Guests of the Unspeakable: The Odyssey of an Australian Airman – being a Record of Captivity and Escape in Turkey

AUSTRALIAN MILITARY

1932 (first Australian edition)/ ( London 1928.) SCARCE

Foreword by General Sir John Monash.

‘Lieut.-Col. White … was one of the first four officers chosen from the Australian Commonwealth Military Forces for instruction in aviation, and as an aviator was sent to Mesopotamia. In November 1915, he and Captain Yeats-Brown were captured during a hazardous raid to destroy telegraph lines behind the enemy lines, a task for which they had volunteered. Callous neglect and deliberate cruelty characterized the treatment of the Allied and Indian troops by the Turks, yet the saving graces of humanity, humour and kindness ever rose in the spirits of the suffering captives…. From Constantinople White and [Alan] Bott made their escape to Odessa, then under Bolshevik control. Their insolent disregard for ordinary precautions seemed only to ensure their safety and they were able to reach Varna and then Salonika, only a few weeks before the Armistice’. The two-page foreword by General Sir John Monash is glowing: if White ‘had been able to write only of the early beginnings of war flying, he would have had a story to tell which was well worth the telling and deserving of permanent record. But the cruel misadventure which overtook him and his gallant companion … was the beginning of a long series of strange, eventful happenings, compared with which the story of their prowess in the air pales almost into the commonplace’.

Octavo, pp. xii, 276, 26 (advertisements) #071123 (Some wear to fep / fpd connection, small name and bookshop label on fpd) A very sound and collectable quality copy.

• White, T. W. (Thomas Walter), Sir, 1888-1957
• World War, 1914-1918 — Personal narratives, Australian
• World War, 1914-1918 — Prisoners and prisons, Turkish
• Escapes — Turkey