With the departure of the party for Geddos, the camp at Changri did what little they could to render the long bare barrack rooms somewhat more endurable as winter quarters. Each room was about 80 feet in length, and consisted of a central passage bordered on either side by a row of ugly timber posts supporting the roof. Between the passage and a row of which ran along the walls were raised platforms, affording about six feet of useful width. Each platform was divided in two by a single partition half-way along the room. Viewed from one end the general effect resembled that of stables, to which use indeed all the lower rooms had been put previous to our arrival. Each length of platform was to a group of three or four officers, who were then at liberty to beautify their new homes as might suggest. were hard to come by, so for the most part old valises, blankets, and curtains were strung from post to post to[16] screen the "rooms" from the passage, and gain for the occupants a little privacy.
As the severity of the winter increased, floor-boards became a profitable occupation, for an icy now swept up through the cracks. By the time the financial difficulties to which we have referred were at an end, it was no longer possible to obtain in the a sufficient quantity of firewood for anything except our kitchen stoves. It was not, however, until snow was lying deep upon the ground that Sami Bey could be prevailed upon to let us cut down a few of the neighbouring willow-trees, for which it need hardly be said we had to pay heavily. Apart from the exercise thus obtained—and it was good exercise carrying the wood into the barracks—an odd visit or two to the bazaar, and a few hours' tobogganing as a on Christmas Day, were the only occasions on which we saw the outside of our dwelling-place for three long months. Nor was there anything in the way of comfort within. The number of trees allotted to us was small, and the daily wood we allowed ourselves only sufficed to keep the stoves going in our rooms for a few hours each day. The fuel, moreover, being green, was difficult to keep alight, so that we spent many hours that winter blowing at the doors of stoves; and the stoker on duty had to give the fire his undivided attention[17] if he wished to avoid the comments of his chilled companions. It was a special treat reserved for Sundays to have our stoves burning for an hour in the afternoon. For over a month the temperature remained night and day below freezing-point, and the thermometer on one occasion registered thirty-six degrees of frost.
An officer who used to fill up an old beer-bottle with hot water to warm his feet when he got into bed, found one morning that it had slipped away from his feet and had already begun to freeze, although still under the clothes!
But enough of the of that winter: in spite of such unfavourable conditions, the camp was a cheerful one. We were all good friends, and united in our determination not to under to the Turk. Our senior officer, Colonel A. Moore, of the 66th Punjabis, was largely instrumental in making our lot an easier one. This he did by fighting our many battles against an and commandant, and in all our schemes for escape he gave us his sound advice and ready support.
Compared to his two , this commandant, Sami Bey, was a very difficult person from whom to "wangle" anything. Although he could lay claim to no greater efficiency for his task of commanding a prisoner-of-war camp than they, he made himself very to us by his policy of pure .[18] If we for any sort of concession, however reasonable, he safeguarded himself by saying he would have to wire to Constantinople for orders, and of course no orders ever came. With the two commandants we had had in Kastamoni, a threat by our own senior officer to report any matter under discussion to the Turkish Headquarters was enough to make him give in over any reasonable request without further ado. Sami, however, would look the question up in his Regulations. On one occasion we bombarded him from every quarter with demands to be allowed to go out tobogganing. Finally the answer came back: "The Regulations do not mention the word 'toboggan'; therefore, I cannot allow you to do so." Even the Turk, then, though he uses sand instead of blotting-paper, has his office "red tape"!
The average Turkish officer is an ignoramus, and the following story of Sami Bey will serve to show that he was no exception to the rule. At the time that the German gun "Big Bertha" was bombarding Paris at long range, he was very proud to produce a picture of it in a German paper. It was one of those semi-bird's-eye views, showing Paris in the left-hand bottom corner, and along the top the Straits of Dover and the English Channel. The gun was about half-way down the right-hand edge, and the curved of the shell was shown by a dotted line from the moment it left the to the moment when it[19] entered Paris. To a British officer to whom he was showing the picture, Sami explained at great length how the shell passed through St Quentin, Cambrai, Douai, up to one of the Channel ports, and then down again viâ Amiens, until it finally arrived at its destination in Paris and exploded! This Turkish brigadier-general believed this to be a solemn fact, and his "ignorant" British hearer was polite enough not to undeceive him.
