The Road to En-dor
Page 42
We tricked Chouaïe Bey in another way – I had kept up the old pretence of knowing no French, and had the pleasure of listening with a wooden face while he described our diseases to a friend.
78. I learned at Haidar Pasha that Hill’s medical history was never sent to Gumush Suyu, nor did the Gumush Suyu doctors ask for it, although they knew Hill had been two months under Mazhar Osman Bey. Hill’s transfer was made in obedience to an administrative order from the Turkish War Office, without the knowledge or concurrence of our own doctors, who were off duty when the order arrived. I was sent to Gumush Suyu at the same time as Hill, and was subjected to similar treatment. (My temperature on admission was 103° due to influenza.) By dint of making a thorough nuisance of myself to everybody, I succeeded in getting myself sent back to Haidar Pasha after thirty-six hours of Gumush Suyu, but failed to get them to send Hill with me. The reason for sending me back was stated in a note from the head doctor which said that Gumush Suyu hospital had neither the trained staff nor the accommodation necessary for mental cases. It amounts to this: the bold experimenters at Gumush Suyu were quite ready to practise their prentice theories on Hill, who was harmless and passive under their treatment as befitted his malady, but they had no desire to try their tricks on a lunatic who was active and possibly dangerous, like myself. When I pretended to take a violent dislike to one of the doctors, and tried to buy a knife from the sentry, they thought discretion the better part of valour. This was the sole reason why I was a ‘case for specialists’, while Hill was not.
79. Colonel F.E. Baines, I.M.S., the British medical officer who saw Hill at Psamatia, at once put in a strong protest in writing about Hill’s condition and treatment. It stated that Hill was suffering from dysentery and acute melancholia, and that he was dying through neglect, and that he should be sent to England at once. It ended with the threat that if Hill did die, Colonel Baines would hold the Turkish government responsible for his death, and do his best to bring the responsibility home. The letter was a gallant challenge to the Turks from a man who was himself a prisoner. It was, of course, a perfectly bona fide expression of the Colonels’ professional opinion, and is a worthy example of the fearless way in which our medical men sought to do their duty. That Colonel Baines, too, was deceived is no reflection upon him. Another British doctor, also deceived, characterized Hill’s performance afterwards as ‘the most wonderful case of malingering he had ever heard of’.
80. The Embassy report was sent to my parents by the India Office in their letter M.35342 of 30th October, 1918, and is as follows:
‘14th August, Psamatia. We found removed to Psamatia 2nd Lieut. C.W. Hill, R.F.C., mentioned in our first report on Gumush Suyu Hospital. As he is not taking any food and his insanity growing worse every day, we advised to send him back to England instantly together with Lieut. Jones of Haidar Pasha Hospital or to put him under special treatment.’
81. There were other portraits of Enver in the hospital, and when his Cabinet fell, about a month before the armistice, they were all taken down – except mine. On that occasion a Pasha – named, I think, Suliman Numan Pasha – came to the hospital, took down a life-size portrait of Enver, put his foot through it and danced on the fragments. His object was to try to dissociate himself from his former chief, and keep his job; but I believe he too ‘crashed’. Still, to me his object did not matter. How I secretly longed to join him in his dance!
82. A mistake. The charge on which we were convicted was ‘communication by telepathy’. See Major Gilchrist’s account of the trial, p. 132, Chapter X. There is nothing about ‘telepathy’ in the Turkish Regulations.
83. The original sentence was ‘no walks’. Later the Commandant gave it out he would allow us only the regulation number of walks – one a week. Really, of course, we could have had as many as we pleased. We had three altogether, including the two treasure hunts.
84. A mistake. The correct date is 20th March.
85. ‘School House’ was another name for Posh Castle.
86. A mistake. The correct date is 2nd April.
87. The interview is described in Chapter XI., pp. 139.
88. Compare Major Gilchrist’s pæan of praise, Chapter XI. at end, and Major Peel’s laudatory comment.
89. We thought the Colonel should have reported our imprisonment and the charge against us, in his monthly letter, whether he agreed with the Commandant or not.
90. By the Spook’s instructions. See Chapter XIX., p. 247.
91. We left the house on April 22nd. The notice appears to have remained.
92. In Chapter XIX., p. 254, the notice is quoted.
93. ‘Martyrs’. The camp was a bit wide of the mark, as usual.
