Turkey Travail Harold Armstrong British WWI Kut Armenia Armenian Massacre Greeks

Description: Turkey in Travail by Harold Armstrong. London, John Lane, dated 1925. First edition, with illustrations and 2 maps Armstrong, Harold. Turkey in Travail. London: John Lane - The Bodley Head, 1925, xi + 280 pages, with eight illustrations and two maps, small 8*. Harold Armstrong was a British officer who fought against the Turks during the WWI at Kut in Mesopotamia. In April, 1916, British troops surrendered there and he, with his comrades, marched 1,600 miles to their captivity at the town of Kastamuni not far from the coast of Black Sea. On his long march, he ditches full of dead bodies of Armenian women and children, he witnessed Turkish gendarmes selling Armenian women “for a few shillings in the bazaars of Aleppo and Mosul.” During the nights, he would be woken hearing “the sound of women and children, and in the next field were a crowd of Armenians and with them white-bearded priests. I saw them marched away over the country under the escort of armed gendarmes. They were being marched slowly to death, and the bodies I had seen by the roadside in the Amanus Mountains were those of them who could not keep up.” (p. 28). After Turks were defeated, Armstrong became Assistant and acting Military Attache to the High Commissioner at Constantinople and stayed at War Office of Allied Army of Occupation. Later he even became a Supervisor of Turkish Gendarmerie. He left Turkey in 1923. As many other British high rank officers he was under influence of the myth of “Clean-Fighting Turk,” praising the former enemy’s courage and gallantry. While dealing mostly with the Turkish officers he acquired their habit to blame Armenians in everything, even in them being exterminated by Kurds and Turks. Witnessing hordes of dirty, wretched, and terrorized Armenians only reinforced his negative attitude toward the entire race. “… the Turks, despite their record of vice and brutality, are pre-eminently lovable and have great charm…The Armenians are a black-haired, black-eyed people with runaway foreheads and hooked noses like the Hittites. About them there is nothing kindly. They are a highly nervous, over capable and over intelligent race. They are afflicted with an obstinacy that would enrage the mildest tyrant. They cannot and will not submit to any rule.” (p. 224). There are many other references to Armenians in this book and an interesting episode of author’s encounter with Enver Pasha (“mildest tyrant!!” – V.I.). Quite scarce title, a must have for any serious collector or researcher in Armenian Genocide field.

Price: 125 USD

Location: Providence, Rhode Island

End Time: 2025-01-05T00:17:30.000Z

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