THE FIRST BATTLE OF PLEVNA.
The Town of Plevna--A Natural Stronghold--_Le Petit
Village_--The Gypsies' Warning--Dr. Robert--An Expatriated
Bacchanalian--We attend a Banquet--The First Battle of
Plevna--An Artillery Duel--Surgical Aid to the Wounded--A
Gunner's Death--The Zacuska--Arranging the
Hospitals--Disposition of the Turkish Line of
Defence--Commencement of the Battle--Fighting on the Janik
Bair--Arrival of the Wounded--Sufferings in the Arabas--Variety
in Gunshot Wounds--Some Extraordinary Recoveries--Turkish
Fortitude--Objections to Alcohol--And to Amputation--Berdan _v._
Krenke Bullets--A Man shot through the Brain--Rapid Cure--An
Erratic Rifle-ball--Remarkable Example of Vitality--A Missile in
the Heart of a Living Man--My Second Hospital--A Turkish
Colonel's Wound--Insufficient Beds--Mangled Wretches lying on
the Floor--Two Russians wounded--They both die--The Shambles in
the Mosque--Our Open-air Operating Theatre--Calling the Faithful
to Prayer.
The town of Plevna is built in the valley of the Tutchenitza, a small
affluent of the Vid, about three miles from the meeting of the two, and
just south of the confluence of the former with the Grivitza, which gave
its name to the celebrated Grivitza redoubt. Before the war Plevna
contained about seventeen thousand inhabitants, eight mosques, and two
Christian churches. All round the angle formed by the confluence of the
Grivitza and Tutchenitza are rolling hills, rising to their highest on
the north near the villages of Opanetz, Bukova, and Grivitza. To the
east one could see a number of small isolated hills, forming natural
mamelons; and on the south a huge natural rampart defends the town. On
the left bank of the Tutchenitza rise a succession of knolls, which were
called by the Russians the "Green Hills"; and here some of the heaviest
of the fighting afterwards took place.
When we of the advance guard arrived at Plevna on the morning of July
18, the uncut maize stood high on the hill-slopes round the town, and in
places even a cavalry trooper might be hidden. The Green Hills were
covered with vineyards, and there was plenty of timber, consisting
mostly of oaks and beeches, which speedily vanished as the campaign
progressed, until the hills were desolate in their absolute bareness.
When Osman Pasha arrived, the fortifications consisted of a single
blockhouse, between the Vid and the Tutchenitza on the Sofia road, of
the kind which one saw all along the Servian and Albanian frontiers. The
position, however, offered splendid opportunities for defence, enclosed
as it was on three sides by hills, which afforded admirable sites for
defensive works, hiding the interior and allowing reserves to be
concentrated out of sight ready to be directed on any threatened point.
The deep ravines which break up the country and for the most part
converge on Plevna rendered the lateral communication of the attacking
force very difficult, so that the tactical contact, which is so
important to the success of a combined attack on two points, was
scarcely possible. It was easy to see that the ground was difficult for
the movements of cavalry and guns; and the maize, vineyards, and scrub
combined to prevent the rapid movement even of infantry.
In a short but highly suggestive sketch entitled _Le Petit Village_,
Zola describes a modest little hamlet, nestling in a valley, remote from
the busy world outside, and screened by a curtain of closely planted
poplars from the eyes of curious strangers. It is watered by a small
gurgling stream, along the banks of which are built the simple cottages
of the country folk. To-day the very existence of the hamlet is unknown,
even to the dwellers in the neighbouring towns. To-morrow the curtain of
poplars has been rent by shot and shell, the little river runs red with
blood, and the name of "Woerth" is blazoned in letters of fire upon the
page of history. So has it been with Plevna. The little town had never
been heard of before the campaign of 1877-1878, and it is not even
mentioned in Von Moltke's sketch of the defensive advantages of
Bulgaria. Now its name is known to every schoolboy, and the mere mention
of it makes the pulse beat faster wherever pure patriotism and
unflinching devotion to duty in the face of fearful suffering are
recognized and honoured.
I walked through the narrow streets of Plevna on the day before the
first battle, and saw a town already deserted by most of the wealthy
inhabitants. Here and there I noticed a Turkish civilian dressed in the
long, loose caftan, and the wide trousers tucked into high boots, which
formed the universal dress of the Turks; while the Bulgarians wore the
sheepskin caps and suits of coarse yellow frieze which I had seen before
in Widdin and Sofia. The streets were paved with cobble-stones, and the
main street formed the principal bazaar of the place; while sundry
evil-smelling lanes, running off to the right and left, were inhabited
by scowling Bulgarians, who looked as though they would have cut my
throat with the greatest pleasure. The Tutchenitza ran right across the
main street; and here I saw the women washing clothes and chattering
together, apparently unconscious of the dreadful trials before them.
