World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, Turkish
We reached Angora long after dark and were met by a Bimbashi who
conveyed us in carriages to our new quarters. The men marched, but to
the same destination, and it was after our arrival there that we were
able for the first time to talk with them freely. This was seventeen
days after capture.
We drove through the squalid streets of a corner of the town, and out
about a mile into the country. I think we all shuddered as we drew near
a large barrack and remembered Taxim, and breathed more freely when we
had left it behind. Our destination was not a particularly sweet place,
but it was better than that.
We crossed a bridge, passed a mulberry plantation, and the carriages
halted at the foot of a slope leading up to a group of buildings
surrounded by a high wall. A small, low, iron-studded door, guarded by a
sentry with a fixed bayonet, was opened. We stooped through it, walked
beneath an arched gateway, and came out in a paved courtyard surrounded
by buildings black against the starry sky. As we came in heads popped
out of the windows, and we heard people speaking in French. That sounded
civilized at any rate. Have you who read this ever considered what the
word “civilized” means? It means a good deal when you are in the middle
of Anatolia. Through a door to the left and up a flight of steps we
went, and at the top we were met by three French naval officers, headed
by Commander Fabre, who welcomed us so courteously and kindly that my
heart warms to think of it to the present day.
Everything that a fellow-prisoner could do they had done. And when the
Turks had gone and the gate was locked once more, we sat down with them
to an excellent meal.
Our friends were the officers and crew of the submarine “Mariotte,” sunk
in the Dardanelles rather more than a month before. Two of the officers
spoke English fluently, and the third was a dogged striver who had
mastered a great deal of our language before the end of the war.
From them we learned what this strange building was. It was called the
Wank (pronounced Wonk) and was an Armenian monastery, half farm, half
stronghold. What had happened to the monks they did not know, save that
they had been turned out. As a matter of fact they were dead. Very
nearly everything they had had been moved by the Turks, looted by
officials and officers, but we came into joint possession with the
French of a few beds; enough for the officers, the men were not allowed
beds; a divan round three sides of a fairly comfortable room, a
shower-bath, and some framed photographs of various high dignitaries of
the Armenian Church. There were also lamps and a stove. This was a very
great advance on any home we had yet had in Turkey; for, although a
European housekeeper would have been disgusted at the vermin, they were
not sufficiently numerous to keep one awake all night.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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