IN TURKISH HANDS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 46, 22 February 1918, Page 5

IN TURKISH HANDS.

NEW ZEALAKDER'S STORY. TWO YEARS OF SUFFERING. LONDON, February 21. Corporal A. Shoebridge, 10/563, of the Wellington Battalion, New Zealand Infantry, -was among the first of the prisoners to arrive from Turkey. He states he was engaged in the attack on Anafarta in August, 1915. When the Anzacs were forced to retire he was left on the field shot in the elbow. He was taken with other New Zealanders from Gallipoli in a jolting cart. It stopped at the- roadside, when an old Turkish woman belaboured the prisoners with a heavy stick, killing his mate, who was suffering from a serious bayonet wound in the abdomen. The body was left on the roadside. Corporal Shocbridge was sent to a good hospital in. Constantinople. In a few days he was told that the British were ill-treating Turkish prisoners, and as a reprisal he was sent to a building, like a stable, with the windows boarded. The prisoners were laid on a dirty floor, with only a blanket each, and their wounds were left unattended. Later he was cent to various hospitals. Throughout the treatment and food were wretched, the latter consisting of bread, boiled wheat, and potatoes. Other prisoners state that British prisoners died like flies, and were buried unclothed, and without coffins, in holes holding four. The condition of the prisoners from Kut-el-Amara was indescribable. At first the others could not believe they were British. Some were clad in a shirt only. The prisoners received four pounds of food a month from the Americans. Then the Dutch Consul was permitted to buy them food. Prices were terrible. The released men stayed for 10 weeks in Austria, en route to England. The food there iwas worse and scarcer than in Turkey. Conditions in Turkey now are much improved.— (United Service.)