Ours claimed to have been the first party formed with a view to escape, but it was not long before there were several others, and it became evident that some plan would have to be devised by which a large number might hope to make their way out of the barracks fairly . Since these had been designed for Turkish soldiers, every window was already barred. But we were in addition a camp of suspects, who had refused to give their parole; so at night, in addition to being posted at every corner, visiting patrols went round the building at frequent . Three or four fellows, of course, might cut the bars of a window and slip through, but hardly five or six parties.
At this moment an old magazine came into our hands containing an article which described how thirty or forty Federal officers had escaped from a Confederate prison by means of a tunnel. This was at once recognised as the ideal solution of our problem[20] if only we could find a suitable and the means of disposing of the earth.
While the general plan was still under discussion, we were reinforced by the arrival of three officers from Geddos. They had refused to give their parole in spite of the Turks' threat that they would be moved to Changri if they did not change their minds. Here then they arrived one cold December morning, looking very racy in their check overcoats, supplied to them by the Dutch Legation. These coats were doubtless the last word in Constantinople fashions, and in the shop windows had probably been marked "Très civilisé," for it is the highest ambition of the Turk to be considered civilised.
Nothing hurts his feelings more than to be the object of on account of any lack of up-to-dateness, as the following story will serve to . While we were at Kastamoni, a chimney in one of the houses occupied by the prisoners of war caught fire, and, with a great flourish of , the town fire-brigade was called out to extinguish the . Let not the reader, however, picture to himself even the most of horsed fire-engines. In this town, with a pre-war population of something like 25,000 souls, and with houses almost built of timber, in the event of a fire was placed on what can best be described as a tank carried on a stretcher, and provided with a small pump worked by[21] a lever, fashion. The tank was kept filled by buckets at the nearest spring. The sight of two men in shabby uniform solemnly oscillating the lever by the handle at either end, and of the feeble of water which resulted at the nozzle of the hose, was too much for the sense of humour of the British officers who happened to be present at the time. At this moment the commandant, then one Tewfik Bey, appeared on the scene. at such ill-timed on the part of the , he seized upon a major by and had him escorted to his room, there to be confined till Tewfik's anger should . To the Turk this tank was the latest thing in fire-engines.
To carry the story to its happy ending, we may add that, after three days of , the major addressed a letter to H.E. Enver Pasha through the commandant, which ran somewhat as follows:—
"Sir,—I have the honour to report that, owing to the close confinement in which I have been kept, my health has now entirely broken down. I therefore request that, with a view to providing some slight possibility of recovery, I may be allowed to go to England on one month's sick leave, and that as far as the port of I may be accompanied by posta[5] 'Ginger,' as he alone in all Turkey really understands my .—I have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient prisoner of war,
X."
[22]
Whether this letter ever reached His Excellency we shall probably never know. From our knowledge of the Turk's total lack of humour, however, we should say that it is more than probable that Tewfik Bey solemnly forwarded it on through the proper channel. That no answer was received proves nothing; for it is a matter of years to get a reply to an application like this from the authorities at Constantinople, and the letter was only written three years ago. At least it had this good effect, that the major was released from confinement forthwith.
But we must return to our real subject. Amongst the three officers from Geddos was one Tweedledum, so named from a certain rotundity of figure, which even the provisions said to be obtainable there had failed to reduce. From his lips we first heard of the wonderful of the Handley-Page passenger aeroplane. Such machines, he said, could carry fifteen to sixteen passengers, and three of them had recently flown from England to Mudros, with only one intermediate landing in Italy. A pilot of one of them had been a prisoner with him at Geddos. A few evenings later Nobby had a great brain-wave; fetching a 'Pears' Annual,' he turned up the maps of Europe and Asia , and, after a few hurried measurements, unfolded to his stable companions, Perce and Looney, what was afterwards known as the "aeroplane scheme."[23] These three had, with much expense and trouble, managed to collect enough planks for a real wooden partition to their "room," and it was behind this screen that this and many another devilish plot was hatched.
