THE TERRIBLE TURK

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 461, 17 September 1928, Page 9

THE TERRIBLE TURK

CRUELTIES OF WAR-TIME AN AUSTRALIAN’S STORY (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) LONDON, Saturday. Colonel T. W. White, of Melbourne, has published a remarkable work entitled “Odyssey of an Australian Airman.” The English newspapers are giving it prominence. It tells the story of Colonel White’s captivity in the hands of the Turks and gives details of a horrifying series of cruelties inflicted on prisoners of war. These are based on the writer’s own diaries which were written on tiny sheets of paper, on each of which he managed to write 360 words. He concealed them in the soles of his shoes, in the pith of his helmet and other curious receptables. Of the 14,000 British and Indian prisoners in Turkey, Colonel White estimates that 11,000 died of horrors on the march from Kut. These horrors, he says, equalled those of the black hole of Calcutta. At Mosul 249 prisoners were thrust into a single cell. In January, 1916, on another stage of the journey, 40 prisoners were confined to a room 10 feet square. Three of them died. The Turkish guards often withheld food and water from the emaciated prisoners, who were without money to bribe them. Colonel White says he escaped from Constantinople during the confusion following upon a railway collision. This enabled him to make a dash for liberty. Friendly Greeks hid him in a cupboard until he was able to stow away on a Russian ship that was going to Odessa.