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
Shortly after we had made our decision the question of giving parole
cropped up. To any one who gave it the Turks offered a better camp and
more liberty. It was a question for each to decide for himself, and we
did so. On the 22nd November 1917, therefore, seventy-seven officers
went off to Geddos. It was very sad parting from many good friends, and
when the last cart disappeared round the spur of the hill, one turned
away wondering if one would ever see them again. There were still
forty-four officers and about twenty-eight orderlies in Changri. These
officers were moved into the north wing of the barracks, and there
they remained for the next four and a half months. At this period we
had a great financial crisis--none of us had any money, prices were
very high, and it came to tightening our belts a little. Our long and
badly-built barrack rooms were very draughty, and as we had no money
there was not much likelihood of getting firewood. Some cheerful Turk
kindly told us that the winter at Changri was intensely cold, and that
the temperature often fell below zero. Altogether the prospect for the
next few months was anything but pleasant.
During our most depressed moments, however, we could always raise a
smile over the thought that we were "The honoured guests of Turkey."
Enver Pasha himself had told us so at Mosul, where we halted on
our four-hundred-mile march across the desert, after the fall of
Kut-el-Amara.[4] So it must have been true.
At the time we write this unscrupulous adventurer, Enver--a man of
magnetic personality and untiring in his energy to further his personal
schemes--has but lately fled to Caucasia. He is a young man, and
having held a position of highest authority in Turkey for some years,
presumably a rich one. Doubtless he will lead a happy and prosperous
existence for many years to come.
There are thousands of sad hearts in England and in the Indian Empire
to-day, and hundreds of thousands in Turkey itself, as a result of the
utter disregard for human life entertained by this man and a few of his
colleagues. Of the massacre of Armenians we will not speak, although
we have seen their dead bodies, and although we have met their little
children dying of starvation on the roadsides, and have passed by their
silent villages; but we should fail in our duty to the men of the
British Empire who died in captivity in Turkey did we not appeal for a
stern justice to be meted out to the men responsible for their dying.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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