Horsman Brothers, POW in Tarsus

Private Stanley Horsman (K.O.Y.L.I.), son of Mr and Mrs Horsman, 41 Ivanhoe road, who is suffering from appendicitis and pneumonia, and has been invalided to a Manchester hospital.

His brother Cecil
this was killed this year in France; another brother has served in India and Mesopotamia, with the R.F.A., and was in the siege and capitulation of Kut. His was parents have received the welcome news that he is safe in Tarsus.

Gunner Horsman in Tarsus

The thousands of South Yorkshire soldiers serving with the British Mediterranean forces have had unexampled opportunities of rubbing up their biblical and classical knowledge. Such is the case of Gunner Horsman, of Conisbrough, now, unhappily, in Turkish captivity.

He served in general Townsend’s artillery, and shared the fate of that unfortunate expedition.

Earlier in the invasion of Mesopotamia he wrote that he was “somewhere in the garden of Eden.”

Now he is able to say that is in the native town of St Paul, for he is interned in Tarsus, which stands on the northern Mediterranean shore of Asia Minor. Tarsus is the ancient capital of the province of Cicilia, and some 10 miles south-west of the now better known town of Adana. The prestige of Tarsus as long since disappeared, but when the Roman Empire was at its zenith, the learning, literature and art of Tarsus rivalled in splendour the aesthetic glories of the Athens and Antioch, and one can understand the parochial pride of St Paul (“soul of Tarsus”) when he exclaimed, “I am a Jew of Tarsus, a citizen of no mean city.”