1 Introduction the General Experiences of Australian Prisoners

Introduction The general experiences of Australian prisoners of war in World War I have been neglected in both official and general war histories and accounts of the Anzac tradition. Even more neglected however are the experiences of Australian soldiers captured in theatres of war throughout the Ottoman Empire, including those captured at Gallipoli. Most examples of prisoner of war (POW) writing have concentrated on World War II POWs and the Japanese experience in particular.1 In the Australian War Memorial’s (AWM) collection dealing with Australian war captivity, for example, almost two thirds are concerned with World War II prisoners of the Japanese. Only ‘a tiny one percent’ is devoted to prisoners of the Turks.2 In the event that prisoners of war in Turkey are acknowledged, few sources are consulted. Selected memoirs and autobiographies are used uncritically without corroboration of other historical sources, particularly Turkish sources, to produce an overall picture of unrelieved brutality. It has been suggested that this historical neglect of prisoners of war can be explained by their representations of military failure, creating a sense of national shame. The fact that they have been captured suggests failure of leadership and planning at the highest level and also calls into question ‘the notion which has long been central to our national self-image, that our soldiers are especially competent fighters’.3 It is noteworthy in this context that the source of the Anzac tradition – the Gallipoli campaign – has not produced a scholarly study of the 1 See the following for an assessment of writers on prisoners of war (hereafter POWs): R. Gerster, ‘The Rise of Prisoners-of-War Writers’, Australian Literary Studies, vol. 12, October 1985, pp. 270-274; R. Gerster, ‘Hors de Combat. The Problems and Postures of Australian Prisoner-of-War Literature’, Meanjin Quarterly, vol. 42, 2, 1983, pp. 220-229; P. Stanley in R. Reid, Stolen Years. Australian Prisoners of War, Canberra, Department of Veterans Affairs, 2002, p. 5; J. Beaumont, Gull Force. Survival and Leadership in Captivity 1941-1945, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1990. 2 Stanley in R. Reid, Stolen Years, p. 93. 3 Beaumont, Gull Force, pp. 1-3. 1 prisoners captured there.4 A random selection of both popular and scholarly texts on Gallipoli reveals no references at all to Australian prisoners of war.5 The aim of this thesis therefore is to draw upon a wider range of sources than has previously been used to establish the identity of the Australian soldiers captured at Gallipoli and to create a detailed and balanced narrative of their experiences, from captivity to repatriation. Historical documents from Australian, British and Turkish archives have been examined. The underlying theme of the thesis is to challenge the myths developed over the past ninety years that have shrouded the Gallipoli prisoners. These include the claims that few of the captured Australians survived incarceration and that their treatment in Turkey was equivalent to that under the Japanese in World War II. The stereotyped image of Australian war captivity is invariably the skeletal prisoners who emerged from Japanese camps in World War II. This is largely due to the overwhelming number of captives, the harsh conditions experienced by these prisoners, the large percentage that died and the vividness of commonly available print and film accounts. A simple assumption has been that the Turkish experience was similar. These myths have accumulated since the Gallipoli landing of 25 April 1915 and have been fuelled by historians’ use of a narrowly selected range of published memoirs, autobiographies, media reports and official British propaganda set in a broader historical context of Western bias towards the Turks. Seven field and research trips to Turkey have been undertaken by the author to access Turkish material, gather extant oral histories and to investigate relevant sites. Turkish documents 4 N. Brackenbury wrote an unpublished honours thesis focussing on the capture of the Gallipoli soldiers. However, he does not base his discussion on the full complement of prisoners and his source base is very limited. Becoming guests of the unspeakable, Macquarie University, 1983. AWM MS 974, AWM, Canberra. 5 See, for example, J. Laffin, Damn the Dardanelles! The Agony of Gallipoli, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1985; D. Winter, 25 April 1915. The Inevitable Tragedy, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1994; T. Travers, Gallipoli 1915, Tempus, London, 2001; L. Carlyon, Gallipoli, Macmillan, Sydney, 2001; A. Moorehead, Gallipoli, Harper Collins, New York, 2003; R. Pelvin (ed), Anzac. An Illustrated History 1914-1918, Hardie Grant Books, 2004; J. King & M. Bowers, Gallipoli. Untold Stories from the War Correspondent Charles Bean and Front-line Anzacs, Doubleday, Sydney, 2005; H. Broadbent, Gallipoli, the Fatal Shore, Viking Books, Melbourne, 2005; R. Prior, Gallipoli. The End of the Myth, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2009. 