FourFifty Miles to Freedom 3
An officer who used to fill up an old beer-bottle with hot water to
warm his feet when he got into bed, found one morning that it had
slipped away from his feet and had already begun to freeze, although
still under the clothes!
But enough of the miseries of that winter: in spite of such
unfavourable conditions, the camp was a cheerful one. We were all
good friends, and united in our determination not to knuckle under to
the Turk. Our senior officer, Colonel A. Moore, of the 66th Punjabis,
was largely instrumental in making our lot an easier one. This he did
by fighting our many battles against an unreasonable and apathetic
commandant, and in all our schemes for escape he gave us his sound
advice and ready support.
Compared to his two predecessors, this commandant, Sami Bey, was a
very difficult person from whom to "wangle" anything. Although he
could lay claim to no greater efficiency for his task of commanding
a prisoner-of-war camp than they, he made himself very obnoxious to
us by his policy of pure obstruction. If we applied for any sort of
concession, however reasonable, he safeguarded himself by saying he
would have to wire to Constantinople for orders, and of course no
orders ever came. With the two commandants we had had in Kastamoni, a
threat by our own senior officer to report any matter under discussion
to the Turkish Headquarters was enough to make him give in over any
reasonable request without further ado. Sami, however, would look
the question up in his Regulations. On one occasion we bombarded him
from every quarter with demands to be allowed to go out tobogganing.
Finally the answer came back: "The Regulations do not mention the word
'toboggan'; therefore, I cannot allow you to do so." Even the Turk,
then, though he uses sand instead of blotting-paper, has his office
"red tape"!
The average Turkish officer is an ignoramus, and the following story
of Sami Bey will serve to show that he was no exception to the rule.
At the time that the German gun "Big Bertha" was bombarding Paris at
long range, he was very proud to produce a picture of it in a German
paper. It was one of those semi-bird's-eye views, showing Paris in the
left-hand bottom corner, and along the top the Straits of Dover and the
English Channel. The gun was about half-way down the right-hand edge,
and the curved trajectory of the shell was shown by a dotted line from
the moment it left the muzzle to the moment when it entered Paris. To
a British officer to whom he was showing the picture, Sami explained at
great length how the shell passed through St Quentin, Cambrai, Douai,
up to one of the Channel ports, and then down again viâ Amiens, until
it finally arrived at its destination in Paris and exploded! This
Turkish brigadier-general believed this to be a solemn fact, and his
"ignorant" British hearer was polite enough not to undeceive him.
Ours claimed to have been the first party formed with a view to escape,
but it was not long before there were several others, and it became
evident that some plan would have to be devised by which a large number
might hope to make their way out of the barracks fairly simultaneously.
Since these had been designed for Turkish soldiers, every window was
already barred. But we were in addition a camp of suspects, who had
refused to give their parole; so at night, in addition to sentries
being posted at every corner, visiting patrols went round the building
at frequent intervals. Three or four fellows, of course, might cut the
bars of a window and slip through, but hardly five or six parties.
At this moment an old magazine came into our hands containing an
article which described how thirty or forty Federal officers had
escaped from a Confederate prison by means of a tunnel. This was at
once recognised as the ideal solution of our problem if only we could
find a suitable outlet and the means of disposing of the earth.
While the general plan was still under discussion, we were reinforced
by the arrival of three officers from Geddos. They had refused to give
their parole in spite of the Turks' threat that they would be moved
to Changri if they did not change their minds. Here then they arrived
one cold December morning, looking very racy in their check overcoats,
supplied to them by the Dutch Legation. These coats were doubtless
the last word in Constantinople fashions, and in the shop windows had
probably been marked "Très civilisé," for it is the highest ambition of
the Turk to be considered civilised.
Nothing hurts his feelings more than to be the object of ridicule on
account of any lack of up-to-dateness, as the following story will
serve to illustrate. While we were at Kastamoni, a chimney in one of
the houses occupied by the prisoners of war caught fire, and, with a
great flourish of trumpets, the town fire-brigade was called out to
extinguish the conflagration. Let not the reader, however, picture to
himself even the most obsolete of horsed fire-engines. In this town,
with a pre-war population of something like 25,000 souls, and with
houses almost entirely built of timber, dependence in the event of a
fire was placed on what can best be described as a diminutive tank
carried on a stretcher, and provided with a small pump worked by a
lever, seesaw fashion. The tank was kept filled by buckets replenished
at the nearest spring. The sight of two men in shabby uniform solemnly
oscillating the lever by the handle at either end, and of the feeble
trickle of water which resulted at the nozzle of the hose, was too
much for the sense of humour of the British officers who happened to
be present at the time. At this moment the commandant, then one Tewfik
Bey, appeared on the scene. Horrified at such ill-timed levity on the
part of the onlookers, he seized upon a major standing by and had him
escorted to his room, there to be confined till Tewfik's anger should
abate. To the Turk this tank was the latest thing in fire-engines.
