THE INTERVAL BETWEEN THE FIRST AND SECOND BATTLES.
Sending away the Wounded--Osman Effendi--We perform
Operations--Amputating Fingers--A Warning to Malingerers--Trial
and Execution--Discipline in the Town--Round the Bazaars after
the Battle--Some Pathetic Souvenirs--The Punishment of
Looters--Circassian and Bulgarian--A Cold-blooded Murder--The
Work of Fortification--Out with the Burial Parties--A Walk over
the Battle-field--Fresh Reinforcements arrive--The Lovtcha
Expedition--Rifaat Pasha's Success--My Quarters near the
Hospital--I have a Flitting--Arrival of Olivier Pain--A Pretty
Bulgarian Girl--Limitations of a Vocabulary--Hospital
Routine--Soldier Nurses.
We sent away about eight hundred of the wounded to Sofia within a few
days after the first battle; and of those who remained behind many died,
and the remainder resolved themselves into cases for simple operations.
Amputation of the arm or leg was necessary in many instances, and
whenever the sufferer would permit it this was carried out. With the
large medical staff attached to the army, the work ought to have been
very easy; but as a matter of fact many of the surgeons could not or
would not undertake any important operation, and in the few instances
when they did muster up courage to lop off an arm or a limb the
spectacle was not an edifying one. Almost all the operations were
performed either by Osman Effendi, a Circassian, who was a really
brilliant surgeon and a capable anatomist who had learnt his profession
in Paris, or by myself. Both of us were very young and inexperienced;
but in spite of these drawbacks it is not too much to say that we saved
many lives which would otherwise have been lost. The foreign doctors
seemed to lose their heads in an emergency; and it was not an uncommon
thing for Osman Effendi or myself to find some poor unfortunate wretch,
who had been smashed up by a shell or drilled through by a Berdan
bullet, absolutely rotting away in a hospital ward simply because the
surgeon in charge would not operate. Whenever we made a discovery of
this kind, we used to bring the patient out to the operating table under
the willow tree, and do the best we could for him under the
circumstances; but it cannot be denied that, owing to our lack of
experience, we often made serious mistakes. I will candidly confess that
if I had possessed my present knowledge at that time, and if I had had
command of all the best appliances, I could have saved many lives which
unfortunately flickered out in that shady little grove on the banks of
the Tutchenitza.
In addition to the grave cases which involved the removal of an arm or
leg, we had a large number of minor injuries to attend to, especially
wounds in the hand, which were remarkably frequent. When the troops were
in the act of firing, their fingers and hands were naturally exposed;
and though later on, when the firing was mainly done from behind
entrenchments, finger wounds became far more frequent, still we had a
good many of them even after the first battle.
A splendid lesson in stoical fortitude was afforded by those fellows,
who tendered their maimed hands for operation without the slightest
flinching. The stump of a willow tree which had been cut down stood near
the bank of the stream, and here I was accustomed to take my seat, after
providing myself with a basin of water from the stream and a sharp
knife. I put a little carbolic in the water, and with these simple
preparations I was ready for my patients, who sat cross-legged in a row
close by me. There was no administration of chloroform by a skilled
anæsthetist, no careful dressing of the injury by a white-aproned nurse,
none of the usual accessories of the ordinary hospital; for my operating
theatre had a carpet of greensward starred with wild flowers, and its
ceiling was the deep blue sky of midsummer. Instead of the rows of
students who usually grace these scientific ceremonies, scores of the
snow-white doves that are considered sacred throughout Turkey paused now
and then in their cooings, as they fluttered round the minarets of the
ancient mosque above the willow grove and looked down upon the strange
scene below them. The wounded soldiers took their turns each in his
proper order; and as I sat on the willow stump a man with a thumb or
finger, as the case might be, mangled into a shocking pulp of festering
flesh, would hold up his injured hand to me as he sat on the grass at my
feet, and would look on without flinching while I cut away the rotting
flesh, trimmed up the place, and washed and dressed the bleeding stump
that still remained. I did over a dozen of these cases in one morning;
and later in the campaign, when the fighting in the redoubts began, I
have amputated as many as twenty-seven fingers in succession.
