In 1915 Turkish gendarmes and Kurdish irregulars attacked hundreds of Armenian villages throughout the Ottoman empire. Their objective was the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians from their ancestral homes. This account covers the experience of one of the survivors, Mardiros Manuelian, a boy of eight at the time. Written in the 1950s and newly edited, with explanatory end notes, this book adds to the literature of the Armenian genocide from a personal point of view. Personal photographs are included. Chapters describe what ocurred in a particular village near Palu; what happened to some of the children who survived; how many were rescued and placed in orphanages