, Nobby's idea was for a flight of five or six Handley-Pages to be sent from Cyprus, down on Changri, and pick up the whole camp, both officers and men—and Sami too. We should, of course, have to take over the barracks from our guards, but this should be easily effected by a de main, and probably without having to resort to bloodshed. At first the idea appeared a trifle fantastic, for after being cut off from the outside world for two whole years it took time for us to assimilate the wonderful advance of science which the scheme assumed; but given that Tweedledum's statement was correct, the scheme was feasible, and we soon took up the question seriously. Our representative of the R.F.C. pronounced the surrounding fields practicable landing grounds; a committee confirmed the possibility of taking over the barracks by surprise; and the whole scheme, by a small of the vicinity, was soon on its way home.
We were fortunate in having a method of sending secret information without much risk of detection. The censorship of our letters, like most things in Turkey, was not very efficient. Looney's brother in England was[24] the inventor of the secret means. The first code which he devised consisted merely of diminutive gaps between pairs of letters in an ordinary communication. That there was a message contained was indicated to the addressee by the writer adding after his signature his address as "Codin House, Thislet Terrace."[6] The exact nature of the code then had to be discovered by guess-work. After two letters had been received, Nobby noticed the gaps, and the clue was discovered. By stringing together all the letters preceding the gaps, one obtained the message.
The way thus opened, more effective means of communication could be developed. One of these was to send out messages written on a slip of paper, wrapped up in silver tissue and then inserted in a full tube of tooth-paste. As parcels, however, took anything from eight months to over a year to reach the camp, the value of the news contained was diminished. Moreover, this method was not available for sending news from Turkey to England.
[25]
The final method was simple, yet effective for news into a country such as Turkey. It consisted of pasting together two thin post-cards, the gummed portion being confined to a border of about an inch in width round the edges. The central rectangle so left ungummed was available for the secret message, which was written very small on the two inner faces of the cards before they were stuck together. Further space for writing was obtainable by adding another slip of paper of the size of the rectangle, and including this within the cards when gumming them up. After being pressed, the final post-card was trimmed so as to leave no sign of the join. The position of the rectangle containing the message was indicated on the address side by at first two lines, and later by the smallest possible dots at the corners. Well over a score of such cards must have passed from England into Turkey, and more than half that number in the reverse direction, without discovery ever being made by our captors. In the camp, to avoid the risk of being overheard talking about "split post-cards" by one of the interpreters, these cards were known as "bananas"—an apt name, as you had to skin them to get at the real fruit inside!
This explains the method by which it was possible to suggest the aeroplane scheme to the home authorities.
Unfortunately it used to take at least four months to receive a reply to a letter. For this reason we could not afford to wait until a definite date was communicated to us, so we ourselves named the first fifteen days of May as suitable for us, and agreed, from 6 to 8 A.M. on each of these days, to remain in a state of instant readiness to seize the[26] barracks should an aeroplane appear. For the sake of , the details of the coup de main itself were left to be worked out by a small committee, and the report spread amongst the rest of the camp that the scheme had been dropped. The true state of affairs would not be until a few days before the first of May.
The committee's plan was this. There were at Changri 47 officers and 28 orderlies—a total force of 75 unarmed men with which to take over the barracks. Our guard, all told, numbered 70 men. At any one time during daylight there were seven Turkish sentries on duty: one outside each corner of the barracks, one inside the square which had an open staircase at each corner, one at the arched entrance in the centre of the north face, while the seventh stood guard over the commandant's office. This was a room in the upper storey over the archway and facing on to the square.
On each side of the commandant's office, therefore, were the barrack rooms inhabited by the British officers, and to go from one side to the other it was necessary to pass the standing at his post on the landing in between. From here a flight of steps gave on to the road through the main archway; on the other side of this again, and facing the stairs, was the door of the ground-floor barrack room used by our guard. This room was similar to those in the upper storey already described, and we found out by looking[27] through a hole made for the purpose in the floor of the room above, and by casual visits when we wanted an escort for the bazaar, that the rifles of the occupants were kept in a row of racks on either side of the central passage-way.
