A VERY RARE (Battle of Gaza)
Old Contemptible's "TURKISH PRISONER OF WAR"

1914 STAR & BAR CASUALTY TRIO with PLAQUE.

To:
6867 Pte W. Douglas 1/Bedfordshire Regt & 201130 4th Essex Rgt.

DIED IN TURKISH CAPTIVITY 2nd October 1917.

[BIOGRAPHY]
Walter Douglas was born at Mill End, Rickmansworth on 23rd June 1878. He had first enlisted in the army aged 21 in 1900 and is shown as living at the 16th Brigade Depot, Kempston. After a short service engagement he was then transferred to the reserve.

Prior to WW1 and on the 1911 census he is seen working as a 33 year old carman for a contractor and being single was still living at home with his father Steven & his sister Fanny at 1 Chalkpit Cottages, Springwell, Middlesex.

He was clearly called up in August 1914 and after a brief period of retraining he proceeded to France on 12th September 1914 with 1st Bedfordshire Regt. During the closing months of 1914 he took part in the early battles of the Great War at Mons, Le Cateau, The Marne, The Aisne, La Bassee, Ypres, Langemarck and Gheluvelt.

[TRANSFERRED to 4th ESSEX Regt, 5th JANUARY 1916]
The 4th Essex Regt were sent to Gallipoli where they took part in the Suvla Bay landings in August 1915. After suffering many casualties they were evacuated on 4th December 1915 and were shipped out to Alexandria. Walter Douglas then joined the unit as a reinforcement in January 1916. The bulk of 1916 was spent in Egypt with a unit strength of 32 officers and 869 other ranks.

[THE FORGOTTEN BRITISH PRISONERS OF THE TURKS]
The 4th Essex then took part in the first & second battles of Gaza. The first attempt to take Gaza had failed with 9 officers & 49 other ranks killed and 74 men missing of which Walter was one when he fell into the hands of the Turks.

The shocking & brutal treatment of our troops by the Turks is legendary in the annals of war. Our men were forced marched across the desert without food and water and those who didn't die on the march were imprisoned in prison camps in subhuman conditions. Both officers & men who could work were forced to labour under atrocious circumstances, but prisoners who were not fit to work were not given food at all with the predicable outcome of death in a very short time.

Walter Douglas was clearly a tough man as he both survived the desert marching and then a period of forced labour on the Cilician Gates railway project before succumbing to illness. He had been transferred and was held at Bor Prison Hospital near Nigdeh just north of the Taurus Mountains where he died in captivity, most probably of dysentery, on 2nd October 1917. He was 38.

The Turks sent sick British and Russian prisoners to the hospital in Bor for treatment and recovery. Bor was located in the Vilayet of Konia, near Nigdeh, twenty-five miles southeast of Akseral and sixty-one miles north of Adana, north of the Cilcilian Taurus Mountains. The hospital served prisoners assigned to the labor detachments working on the railway line through the Cilician Gates.

Out of a total of 2,962 British soldiers captured by the Turks at Gaza, 1,782 died as prisoners of war, mainly of starvation.

LEST WE FORGET THE TRUE COST OF OUR FREEDOM.










A Rare & Desirable "Old Contemptible's" 1914 Star & Bar Turkish P.O.W. Casualty Group with Plaque. We've never seen another one !!

£795