound and sight of ruined buildings; for every day there were to be seen numbers of Armenian children dying as they lay in the narrow streets, starved, emaciated, and clad in rags. For us to provide relief on the large scale required was impossible, owing both to the difficulties of obtaining money and the necessity of screening our philanthropy from the commandant and other Turkish authorities. To the credit of the Turkish soldier be it said, however, that he at any rate did not prevent us from helping these poor miserable creatures; and it was thanks to connivance on the part of our sentries and escorts that we were able towards the end of our time to give away money and bread daily in the streets.

The White Paper published in November 1918 on the subject of the Treatment of British Prisoners of War in Turkey describes the commandant of the camp at Yozgad as a "Turk of the old school—polite, honest, and silent." Silent, or, we would rather say, taciturn, Kiazim Bey undoubtedly was, for it needed many applications before an inquiry or request received an answer at all. Polite, too, for when he did vouchsafe to reply he would promise almost anything; but is it not known to those who have dealt with a Turk, albeit one of the old school, that in his estimation a promise costs nothing and involves no obligation of fulfilment? It is merely his method of temporarily soothing your feelings, and is not this of the essence of politeness? As to his honesty, if he did not loot our parcels or steal our money, he was not averse from accepting a regular commission from every shopkeeper who wished to supply his wares to the camp. Even our sentries had to bribe him before they were allowed on leave. Ten Turkish pounds, or an equivalent in kind, passed hands before a fortnight's leave was granted.

The following story can be vouched for. One of our guard, when desiring a holiday, turned up at the commandant's office, but he was out. His son, however, a boy of fourteen, was there, and to him the simple soldier gave his money to be handed on to Kiazim Bey. Such an opportunity did not often occur; so the boy spent the rest of that day gorging costly sweetmeats in the bazaar. After several days the soldier made further inquiries about his leave, and the truth was out. The story ends with a good beating for the boy and no leave for the soldier. Another of our guards used to mend boots for us, but finally gave it up, declaring openly that the commission demanded by his commandant made it no longer worth his while.

By the time of the arrival of the party from Changri, a number of so-called privileges had been granted by this polite, honest, and silent old Turk—although, it must be admitted, rather in the spirit of the unjust judge worried incessantly by the importunate widow. The most useful of these concessions was the permission to go out coursing on two days a week. The "Yozgad Hunt Club" boasted a pack of no less than three couple of "hounds." These were of a local breed, and had the shape of small and rather moth-eaten greyhounds, mostly, however, with black, or tan and white, markings. Nevertheless, they were clean and affectionate, and, thanks to the master and whips, became wonderfully good coursers. Seldom did they fail to account for at least one hare or fox between the hours of 4 and 9 A.M. each Monday and Thursday in the spring and summer of 1918.

One exception we remember was the day when the master appeared for the first time in a pink coat of local style and dye, and then we drew blank. The field themselves were dazed, so the hounds had to be excused. Some of the happiest recollections of our captivity are of those glorious early mornings in the country, far away from the ugly town which was our prison. Here for a few brief hours it was almost possible to forget that we were prisoners of war, until reminded that this was Turkey by the monotonous drawl of one of our greatest exponents of the Ottoman tongue. Wafted on the soft morning breeze as we wended our way back to bath and breakfast, would come at intervals of half a minute some such sounds as those which follow: Er ... er ... posta ... bou ... bou ... bourda ... er ... er ... aie ... der.... Such fluency almost suggested that Turkish was a simple language, instead of one of the most difficult in the world, second only, it is said, to Chinese.

Although attempts were made to play football, no suitable ground existed in or near Yozgad, and four-a-side hockey became the form of recreation which for the majority in the camp provided the best means of combining pleasure and hard exercise. Hockey was available at any time of day, as the ground was within the precincts of the camp, being in fact the lowest of a series of terraces in one of the gardens belonging to our houses. It was a bare plot, with a hard but dusty surface, and surrounded on three sides by stone walls: the area available for play was, perhaps, the length of a cricket pitch and about ten yards across, so that there was not room for more than a total of eight players.