By 6 A.M. on each morning of the first fifteen days of May every one was to be dressed, but those who had no specific job to do were to get back into bed again in case suspicion should be caused in the mind of any one who happened to come round. The aeroplanes, if they came, would arrive from the south. Two look-out parties of three, therefore, were to be at their posts by 6 A.M., one in the officers' mess in the S.E., and the other in the Padre's room next to the in the S.W. corner of the barracks.
The staircases at these two corners of the square were to be watched by two officers told off for the purpose, one in each half of the north wing. When the look-outs in the south wing had either distinctly heard or seen an aeroplane, they were to come to their staircase and start walking down it into the square. Our look-outs in the north wing would warn the others in their rooms to get ready, and the officer who had the honour of doing verger to the Padre, and who used to ring a handbell before services, would run down the north-eastern staircase and walk diagonally across the square towards the chapel, ringing the bell for exactly thirty seconds.
[28]
The stopping of the bell was to be the signal for simultaneous action. The sentry on the landing could be easily disposed of by three officers; most of the rest were to run down certain staircases, cross the archway, dash into the barrack room and get hold of all the rifles, a small party at the same moment tackling the sentry at the main entrance.
On seeing the rush through the archway the look-out parties from the south wing would overpower the sentry in the square. The arms belonging to the three sentries and one other rifle were to be immediately taken to the corners of the barracks and the outside sentries covered. The orderlies, under an officer, would meanwhile form up in the square as a reserve.
Surprise was to be our greatest ally, and we hoped that, within a minute of the bell stopping, the barracks would be in our hands.
Having our Turkish guard into a big cellar and locked them in, we would then signal to the aeroplanes that the barracks were in our possession by laying out sheets in the square; while small picquets, armed with Turkish rifles and , would see to it that the aeroplanes on landing would be unmolested from the village. We are still convinced that the plan would have succeeded.
Even those in the know, however, put little faith in the probability of the aeroplane scheme being carried out, realising that the machines necessary for such an enterprise were not[29] likely to be available from the main battle-fronts. Preparations, therefore, continued for working out our own , as though this plan for outside help had not entered our heads. With the first signs of spring the tunnel scheme began to take concrete form.
As already mentioned in the description of the barracks, the ground to the west rose gently up to the Angora road. In this slope was a shallow, cup-like depression at a distance of forty yards from the building. If only a convenient point for starting a tunnel could be found in the nearest wall, the cup would form an ideal spot for breaking through to the surface. A night reconnaissance was made in the downstairs room on the western side of the barracks. As a result of this there seemed a likelihood that under the whole of the platform in this room we should find a hollow space varying from one to three feet in depth. If the were correct and a tunnel could be run out from here, there would be no difficulty in getting rid of all the earth into this hollow space. Unfortunately the lower room, though not in use, was kept locked.
It was discovered, however, that the walls of the barracks consisted of an outer and inner casing, each a foot thick, and built of large sun-dried bricks, the space between being filled up with a mixture of , , and earth, and a few larger stones. This was in the bottom storey. Above that[30] the construction of the wall changed to two thicknesses of lath and plaster attached to either side of a timber framing, and the thickness of the wall diminished to only nine inches. The total width of the wall below was five feet; therefore the lockers in the upper room were immediately above the rubble core of the heavier wall. It would thus be possible to get down through the lockers and sink a through the rubble to a trifle below the level of the ground, and from there to break through the inner casing and come into the empty space below the ground-floor.
Work was commenced in the middle of February 1918. For the next few weeks an officer was usually to be seen lolling about at either end of the first-floor rooms, and, on the approach of an interpreter or other intruder, would stroll down the passage, whistling the latest melody.
