TCD MS 3416 page 71
[July 1916]
or attention. The food gradually became almost uneatable and insufficient; insufficient in as much as we were obliged to cut down the number of dishes owing to the fact that the Turks refused to pay us up to date & we simply had not the money to pay. Time after time, Col. W. Chitty, our senior officer wrote invoking the aid of the Commandant, but his letters were never answered & neither did he come down and see Col Chitty. From this extraordinary behaviour we could but only deduct one solution, namely that the Commandant was in company with his subordinates to make whatever profits they could out of us unfortunate prisoners, which practice is by no means uncommon in Turkey. The Commandant refused to inform us of our contract price of our daily messing; the prices of “extras” which we were obliged to buy from the contractor since we were not allowed out, where known to us to be excessive and an extensive robbery, & since the Commandant would not inform us of the correct prices of these stores, it became nothing else than licenced robbery. We were informed that we would go out for walks once a week, but in practice this worked out to be one walk in ten days, if that.