At the lower end of the long, straggling main street, however, there was
a collection of dirty little huts occupied by the Gypsies; and when they
saw the troops coming, they seemed to recognize that the horrors of war
were near, for they set up a prolonged wailing, while they wrung their
hands with gestures of the deepest grief.
Leaving them to their lamentations, I proceeded to investigate the
resources of the town, and was overjoyed to discover a European doctor,
upon whom I promptly called and introduced myself. He was a very
original character this Dr. Robert, and how he came to Plevna in the
first instance I never found out. Born at Neuchâtel in Switzerland, he
disappeared from the paths of European civilization when he had finished
his medical course, and eventually settled down in Plevna, where he had
been for ten years before I met him. He was not a bad-looking man,
apparently about thirty-three years of age, with a fair beard and
moustache. He had a good practice among the Bulgarians, and had
evidently become a fashionable physician who commanded his own price.
Dr. Robert lived in the best house of the town, and drove the finest
team of four black cobs that I ever sat behind. He had a regular
menagerie in his gardens, which were fenced with wire, and contained a
collection of storks and herons, a tame animal which I took to be a
jackal, and four deer, which we afterwards ate. He had some good ideas
as a landscape gardener too, and had tapped the Tutchenitza for water to
irrigate his domain by means of channels.
After calling on Dr. Robert, I went off to pay my respects to the
_kaimakan_, or Turkish governor of the town, who had his quarters in the
konak, or townhall, a fine structure, built from the stone taken from an
old Roman ruin which once occupied the site. We afterwards used this
building as a hospital. The kaimakan was very courteous, and placed a
clerk at my disposal, who found me quarters in a small, isolated
Bulgarian house at the extreme north of the town.
After making these necessary arrangements I joined Weinberger, and we
both went to dinner with Dr. Robert, who had not seen any European
except his housekeeper for ten years, and was naturally eager to meet
visitors who could tell him of the haunts of his youth. The housekeeper
was a Viennese woman, decidedly unprepossessing in appearance, but a
most excellent cook; and Weinberger and I, who had quite recovered our
appetites after eating the two geese at Veltchiderma, enjoyed that
dinner thoroughly. The doctor's house was furnished with every luxury.
There were knives and forks and chairs, not to mention a piano; and as
it was the first European meal that I had eaten for many months, with
the exception of my dinner with the Roumanians at Kalafat, it is
needless to say that I made a first-rate repast. We drank a great many
bottles of Bulgarian wine, and the more Dr. Robert drank the more
loquacious he became, recounting his early bacchanalian and amatory
exploits in German with a particularity of detail that was most
edifying. Then he sat down at the piano and thumped the keys furiously,
while he roared out convivial ditties in French, German, and Bulgarian
until the whole house shook as if under the concussion of a bombardment.
Even the Viennese housekeeper, who made her appearance upon the festive
scene with a threatening aspect, failed to keep him quiet; and Dr.
Robert was still chanting the praises of "Wein, Weib, und Gesang" when I
made my way to my new quarters and sank into a deep and dreamless
slumber, which even the manifold insects of Bulgaria were powerless to
disturb.
Next morning I rode out to my regiment, which was camped on the hills,
and asked the colonel to supply me with a servant. He ordered up six men
for my inspection, and I chose a particularly smart-looking young
Circassian named Mehemet, who afterwards became my faithful adherent,
and performed his duties as groom and cook most satisfactorily. Then I
rode away to the bridge over the Vid, and watched the arrival of Osman
Pasha with the main body. They were all pretty well fagged out with
fatigue and want of food and sleep; but there was no time to be lost,
for the Russians were already advancing from Nicopolis upon Plevna, so
Osman Pasha and his staff rode out at once and selected tactical points
for the disposition of the troops. A strong force was sent out to the
Janik Bair facing due north, another detachment was sent to the village
of Grivitza in the hills facing east, and there was also an outpost in
front of the village of Opanetz.