Within the room all would now be silent; but when the coast was again clear there could perhaps be seen in the barrack room a pair of figures, strangely and white with dust. Somewhere in the line of lockers was the entrance to the shaft-head. The doors being only a foot square were too small to admit a man, and so the top planks at the place where we wished to work had been levered up and fitted with hinges to form a larger entrance. To give additional room inside, the partition between two consecutive[31] lockers was also removed; the floor of one locker and the joists supporting the platform at this point were then cut away, and we were free to commence the shaft.
For this job six officers were chosen, of whom three belonged to our escape party. The six were divided into three reliefs, and each worked for two hours at a time. The hole was of necessity only just large enough for one man to work there, so of the pair one did the digging, while his partner, when the shaft had progressed a little, sat inside the locker at the top of the hole. When actually at work, the time went quickly enough; but sitting in the locker was very wearisome, as one's only duties were to pass on the alarm when the ragtime was whistled, and from time to time to draw up by a rope the small sacks filled by the digger. When all the available sacks were full, work was stopped, and the two would emerge from the locker. The sacks of rubbish were then carried a few yards along the room and emptied into a space some planks which had been loosened in the platform. At the end of their relief, the two would go off to change their clothes, leaving the work to be continued by the next pair.
During the time spent in the locker, one of the six learnt 'Omar Khayyám' by heart. Reading a book was almost impossible owing to the lack of light; even if it had been , in view of the risk of the reader[32] becoming so interested as to miss the signal of the alarm. 'Omar,' however, was a different thing. A verse could be read line by line at the of light entering by a chink in one of the ill-fitting locker doors, and then committed to memory—not a very task, but it helped to pass the time.
The working was a light one: a shirt and "shorts," sand-shoes, and a Balaclava cap. Round his mouth the digger usually tied a handkerchief, so as not to swallow his peck of dust at one time, while the cap prevented his hair and ears getting quite full of rubbish.
Let us work for one relief. You are dressed for the occasion. The tools, consisting of two , are at the bottom of the hole, which is, say, twelve feet deep. A couple of candles and a box of matches is all you need take with you. It is your turn to dig. You get into the locker and climb down the rope-ladder as quickly as possible, but you must take care not to touch the outer casing of the wall as you go, or you may find yourself staring at an astonished sentry outside: there are already a few holes in the wall through which daylight can be seen.
The candle lighted, you have a look round: but this is absurd! No one has done any work since you were down there yesterday morning. That beastly stone in the corner looks as tightly in the mortar as it was then. You bend down to pick up a and you bump your head against a projecting[33] brick. You try to sit down, but there is not enough room to sit and work at the same time. You try kneeling, but it can't be done. After twisting your limbs in a hitherto undreamt-of fashion you begin to chip away at the mortar round your old friend. Nothing seems to happen; then suddenly your candle falls down and goes out, leaving your of little ease in Stygian darkness.
You think you hear your partner say "Stop!" and you look up just in time to get your eyes full of , for he has merely shifted his legs, which are above you. After yourself you relight the candle and again get down to the stone. You pick and scrape and prise, and then as the chisel slips you bark your ; and so you go on. All sense of time is lost, and your one thought is to get that stone out. Now it moves. You work with redoubled energy, with the result that you break into a . How you hate that stone! Finally up it comes when you don't expect it, and the at the back of your head is nothing compared to the joy of the victor, which is equally yours.
The rock is too big, however, to go into a sack, so you shut your eyes and whisper to your partner above you. He then lets down an old canvas bath kept in the locker for this purpose. The of the bath is attached to a rope by several cords, the resulting appearance as it is lowered towards you being that of an parachute. The stone is difficult[34] to lift and your feet are very much in the way, but in the end the load is ready. There is not enough room in the shaft for the stone and the bath to be pulled up past your body, so you climb up the ladder and help your partner to haul. This done, work is resumed. A small sack is filled with bits of mortar picked away from round the stone, and this too is pulled up the shaft, but the sack being small you need not leave the hole.
