THE STORY OF A TURK

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16601, 26 January 1916, Page 9

THE STORY OF A TURK

Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, who has recently visited the Indian Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia, tells a moving story of one of the captured Turkish soldiers. "Hearing a word in then- own tongue, they rose with beaming eyes and deep, respectful greetings. One of them, an old sergeant, with dark, genie eyes and greyblack beard, caine into the palm grove. 'I come from tho Konia province, sir; from a little village, Hassan Bey Koi. Yes, there are forests and fields and running water and great mountains. Yes, I havo a wife and four little children, the smallest a girl bo high.' As ho spoke his eyes filled with tears, which trickled down his wrinkled cheek. Yes, sir, it is shameful for a soldier to cry. I was in tho Greek war. and the Balkan war, and now, when a man finds all lost, and because that boy Enver has set him fighting against his best friends, why a man must needs cry. Whosover heard 'of tho Inglis fighting Osmanlis ? But tho world has been upsido down since Aibdul Hamid fell; and the Germans use us to fill their ditches, and /kill us to defend tho railwavs they have stolon from us.' "