Four-Fifty Miles to Freedom — Chapter 4, Part 2 - Yozgad Camp

As to the best means of taking along all this kit, opinions were most diverse.

The weary experiments which had been commenced whilst at Changri were continued with renewed zest at Yozgad, until by a system of trial and error each had worked his own particular idea into a more or less practical form.

Our difficulties were enhanced by the necessity of concealing our experimental models from the eyes not only of brother Turk, but also of brother officers, so that all our tests were carried out in the somewhat confined space of the room cupboards.

While so situated there was the risk of finding oneself shut in for half an hour if an officer not in the know came into the room to describe the events of the latest fox-hunt.

Eventually the equipment of our party varied from a simple but enormous rucksack, with water-bottle slung separately, to a rather complicated arrangement by which the pack was balanced to some extent by biscuit-pouches, haversack, and water-bottle attached to the belt.

In all cases the total load carried, with water-bottles filled but chargals empty, amounted to close upon 50 lb.

; of this 25¼ lb.

were food, 5 lb.

water-bottle, and 12 lb.

accessories and spare clothing;

and the remainder the weight of the equipment itself--in one case as much as 8 lb.

A few notes as to the above food and equipment may be of interest.

The soft biscuits were obtained at the last moment from an officer who had intended to decamp but was prevented from so doing by a game leg.

They took the place of 1½ lb.

of a kind of sun-dried meat known locally as "pastomar," similar to "biltong," but seasoned with garlic.

This we had bought two or three weeks previous to the date of departure, for it was not always obtainable in the bazaar.

Hence it was necessary to take it while the chance offered, in spite of the unpleasantness of having to keep such evil-smelling stuff in a living-room.

Its taste to any one but the garlic-loving Oriental is as disagreeable as its scent, so that it was not altogether without relief that we found at the last moment that most of the pastomar was already breeding maggots, and we replaced it with the odd six biscuits apiece.

Having read during our captivity a good deal about Arctic exploration, we had also experimented with the local pemmican, but found it would not withstand the heat.

The cheeses were from home parcels, and to save weight were taken out of their tins on the last day.

The same was also done with the cocoa and Ovaltine, which were then carried in bags made from handkerchiefs.

Two of the party also carried an extra pound of chocolate and some Oxo tablets, on the understanding that they were to be thrown away if the loads proved too heavy, for most of us felt that the last straw was already nearly reached.

Spare clothing was left for individuals to decide for themselves, and some carried a little thin underclothing and a "woolley" in addition to the spare shirt and socks.

The medicines comprised quinine, aspirin, cascara sagrada, Dover's powders, and iodine, these being supplied to us by our own doctors.

Also some arrowroot and Ovaltine in case any one had to diet himself.

We had in addition, while at Changri, managed to obtain from the local chemist about fifteen opium pills per head.

Most of us further carried either boric powder or ointment for the feet.

The vermin-proof belts were to be more useful as a safeguard against chill than against vermin, as in the end we on no occasion slept inside a Turkish dwelling.

With one exception, all the compasses were of the poorest description, being of the more or less toy variety with a mirror on the back.

Changri, however, produced one of superior pattern, which we purchased without arousing suspicion, and attempted to make more efficient with the luminous paint off the face of an old watch, but without very lasting success.

It is not easy to make a bag of canvas which will hold water, but by dint of fine stitching and a special kind of beeswax, our naval leader succeeded in producing three chargals which did yeoman service.

The map on which we were to rely was a French one, forty years old, and on a scale of about twenty-four miles to the inch.

An officer had bought it for five pounds from a Greek dentist at Kastamoni.

As it happened it was not bought primarily for escape purposes, but we persuaded him to sell it to us on his leaving Changri for Geddos.

In this the hill features were very indistinctly shown by vague hachuring, and even a big river such as the Kizil Irmak was in several places shown dotted, signifying not that this dried up during parts of the year, but that no one had surveyed it.

An up-to-date but very small map had been received from home by means of a series of six "bananas," each containing a tiny section; but, owing to our change of plan, this showed little of our proposed route.

The "sun compass" needs some explanation.

This was an invention of Captain A. B.

Matthews, D. S.

O.

, R.

E.

, who had been a prisoner of war at Yozgad since the fall of Kut-el-Amara.

Wishing to make a rough survey of the immediately surrounding country for the use of the Hunt Club, and finding that local magnetic attraction made a compass altogether unreliable, he bethought him of a simple means of utilising the sun, which in the wonderful climate of Asia Minor is rarely obscured throughout the spring, summer, or autumn.

The "sun compass" consists merely of a thin wooden disc of say 5 inches diameter, with the outer edge divided into 360 degrees, and with a hole at the centre through which can be inserted a piece of stiff straight wire.

A table of the sun's bearing at any hour on any day completes the instrument.

In actual use the disc is held horizontally, with the graduations upwards, and the wire kept vertical and protruding above the disc.

Then, by turning the latter till the shadow of the wire falls on the sun's bearing plus 180 degrees, you have the disc set to read off true bearings in any direction.

Captain Matthews was also responsible for the star charts.