After seeing the troops arrive, I went to lunch with Dr. Robert, who had
arranged to go with me and see the fighting if there should be any. At
one o'clock I heard the boom of the Russian cannon which marked the
opening of the protracted hostilities round Plevna, and the challenge
received an immediate response from our batteries. Immediately all the
Bulgarians in Plevna retired to their cellars, or any other place of
security that they could find; and Dr. Robert and I rode off along the
Nicopolis road to the Janik Bair, where the Turkish batteries were in
position. By keeping just below the crest of the hill, Robert and I were
safe from the shells, which either fell short on the far side of the
hill, or else flew over our heads in the direction of the town. The
hills were lined with our troops, who were all under cover, and, tying
my horse to a tree, I walked up towards the summit. On my left I could
see the villages of Bukova and Opanetz, while on the rising ground in
front of me a mile away I caught an occasional glimpse of the gleam of
Russian bayonets.
Looking out from the crest of the hill on which the Turkish batteries
came into action, I saw the ridge of a smaller hill in front of me, and
beyond it a second slope of rising ground, upon which the Russian
artillerymen had planted their guns. These formed part of the force
which General Schilder-Schuldner had under his command, and with which
he advanced next day with the greatest confidence to a crushing defeat.
The hill upon which the Russian guns were planted was thickly timbered,
and at first I could see nothing but puffs of smoke followed by leaping
flashes of flame. Then came the scream of the shell, which in the great
majority of cases either buried itself in the hill-face below our
batteries, or else flew overhead and dropped half a mile behind us in
the valley towards Plevna. We had eighteen guns right on the summit of
the hill extended in line, with hastily thrown up entrenchments in
front, and the firing was almost continuous. I made my way to the
extreme left, where I took up a position in rear of the battery, and
watched the firing. The artillery horses had been left under cover in
the rear, and the men settled down steadily for an afternoon's practice
at long range. It was the first time that I had been under fire in the
open field, and I watched the proceedings with the closest interest,
having my box of instruments and my packet of _tiftig_, or lint, ready
for treating the wounded. Both sides were firing common shell,
apparently rather as an evidence of willingness than with any hope of
doing serious damage at so long a range. I counted about forty Russian
guns in action, and after a while I could see the shells in the air
quite plainly, and could pretty well judge where they would fall. When
they struck the hill-face below us, a cloud of dust would fly up as they
exploded in the earth; and when they flew over us, I could hear them
buzzing like hornets as they sailed away into the valley behind. While I
was making my way up to the left of our line, I saw three Turkish
artillerymen lying dead. One had been shot in the abdomen, and presented
a terrible spectacle with his intestines all hanging out. The two others
had had their legs carried away by shells. When I reached the farthest
battery, I found one of the gunners with his hand ripped open by a
splinter of iron, and I rendered surgical aid to my first wounded man
under fire, washing the injury with water from my water-bottle, sewing
up the hand, and dressing it with tiftig from my wallet. Then I sent the
man to the rear, and told him to report himself at the hospital.
Here it was too that I saw my first man killed in the open field. It
happened this way. I was lying on my stomach exactly on the summit of
the hill, and about twenty-five yards from the end gun of the battery,
watching the Russian practice, when I saw six simultaneous puffs of
smoke and six flashes of fire dart from the oak wood on the distant
slope. One of the gunners at the end gun in the battery next to me was
in the act of "laying" it, and was squinting along the sights to get the
elevation of the Russian battery, when the six shells started on their
journey. Those flashes of fire were the last things he ever saw on
earth, for one of the shells struck him full in the face and took his
head clean off. There was a spirting from the blood-vessels in the neck,
and then the headless corpse spun round in a circle, the legs moving
convulsively like those of a chicken when its throat is cut. I was so
close to the man that I could see every movement, and the sight affected
my nerve centres in the way that the normal system is affected by any
sudden and horrible sight; that is to say, I turned cold all over, and
was very sick on the spot. A few months later the frequent repetition of
similar spectacles had so dulled the sensitiveness of my nerve centres,
that I could look upon the most shocking casualties without experiencing
the slightest physical inconvenience. We dragged the gunner's headless
corpse to the rear, where it was buried the same evening.
Both sides ceased firing at about six o'clock, at which time we had only
nine men killed and three wounded. I heard afterwards that the Russian
loss was also small. The demonstration hardly rose to the dignity of an
engagement, and doubtless the Russians regarded it more as an appetizer
for the solid fare to follow than anything else. At Russian dinner
parties there is always a preliminary course called the _zacuska_,
consisting generally of caviare or sardines devilled with cayenne, with
which the guests are expected to sharpen their appetites. This artillery
duel was the zacuska to prepare the combatants for the _pièce de
résistance_ on the morrow.
