World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, Turkish
After Broussa the most conveniently placed camp, so far as officers are
concerned, is Afion-Kara-Hissar, though its direct communication with
the capital by railway did not save the prisoners from severe privation
in the winter of 1917-18. The few things there were to buy were then at
prohibitive cost; and the general state of affairs may be judged by the
fact that on Christmas Day, there being no firewood and twenty degrees
of frost, the officers took their dinner in bed, as the only place where
they could keep a little warm. Afion was one of the earliest formed
prison camps in Turkey. In the spring of 1918 there were 100 British
officers here, and 120 Russians. This is too large a number for the
accommodation, and still more for the resources of the town.
They are lodged in a number of empty houses between the town and the
station, which is about two miles away. These houses are in two groups,
forming the so-called upper and lower camps, though they are not camps
in the sense of being enclosed in any sort of compound. They seem to be
fairly satisfactory in good weather, but they are very primitive. In the
buildings, more or less unfinished, of the lower camp there was at first
no provision for heating and no glass in the windows. By the early part
of 1917 the officers had arranged a routine for themselves which the
vexatious, sometimes maddening, inefficiency and caprice of the Turk did
not seriously interfere with. They had books and games indoors, fixed
hours of study, and a flourishing run of amateur theatricals. Out of
doors they were cramped, but there were some limited chances of
cricket. Once a week the two camps could visit each other, under escort,
and there was another weekly outing when they could go for country
walks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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