Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom

by Maurice Andrew Brackenreed Johnston; Kenneth Darlaston Yearsley

With one exception, all the compasses were of the poorest description, being of the more or less toy variety with a mirror on the back. Changri, however, produced one of superior pattern, which we purchased without arousing suspicion, and attempted to make more efficient with the luminous paint off the face of an old watch, but without very lasting success.

It is not easy to make a bag of canvas which will hold water, but by dint of fine stitching and a special kind of beeswax, our naval leader succeeded in producing three chargals which did yeoman service.

The map on which we were to rely was a French one, forty years old, and on a scale of about twenty-four miles to the inch. An officer had bought it for five pounds from a Greek dentist at Kastamoni. As it happened it was not bought primarily for escape purposes, but we persuaded him to sell it to us on his leaving Changri for Geddos. In this the hill features were very indistinctly shown by vague hachuring, and even a big river such as the Kizil Irmak was in several places shown dotted, signifying not that this dried up during parts of the year, but that no one had surveyed it. An up-to-date but very small map had been received from home by means of a series of six "bananas," each containing a tiny section; but, owing to our change of plan, this showed little of our proposed route.

The "sun compass" needs some explanation. This was an invention of Captain A. B. Matthews, D.S.O., R.E., who had been a prisoner of war at Yozgad since the fall of Kut-el-Amara. Wishing to make a rough survey of the immediately surrounding country for the use of the Hunt Club, and finding that local magnetic attraction made a compass altogether unreliable, he bethought him of a simple means of utilising the sun, which in the wonderful climate of Asia Minor is rarely obscured throughout the spring, summer, or autumn. The "sun compass" consists merely of a thin wooden disc of say 5 inches diameter, with the outer edge divided into 360 degrees, and with a hole at the centre through which can be inserted a piece of stiff straight wire. A table of the sun's bearing at any hour on any day completes the instrument. In actual use the disc is held horizontally, with the graduations upwards, and the wire kept vertical and protruding above the disc. Then, by turning the latter till the shadow of the wire falls on the sun's bearing plus 180 degrees, you have the disc set to read off true bearings in any direction.

Captain Matthews was also responsible for the star charts. By means of two maps of the heavens obtained from a book on travel, published by the Royal Geographical Society, he devised from first principles a "bus" consisting of three concentric cardboard discs. By means of these it was possible, almost mechanically, to read off the bearings of the brighter stars in the main constellations for any hour and any night of the year. It was thus possible to obtain a series of charts showing on which star one should march for any required bearing, and at any particular time. We prepared them for all hours of the nights from the 1st August to the 15th September 1918. This chart-book was of value as a check on a magnetic compass by night, but assumed an elementary knowledge of at least those constellations which would be of use for the particular purpose in view.

Although it was expected that if we wished to evade recapture we should have to avoid replenishing our supplies at any villages, it was necessary to take money in case we were compelled to do so as a last resource. For this purpose a certain amount of gold and silver was essential: otherwise it was quite possible that, in payment for anything in an out-of-the-way district, the paper money would be received at its true value, namely, nothing at all. A certain amount of paper money was, however, advisable in view of the conditions we might expect if we were recaptured, as paper money was less likely to be taken away from us than gold and silver. It was decided then to start if possible with at least £2 each in gold, £30 in paper, and two medjidies (worth four shillings each) in silver. This we succeeded in collecting, thanks to being able to cash a few cheques locally: for both the gold and the silver, however, it was necessary to pay five times their face value in paper. We bought silver coins, a few at a time, from various sentries. These men thoroughly understood our desire for them when we hinted at a pretty girl in England who would look very handsome with a necklace of medjidies round her neck.

While at Changri our party had succeeded in obtaining from other officers two pukka helio-mirrors, which had escaped destruction on the fall of Kut-el-Amara. With these we had fitted up a duplex heliograph, complete with signalling key and adjusting screws. Whereas, however, for the Samos scheme it would have been invaluable, for Rendezvous X its use was more problematical; and in view of the way in which essentials had gradually mounted up, it was in the end rather reluctantly decided that the helio must go by the board, as it weighed about three pounds.

Another decision now made was that in our party we should not use violence in order to make our escape, unless it should be necessary on the coast itself to avoid throwing away a really good chance. It was recognised that if bloodshed occurred, the Turks would be quite capable of killing off the whole of our party, and possibly others, if recaptured. For this reason no attempt was made to procure firearms, though this would probably have been no more difficult than obtaining the fezes, compasses, and field-glasses.

During the four months we were at Yozgad, Grunt, being one of the best Turkish scholars in the camp, started a class for any who chose to learn Turkish. About five times a week, therefore, all the original six of our escape-party and a few others used to meet in Grunt's room for an hour's instruction. In the case of would-be escapers, the main attraction of these lessons was this: if any of us were recaptured, as some were practically certain to be, it would be possible to make oneself understood to some slight extent, and thereby perhaps alleviate the unpleasantness of prison life by being able to let our jailers know our wants. Since, also, to judge by the experience of those who had been recaptured, we should, if equally unfortunate, spend several months in the close company of some of the worst criminals in Turkey, it would be a pity not to take the opportunity of picking up a really good conversational knowledge of the language under exceptionally favourable circumstances. For this a grounding in grammar would be invaluable. Nothing else but these considerations would have induced the majority of us to attempt so difficult a task as learning even the rudiments of the Ottoman tongue.

As the time grew near for the great adventure, the last stage of our training was entered upon. Every opportunity was taken of going out hunting, although the field was limited to a total of thirty. Keenness in hockey died off, as many of us were afraid of sustaining some injury which might incapacitate us on the actual day. Running and hard walking round the garden became a regular institution in some houses; and several cupboards, if suddenly opened at almost any hour of the day and at many in the night, would have disclosed a member of an escape-party loaded up in the most extraordinary manner, and performing gymnastic exercises for the strengthening of leg and shoulder muscles. In view of the inevitable hard marching, towards the end several of the party even went so far as to soak the feet several times a day in a strong solution of alum, in the hope of hardening the feet and avoiding blisters.