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[Page 71]
try any low down tricks here like they were guilty of at Angora by trying to poison the delirious and generally speaking the Turkish Authorities did their best for us. These injections were given by the hospital orderlies in a very dirty manner just pulling the needle from one man's arm into the next without sterilising. Their fingers usualy covered in blood. The method of feeding typhus patients was very strange. The chief diet in the early stages of the plague considted of about 1 quart of milk given once a day at 3 p.m. which was followed in about ½ hour with more milk thickened with Turkish concoction called "Yoat". If the patient didn't. If the patient didn't feel up to this double dosw of milk diet and finish it in about an hour, what was left over was taken away. This was all the food we got in the 24 hours and it usually proved far too much at one time. Other batches of typhus prisoners came in and a great number died having little or no stamina to fight it with. The plague became so dangerous to the Rest Camp at Bore, that the O.C. there did his best to stamp it out by fumigation and implicitely followed the directions of the English Doctors there.
After being in bed for three weeks for & five days I was delirious, and before I had properly recovered I with others, was ordered back to Bore. We were not even allowed a short period to convalesce but within 24 hours of leaving the sick bed, we were on the road. That nine miles walk seemed unending. We staggered along like drunken men through sheer weakness. This action certainly jeopardised our ultimate recovery but I often noticed how the Turks would do one good act and spoil the effect by some inhumane treatment immediately afterwards.
My next change of locality was Gelebek. About the end of September, 1917,
A working party of 25 prisoners was picked out and sent to work for the German Military Company at Geblek Gelebek. Here we found 25 other prisoners, chiefly Indians and English from General Townsends army. The Commandant was a German Lieutenant who had previously been a Tea Planter in India. He spoke English very well and proved a good sort. Gablek Gelebek
[Side note: Is this Gebel Belekit Bereket]
down off the Bagdad side of Tarsus Mts., and the end of the narrow gauge line. Here all munitions had to be unloaded and loaded. The climate very hot and full of malaria.
population: 1000 Always changing just sprung up as head of railway construction works.
All the prisoners were put to work in moving heavy stores to and from the trains. We were kept at high pressure all the time and had no time off or smoko. Evidently the stuff was badly needed at the front and we often thought of our chaps somewhere in Mesopatamia or Palestine as we handled the shells and ammunition meant for their destruction. Here the rations were very scanty and poor, the daily menu being