The Role of Sport for Australian POWs of the Turks during the First World War

Abstract

Nearly 200 Australians were taken prisoner by the Turks during World War I, some 76 of them during the Gallipoli campaign and the remainder over the succeeding three years during the ongoing campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. Approximately a quarter of them died in captivity. In contrast to the experiences of Australians taken prisoner by the Japanese during the Pacific War, Australian history and collective memory, and Australian commemorative activities, have almost totally overlooked the Australian prisoners of the Turks. This article redresses the balance somewhat by looking at an important aspect of the prisoners’ lives; the games they played while in captivity. The article suggests that sports and games were an important part of their methods for coping with the captivity experience, although there were some significant differences in the role sport played for captives of the Turks as compared to the role it played for those taken prisoner by the Japanese in the next World War.

Keywords::

• Australians
• Turkey
• Gallipoli
• prisoners
• games

Notes

^1. M. Delpratt to E. White, March 29, 1918. Maurice George Delpratt Correspondence, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

^2. Ibid.

^3. On the soldier as traveller and tourist see Richard White's two articles: “Cooees Across the Strand” and “The Soldier as Tourist.”

^4. Examples include Adam-Smith, Prisoners of War; and Neave and Smith, Aussie Soldier.

^5. Examples include Kerr, Lost Anzacs; and Brenchley and Brenchley's two books: Stoker's Submarine and White's Flight.

^6. This trend is changing. Jennifer Lawless completed a PhD about the experiences of Australians taken POW on Gallipoli at the University of New England in 2011, while Kate Ariotti is in the final stages of her PhD thesis about how the prisoners of the Turks, their families and various other groups felt about and coped with the unprecedented challenges brought about by captivity at the hands of a radically different enemy. See Lawless, “Kizmet”; and Ariotti, “Coping with Captivity.”

^7. Scholarly studies into the prisoners of the Japanese began in the 1980s with the groundbreaking work of historians Hank Nelson and Joan Beaumont. See Nelson, Prisoners of War; and Beaumont, Gull Force. Since then there has been a steady stream of work devoted to their experiences, ranging from studies of specific groups of captives, such as Hearder, Keep the Men Alive, and Kenny, Captives, to analyses of specific camps such as Gamble, Darkest Hour, studies of the Burma–Thai Railroad including Nelson and McCormack, The Burma-Thailand Railway, and investigations into the trials of those accused of war crimes against prisoners such as Rowland, A River Kwai Story.

^8.Blackburn, The Sportsmen of Changi.

^9. Ibid., 2.

^10.Monteath, P.O.W., 215.

^11. Ibid., 215–6. While this may have worked during the early years of captivity, by late 1944 the effects of poor diet and disease had weakened the prisoners to the point that many sports, including rugby and Australian Rules football, were abandoned.

^12.Monteath, P.O.W., 220.

^13. Ibid., 217–8.

^14. Ibid., 218–9.

^15. Ibid., 219.

^16. Ibid., 218.

^17. Ibid., 124.

^18.Blackburn, The Sportsmen of Changi, 128. Blackburn argues that rugby league took precedence over the official game of the AIF, rugby union, for several reasons ranging from connotations of class to the fact that league is typically a faster game, and thus more enjoyable for spectators.

^19. Ibid., 131–3.

^20. Ibid., 142–3. Two of the three fields had already been lost to the POWs: one had been turned into a runway and the other had an aircraft hangar built on it.

^21. Ibid., 129–30.

^22.Perry, The Changi Brownlow.

^23.Nelson, Prisoners of War, 12.

^24.Sobocinska, “‘The Language of Scars’,” 58.1–58.19.

^25. Article 6 of “Annex to the Convention: Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907,” http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp.

^26. C. Cliffe to M. Chomley, November 20, 1917. ARC POW Dept. Case File of William Cliffe, AWM3DRL/428 Box 39.

^27.Brown, Turkish Days and Ways, 178.

^28.Jones, The Road to En-dor, 118.

