Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1920 — WON BY SHAMMING INSANITY [ARTICLE]

WON BY SHAMMING INSANITY

How Two British Officers Fooled Their Turkish Captors by Period of Feigned Madness. Are really lunatics or, brilliant actors? Sceptical Turks and British asked the question as they looked at the weird, ghastly figures of Lieutenant Jones and Lieutenant Hill In the prisoners’ ward of a Turkish hospital in the early days of the war. Here is a picture of Lieutenant Hill, as described by another British officer : “A tousled scarecrow of a man. His long, untrimmed hair hung over his unwashed neck, his cheeks were sunken, his hands were clasped over ths bed-clothes that covered his shins. He never looked at us, but with an expression of the most unswerving austerity continued to read a book that lay open on his knees. As I passed I saw, from the ruling and paragraphing of the pages, that it must be a copy of the Bible.” "Jones was in a bed opposite. His face was unusually white. The young forehead was divided and subdivided by deep wrinkles; a golden beard tufted from the chin; the head was covered by a too large fez, made ot white linen.

“He grinned and waved an arm toward the Turkish orderly. 'I am not English,’ he protested, in Turkish. 'I am a good Turk. The English are my enemies. I wrote to his excellency Enver Pasha, telling him I wished to became a Turkish officer.’ ” The reputation of these two officers as lunatics had spread through every prison-camp in Turkey, says the writer who tells the story tn “Blackwood’s Magazine." But they were not mad. They were feigning madness the whole time in order to recover their freedom ! And they won through. As soon as the British vessel on which they were shipped had left Turkish waters they miraculously recovered ! It was one of the most amazing cases of malingering on record. The marvel is that Hill’s mind did not give way under the ordeal. For twelve hours a day he sat up in bed reading and re-reading the Bible. He showed no signs of interest in anything; prayed aloud for nearly half an hour morning and evening in the presence of a dozen people, and never smiled — a task which required almost inhuman concentration. Jones, on the other hand, acted farce instead of tragedy, and both men completely duped the Turks.