To carry the story to its happy ending, we may add that, after three
days of confinement, the major addressed a letter to H.E. Enver Pasha
through the commandant, which ran somewhat as follows:--
"SIR,--I have the honour to report that, owing to the
close confinement in which I have been kept, my health has now
entirely broken down. I therefore request that, with a view to
providing some slight possibility of recovery, I may be allowed to
go to England on one month's sick leave, and that as far as the
port of embarkation I may be accompanied by _posta_[5] 'Ginger,' as
he alone in all Turkey really understands my temperament.--I have
the honour to be, sir, your most obedient prisoner of war,
X."
Whether this letter ever reached His Excellency we shall probably never
know. From our knowledge of the Turk's total lack of humour, however,
we should say that it is more than probable that Tewfik Bey solemnly
forwarded it on through the proper channel. That no answer was received
proves nothing; for it is a matter of years to get a reply to an
application like this from the authorities at Constantinople, and the
letter was only written three years ago. At least it had this good
effect, that the major was released from confinement forthwith.
But we must return to our real subject. Amongst the three officers from
Geddos was one Tweedledum, so named from a certain rotundity of figure,
which even the scanty provisions said to be obtainable there had failed
to reduce. From his lips we first heard of the wonderful capabilities
of the Handley-Page passenger aeroplane. Such machines, he said, could
carry fifteen to sixteen passengers, and three of them had recently
flown from England to Mudros, with only one intermediate landing in
Italy. A pilot of one of them had been a prisoner with him at Geddos.
A few evenings later Nobby had a great brain-wave; fetching a 'Pears'
Annual,' he turned up the maps of Europe and Asia Minor, and, after a
few hurried measurements, unfolded to his stable companions, Perce and
Looney, what was afterwards known as the "aeroplane scheme." These
three had, with much expense and trouble, managed to collect enough
planks for a real wooden partition to their "room," and it was behind
this screen that this and many another devilish plot was hatched.
Briefly, Nobby's idea was for a flight of five or six Handley-Pages
to be sent from Cyprus, swoop down on Changri, and pick up the whole
camp, both officers and men--and Sami too. We should, of course, have
to take over the barracks from our guards, but this should be easily
effected by a _coup de main_, and probably without having to resort to
bloodshed. At first the idea appeared a trifle fantastic, for after
being cut off from the outside world for two whole years it took time
for us to assimilate the wonderful advance of aeronautical science
which the scheme assumed; but given that Tweedledum's statement was
correct, the scheme was feasible, and we soon took up the question
seriously. Our representative of the R.F.C. pronounced the surrounding
fields practicable landing grounds; a committee confirmed the
possibility of taking over the barracks by surprise; and the whole
scheme, illustrated by a small sketch of the vicinity, was soon on its
way home.
We were fortunate in having a method of sending secret information
without much risk of detection. The censorship of our letters, like
most things in Turkey, was not very efficient. Looney's brother in
England was the inventor of the secret means. The first code which he
devised consisted merely of diminutive gaps between pairs of letters
in an apparently ordinary communication. That there was a message
contained was indicated to the addressee by the writer adding after his
signature his address as "Codin House, Thislet Terrace."[6] The exact
nature of the code then had to be discovered by guess-work. After two
letters had been received, Nobby noticed the gaps, and the clue was
discovered. By stringing together all the letters preceding the gaps,
one obtained the concealed message.
The way thus opened, more effective means of communication could be
developed. One of these was to send out messages written on a slip of
paper, wrapped up in silver tissue and then inserted in a full tube
of tooth-paste. As parcels, however, took anything from eight months
to over a year to reach the camp, the value of the news contained was
considerably diminished. Moreover, this method was not available for sending news from Turkey to England.
댓글 없음:
댓글 쓰기