The Road to En-Dor by E. H. Jones

The Road to En-Dor

By E. H. Jones

Pan Books, 1955, Slightly Abridged, paperback

Good Condition, some edge and shelf wear, some rubbing and bumping to covers, some creasing, a few loose pages, however text is complete, no inscriptions, age toned pages (see photographs)

“The Road to En-Dor is the most famous of the escape books of the First World War.  The author, a young Welsh officer, was one of the starving garrison of Kut-el-Amara, and when the town had surrendered to the Turks, after a long siege, he was marched 500 miles to Yozgad prison camp.  Here in 1917 he and his Australian companion, Lieutenant (now Group Captain) C. W. Hill, devised the extraordinary plot of deception and intrigue which brought them untold suffering but eventually gained for them their freedom.  This plot centred on the use of a ‘ouija-board’ and the fostering, among their fellow-prisoners and their Turkish guards, of the belief that the two men were really in touch with a ‘spirit medium’ (called by them “The Spook”), which spelt out messages at seances by controlling the movements of a glass tumbler so that it touched letters of the alphabet placed in a circle round the board.  They succeeded in completely hoodwinking the Turks, and even persuaded the camps Commandant that they could discover buried treasure for him.  Later they planned to kidnap the Turkish staff, but had to give up this idea, deciding instead to feign madness.  They actually hanged themselves, narrowly avoiding death, and were eventually moved to hospital in Constantinople as lunatics and were passed for repatriation to Britain.  An introduction has been specially written for this PAN edition by Eric Williams.”