PRISONERS IN TURKEY.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14643, 22 February 1918, Page 5

PRISONERS IN TURKEY.

REPATRIATED NEW ZEALAND-

ER'S STORY

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE

BAD FOOD AND BRUTAL TREAT-

MENT.

(United Service.)

<lleceived Feb. 21, 7.35 p.m).

London, Feb. 20

Corporal A. Shoebridge, No. 10/563, Wellington Battalion, New Zealand, is among the first prisoners to arrive i from Turkey. He states that he was t engaged in the attack at Anafarta in ! 1915, and when the Anzacs were forced to retire he was left or the field, being stot in the elbow. He was taken with other New Zealanders from Gallipolx in a jolting cart. It stopped by the roadside, and an old Turkish woman." belaboured thc-v,; with a heavy stick, killing his u^b-, who was suffering from a seven- bayonet wound in the stomach. 3is body was left on the roadside. Shoebridge was sent to a good lospital at Constantinople for a few days. They were told ihut the British were ill-treating Turkish prisorers, and as a reprisal they \ver<:> sent to a building like a stable, the windows being boarded and the interior dark. They were laid on the dirty floor with a blanket eael1. Their wounds were not attended to. Later they were sent to various hospitals. Tliroi'-ghout their treatment the food was wretched, consisting of bread, boiled wheat, and potatoes. Other prisoners state that British, prisoners died like flies ard were buried unclothed and uncoffined in holes holding four. The condition of the prisoners from Kut was indescribable. 'At first one could not believe -that thejs

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wero British. Some were clad in shirts only. The ..prisoners received £4 a month from t-lio Americans, and ther■the Dutcb Consx.l was permitted to buy food. The prices were terrible.

They stayed ten weeks in Austria en refute. The food'was worse and scarcer tl#re than in Turkey. Conditions in Turkey are now much improved.