HORRIFYING FATE OF HEROES OF KUT

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 84, 3 January 1919, Page 6

HORRIFYING FATE OF HEROES OF KUT

"A PERFECTLY APPALLING STORY"

SCOURGED BY ARABS

THOUSANDS DIE IN THE DESERT

A perfectly appalling story ot the treatment of British prisoners of war who fell into the lianas of the Turks, particularly those taken at the fall of Kiit, is told in a White Paper issued by the Foreign Office recently. As a preface to the heartrending; record of the sufferings of our officers ami men we get the following summary:— "The total number of officers and men believed to have been taken prisoners by the Turks from the beginning of the war is 16,583. Of these 3290 have been reported dead, while 2222 remain iuitraced, and we must believe that they, too, have, almost all perished .unnamed, how or where we cannot tell in any single case. They all belonged to the forco which surrendered at Kut, and it is there£6re certain that they passed living into the Turkish hands, but not one word waa ever afterwards heard ot any of tliem." "Honoured Guests." When Kut surrendered, on April 29, 1916, the whole force had been very much weakened by long privation. There were 1450 sick and wounded in hospital, and about 1100 of the worst cases were sent down the,. Tigris for repatriation. "They alone cscaped the experience of becoming—as Enver Pasha presently expressed it to those who remained —"Hie honoured guests of tho Turkish Government." The Turkish forco entered Kut in tho morning. Within a very short' time they were busy thieving, assisted by the Arabs of the town. They robbed both officers and men of their boots and clothing, and not only rifled the possessions of the sick, but stole the ca6es of surgical instruments and plundered the stores of the medical staffs. During the night and x the following day the British iorce, officers and men, was marched to an unsheltered point in the desert near Sbauiran, and for a week lay on the sand unsheltered from sun and rain. l''or two days no lations were issued; the only food obtainable was dates, black bread," and stony biscuits, which Arab soldiers peddled among the men in. exchange for boots and clothing, ami 300 men died within a week of surrender. . When.the column of prisoners set out on' the 100-mile march to Bagdad the officers, to their dismay, were told that they would ba separated from their men. They stipulated that the men required to march (the most exhausted were sent by boat) should not berequired to march more than eight miles a day. The march occupied nine days. For one day only the Turkish commandant kept his promise to march only eight miles a day; on the second day they covered 18 miles and afterwards 12 to 15 miles daily. The escort almost stripped tlic men; "they were/herded like sheep by Arab mounted troopers, who freely .used sticks ' and whips to'flog forward the, stragglers." They struggled on, b\it all were so near the limit of exhaustion that deaths occurred daily by the roadside before they reached Bagdad, where_ they were paraded through the city for the entertainment of the people. 500 Mile (Death March. la August, 1916, there was an exchange of sick prisoners, and 22 British officers c;kl 323 meii were sent down the river to the British lines. The remainder wero 6ent across the Syrian desert to' Asia Minor, a inarch of 500 miles from the railhead at Samara. The 'truth of all that happened on the way will never be known, for those who could tell the worst aro long since dead. J "But it is certain," the report says, "that this desert journey rests ' upon< those responsible for it as a crime of the kind which we call historic, so long and terrible was the trrture it meant for thousands Of helpless men. . . . There was no one in the Turkish Higher Command wbo could be ignorant that to send the men out on such a journey and in such condition' was to condemn half of tliem to certain death." By accident British doctors in Bagdad heard of the terrible plight of the prisoners, and wero allowed to go on to Samara. The intelligence came from a party of officers, who ) ad been delayed by illness, and who followed and overtook the column. At Samara the doctors collected the hundreds of sick who had fallen out of the march during its first stages. They were picked lip from the roadside, where they lay in the miseries of dysentery, j list 'as they chanced to drop, disregarded and deserted. l]ut it was only those who failed on the first part of the march who could be brought to Samara; the main body passed ' oil', and out of.reach. The track was still followed by tho group of officers mentioned above, .and the sights they saw at villages and halt-/ ing places all along tile road hardly, bear telling. There were parties of men lying exhausted under any shelter they could find, in all stages of dysentery and starvation; some dying, some dead; half clothed, without boots, having sold everything they could to bay a little milk. , Only hero and there hod an attendant of some kind' been left to look after them, generally there was no one but the Arab villagers,- who mercilessly robbed them, or tho under-officer of the local police post, who stared indifferently, and protested that he had no authority to give help. The dead lay unburied, plundered and stripped of their last clothing. All across the desert.' at one place after, another, theso sights were repeated ; starving and dying men, in tens and twenties, lay in any scrap of shade, or mud-hovel that might be allowed them, and waited their end. :' ' 111 September, 1.916, about 1000 men began the 'journey 'across the Taurus mountains. Their hardships and sufferings were even worse than those experienced a few weeks befdre. which had seemed the limit of possible suffering. The men were forced' forward by gendarmes with the butt-ends of their rifles, till of sheer inanition r-anv had dropped and died. A few managed to take irj/ige in certain German and Austrian military camps in the Taurus; but the main body was somehow beaten and driven across the mountain range. It was like one thing only—a 6cene from Dante's "Inferno"; the word was that of an Austrian officer who witnessed it. When the small remnnrit of survivors arrived at Afion Cahip. some of them ■were naked, many were half out of their minds with exhaustion, most of them rotten with dysentery.