Papers concerning the Treatment of British Prisoners of War at Kut [‎31v] (62/62)

in all that time. There were 11 sick officers and 300 sick men on the boat,
and our doctors had to care for them with the depleted medicine chests
which had "one through all those months of the siege and captivity in
Baghdad. The men got very scanty rations, and all the officers were fed
on was rice, cooked in ghee, and a watery soup made out of vegetables.
We were fed twice a day, 12 noon and G o’clock at night. Between G in the
evening and 12 noon the next day we got nothing except a cup of tea at six
in the morning.
On the morning of the 10th September we at last got under way, and
knew that we should be exchanged when we had almost given up hope.
We had been disappointed so often that none of us were absolutely certain
until we were inside the British lines.
OBSERVATIONS MADE IN BAGHDAD.
It is extraordinary the loss of prestige we suffered by the surrender of
Kut. The Turks have small respect for the British arms, with the exception
of the artillery and British infantry, and regard us as a beaten nation in
this campaign.
But they have small love for Germany, however, and several Turkish
officers whom I talked to stated that after this war Turkey would take
steps to make friends with England, but would never be friendly with
Germany again. The Turkish officers spoke of the Germans in a con
temptuous tone, and pointed out to me that while there was a large number
of Germans in Baghdad itself very few of them are allowed at either the
Russian or the British Front. A Turkish Staff Officer, Hyder Bey, informed
me that Turkey would never have come into this war if we had not
confiscated the two battleships being built for the Ottoman Empire in Great
Britain. He stated that these boats were built by National Subscription
and that their seizure roused the people against us as nothing else would
have done. This happened at the same time that the two German battle
ships, the Goeben and the Breslau, were bottled up in the Mediterranean.
Hyder Bey stated that Germany immediately made Turkey a present of
these men-of-war to take the place of those we had confiscated.
Money is very scarce in Turkey and great dissatisfaction is shown by the
officers who have not been paid for some time.
British soldiers were not paid in Baghdad whilst they were prisoners
of war.
From conversations that I had in Baghdad with the Armenian and
Jewish shopkeepers I gathered that they would welcome a British occu
pation with open arms. The American Consul told me privately that he is
certain that if the British administer a smashing defeat to the Turks there
will be a revolution in Baghdad.
The size of Baghdad is enormous. It is full of little alleys and culs-de-
sac. I should think Irom what 1 saw of it it would take a division and a
half at least to police it properly.
All the large houses in Baghdad are full of wounded and the artillery
barracks have been turned into a hospital. Whilst in the Turkish hospital
I met an officer who had been captured in France by the Germans. He told
me that he was a sergeant in a regiment of Algerian infantry, and had been
taken with his battalion on the Aisne. With several other non-commissioned
officers he had been sent to a German military academy for three months.
At the end of that time he had been made a second lieutenant and sent with
his old regiment to help the Turks against the Russians. His name was
Ben Rabben, and another office]' of the same corps was called Trakir. I
also learned that nearly the whole of the present ammunition supplies for the
Turkish guns comes from Germany, and heard on reliable authority that the
Germans have a large aeroplane factory An East India Company trading post. in Baghdad where they employ
British prisoners of war.
lf-4.