By means of two maps of the heavens obtained from a book on travel, published by the Royal Geographical Society, he devised from first principles a "bus" consisting of three concentric cardboard discs.

By means of these it was possible, almost mechanically, to read off the bearings of the brighter stars in the main constellations for any hour and any night of the year.

It was thus possible to obtain a series of charts showing on which star one should march for any required bearing, and at any particular time.

We prepared them for all hours of the nights from the 1st August to the 15th September 1918. This chart-book was of value as a check on a magnetic compass by night, but assumed an elementary knowledge of at least those constellations which would be of use for the particular purpose in view.

Although it was expected that if we wished to evade recapture we should have to avoid replenishing our supplies at any villages, it was necessary to take money in case we were compelled to do so as a last resource.

For this purpose a certain amount of gold and silver was essential: otherwise it was quite possible that, in payment for anything in an out-of-the-way district, the paper money would be received at its true value, namely, nothing at all.

A certain amount of paper money was, however, advisable in view of the conditions we might expect if we were recaptured, as paper money was less likely to be taken away from us than gold and silver.

It was decided then to start if possible with at least £2 each in gold, £30 in paper, and two medjidies (worth four shillings each) in silver.

This we succeeded in collecting, thanks to being able to cash a few cheques locally: for both the gold and the silver, however, it was necessary to pay five times their face value in paper.

We bought silver coins, a few at a time, from various sentries.

These men thoroughly understood our desire for them when we hinted at a pretty girl in England who would look very handsome with a necklace of medjidies round her neck.

While at Changri our party had succeeded in obtaining from other officers two _pukka_ helio-mirrors, which had escaped destruction on the fall of Kut-el-Amara.

With these we had fitted up a duplex heliograph, complete with signalling key and adjusting screws.

Whereas, however, for the Samos scheme it would have been invaluable, for Rendezvous X its use was more problematical; and in view of the way in which essentials had gradually mounted up, it was in the end rather reluctantly decided that the helio must go by the board, as it weighed about three pounds.

Another decision now made was that in our party we should not use violence in order to make our escape, unless it should be necessary on the coast itself to avoid throwing away a really good chance.

It was recognised that if bloodshed occurred, the Turks would be quite capable of killing off the whole of our party, and possibly others, if recaptured.

For this reason no attempt was made to procure firearms, though this would probably have been no more difficult than obtaining the fezes, compasses, and field-glasses.

During the four months we were at Yozgad, Grunt, being one of the best Turkish scholars in the camp, started a class for any who chose to learn Turkish.

About five times a week, therefore, all the original six of our escape-party and a few others used to meet in Grunt's room for an hour's instruction.

In the case of would-be escapers, the main attraction of these lessons was this: if any of us were recaptured, as some were practically certain to be, it would be possible to make oneself understood to some slight extent, and thereby perhaps alleviate the unpleasantness of prison life by being able to let our jailers know our wants.

Since, also, to judge by the experience of those who had been recaptured, we should, if equally unfortunate, spend several months in the close company of some of the worst criminals in Turkey, it would be a pity not to take the opportunity of picking up a really good conversational knowledge of the language under exceptionally favourable circumstances.

For this a grounding in grammar would be invaluable.

Nothing else but these considerations would have induced the majority of us to attempt so difficult a task as learning even the rudiments of the Ottoman tongue.

As the time grew near for the great adventure, the last stage of our training was entered upon.

Every opportunity was taken of going out hunting, although the field was limited to a total of thirty.

Keenness in hockey died off, as many of us were afraid of sustaining some injury which might incapacitate us on the actual day.

Running and hard walking round the garden became a regular institution in some houses; and several cupboards, if suddenly opened at almost any hour of the day and at many in the night, would have disclosed a member of an escape-party loaded up in the most extraordinary manner, and performing gymnastic exercises for the strengthening of leg and shoulder muscles.

In view of the inevitable hard marching, towards the end several of the party even went so far as to soak the feet several times a day in a strong solution of alum, in the hope of hardening the feet and avoiding blisters.

At the same time efforts were made to build up the stamina necessary for a 400-mile march by eating the most nourishing foods obtainable, irrespective of the fact that the price of any food seemed to go up as the cube of its body-building value.

To give one instance, sugar at this time cost a sovereign the pound.

It was almost inevitable that, with so many preparations in progress, the secret of our intentions should leak out in the camp; and once suspicions were aroused many of our actions would go to confirm them.

Thus it came about that a few days before the 30th July, the whole of the camp at Yozgad knew pretty well that attempts to escape were on foot; the shopping lists for the Changri division were alone enough to have set people talking.

Everybody wanted bootlaces, straps, hobnails, rope, &c. , in prodigious quantities.

Unfortunately the Turks also appeared to have got wind of it.

For the last week of July, sentries were visited and awakened with unheard-of frequency.

Even the commandant himself occasionally visited the different houses after dark.

In the case of one house, an extra sentry was suddenly posted in the garden.

However, our preparations went quietly on; our "hosts" might have nothing really definite to go upon, and the more keen the sentries were now, the more weary they would be by the time the real day arrived.

