We liked the looks of neither the carriage nor the fellow-passengers, and thought how much more pleasant a goods truck would be. R. and I persuaded a gendarme to take us to the office of the station commandant in the hope of being allotted different quarters. The commandant was polite, but pretended that he could offer nothing better. Then, as we passed along the platform, I saw a clean, covered-in truck, with a few German soldiers inside it. One man leaned idly against the entrance, and him I asked politely if, since there was so much room to spare, they could lend us a corner. "_Ausgeschlossen!_" he growled. "_Wir wollen keine Englander._" We were about to move on, when--"_Was gibt's?_" called a Feldwebel as he stepped from the truck. I explained that seven British officers, two of them wounded, longed for floor-space, so that they would not be herded with odorous Turks. "Perhaps we can manage it," said the Feldwebel. "What's Paris like now?" he asked suddenly, and went on to explain that before the war he was a bank clerk there. With one eye on the space in the truck, I admitted to having lived for a time on the _rive gauche_, discussed peace-time and war-time Paris, and even--for one will put up with a lot to avoid travelling in a Turkish third-class carriage--listened patiently to the German's reminiscences of a love affair with a French singer. This patience was rewarded. He took a referendum of his five companions; and all, except the surly brute to whom I had first spoken, agreed to cede half the truck. The Feldwebel asked permission of a German major to ask us inside, and the major agreed. "But only because you happen to be fellow-Europeans," he explained, "while the Turks are not." A small bribe to the gendarme, and we moved thankfully from the Turkish compartment. There was room enough for all, prisoners and guards, to lie on the floor of the truck, so that by comparison we travelled _de luxe_. The Germans were friendly; and the Feldwebel, after I had pretended to be interested in more tales of his _affaires de coeur_, offered us a supply of tea, with the loan of a spirit-stove for boiling it. So, with poker and talk, we travelled across Asia Minor. On three of the next four evenings a certain amount of excitement was produced by Turkish soldiers' attempts to desert when the train halted. They ran toward the hills, sometimes fired upon and sometimes chased. Several were captured, several got away and went to swell the huge total of brigands.