Now your partner tells you that it is time for the next shift. You leave the chisels in an obvious place, blow out the candle, and climb to the locker. Here your partner is tapping gently against the door. If your look-out says "All safe!" you push open the lid and emerge. The big stone is hastily carried to an empty locker and the rubbish from the sack disposed of as already described. The in the platform is replaced, the bath and sack returned to the locker, the lid closed, and the place once more assumes its normal aspect.
You then nip along to the nearest inhabited room, where you find your relief waiting for you. One of these two is almost certain to greet you with the words: "I suppose you got that stone in the corner out straight away. I practically finished it off last night. It only wanted a heave or two." It is useless to point out that, had it not been for the masterly manner in which you had worked, the stone would still be firmly embedded there. You[35] merely your time, certain that within a few days you will be in a position to make a similar remark to him.
Work was now being carried on continuously throughout the day. Besides the diggers, there were 24 officers who took their turn as look-outs. It was not possible to keep the work going at night, for from time to time the sentries outside would patrol this wing of the barracks. In the daytime, when they approached the point where we were at work, our look-outs could stop the diggers, but this would have been impossible after dark. Moreover, light from a candle would then have been visible from outside through the cracks in the outer casing.
At this stage our plans received a rude shock. We were suddenly informed that we were to be moved to the Prisoner-of-War Camp at Yozgad (pronounced Useguard), eighty miles south-east of us. We were to be ready, said Sami Bey, to start within a week. After our experience of the departure from Kastamoni, we came to the conclusion it might equally well be a month before the necessary transport was collected. We , therefore, to push on with the tunnel at high pressure, and if necessary to bring it out to the surface short of the spot originally intended, and then one dark night to make a bolt for it. So the work went on.
For the first three feet of the shaft we had found merely loose rubble and stones easily[36] excavated, for the next thirteen we had had to dig out stones embedded in very hard mortar. Here we progressed only a few inches a day. Below this there was solid concrete. Every few feet we came to wooden ties holding the inner and outer casings together; but fortunately these were on one side of the hole, and we did not have to cut through them.
At the time the move was announced we were at a depth of 16 feet, just entering the concrete. Here we were below the level of the lower storey, so we broke through the inner casing into the space beneath the platform. We now found, to our disgust, that the ground was on an average barely a foot below the joists, and the surface, being composed of dust which had been falling for eighty years between the boards of a Turkish barrack-room floor, was very unpleasant.
Our disappointment, however, was by a stroke of good luck. At each end of the barrack room above there was an , and we found beneath the nearer of the two an empty space 8 feet by 6 by 5. In this we could dispose of a good deal of the spoil from the tunnel. To get rid of the rest we should have to make a main below the floor, filling up the remaining space on either side between the ground and the floor, and eventually packing the burrow itself with earth excavated from the mine. Should this again not suffice, the surplus earth would have to be[37] pulled up by way of the shaft, and distributed under the boards of the upper-room platform. All that now remained for us to do before actually starting on the tunnel itself was to sink a secondary shaft about 6 feet deep, so as to get below the level of the concrete foundations. After this we could strike horizontally towards the Angora road.
The method of moving about in the confined space was that employed by the that loops its back, draws its legs under it, and then advances with its forefeet; and we found it a slow means of . The burrow to the hollow under the alcove was completed, and another in the opposite direction to the farther alcove was well on its way when we started to work on the second shaft. Three feet down we came to water. It was a great blow to us; and although with time at our disposal the difficulty might have been overcome, under present circumstances we had to consider ourselves defeated in that direction, especially as we heard, a few days later, that transport was already on its way from Angora.
The early move would also, of course, upset the aeroplane scheme, and we sincerely hoped that the authorities at home would hear that we had left Changri in time to prevent aeroplanes being sent. Although the scheme sent to them had provided somewhat for this by arranging that the aeroplanes were not to land till they saw the[38] special signal from us, it was not pleasant to think that we might be the cause of risk to valuable pilots and machines, and all to no purpose. Apart from the move, however, it eventually turned out that the scheme could not be entertained at home, as in April and May 1918 every available machine was being urgently required for making things unpleasant for the Germans behind the main battle-front.
FOOTNOTES:
[5]= soldier.
[6]= code in this letter.