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[Page 72]
a small loaf of bread, no meat, not enough for a growing boy, much less men doing hard manual work (9 ½ hours a day). We turned to at six in the morning, had from 8.30 till 9 for breakfast, but we were issued with nothing, we may have a piece of dry bread left from previous night.
Side note: our rations here consisted of a hard sort of brown pea- not unlike Indian corn- boiled with Olive oil. Sometimes we got a little rice & lot of water For 3 months at midday & evening we had a larger kind of black horse bran full of small grubs & v. hard. These too were boiled with oil & water. NB The only meat we ever got was the lights, no liver, & they sometimes crawling which we wouldn't give to a dog in Aust. Many times we all longed for scraps we had thrown away before in the good old times.
When we found ourselves getting weak and run down we began to make complaints about the harsh treatment but it fell on deaf ears. Moreover the Germans wouldn't allow the Dutch Ambassador to give us money to buy food. They said if we had money from other sources we would not work for our food. This was foolish because of the high cost of living at Gelebek it cost £1:0:0 per day.
Many, many nights we went to our dug outs- no huts or tents were given- hungry and done up. Very soon 15 out of our 25 had to be carried to the hospital nearby, too ill and weak to slave any longer. Note:- There were no shopping parties here as we were working right in the village and could buy whenever we wanted, but money was the difficulty.
A large number of Russians were driven into Camp soon after and they immediately began to increase their own food allowance by stealing very considerably and successfully. They didn't waste time complaining but very soon the Germans did at the loss of their stuff. The pilfering soon reached such a pitch that the whole lot of us were shifted and Turkish soldiers put in our places.
Two of my pals were sent to the Electric Department My friend and I went to the River Railway Repair Shops. This change gave us more liberty of action, so much so, did we appreciate the change that it made us wish for more and we decided to try and escape again.
In passing I might say that the 6 shops in Gelebek were kept so well stocked with all sorts of things, stolen by the Turks who took a our place that at last the Germans made a very successful raid on these shops one day and much loot was recovred. It would have been too much like the devil rebuking sin for the Germans to punish the Turks for this for the whole was seething with corruption. Any sick prisoner returning out of hospital, always spoke in the highest favour of the English Doctor there. Captain Clifford I.M.S. Though he was working under German restrictions and supervision he- being an expert in Malaria, forced the Authorities to give better treatment and more food to the patients. His was a fine example of bulldog tenacity and British pluck for he kept on fighting against the powers that were., until he either shamed or worried them into giving the sick a fighting chance. His unremitting care and constant self sacrifice was a noble rebuke to the callousness of the Germans and many a poor wretch rose up & called him "Blessed". The 2 german nurses working with him were so influenced by his splendid example that they soon favoured the English to the Turks on whose side they were supposed to be
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[Page 71]
This can be added to what I have already said about Gelebek. Nearly every morning a train load of Kurdish refugees came in, this was due to the Russian advance in that part of the country. These people came through in a terrible starving condition and it was a frequent sight to see dead dragged from the train. One morning in particular I can remember, myself and another Englishman were working with a German soldier putting a small steam crane together close to the station we were standing watching these people get off the train, a man jumped out of a truck dragging a dead child about 12 yrs of age out after him he did not carry the body but just had hold of the arm dragging it along the ground when he thought nobody was looking he threw the body in amongst a heap of iron rails, the German immediately ran after him catching him a blow on the back of the head and made him take the body away and bury it.