One result of the frequency of these finger wounds was that they formed
a convenient pretext for escaping service in the ranks; and though the
Turkish soldiers were too brave to think of malingering, there was one
Arab regiment in which the offence became very common. This was the
regiment which had already shown the white feather during the battle,
and which was only induced to hold its ground by the threat of Osman
Pasha that unless the men stood firm he would himself open fire on them
from headquarters, and catch them between the Russian fusillade and the
fire of their own side. Compelled by this unpleasant prospect, the
regiment rallied, and afterwards gave a good account of itself; but, as
might be supposed, the men were not in love with fighting, and many of
them hit on the device of deliberately blowing off the trigger-finger so
as to be unfit for further service. We had a good many of them to treat,
and at last Osman Pasha got to hear of it, and of course was very savage
at the malingering. He at once issued an order that the next man found
guilty of maiming himself in this way would be instantly shot, and the
threat, as it turned out, was no idle one.
One morning, just as I finished my round in the hospital, I was summoned
by an orderly to attend Tewfik Bey, and when I reached his tent I found
three men from the Arab regiment standing there under a strong guard.
Their arms had been taken from them, and each man had a hole through the
index-finger of the right hand. Tewfik Bey desired me to decide whether
the appearance of the injuries indicated that they had been
self-inflicted; and when I learnt from him that if I answered in the
affirmative the men would be instantly shot, I declined to take the
responsibility, and requested that a small medical board might be
appointed to deal with the matter. Tewfik assented, and invited me into
his tent to wait while an orderly fetched two other surgeons. Presently
Weinberger and Kustler arrived, and we three, after inspecting the
prisoners, retired to a little distance to consult. There could be no
doubt whatever about the fact, for the mutilated finger in each case was
blackened with gunpowder, showing that the man had placed his finger on
the top of his rifle-barrel and pulled the trigger, probably with a
piece of string. The three men watched us as we sat at a little table
under a tree and drew up a short report confirming that the injuries
were self-inflicted. I presented the report to Tewfik, who was smoking a
cigarette nonchalantly in front of his tent; and as soon as he had read
it, he ordered out three firing parties of twelve men each, six of each
squad having their rifles loaded with ball, and six with blank
cartridge. A sergeant stepped up and bandaged the eyes of the culprits,
who were placed on their knees in a row a few yards distant from each
other. A few moments were granted to them to say their prayers, then a
naked sword-blade flashed in the sunlight, a quick word of command rang
out, a volley startled the camp, and the victims fell dead riddled with
bullets. It was a sharp remedy, but a sure one, and after that we had no
more malingerers.
Osman Pasha was a strict disciplinarian, and the splendid order which he
maintained in Plevna all through the campaign was really remarkable. At
first the Bulgarian shop-keepers wanted to close their shops; but the
commander-in-chief compelled them to keep them open, promising that any
attempt at looting by the soldiery would be promptly and severely
punished. A military police force was organized for the protection of
the townspeople, and the soldiery were given to understand that any
excesses would be visited by the only penalty known to the martial code
in war-time--the penalty of death. Owing to this decisive action, the
Bulgarian population regained confidence, and carried on their
respective businesses without let or hindrance. For several days,
indeed, after the first battle the spoils of war stripped from the dead
Russians on the field of action by the roving and predatory Circassians
were on sale in every bazaar. One could buy good Russian great-coats for
a few piastres, while boots, caps, and arms all had a ready sale. A
large number of crosses in bronze, silver, or gold were taken from the
dead Russians, and exposed for sale in the bazaars. It was strange to go
shopping in the narrow, malodorous Plevna by-streets, and watch the
chaffering that was going on over the poor small personal effects of the
brave fellows who lay out yonder on the slopes of the Janik Bair. Many
of the Russians had gone into action with the photographs of their wives
or sweethearts in little leather cases, which they carried in an inside
pocket next to the heart; and the Circassians, prowling round the field
on the first night after the battle, robbed the corpses of these simple
treasures, and bandied them from hand to hand with brutal jests round
the bazaars next day.