Every one knew when the fields-guns ceased talking on the evening of the
19th that we were in for a big fight next day, and that the Russians
were preparing to make an infantry attack. Hassib Bey, the principal
medical officer, and Reif Bey, his second in command, were busy making
preparations for the reception of the wounded; and the owners of several
of the largest houses were unceremoniously evicted by the military
authorities with the curt notification that their residences were
required for hospital purposes. Weinberger and I dined with Robert that
night at his house, and had a tremendous "shivoo," the expatriated Swiss
surpassing all his previous bacchanalian exploits, and adding sundry
incoherent battle-songs to his _répertoire_ of selections, until the
Viennese housekeeper finally asserted her authority and closed the
festivities. I went off to bed at my own quarters about midnight, and
found that my Circassian had arranged all my effects in order and made
me fairly comfortable. All the medical staff had received instructions
to assemble at the main hospital at seven o'clock in the morning; so I
tumbled into bed at once, and slept until I was awakened at about six
o'clock by the roar of the field artillery in action once more. The guns
had already been firing for a couple of hours, and the engagement was in
full progress, when I hurried to the large Bulgarian schoolhouse, which
had been converted into the principal hospital.
At this stage it will be convenient to sketch briefly the main features
of the attack which General Schilder-Schuldner delivered on Plevna on
July 20, and of the manner in which he was defeated by Osman Pasha.
The total Russian force operating against him was supposed by Osman
Pasha, from information which we obtained, to amount to thirteen
thousand men. The total available strength in Plevna was about fifteen
thousand men, most of whom, however, were in poor trim for fighting,
having just arrived after a long and arduous march, and having been
deprived of sleep for many nights in succession. On the night before the
battle Osman Pasha gave strict orders to the outposts to exercise the
greatest vigilance, so as to prevent a night surprise, and instructed
the commanding officers to group their men as much as possible, and not
allow them to straggle. An attack was imminent; but it was difficult to
foresee in what direction it would be made. Roughly speaking, the
Turkish line of defence extended from the village of Grivitza on the
east of the town, along the slopes of the Janik Bair, and away through
Bukova to Opanetz on the north-west, the right wing being at Grivitza
and the left at Opanetz.
Soon after four o'clock the battle began by the Russian artillery
opening fire upon the Grivitza positions, and the Turkish batteries at
once replied. Then a brisk fusillade was heard on the hills in the
direction of Opanetz, and the general advance of the Russians began.
Five battalions of Russian infantry advanced to the assault, and threw
themselves upon the Turkish left wing, forcing it backwards.
Osman Pasha quickly despatched supports, and the Turks charged home with
the bayonet, whilst the Russian troops stood firm against the attack.
The heaviest of the fighting took place on the slope of the Janik Bair
extending towards Plevna, and here the loud "hurrahs" of the Russians
were answered by cries of "Allah," "Allah," from the Turkish lines.
After three hours' fighting the Russians, who had sustained enormous
losses, were repulsed and driven off in full retreat, while the reserves
sent up to support them retired without having taken part in the
engagement. The initial success of the Russians in forcing back the
Turkish line of defence no doubt conduced towards their defeat; for,
encouraged by the result of the first attack, they straggled on in
disorder, and fell in with a hot fire from the hedges and walls all
round them.
While our troops were holding the enemy in check on the left, a Russian
infantry attack was developed on our right wing, where two lines of
trenches were carried; and finally the third and last trench was also
carried at the point of the bayonet, nearly all the Russian officers
having been killed. Turkish supports were hurried up, and the Russians,
who had suffered terrible loss, were driven from the positions which
they had taken, and were put to complete rout.
When I reached the building where I was instructed to report myself, I
found that it consisted of two large rooms, the outer of which contained
fifty beds, while the inner was furnished with three or four benches
intended to serve as operating tables. The rooms were high and well
ventilated with many windows, and fortunately there was an abundant
water supply, while the building stood in about two or three acres of
ground. This had originally been the playground of the Bulgarian
children who attended the school. Now it was filled with wounded men,
and the laughter of the children was replaced by groans of agony.
