The Road to En-Dor Being an Account of How Two Prisoners of War at Yozgad in Turkey Won Their Way to Freedom — Inside the Classic

The Séance as a Tool of Resistance

The authors do not claim genuine spiritualist powers. Instead, they describe how they manufactured séances to gain privileges and sow confusion. The preface explicitly states that spiritualism allowed them to “kill much empty and weary time” and obtain comforts. In one episode, the “Spook” instructs the commandant to double sentries and prohibit roll-call, securing the authors a quiet evening to develop photographs. The séance is a performance: Hill hides in a cupboard to develop film while Jones paces in an “agony of impatience.” The narrative emphasizes the mechanics of deception—timing, props, and nerve—rather than mystical experience.

Photography as Evidence and Escape

Hill’s role as photographer is central. The authors need photographic proof to blackmail the commandant, and the climax of one episode is Hill emerging from a cupboard with a roll of “newly-developed V.P. Kodak films.” Jones notes that the negatives are “over-exposed” but show “Bimbashi Kiazim Bey, Commandant of Yozgad” clearly. The camera is a weapon: held steady for time exposures under tense conditions, it captures the Turks’ complicity. The narrative treats photography as both a practical tool and a source of dark humor—Hill is “never wholly satisfied with his own performances.” The images are not reproduced in the text, but their existence drives the plot.

The Texture of Captivity: Names, Places, and Gallows Humor

The book is dense with specific, often sardonic, references. The camp at Yozgad is a real location; the authors name fellow prisoners like Lieut. Taylor, R.E., who shouts “Sivas” as a false lead. The commandant is consistently called “the Pimple,” and a cook’s attempt to kiss Jones is met with Hill choking and turning his back. The treasure hunt is set in “Bones’s Nullah,” a gully beyond the Pinewoods. These details ground the narrative in a particular time and place, while the authors’ tone remains wry. They describe a “dreadful explosion” and OOO’s murder plot with the same matter-of-factness as they describe developing film.

Readers should approach The Road to En-Dor as a crafted narrative, not a transparent diary. Jones and Hill are self-aware storytellers who shape their material for effect. The book rewards attention to its layered ironies: the authors exploit belief they do not share, and their escape depends on the very superstition they mock. The photographs, though absent from this edition, are integral to the plot. This is a memoir of ingenuity under duress, told with a dry, collaborative voice that never loses sight of the absurdity of its own premise.

I often think of that other volume, The Road to En-Dor, where two prisoners spin a ghostly fiction to win their freedom. It shares a quiet kinship with The Scout and Ranger Being the Personal Adventures of Corporal Pike of the Fourth Ohio cavalry — A Reader’s Guide, both men simply improvising with wits against hard walls, each step a small, stubborn invention.