The simple faith which is such a dominant feature in the Russian
national character was strikingly exemplified in some of the articles
found upon the dead bodies. I saw a Circassian offering for sale a
little painting of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, which he had
taken, according to his own statement, from the body of a dead Russian,
a mere fair-haired lad, who had been killed by a bayonet thrust in the
hand-to-hand fighting. The painting was done on a wooden plaque about
one foot long by six inches wide, and was evidently of great age,
probably at least two hundred years old, from its appearance. It was
found beneath the tunic of the dead boy, and was perhaps a family
treasure given to him by his mother before he went away to the war.
There is at least no doubt that it was worn as a charm against danger.
But the simple faith of the Russian mother could not save her son in the
grim reality of battle, and the steel of the infidel Turk pierced the
sacred figure of the Virgin before it reached the soldier's heart.
Many of the Russians wore steel plates covered with chamois leather over
the region of the heart. These plates would stop a rifle-bullet in those
days, although the ball from a more modern Lee-Metford, Lebel, or
Mauser rifle would have pierced them like tinder.
No scruples were shown in appropriating the valuables of the enemy; and
the Jews in Plevna made a handsome profit by buying Russian roubles for
a few piastres apiece from the Circassians and Bashi-Bazouks who had
gone through the pockets of the dead, and by taking the foreign coin
away to the ordinary markets of exchange.
I bought a Russian signet ring in the bazaar one morning from a
Circassian. It lies before me on the table now, and brings back vivid
memories. It is a heavy gold ring, with a large red stone like a
cornelian, carved with the figure of Æsculapius, easily recognizable
from the traditional accessories of the snakes and the cock. It was
surely a curious coincidence that the figure of this legendary founder
of medical science should have fallen into the hands of one of his own
disciples!
Of course Osman Pasha strongly discountenanced this looting of the dead;
but it was impossible to control the predatory instincts of the
Circassians, and in spite of the prospect of instant death if detected
they continued to prowl round the battle-field in search of treasures.
One night five of them were taken red-handed, and hanged at daybreak
_pour encourager les autres_; but Osman Pasha's attention was so much
taken up with the necessary work of fortification, that the looting
went on afterwards just the same.
To show, however, that the Muchir, far from oppressing the Bulgarian
inhabitants in the manner imputed to him by contemporary press writers,
was always throughout the siege absolutely fair towards them, one
significant incident may be mentioned for which I can vouch, as I was
myself a witness of it. One morning, while I was passing by the yard of
a Bulgarian butcher, I found an altercation going on between the
Bulgarian and a free-lance from one of the Circassian irregular bodies.
Although I could not understand what was said, I was able to gather that
the Circassian wanted some meat, which the Bulgarian would not give him.
After a minute or two of heated argument, the Circassian drew his
revolver and shot the Bulgarian in my presence, the bullet entering the
man's foot. I reported the matter to Osman Pasha personally, and he
ordered the instant arrest of the Circassian; but the man was never seen
again. Recognizing that death would be the penalty of his act if he were
discovered, he escaped from Plevna that night, and we saw no more of
him. The butcher died from his wound.
There was plenty of work for the men of all ranks to do between the 20th
of July and the 30th. We never knew when another attack might be
launched; and though the Russians had disappeared from sight, our
scouts used occasionally to bring in word that they had seen detachments
as near as five miles off. Our men were working away as busily as bees
fortifying outposts, digging entrenchments, and building redoubts on the
cordon of hills that formed the natural rampart of the town. They also
had to complete the work of burying the dead, and as the Russians had
left us all their dead to inter as well as our own this was no light
task. When I had finished my morning's work in the hospital, I used to
call on Dr. Robert and borrow one of his smart little black cobs for a
ride out to the hills to see how our fellows were getting on with their
labours. I often watched the burial squads at work, as I sat there on
the black cob puffing a cigarette in the glorious summer weather, and
saw them dragging the scattered bodies together into a little heap, and
then digging a trench to hold them. Sometimes they would put twenty or
thirty into one trench when they came on a patch where the troops had
fallen thickly, and sometimes a dead soldier lying far away from his
comrades would be buried in a lonely grave by himself. The Russian and
Turkish dead were always kept distinct, for the Moslem will not sleep by
the Giaour, even in the grave.