Already the courtyard was full; and as I looked up the Nicopolis road I
could see a long string of Bulgarian arabas, each drawn by two little
white oxen, bringing the wounded down from the battle-field. Only the
men who were gravely wounded were brought in these arabas, and hundreds
had to drag themselves down on foot. As the rough, springless arabas
jolted over the cobble-stones of the Plevna street, the sufferings of
the wounded men must have been excruciating. There was no field hospital
to render first aid, and it is not easy to imagine the misery of an
unfortunate wretch, say, with a compound fracture of the thigh,
transported in a cart and without any surgical attendance from the field
to the base hospital. The two ends of the bone jarring together with
every movement of the cart could not but cause the most exquisite agony.
As far as the eye could reach stretched the long line of arabas, each
with its load of suffering men. Every cart was driven by its Bulgarian
owner, and escorted by a Turkish soldier to see that the Bulgarian did
not despatch the unhappy victims before their time. The foremost carts
had already arrived, and the entrance was blocked by the jostling
drivers all anxious to get rid of their loads, while every minute fresh
wounded kept staggering in on foot. Even the stoical Turks could not
help moaning when they were lifted out of the carts by unskilful hands
and dragged into the hospital, which was quickly assuming the appearance
of a slaughter-house. Dead and dying were lying one on top of another
in many of the arabas, matted together with clotted blood.
Other ambulances had been established in different parts of the town;
but this was the principal one, and there were six other surgeons
besides myself attached to it. I pulled off my coat, and went to work at
once. The first man whom I tackled had walked down from the field. He
had been shot through the jaw, and was much blanched from loss of blood.
I plugged the hole with lint, and passed on to the next unfortunate, who
had been shot through the liver by a fragment of shell. Part of the
liver was sticking out through the wound, and the man, who was much
collapsed, although quite conscious and in great pain, formed a shocking
spectacle. He had a great tear in his liver. I stitched it up and washed
the wound; but the case was a hopeless one. If I could have given him
chloroform, thoroughly opened him up, and washed everything out, I might
have been able to save him; but there was no time for that. He lingered
on in great agony, and died on the following day.
In dealing with gunshot wounds, where the variety is practically
unlimited and no two cases are the same, the surgeon has to be
resourceful and inventive. I was here brought face to face with
conditions which were quite new to me, and with extraordinary
complications, which required the most delicate and careful operations,
but which had to be dealt with out of hand and in a few minutes. Looking
back now I am filled with wonder that so many of our wounded recovered,
considering the unfavourable conditions under which they were treated.
The third man whom I tackled had been struck in the abdomen by a piece
of shell, and about one foot of his intestine was projecting through the
wound. In that condition he had been carried from the hill where he was
shot, and, needless to say, he was in a horrible condition. I washed the
intestine, enlarged the wound, again shifted the intestine back into its
place, and stitched the wound up. In a week or two the man recovered,
and went back to his place in the ranks.
All day on that terrible 20th of July I worked in the Bulgarian
schoolhouse among the wounded men, and all day the arabas kept arriving
with fresh loads, until there was absolutely no place left in which to
lay the sufferers. In all my surgical experience I have never known men
to exhibit such fortitude under intense agony as these Turkish soldiers,
nor have I ever met patients who recovered from such terrible injuries
in the remarkable way that these men did. They were magnificent material
for a surgeon to work on--men of splendid physique, unimpaired by
intemperance or any excesses. Occasionally one found isolated cases of
intemperance among the higher officers in the Turkish army; but I never
saw a private soldier under the influence of liquor during the whole
time that I was in the country. There were many of these men whose lives
I could have saved if I could have persuaded them to take stimulants;
but it was impossible to get them to touch alcohol, even as medicine.
The principles of their religion forbid the use of alcohol, and the
humble Turk clings so tenaciously to his religion that he would rather
meet death itself than violate its precepts. On account of another
remarkable religious prejudice many of the men who came under my hands
absolutely refused to submit to amputations, believing that the loss of
a limb would prevent them from entering paradise. Owing to this curious
prejudice many of my patients lost their lives.
The booming of the artillery was soon varied by the sharp crackle of the
rifles, which indicated that the infantry fusillade was commencing in
earnest, and men began to come in who were wounded by the heavy conical
bullets from the Berdan rifles, with which a large proportion of the
Russian forces were armed. This rifle carried a bullet with a very high
velocity; and several cases came under my notice which illustrated its
destructive power. The Berdan rifle-bullet, however, often drilled a
clean hole right through a man, thus simplifying the surgical treatment;
while the older Krenke rifle, with which the bulk of the Russians were
armed, inflicted a much larger wound, and not infrequently left the
bullet embedded in the body.
