miserable days and nights in Russian-occupied Erzurum,
he heads for prison camp at Sarıkamış.//
Russian troops in Erzurum, February 1916.
17 February 1916
Thursday
We stayed in this filthy place till
morning. Then we left the soldiers
again. Another Armenian officer took Şakır and me to a
place here –
around the American Consulate – with its upstairs a mess, broken
windows
and filled with human waste. We waited here for a long time.
With us, despites Şakir’s
insistence, were two servents from among
our soldiers. At this time an artillery officer
had joined us. His name
was Mustafa.
He’d been taken prisoner at Erzurum. We waited a bit
more. We then left here and walked quite a way with two Russian
officers and a number
of soldiers, one of whom was a Cossack.
His name was Ismail and he was quite
peevish. Limping along, we
walked quite
a way. In fact, the Cossack and at the times the
soldiers
jostled me because I couldn’t walk very well. It was really very
awful and I cried.
In any event, after walking for quite a while we
came to the room of captive officers who had been taken prisoner
earlier. There
were four people, all of them first lieutenants.
Two were
artillery, one was infantry and one a telegrapher. We chatted. A bit
later the
neighborhood imam and mayor came. We spoke with them.
Because artillery officer
Mustafa was married he was allowed to
go to his home.
Russian Cossacks
18 February 1916 Friday
We passed the time in the house. At noon
the Russian commander sent
us sugar. Since we didn’t have tea we boiled cinnamon. The imam and
the mayor came again. For now we are being fed wth the food the
imam brought from the neighborhood. Sometimes there was a fellow
named Hasan of Bayburt
who was among those who came with them.
Supposedly he is an interpreter. The
Russian are giving him baksheesh
and he says this proudly. I said this man is definitely a
spy and this must
be absolutely true. The time passes almost completely with sleeping.
I was very bewildered. My ears felt as if
they were deaf. To go from
activity to inactivity all at
once has a bad effect.
19 February 1916 Saturday
Again our time here passes tediously. At noontime
a Russian captain and
a second lieutenant came to our room. With us again was that
no-good
Hasan. The captain told us that 43 more Ottoman officers had been taken ,
prisoner…and such…that Erzurum had fallen…and a few other
nonsensical things. Hasan happily translated these to us. I felt
very
badly. Moreover, this Russian told us that if they could
find room they
would put us in with the
newly captured officers and he left. The
imam, mayor and a few other people from
the neighborhood came and
we talked. My foot is hurting again. Because
of the underwear the
lice were bothering us.
20 February 1916
Sunday
Again we passed the time in the room. The mayor and imam didn’t
visit our room and
they didn’t bring any bread. We went to another
room today – in the same house - and I felt
quite put out. The other
fellows in the room
irritated me. These were Captain Şakır, Heavy
Artillery First Lieutenant Şevki, İnfantry First
Lieutenant Münir,
Telegrapher First Lieutenant Sadık and Artillery First Lieutenant
Zarif. In
particular when Şevki said ‘you’re full of lice’ with a nasty
attitude it made me quite angry. The lousy fellow has no manners.
Today the actions of a guard named Nikola, a Cossack soldier,
impressed me quite a bit while at the same
time constituting a very
a regrettable incident. This is what
happened: this Cossack saw
that we were only being given bread to eat so he
started to berate the
house owner and others nearby saying that the neighborhood people
were looking
after the captive officers elsewhere well so why
weren’t they taking better care of us. As the
result of this pressure,
in the evening he brought us a
meal with butter, eggs, yogurt and
potatoes. We filled our stomachs
well. After dinnertime
a
Russian officer and the spy Hasan came and said that we would
go to where the
other captive officers were. Again, limping along
on my
slightly throbbing foot we walked for quite a way, passing
the Government House and other place en
route. Because of the ice
and snow
especially I had a very difficult time. Everything in
Erzurum including the
Government House was burnt. It was
full of ruins…finally, we came to Halid Ağa
inn. After waiting a
bit, we entered the
very small and narrow room of the officers.
There were 26
of us and two beds. We passed the night like sardines.
I met up wth Şerif from our regiment here
and I introduced myself.
Today the
Czar’s representative Nikolai Nikolayevich came to
Erzurum in the evening.
Duke Nicholas after the fall of Erzurum.
Toward
Sarıkamış
21 February 1916 Monday
Morning came. We got up very uncomfortably.
They gave us two
sugars each and they brought tea. We drank it. Toward lunchtime
cabbage soup and wheat came. So we ate. They also later gave large
bread to seven
or eight people. Then someone named First Lieutenant
Mustafa Ağa committed theft and
embarrassed us by hiding the soup
spoon of a Russian soldier in his boot. This made me very angry and
annoyed. They told us that today we would head toward Sarıkamış.
We waited quite a while for the things of a fat major (Asım) and
another prisoner
lieutenant (Zühdü) to come from their homes.
It
was three thirty in the afternoon, European style. We boarded horse
carts, ten
of us to each one, and we set out. Near the Kars
Gate we
saw quite a few broken-down Turkish cannons and a barge.
Henceforth, bidding a second farewell to
Erzurum, we were now
going as prisoners to places where we had
once come and gone as
we pleased. On the road the guards sometimes jumped into the
cart
and crowded us. I was again suffering from my foot and at times it
was being
pressed upon. About two hours after midnight we reached
Hasankale and spent the night in
a room in a place above the
Government Office. The room was small. We were 28 officers in
the same place.
//END of PART XIII//
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