As I rode over the crest of the hills four or five days after the
battle, and down to the hollow where the Russian lines received the
hottest of the Turkish fire, I saw that in most cases the Russian dead
had not been buried deep enough; now and then, indeed, scarcely more
than the three handfuls of dust prescribed by the old poet had been
thrown over the corpse, which protested with a faint, sickly odour at
these maimed funeral rites.
In one little hollow I saw some locks of curly fair hair sticking up
from the ground, and, scraping the earth away with my sword-blade, found
a dead Russian there. In many places a foot, a finger, or a hand
protruding from the ground revealed the presence of the dead; and as I
advanced farther down into the valley from the Turkish line of defence,
I came across a great number of bodies which had escaped the notice of
the burial parties altogether. There they lay, with the hot July sun
beating down upon them, and the cool moisture of the earth teeming with
horrible living things beneath them. The faces of many of the Russians,
as is often the case when death is due to gunshot wounds, were placid
and composed; while the skin, tanned to the consistency of parchment by
the rays of the sun, showed as yet no sign of putrefaction. With others
death had come with such instantaneous force that the expression of the
face still reflected the tumultuous passions that chased each other
through the brain of the living man in the supreme hour of battle. One
could see, to quote the vivid words of the soldier's poet,
Anger and pain and terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.
But while the part of the body exposed to the action of the sunlight was
preserved in a mummified condition, the lower part, which rested on the
earth, had already undergone the first stage of decomposition. Any one
who has ever turned over a great stone embedded in a bank of mossy
earth, and seen the swarms of noxious living creatures battening on the
underneath side, will recognize without further description the sight
that met my eyes as I prised over a dead body here and there with my
scabbard to ascertain its condition.
After the battle fresh troops kept pouring into Plevna from Sofia, and
it soon became evident that Osman Pasha did not intend to content
himself by remaining in the town purely on the defensive.
Lovtcha, as we knew, had fallen into the hands of the Russians before we
reached Plevna, having been occupied by General Sobatoff on July 16; and
Osman Pasha, having had time to look about him, determined to recapture
that town. Its importance from the strategical point of view was
obvious, inasmuch as it commanded the main road to Sofia, from which our
reinforcements were to come. The possession of the town was also
indispensable to Osman Pasha in order to cover the operations of the
Plevna army, and to complete his front line of defence, which should
serve him as a base of operations whenever the moment might prove
propitious for assuming the offensive.
The town of Lovtcha lies in the valley of the river Osma, about twenty
miles from Plevna, and twelve miles from the Trojan Pass. Roughly
speaking, the river divides the town into two parts, one of which was
inhabited by the Mussulman population, and the other by the Bulgarians.
Before the war the great majority of the inhabitants were Mussulmans,
who numbered about twelve thousand; and Lovtcha was then one of the
richest towns in Bulgaria, boasting no fewer than twenty mosques, three
orthodox churches, ten primary Moslem schools, and many schools for
Christians. It was placed at the junction of several main roads, and its
position rendered it therefore important both to the invaders and the
invaded. Sobatoff had occupied it with a column composed of the second
squadron of Cossacks of the Guard, two squadrons of Don Cossacks, and
two field-pieces with a detachment of infantry.
As soon as the fight of July 20 was won, Osman Pasha made all his
preparations for recapturing Lovtcha by a surprise. He first
reconnoitred the position with a detachment of cavalry, and then, taking
six infantry battalions, a battery of field artillery, and a troop of
Circassian light horse from the reinforcements which had arrived from
Sofia, he formed a column, the command of which he entrusted to
Brigadier Rifaat Pasha, who had Tewfik Bey as his next in command. The
column marched from Plevna at six o'clock in the evening of July 25, and
arrived at daybreak before Lovtcha. An attack was immediately delivered
on the town, which was defended by three or four squadrons of Cossacks
and a large number of Bulgarians who had been armed by the Russians.
Only the merest semblance of resistance, however, was offered by the
enemy, and Rifaat Pasha's column occupied the town almost without
striking a blow.
Thus within the space of a week the Russian arms had sustained two
serious reverses, and the Russian commanders were evidently preparing an
attempt to rehabilitate their prestige. Avoiding any serious engagement,
and only showing themselves at great distances, they confined themselves
to long-range artillery practice while they concentrated their forces.