Among the others whom I attended that morning was a splendid young Turk
who had been shot through the head. The Berdan conical bullet pierced
the left side of the skull about an inch and a half below the crown, and
passed out in a straight line through the other side, leaving two holes,
one at each side of the fez which the man was wearing. It bored a hole
clean through the upper portion of the brain; but the sufferer, though
he was weak from loss of blood, was perfectly rational. I put a syringe
into the orifice, and cleaned the lacerated portion of the brain with a
solution of carbolic, afterwards dressing the skull with an antiseptic
pad and bandages. The man was put into the hospital, where he remained
for about six weeks, and at the end of that time he was discharged
cured. He went back to his regiment, and I never saw him again.
In one of the arabas which discharged its load at the hospital door was
a wounded sergeant. The poor fellow had had both his eyes taken out by a
bullet, and was in great agony. We took him in and treated him, keeping
him in the hospital till he recovered. Some weeks afterwards we
discharged him cured, but sightless, and he went down to Sofia.
Many men were shot right through the chest, of whom nearly all died. In
cases where we could not readily locate the bullet we did not waste time
looking for it, and several men who recovered from their wounds went
back to the ranks with an ounce of Russian lead hidden somewhere in
their bodies. Occasionally a bullet would take a most erratic course.
One man whom I attended had been shot in the back of the neck, and the
bullet travelled along his shoulder and down his arm just under the
skin. I took it out at the wrist.
A peculiar instance came under my notice of the extraordinary vitality
which a human being sometimes displays. A couple of men brought in a
young Circassian and laid him on the floor, all the beds in the hospital
being already occupied. He was deathly pale, and when I went to him I
found that he had a terrible wound in the chest. At first I thought that
he had been struck by a whole shell; but I found on examining him that a
rifle-bullet had struck his cartridge case which was strapped across his
chest, and exploded one or more of the cartridges. The explosion had
blown away a great portion of the chest, and exposed the heart, which I
could see beating. I plugged the cavity as well as I could, and he lived
for four or five days in the hospital, perfectly conscious all the
while, and eager for news of the fighting. I think it was on the fifth
day after his admission that I was examining the wound, when I found
the brass butt of a cartridge embedded in the muscles of the heart. I
pulled it out, and dressed the wound again; but the shock was too
severe, and the man died soon afterwards.
We had no skilled attendants attached to the hospital, and no one to do
the dressing but a few soldiers who had been told off for the purpose.
Blood was everywhere; and as I went my rounds as quickly as possible
among the moaning sufferers, I had an attendant carrying my box of
instruments, a basin of water, and a supply of bandages after me. On all
sides I heard the piteous moan, "Verbana su, effendi," "Verbana su,
hakim bashi," meaning, "Give me a drink of water, doctor"; and
fortunately we were able at least to assuage the intolerable thirst
which afflicts men when the moisture of the body has been depleted by
great loss of blood. All the cases which required operations were put
aside, and left for the following day, as it was necessary, in the hurry
of endeavouring to over-take the work, to deal with the larger number of
less serious cases first. Whenever I saw that a case was hopeless, and
that the man was sure to die, I simply made him as comfortable as I
could on the floor, gave him a drink of water, and left him there.
I remained in the hospital until three o'clock in the afternoon, and
during the whole of that time the carts were jolting over the stones
bringing us in fresh cases. I never stopped for a moment whipping out
bullets, sewing up wounds, cleaning wounds, and putting up fractured
limbs in splints. Sometimes when the carts came in I did not know which
of the men were alive and which were dead, the living and the dead were
lying so closely one on the top of the other.
At three o'clock Hassib Bey, the principal medical officer, sent a
message for me, ordering me to go to another place which had been turned
into a temporary hospital. It was an isolated building, about a quarter
of a mile away from the schoolhouse, and was on the other side of the
Tutchenitza. The building had been a private house, and here I found
about a hundred wounded men, many of them officers, who had been lying
there helplessly since early in the morning, with no attendance except
the small services which two jarra bashis were able to afford.
A Turkish colonel shot through both jaws was my first patient. The
bullet had cut through the base of the tongue, and the poor fellow was
unable to speak. His mouth was wide open, and blood was issuing from it.