^29.Kerr, Lost Anzacs, 139 (diary entry for December 28, 1915). Army versus Navy was a popular competition.

^30.Brown, Turkish Days and Ways, 237.

^31. Ibid., 241. John Beattie stated that the field used by the prisoners at Afyon was approximately half a mile's walk from the town. Repatriation Statement of John Beattie, AWM30 B1.3.

^32.Kerr, Lost Anzacs, 147 (diary entry for January 14, 1916).

^33. Swiss doctor and International Red Cross Representative Adolf Vischer visited many POW camps in Europe and Turkey during the First World War. In the aftermath of the conflict, he published a book in which he argued that the specific restrictions of wartime captivity caused prisoners to suffer from a recognisable psychological illness he termed ‘barbed wire disease’. See Vischer, Barbed Wire Disease.

^34.White, Guests of the Unspeakable, 157.

^35.Brown, Turkish Days and Ways, 214.

^36.Reid, Prisoner of War, 157.

^37.Kerr, Lost Anzacs, 189 (diary entry for May 12, 1916).

^38. “Diary Written by D.B. Creedon,” 15. Creedon Diary 1915, OM90-138, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

^39. “Diary of A.E. Knaggs,” 12. Papers of A.E. Knaggs AE2, AWM PR85/96.

^40.Foster, Two and a Half Years, 39–40.

^41.Woolley, From Kastamuni to Kedos, 110–1.

^42. W. Randall to Mr & Mrs W. Wangemann, May 27, 1918. Papers of Trooper E. Randall 6th ALH and Pte. W. Randall 14Bn., AWM 3DRL/7847.

^43. Ibid.

^44. Ibid.

^45.Salt, “Johnny Turk Before Gallipoli,” 17.

^46. Ibid., 19–20. See Gladstone, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, for a contemporary – and influential – view of the Bulgarian massacres.

^47. On Western European perceptions regarding the decline of the Ottoman Empire see Asli Cirakman, From the “Terror of the World” to the “Sick Man of Europe,” 164–72.

^48. “War with Turkey,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 7, 1914.

^49.Jupp, The Australian People, 709; Knibbs, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 85.

^50.Stephenson, Islam Dreaming, 35. “Afghan” was used as a collective term for the cameleers, regardless of whether they came from Afghanistan, Baluchistan or what is now Pakistan. Their common religion bound them together as one group in the eyes of white Australians.

^51.Stevens, Tin Mosques and Ghantowns, 239.

^52. Ibid., 150.

^53.Stanley, “‘He Was Black, He Was a White Man, and a Dinkum Aussie’,” 221.

^54. Article 7 of “Annex to the Convention: Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907,” http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp.

^55. M. Delpratt to E. White, December 16, 1917. Maurice George Delpratt Correspondence. For Australian POW perceptions of their Russian counterparts, see Halpin, Blood in the Mists, 180–1. Halpin states that the Russians were abandoned by their country – the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 meant there was no aid agency to assist Russian prisoners of war.

^56. Repatriation Statement of Edgar Hobson, AWM30 B2.2. Maurice Delpratt also assumed responsibility for a camp of Indian POWs in the Taurus Mountains.

^57. M. Delpratt to E. White, April 1, 1918. Maurice George Delpratt Correspondence.

^58.Coombes, Crossing the Wire, 280.

^59.Pegram, “Introduction,” xii.

^60. Pte Frank Sturrock cited in Coombes, Crossing the Wire, 294.

^61.Lake, “British World or New World?” 36–7.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kate Ariotti

Kate Ariotti is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at the University of Queensland. Her work focuses on the impact of wartime imprisonment on Australians during the First World War, specifically how those affected by captivity in Turkey coped with the unique challenges it posed. She has several publications due out later this year.

Martin Crotty

Martin Crotty teaches History at the University of Queensland. He has written in the fields of sports history, masculinity studies and the experiences of Australians during and in the aftermath of the First World War.