Emily Chan
Prison breaks have long captured people’s imaginations. Tales of daring escapes, meticulously crafted plans, and the bravery that comes with such a risky move are thrilling to hear about.
But no other narrative detailing the pursuit of freedom is quite like this one. Two men, who were prisoners of war, were able to use a Ouija board to help them escape.
In 1917, during the midst of World War I, two British officers named Harry Jones and Cedric Hill were being held captive at a prisoner-of-war (POW) camp located in a remote area of Turkey.
Jones was a lawyer and the son of a lord. After a five-month siege at Kut, he was captured and forced to trek over 2,000 miles to a POW camp in Yozgad.
That was where he met Hill, a mechanic from an Australian sheep farm. Hill had joined the Royal Flying Corps and was in Kantara, Egypt when he was shot down by Ottoman forces and sent to Yozgad.
While there, Jones wrote letters back and forth with his family members. The Ottoman government had relaxed the restrictions on letters.
Prisoners were finally able to fill both sides of a single piece of paper. However, they were not allowed to receive war news, and their mail was always inspected by Ottoman officials.
Through coded messages from his family, Jones learned that the British had seized Kut in February 1917 and that Baghdad fell the next month.
He used specific words to let his family know he was speaking in code, such as “Tighnabruaich, Argyllshire, Scotland England.”
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