I picked away the broken pieces of bone, put a bandage round the jaw to
support it, and, having made the colonel as comfortable as I could, I
went on to his brother officers. All the rest of that day I worked by
myself, with only the two jarra bashis to assist me, among the wounded
men, and when it grew dark I went on with the minor operations by the
light of four candles stuck on bayonets. At eleven o'clock that night I
dragged myself off to bed.
[Illustration: PLEVNA AND ITS ENVIRONS.
_To face p. 136._
_Walker & Boutall sc._]
It was a beautiful summer night, with moon and stars shining, as I
walked back to my quarters utterly fagged out with that tremendous day's
work. A couple of miles away to the north I could see the long ridge of
the Janik Bair shining in the moonlight. More than a thousand Turks and
more than one thousand two hundred Russians lay stretched on the other
side of the hill, and along the line of the fighting from Bukova on the
left to Grivitza on the right.[2] All was silent now, but the hills were
not deserted yet, for the burial parties were hard at work, and the
Circassians, ever on the look out for plunder, were gathering in the
dreadful harvest of the battle-field.
I slept soundly till six o'clock in the morning, and then went back to
the house where the wounded officers had been brought. There were about
a hundred wounded men there altogether; and as we had no beds to put
them in, we had to lay them on the floor pillowed on their own
great-coats. There were plenty of provisions in the town, and I had
supplies of broth, beef-tea, and milk brought up for the patients from
the central depot. Still, in spite of everything that we could do, it
was an experience never to be forgotten. As one moved amongst them one
heard piteous moans on every side, coming from forms which in some cases
could scarcely be recognized as human, so terribly had the shrapnel done
its work. Those who believed that they were dying were saying their
prayers out loud, calling upon Allah to receive them into paradise; and
here and there an officer in the delirium of fever was fighting the
battle over again, sitting up in his blood-clotted, shot-riddled
uniform, and calling upon his men to follow him, until he fell back
breathless and exhausted. A good many of them had died in the night
while I was away, and I told off a couple of men to bury them at once.
While I was going round the house, I found that we had two young Russian
soldiers there among our own people, and I gave them as much attention
as I could. One was a fair-haired young fellow, quite a lad. His case
was hopeless from the first, for he had been shot through the lungs, and
he died that day without being able to leave any message. The other had
his leg from the knee downwards shattered by a shell, and he lived for
about a fortnight.
Osman Pasha had made arrangements to send all the wounded away to Sofia,
and nearly all of those whom I attended were placed in waggons and sent
down _viâ_ Orkhanieh. Many of them, however, as might be expected, died
on the way, and the road could have easily been traced by the dead
bodies.
I requisitioned some beds for my hospital; and when I had got all the
wounded men dressed and fed, I thought that my day's work was finished.
Just as I was going out for a short rest, however, an orderly came and
told me that a number of wounded men were lying in a Turkish mosque
without any help at all, and asked me to go to them. I found a most
beautiful little mosque nestling down in a grove of trees on a slope of
ground to the west side of the Tutchenitza, and, mounting the half-dozen
steps which formed the approach to the main entrance, I looked inside.
It was indeed a hideous sight. The square floor of the mosque was
covered with dead and wounded men, who had been placed there on the day
before, and apparently forgotten. There were about eighty of them
altogether, and the first thing that we had to do was to separate the
living from the dead, which was not an easy task, as the dead were lying
across the living and the living across the dead. We took out
twenty-seven dead men first, and found that in some cases a man with
faint signs of life in him had been lying all night, half suffocated by
his own blood and by the inert mass of a dead comrade lying across him.
The walls, which were whitewashed, were plentifully bespattered with
blood, and soon I was a shocking spectacle myself.
I put on a soldier to go round with a bucket and pannikin to assuage the
fiery thirst of the poor wretches, and then I set to work extracting
bullets and sewing up wounds and washing them as fast as I could, with a
soldier to help in the dressing. I undertook no big operations simply
because I had not time. It was a race for life with many of the men; and
while there were cases there which would have required at least an hour
to deal with properly, the most that I could spare was ten minutes.
By July 22 all the wounded that could travel had been sent to Sofia, and
we had about two hundred of the graver cases left, most of them being
cases requiring serious operations. We selected a convenient building on
the banks of the Tutchenitza, right under the shadow of a mosque, and
there we set up operating tables under the trees in the open air. It was
strange every day to see a flock of white doves circling round the
minaret of the mosque, and every evening at sunset to watch the old
Mussulman priest as he climbed the tower and solemnly invited the
faithful to prayer.