2 concerning the POWs have been translated into English for the first time. Overall, the aim of the thesis is to present a coherent and detailed narrative about a much neglected aspect of Australia’s war history. To avoid confusion, I will generally refer to the overall forces of the Ottoman army as Turkish, despite the fact that the army was drawn from a wide area of the Ottoman Empire at the time of the war. Many participants would have identified themselves as Greek, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Armenian or other nationality that comprised the vast Ottoman Empire. However, contemporary accounts generally refer to the armed forces overall as Turkish. I also refer to the capital city as Istanbul, rather than the earlier Greek Constantinople preferred by the Allies. The choice of name has political overtones, particularly for Western powers who may have subconsciously wished to eradicate 500 years of Muslim Ottoman occupation with the usage of the earlier name. When referring to place names, I will use firstly the Anglicised name commonly used by the prisoners followed by the Turkish name commonly today. The following pronunciation of Turkish letters is relevant for this study: the sounds approximate the following: 2 =sh as in Ta2 Kishla; ç=ch as in Çankiri. When a POW is first mentioned in the text, his rank and full name will be provided. Henceforth, only the surname will be used. Historiography of Australian POWs in Turkey There is very little historiography on the experiences of the Australian POWs captured in Turkey. Charles Bean’s Official History of the War in 1914-1918, volumes I and II, presents the official Australian account of the war.6 Writing in the post-war period, Bean had access to a variety of sources concerning the prisoners but paid scant attention to them. Repatriation Statements made by the soldiers at the conclusion of the war were accessible as were battalion 6 C. Bean, Official History of the War in 1914-1918, vols. I & II, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1938 & 1942 editions. 3 diaries, memoirs and official documents. Bean mentions approximately eleven instances of capture but does not refer to the actual experiences of captivity. Despite drawing on material from Private Daniel Creedon’s diary for details of the capture of seven men on 28 June 1915, Bean does not name the individual soldiers, except for one. As the incident may be interpreted as controversial, it appears that Bean either self-censored material or official censorship was imposed. This example will be discussed further in Chapter 3.7 Apart from the published memoirs which will be discussed later in the chapter, there is a considerable gap in time between the writings of Bean and other historical discussions of the POW experience in Turkey. The unpublished honours thesis of Brackenbury is the earliest research on the Turkish POW experience.8 The title alludes to Tom White’s colourful memoir, Guests of the Unspeakable, and Brackenbury takes his cue from White in his attitude to the Turks. His thesis is based on the work of British historian A. J. Barker who examined the generic experiences of prisoners in the period between capture and internment in camp, referred to as the ‘first ordeal’.9 With no reference to evidence, Brackenbury states in his Introduction that conditions in Turkish camps were far worse than in German camps. Brackenbury erroneously concludes that two-thirds of those who died of disease did so en route to captivity or within six months of reaching internment camps. Brackenbury also claims that some men returned from Turkey ‘quite insane’, yet provides no names or substantial evidence.10 He accepts AE2 submariner Charles Suckling’s statement that prisoners were nothing more than living skeletons on their release. This fits conveniently with the later images of skeletal POWs released by the Japanese in World War II. However, in the conclusion this claim is contradicted by the statement that on release ‘most prisoners appear 7 Bean, Official History, vol. II, p. 301. In other instances, soldiers are named, for example, McDonald, Elston, Lushington, Ashton,Troy, Luscombe, Calcutt, Cliffe, Delpratt and King. 8 Brackenbury, Becoming guests. 9 A. J. Barker, Behind Barbed Wire, B.T. Batsford Ltd, London, 1975. 10 Brackenbury, Becoming guests, p. 67. 4 to have been better fed and clothed than many of the Turkish populace’.11 Contemporary photographs of the prisoners also challenge this claim. Brackenbury correctly concludes that the experiences in the POW camps were diverse yet he is one of the earliest of several historians to make the allegation that the POW experience in Turkey was similar to that under the Japanese in World War II. This argument is based on prisoners complaining of poor food, suffering the difficulties of cultural difference, unsophisticated medical care and labouring on the construction of a railway. A 1988 British publication, P. Liddle’s Men of Gallipoli, makes a fleeting reference to POWs in Turkey from a British perspective.12 Liddle provides no statistics and bases his comments on the account written by French POW Marius Gondard.

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