E. H. Jones (author)
Elias Henry Jones | |
|---|---|
| Born | 21 September 1883 |
| Died | 22 December 1942 |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Service |  British Army |
| Years of service | 22 September 1915 – 11 November 1918 |
| Rank | Lieutenant |
| Battles / wars | World War I |
Lieutenant Elias Henry Jones (21 September 1883 – 22 December 1942) was a Welsh administrator in India and officer in the Indian Army who, together with Australian C. W. Hill, escaped from the Yozgad prisoner of war camp in Turkey during the First World War. Their story was told in Jones' book The Road to En-dor.[1]
Life
The son of the Welsh philosopher Sir Henry Jones, Jones entered the Indian Civil Service in 1906 and served in Burma. On the outbreak of the First World War, he joined the Indian Army and, after serving as a private soldier in a Volunteer Artillery Battery, was commissioned into the Indian Army Reserve of Officers on 22 September 1915. He served in Mesopotamia during the First World War as part of the Indian Expeditionary Force and taken prisoner in April 1916. He was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant on 22 September 1916.[1]
After the war, he served for a time as Lord Curzon's secretary on the Foreign Office Middle East Committee, before returning to Burma. Retiring from the ICS in 1924, he settled in Bangor, North Wales and became secretary and registrar to the University College of North Wales.
Prison life and escape
Between February 1917 and October 1918, Jones and Hill convinced their Turkish captors that they were mediums adept at the Ouija board. The pair spent over a year conning the camp's commandant. Eventually they persuaded their Turkish captors they were insane and, after being moved to a hospital for the mentally ill in the summer of 1918, the two men played their roles as lunatics so successfully they also fooled the doctors and were returned home. They arrived home a few months before their brother officers were released from Yozgat.
Influences
The Road to En-dor was scripted for film in 2008 by Neil Gaiman and Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller).[2] A film was never produced.[3]
Mark Valentine included an essay on The Road to En-Dor in his collection, A Wild Tumultory Library (2019).[3]
In 2021, American author Margalit Fox published The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History, a retelling of the events described in Jone's memoir with additional context and research.[3]
References
- The Road to En-dor, E. H. Jones, 1919
- ^ a b "Jones, Elias Henry". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Retrieved 10 November 2013.
- ^ firstshowing.net: Neil Gaiman and Penn Jillette Adapting The Road to Endor
- ^ a b c Michael Dirda (16 June 2021). "The greatest prison escape ever? 'The Confidence Men' tells a sensational true story". The Washington Post. Retrieved 17 June 2021.
External links
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| National | |
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- 1883 births
- 1942 deaths
- World War I prisoners of war held by the Ottoman Empire
- Indian Army personnel of World War I
- British Indian Army officers
- British World War I prisoners of war
- British escapees
- Escapees from Turkish detention
- Indian Civil Service (British India) officers
- Administrators in British Burma
- Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
- Alumni of the University of Glasgow
- Grenoble Alpes University alumni
- British Army personnel stubs