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Two British officers escaped from a prison camp in the middle of the desert in Turkey near the end of World War I by crafting an elaborate con involving a homemade Ouija board. It sounds like a crazy story, and it certainly is. But as the old (though not entirely accurate) saying goes, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”
Margalit Fox brings this true tale of daring and cleverness to the attention of current-day readers. She explains not just how the two men pulled off their escape, but why they were able to do so. She puts the story in context of the spiritualism of the time.
Elias Henry Jones and Cedric Waters Hill were two of almost 90 officers shipped and marched for two months to a remote prisoner of war camp in Yozgad, Turkey (now Yozgat), in the mountains of Anatolia. The Ottomans had captured them at the end of a “disastrous” five-month siege at Kut-al-Amara. The town had just recently been home to 20,000 Armenians, who had become victims of genocide. The prisoners were installed in their deserted homes, suffering in poor conditions, presided over by corrupt camp commandant Binbashi Kiazim Bey. Communications to and from this “very bad” man (as even the Turkish guards called him) were translated by a young Ottoman soldier named Moïse Eskenazi.
Escaping their imprisonment would have been difficult but possible. However, leaving the camp itself would have deposited the weakened officers into a harsh environment hundreds of miles from civilization. On top of that, escape would lead to recriminations for the remaining prisoners, so officers did not want to put their fellows in peril.
Boredom led to a number of creative ideas to make life a little interesting. The prisoners managed to secure some instruments from the local bazaar and play music; they wrote and performed a musical for themselves. And then Jones received a postcard from his aunt suggesting he experiment with a Ouija board, which he crafted using instructions she gave. After a number of nights of no response from the beyond, Jones decided to create some.
After weeks of mischievousness on Jones’ part, he began to form an idea. When he heard of rumors among his captors that the Armenians had left behind buried riches, a scheme formed. With the help of Hill, who also desperately wanted to escape, they crafted a detailed plan to trick Kiazim and Moïse.
The plan almost worked — but one issue led to them having to resort to plan B. That was pretending they were mentally ill so they could be put in a mental hospital in the city, where they would be assessed by experts in the field. For both parts of the plan, Jones and Hill had to use all their talents and wits so as not to be discovered.
The Confidence Men is a fascinating true story. It was well-known a century ago but has been lost to most people’s knowledge since. Fox brings it back to light in this nonfiction book, not just giving a detailed and generally gripping account of what these two men pulled off, but also looking back at the reasons the scheme succeeded.
(A similar true story from World War II is Operation Columba.)
Rated: Mild. Profanity includes one instance of moderate language, fewer than 10 uses of mild language, and a few instances of the name of Deity in vain. (There is one instance of the bl- word, not considered cursing in the United States, but considered vulgar in the UK and elsewhere.)
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.
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