We therefore continued to make holes in walls, loosen iron bars, dig unnecessary irrigation channels in the garden, &c. , &c. , all as aids to egress from one house or another on the final night.

In the particular house of our original six, (Cochrane and Ellis lived in another), we had come to the conclusion that our best chance was to prepare a hole through the outer wall of the kitchen belonging to our mess.

This kitchen, it is necessary to explain, was built along the high enclosure wall of the garden, and was separated from the house itself by a narrow alley-way, over which one of the sentries stood guard.

Next to the kitchen in the same outhouse was a little room with one small window opening on to the alley, the entrance being _viâ_ the kitchen itself.

This second room was used as a fowl-house, and it was here that we made up our minds to prepare a hole three-quarters of the way through the outer wall.

How exactly those escaping from our house were to get across into the kitchen and finish off the hole on the final night was a problem of which the solution was only settled in detail at the last moment, and we will therefore leave our readers in a similar state of suspense.

The essential was that all should be present at the evening roll-call, and yet the hole must be completed and everybody be across at precisely 9. 15 P.

M.

So uncertain were we of the means of effecting this that we had a second alternative in case the first scheme could not be carried out.

This involved getting over the wall by ladders.

A day or two before the 30th July, representatives of the various parties met once again in solemn conclave to ensure that the various plans should not clash, and a few general instructions were issued to parties with a view to obtaining as long a start as possible.

Every one was to be represented in bed on the night by a dummy; boots were to be padded, likewise the ends of khud-sticks (these were a _sine qua non_ of our equipment for night-marching); water-bottles were not to be filled because they gurgled; every man's equipment was to be finally tried on to make certain that it would not make any noise.

Lastly, a lamp-signal was arranged between houses in case any party should be caught just prior to leaving their house, for instance while completing a hole.

If that signal were given, it would no longer be necessary for the other parties to wait until 9. 15 before they started;

on the contrary, they were advised to start away at once before the alarm reached the sentries in the other houses.

The 30th July arrived, but with it an unexpected complication.

Vague news had just come through that an exchange ship was being sent out from England to fetch some of the worst cases of sick and wounded from among the British prisoners in Turkey.

The boat, said the rumour, was due to arrive at some port at about the end of August, and the question therefore arose at the eleventh hour whether, if we set off now, it might not give the Turks the pretext that our Government had informed us of the visit of this vessel, and that we were making off in the hopes of getting aboard her secretly.

The argument was of course, on the face of it, ridiculous, but then so is the Turk, and it would be a terrible responsibility for us if by our escape we destroyed the hopes of these poor sick and wounded men.

A vote was therefore taken as to whether we would postpone the date, with the result that the motion was carried by a small majority.

This was a terrible disappointment, for it meant, we thought, another month of indecision.

Moreover, there would be no hope of finding a boat still awaiting us at Rendezvous X, and it would be too late in the year for much chance of our finding crops to eat or hide in.

It was the moon, however, which in the end decided that the postponement could not be for so long.

On working out its time of rising, it was found that if we waited till the end of August the moon would only rise late enough to let us leave our houses at 9. 15, when within four days of its disappearance.

In this way we should be handicapped by having the maximum of dark, or practically dark, nights for our journey.

The whole question was therefore revised in this new light, and it was decided that we must either start before the new moon came or else give up all hope of leaving in this year at all.

The night 7th-8th August was then chosen.

This would be a Wednesday, and the following morning a hunt-day, when the check taken at dawn was confused by the movements of thirty officers dressing in haste for the day's sport.

The week's grace was spent in perfecting all our arrangements.

One refinement was to collect our own and other people's hair when cut by an officer barber, and paste it on to the outside of a cloth bag stuffed with rubbish or towels made up to about the size of a man's head.

These were to be the heads of our dummies.

Meanwhile we were more careful with our shopping orders, and were relieved to find suspicions in the camp dying down.

On the morning of the 31st July an officer, who was supposed to know nothing of the escape, had been called by his orderly and told, "They ain't gone after all, sir!"

FOOTNOTE:

[8] The following is a list of the officers who attempted to escape, but were unhappily all recaptured, mostly within a few days of starting, but in the case of one party not until they had been at large for eighteen days and covered over 200 miles: Major C. H.

Stockley, 66th Punjabis; Captains C. Manners, 104th Rifles; A. B.

Matthews, D. S.

O.

, R.

E.

; E.

W.

Burdett and C. A.

Raynor, 48th Pioneers; T. R.

Wells, R. A.

F.

; R.

O.

Chamier, 110th Mahrattas; H. H.

Rich, 120th Infantry; E. T.

M.

Patmore, Hants Regiment, T. F.

; Lieutenants Tudway, R.

N.

; J.

H.

Brabazon, Connaught Rangers; A. V.

Barlow, R. A.

F.

; H.

D.

Stearns, I. A.

R.

, 117th Mahrattas; A. Macfadyen, I. A.

R.

, 110th Mahrattas; F. S.

Sheridan, I. A.

R.

, Gurkhas; J. Dooley, I. A.

R.

, M.

T.

; M.

L. C.

Smith, I. A.

R.

, 7th Rajputs.

CHAPTER V.