94. This was also by the Spook’s orders.
95. Literally, ‘A red sow and six very small red porklings.’
96. During our air-raids on Constantinople, which usually took place at night, I used to spot the general direction of gun-flashes, etc. For the purpose of accurately marking down these anti-aircraft gun and mitrailleuse positions (in which I was fairly successful), and especially in the hope of locating a concealed munitions factory which several patients told me was hidden near ‘Katikeoy’ (in which I failed), I frequently broke out of hospital. I usually got back without my absence being observed. Once I was nearly shot (by the sentry guarding a mitrailleuse concealed in the English cemetery on which I stumbled quite accidentally). Three times I was captured outside, twice by sentries and once by the gendarmerie. Once I escaped again from my captors, by diverting their attention with a tin of jam – I told them it was a bomb to bomb the English – on the other two occasions I was brought back to hospital, and each time used the same trick – raved and stormed, and said I must kill Baylay. On both these occasions the doctors drugged me, with trional and morphia, to quieten my nerves and put me to sleep. They ascribed my wanderings to my madness. So far as I know my real object was never suspected.
97. This knife for which I bellowed had a history which Nabi never tired of relating to me. According to him, H.M. King George V. had been the original owner. When our King was serving his country in the Navy, his ship came to Rhodes. A shoot was organized. Nabi was one of the beaters, and at the end of the day he asked that, instead of being paid, he should be given a memento of the occasion which he could keep. He got the knife – and I was perfectly safe in bellowing for it, because Nabi is so delightfully proud of the gift that he will never let it out of his possession.
98. Hill entered the bath at 3.30 – five hours earlier.
99. It was a ‘Turkish’ bath, but not well heated at this time because of the scarcity and high price of wood. It had, however, a glass roof, which helped to keep up the temperature.
100. A second of the three negatives was unfortunately lost by my friend, Captain Arthur Hickman, who was kindly bringing it back to England for me. This accounts for the fact that only one of the three photographs appears in this book.
101. The Pimple means twenty-six.
102. For the ‘ease’ with which it was accomplished, see 450 Miles to Freedom.
103. A mistake of the Pimple’s. At this time Colonel Maule was no longer senior officer of the camp.
104. A typically Turkish way of getting ‘demobbed’.
105. A quotation from the Spook. See Chapter XXIII., p. 300.
106. The Pimple means a telepathic message.
107. Spook’s orders again!
108. i.e., Kiazim Bey.
109. i.e., the Spook. The Pimple writes thus obscurely because of the censorship.
110. See Chapter XIII., p. 169.
111. i.e., the ‘Ruler of the World’ story.
112. A suggestion of the Spook’s.
113. From his perusal, as censor, of my private letters to England, Moïse believed I was in telepathic touch with mediums at home. It is an amusing fact that one of my home correspondents, believing me to be genuinely interested in spiritualism (of course the letters were written for Moïse’s benefit), went to
a medium and actually got a ‘message’ about me. But the message referred to the very distant past, before I became a prisoner, and to a fact known to the sitter and several others. Had the medium been able to communicate my plan of escape to the sitter—a plan which must have interested all intelligent spooks—the money would have been well spent and I should certainly have believed in ‘telepathy’.
114. i.e., the Spook.
115. Kiazim was court-martialled by the Turks themselves. I do not know the result.
116. ‘The Sup.’ was one of the Spook names for Kiazim Bey.
117. This was, of course, the photograph of the finding of the first clue, taken by Hill.
118. The incantation. The figure described is the author.
119. The Pimple, as a Spiritualist, has every right to believe the photograph was taken by OOO, but it would be interesting to know how he explained his belief to the court.
120. Captain S.W. Miller, M.C., was a fellow prisoner of war at Yozgad.
121. A typically spiritualistic view of an inconvenient truth.
122. Captain Forbes was one of the Kastamouni Incorrigibles. His version of the story appeared in the Glasgow Sunday Post. According to him the Spooks who guided Kiazim were those of ‘Napoleon’ and ‘Osman the Conqueror’. As a matter of fact, ‘Napoleon’ was on the side of OOO.
123. We promised in the train (on the way to hospital) that we would meet the Pimple again in Egypt so that he might become the ‘Ruler of the World’. (Chapter XXVI., p. 345.)
124. ‘Those questions,’ i.e., spiritualism.
Copyright
Published by Hesperus Press Limited
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First published in the United Kingdom by John Lane The Bodley Head, 1919
First published by Hesperus Press Limited, 2014
This ebook edition first published in 2014
Foreword © Neil Gaiman, 2014
Introduction © Antony Craven Walker and Hilary Bevan Jones, 2014
Letters and Postcards and Original Séance Diaries © Antony Craven Walker and Hilary Bevan Jones, 2014
Supplementary Material © Antony Craven Walker and Hilary Bevan Jones, 2014
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ISBN 978–1–78094–158–5