With the end of hostilities, prisoners of war were repatriated and began to tell their stories, including this one told in the Beds & Herts Saturday Telegraph on December 14, 1918, by a Lutonian who had been captured by the Turks.

Indescribable horrors have been suffered by Sgt Frederick Cleaver (Bedfordshire Regiment), who is on two months leave at his home, 47 May Street, Luton, after an absence on service of three and a half years, in the hands of the Turks as a prisoner.

He has been bound, beaten, half-starved, reduced almost to a skeleton, and has sometimes been in a critical condition when suffering from malaria or black water fevers, but has survived it all. Many of his comrades who underwent similar experiences pulled through until on board the homeward-bound vessel, when collapse set in and they succumbed.

The sergeant himself had to be taken to King George's Hospital, London, when he arrived in this country, and he was in a very bad way when he left for Luton. His condition may be imagined when it is said he was unable to walk on getting out of the train at the station, and had to be conveyed home.

The comfortable conditions of home life are, however, accelerating his recovery, and he is hoping for discharge at the expiration of his leave.

The story of how the sergeant was captured is pathetic. He was in the trenches and an action was taking place. Hearing the cry of a soldier in pain, he went forward to help. He found the soldier, who proved to be L-Cpl Moate, of Highbury Road, Luton, but he was in a dying condition, and it was useless to remove him. By the time he had found him and ascertained his state the enemy had surrounded them, and the Turks closed in around Sgt Cleaver and his comrade.

Many tales concerning the treatment of prisoners in Turkey could be told, but all who are released from that country have to obey certain rules which prevent, at any rate for the present, their publication.

[Sgt Cleaver was among around 200 POWs who attended a dinner for repatriated prisoners at the Winter Assembly Hall, Luton, on March 13, 1919.]