TCD MS 3416 page 47
[June 1916]
unknown we raced up the hill and arrived at the top in quick time only to find, however, that we had only forestalled the arrival of the carts by half an hour! HASAN BEGLIE is a very picturesque Armenian townlet, built on the side of a hill; the stone houses are built in tiers one above the other. These were empty, as were also the fruit gardens with their high poplars, save for Turk soldiery camping in them. The occupants had been “deported”. A German engineer pointed out one house in particular where an old Turkish bimbashi (major) lived with a wretched little Armenian girl who had been wrested from her family.
Major Baines states that on his arrival here: – “En route to Hasan Beglie we picked up three British soldiers on the roadside ill with dysentry. These men had been sleeping out without food or bedding all night, having on the previous day fallen through weakness, out of a convoy of prisoners proceeding up country before us. One of the men appeared to be dying, the Turk in charge of the convoy had simply left them to die when they had fallen out – we put these men into our carts. The village was evidently an Armenian one, but there are no Armenians there now.