HOW IT FEELS TO BE FREE

Evening Star, Issue 17034, 3 May 1919, Page 10

HOW IT FEELS TO BE FREE

[By an Officer Ex-prisoner.] The lean years are past. The prisoners of war are back from Turkey. Our captivity is over. At times I can hardly believe it, yet it is as real and solid a fact as the fat birds I have been eating this Yuletide, To wake up and hear robins singing, to wallow in a long hot bath, to eat ham and drink tea that tastes like tea —these are but the beginnings of the amazing day. One cannot easily get over one’s delight at having passed from an alien and unclean country to this garden land of England, where everything is so clean and beautiful. Even the terrier is immaculate and flealess. But in spite of all one’s pleasure a vein of sorrow runs through these days. . . . There might have been so many more of us to enjoy this peace if the Turk had treated his captives properly. One cannot forget the many missing; they will always be present with ns who saw them alive two years ago. As an officer, my treatment might be described as good (by a stretch of the imagination) when compared with the way our men were dealt with. The callous cruelty shown to them I shall remember so long as I live, and their magnificent bearing in adversity. They suffered, and often they died, like Englishmen. We must see to it that they did not die in vain. In every stage of disease and destitution our men showed their captors the stuff of which the race is made. It is our turn now. It will be fatally easy to find a few scapegoats or to accept compensation for crimes which only punishment can purge. But I hops that, everyone, down to the last man, who was responsible for the maltreatment of our prisoners will bo tried by a civilised court. Only thus will the prestige lost when our men were murdered bo again restored. In the starlight tho waits sing of peace. Our prisoners homo from Turkey are hearing them all over England. All that is left of our prisoners. ... Of the gallant 6th Division, for instance, that laid the basis of our power in Mesopotamia, not a thousand have seen this New Year in. Eighty per cent, of the garrison of Kut-el-Amara died while captives with the Turks. But they are quit of their guards now; they have done with starvation and disease and the terrible desert. They rejoice with us, let ns hope, and are glad*to bo of that white company that has held our honor high. And we survivors, who will live in a new era of justice, do devoutly hope that all the consequences of justice will fall upon those t-yiJ men who battened on the misery of the boys who might have lived.