Four-Fifty Miles to FreedomJohnston, Maurice Andrew Brackenreed
History
Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom
Johnston, Maurice Andrew Brackenreed
Prisoner-of-war escapes; World War, 1914-1918 -- Prisoners and prisons, Turkish
With our arrival at Yozgad was renewed many an old friendship, dating
back to the earlier days of the campaign in Mesopotamia; for, like
ourselves, the majority of the eighty officers whom we found there were
victims of the siege of Kut-el-Amara. A few days later about twenty
officers of the original camp were transferred to Afion-Kara-Hissar,
leaving us now a combined total of roughly 100 officers and 60
orderlies.
The "camp" occupied six detached houses, divided into two groups
of three houses each, the one on the western, the other near the
south-western limits of the town. With a single exception each house
stood in its own grounds, which comprised something under an acre of
garden apiece. These were in most cases planted with fruit trees, and
in all cases surrounded by high stone walls. The first comers had by
April 1918 converted these previously unkempt areas into flourishing
vegetable gardens. For our safe custody there were on the average two
sentries over each house; these had their sentry-boxes in the garden
or at the entrance to the enclosure wall. There was also a post on the
four-hundred-yard length of road which connected the two groups of
houses.
As had been our impression on arrival, the town of Yozgad could by no
manner of means be called picturesque. It is squalidly built on the
steep slopes of a narrow valley, surrounded on all sides by bare and
rugged hills. The larger houses, it is true, have a few fruit trees
in their gardens, and tall poplars line the river bank; the country
around, however, is destitute of trees except for a small pine wood on
the high ridge south of the town. The camp was both higher and less
accessible than any other in Turkey; for Yozgad stands some 4500 feet
above sea-level, and in the heart of the rugged mountain system of
Anatolia, seven days' march from the nearest railway station.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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