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 run by the American Near East Relief organization, in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Greece; the caravan of orphans and other Armenians out of Turkey in 1922; life in Corfu, Greece; the long passage to the United States through France and Canada; and the author's eventual making a life during the Depression in Providence, Rhode Island, and New York City.