Meanwhile the Turkish army was strengthened by additional reinforcements
of regular troops and of auxiliary cavalry. The only other event of
importance between the first and second battles of Plevna was the
recapture of the village of Trestenik, situated about ten miles from
Plevna, on the left bank of the Vid. This village had fallen into the
hands of the Russians; but Hassan Labri Pasha and Mehemet Nazif Bey,
with a few battalions of infantry, a couple of field-guns, and a troop
of Circassian horse, retook the village on July 25, and drove out the
Russians, who retreated towards their main body.
While these stirring events, which can be described in a few words, but
the success of which was of vital importance to Osman Pasha's plan of
operations, were taking place outside Plevna, I remained on duty at my
hospital in the town, hearing only at times the faint echoes of
artillery in the distance to remind me that fighting was still going on.
Although hastily organized and furnished with few of the articles which
are deemed necessary to the equipment of civil hospitals, our hospitals
were fairly efficient at the commencement of the campaign before our
resources became overtaxed. Hassib Bey, the principal medical officer,
was a capital organizer and administrator; and although he never
interfered in the actual surgical work, he was always ready to listen to
suggestions and to furnish us with any necessaries that we asked for.
During the early part of my stay in Plevna, I had my quarters in a small
Bulgarian house which was nearly a mile away from the general hospital,
so far, indeed, that I afterwards moved into a more convenient spot, and
my little house was given over to the French journalist Olivier Pain. My
first landlord--who was landlord in name only, for of course I never
paid him any rent--was a Bulgarian, and his daughter was one of the few
pretty women that I ever saw in Bulgaria. Conversation, however, was
restricted by linguistic limitations, for I knew scarcely any Bulgarian,
and the only word of English that she could say was "London." Wherever I
saw that girl, she would show her white teeth with a charming smile,
flash her big black eyes, and with beautiful irrelevance ejaculate
"London!" Whether she knew what London meant I cannot say, but her
limited vocabulary expressed more in its way than the gushing phrases of
many more brilliant conversationalists. When she said "London" with a
bright air of welcome and a frank smile as I came home at night tired
out with the day's work, I knew that she meant, "Good evening, doctor; I
hope you haven't had a very bad day to-day; and see, here is your pilaf
and coffee ready." When she uttered the word with a backward turn of the
head as she passed out of the door and a pretty coquettish glance, it
was very evident that she was really saying, "Good night now, doctor;
pleasant dreams to you, and I hope a Russian shell won't find you in the
morning." My domestic arrangements, however, which were very primitive
and did not include much preparation of eatables, were mainly attended
to by my Circassian servant, who proved himself to be a very handy
fellow.
Hassib Bey instituted the excellent plan of getting all the medical
staff to meet at nine o'clock every morning at the administrative block,
where the main hospital was placed; and after breakfasting on coffee,
pilaf, and eggs when I could get them, I used to ride up to the
rendezvous. Hassib Bey and Reif Bey, his next in command, used to meet
us all there, and the whole lot of us used to have a smoke together for
half an hour or so, and discuss any interesting cases that we had to
deal with. If we had any complaint to make about the food supplied to
the hospitals, or if we wanted anything extra in the way of appliances,
our representations were listened to on the spot. It was a capital idea,
and worked very well indeed.
After the first rush of work was over, I had my own hospital to attend
to. This was a two-story Bulgarian house, the ground floor of which was
unoccupied, while upstairs there were three large rooms, in which I had
about twenty-five patients. Beds and blankets were provided, and I was
able to make the sufferers fairly comfortable. Two Turkish soldiers were
allotted to me to act as hospital orderlies, and they proved apt pupils
at their work. I trained them to act as dressers and nurses, and found
that they carried out their novel duties excellently. We had a good many
deaths at first, and news was always conveyed to the Moslem priests, who
came and laid out the dead, wrapping the bodies in white linen sheets,
and taking them away for burial in the Turkish burial-ground. Good,
nourishing food was provided for the convalescents, who had plenty of
beef-tea, soup, pilaf, eggs, and bread; and possessing as they did an
extraordinary recuperative faculty and constitutions unimpaired by
intemperance, a very fair percentage recovered.