THE INVESTMENT OF PLEVNA.
Lauri and the Sausage--A Diet of "Poiled Peans"--The Ways of a
_Parlementaire_--Politeness on the Battle-field--Indefatigable
Burrowing by the Turks--Skobeleff's Annoyance--A Visit to a
Redoubt--Russian Artillery Practice--I lose my Groom--Geese, and
how to get them--I go out reconnoitring--We have a Hot Ten
Minutes--Looking out for a New Horse--A Grand Charger lost--We
retire on Netropol--The Use of Artillery--The Russians attack
our Convoy--We lose our Medical Stores--A Humorous Russian
Prisoner--Afternoon Coffee with Sadik Pasha--A Call made under
Difficulties--The Uninvited Guest--Kronberg my Colleague--He
saves a Supposed Spy--A Visit to Sadik Pasha--Coffee under
difficulties--In my Hospital again--Fearful Scenes of
Suffering--Wounds, Filth, and Disease--Heavy
Mortality--Antiseptics exhausted--Appearance of Gangrene--My
Anatolian Soldier--Pyæmia Rampant.
Amid the recollection of all those scenes of bloodshed, the memory of
the little German artist's yearning for the unattainable stands out
clear and distinct. It was connected with a German sausage; but in order
to make the matter plain, it is necessary to point out that Gay and
Lauri had expended about thirty pounds in equipping a private
commissariat department before they came to Plevna. In Constantinople
they had bought provisions of all kinds: English kippered herrings,
American canned beef, potted vegetables of strange and fearful hues,
portable meat lozenges, and last, but not least, a magnificent German
sausage--not one of those insignificant cylinders of suspicious
ingredients which are exposed for sale in the piping times of peace, but
a sausage which was constructed, so to speak, on a war footing. It was
about four feet long and one foot six inches in circumference, and it
was enclosed in a metal case of the kind generally used to carry maps
and charts. This noble specimen of _wurst_ was the apple of little
Lauri's artistic eye. But, alas! I was ignorant of this. Before Gay went
away, being incensed with Lauri over some trivial dispute, he presented
me with the remains of the commissariat, which, it appeared, had been
bought with his money, and which included the famous sausage. He also
gave me several other things, including a capital bell tent, which, I am
sorry to say, was afterwards stolen from me.
However, when I got this sausage Lauri was away, camping, I fancy, in
one of the redoubts, and I at once invited every good fellow that I knew
in the place to come to the banquet. We had two meals off it, and
then--where, oh, where was that triumph of the sausage-maker's art?
"Where," asks that inspired bard Hans Breitmann, "is dat little cloud
that fringed the mountain brow?" We procured some raki, the pungent
Turkish spirit which burns a hole in the membrane of the throat as it
passes down, and we had dinner. Then we procured some more raki, and we
had supper. After that we looked round for the sausage; but it was
gone--"gone where the woodbine twineth." Lauri came back to my quarters
next day, and behaved with contumely when invited to sit down to our
usual fare of boiled beans and rice. He consigned every individual
boiled bean in Turkey to a place where it would soon become unpleasantly
scorched, and then he mourned for the sausage, which he believed Gay had
eaten in the silence of the night all by himself. "If only he had left
me my peautiful sausage!" he wailed, while I said never a word, but only
winked at Czetwertinski. When Lauri had continued every day for a week
making lamentation over the loss of that satisfying yard and a quarter
of food, I broke the news gently to him that we had eaten it in his
absence. Contrary to my expectation, he was not seized with an
apoplectic attack, and at last even became reconciled again to the
"verdammte poiled peans."
One day when I rode up to the headquarters camp at about two o'clock in
the afternoon, I found the whole place in a simmer of suppressed
excitement, and addressed myself to Tewfik Pasha, who had been promoted
to that rank after the battle, in order to ascertain the cause of the
commotion. He told me that the Russians had sent forward a
_parlementaire_ to invite Osman Pasha or some officer representing him
to meet a Russian general at a certain place and discuss a matter of
interest to both. I asked what the subject of discussion was to be, and
Tewfik replied that he did not know. He also told me that Osman Pasha
wished to go himself, but that his staff were endeavouring to dissuade
him, pointing out to him that he would impair his dignity by consenting
to meet any officer of lower grade than the commander-in-chief of the
Russian army, who at this time was Prince Charles of Roumania.
As I sat on my horse at the headquarters camp I saw that Osman Pasha was
ready to start. His best horse, a magnificent chestnut charger with a
saddlecloth heavily embroidered with gold, was champing the bit in front
of the Muchir's tent, and presently Osman Pasha emerged, dressed in his
full State uniform, and actually wearing, what I should never have
expected to see in Plevna at that grim period, a pair of white kid
gloves. It was arranged that if he went he should be accompanied by
Tewfik Pasha.
At the last moment, however, Osman Pasha yielded to the advice of his
staff, and decided to remain behind; so Tewfik Pasha and Czetwertinski
went forward with a small escort. They rode out about a mile and a half
from Plevna, where they met two Russian officers, and after an
elaborate exchange of polite courtesies the business of the conference
was broached. It appeared that during the attack on the Grivitza redoubt
and the subsequent night attack on the Bash Tabiya many hundreds of men
had been killed; and as the Grivitza redoubt remained in the hands of
the Russians, and the Bash redoubt, only one hundred and eighty yards
away, was still held by the Turks, the corpses both of Turks and
Russians which lay between the two works had been left unburied, with
the result that the stench had become almost unbearable, and was a
serious annoyance to the defenders of both forts. The Russian officers
politely pointed out that a removal of the nuisance would be as welcome
to them as it would be to the Turks, and courteously offered to send out
a burial party and inter all the bodies lying between the Grivitza and
the Bash redoubts, if the occupants of the latter work would incommode
themselves so far as to abstain from potting at the military
gravediggers while they were pursuing their melancholy occupation.
Tewfik Pasha and Czetwertinski begged that the Russian officers would
excuse them for a moment while they considered the subject, and then,
after a brief consultation in Turkish, Czetwertinski as spokesman took
up his parable in reply. It was with feelings of the most profound
regret, he explained, that Tewfik Pasha was obliged to deny himself the
pleasure of accepting the generous offer of the Russians. Certainly the
odour from the ill fated corpses, both of the Turks and of their so
gallant and courageous assailants, was decidedly offensive; but it would
not be fair to allow the Russians to incur the whole of the annoyance
which would attach to the burial of so many patriots who had fallen on
the field of honour. In effect he would propose as an alternative that
if the Russians would inconvenience themselves to the extent of sending
out a party of men to bury all the corpses within ninety yards of their
redoubt, the Turks on their side would feel it a pleasure and an honour
to bury all the bodies within a similar distance of the work which they
occupied. Thus the labour would be equally divided and the interment
carried out most satisfactorily.
The wily Tewfik had seen at a glance the object of the Russians in
proposing this generous action. If they had been allowed to advance one
hundred and twenty yards from their redoubt on the pretence of burying
the bodies, they would surmount the crest of the hill, and would be able
to see into Plevna, besides securing most valuable observations as to
the position of the various defences. Hence his polite reply.
The Russian officers were overwhelmed of course with admiration for the
generous proposal made by Tewfik Pasha, but were desolated at their
inability to accept it. After further parleying in the same strain it
was plain that the _parlementaires_ would be unable to come to terms, so
the Russians produced a flask of excellent brandy which they pressed
upon their visitors. Tewfik Pasha did not drink, but Czetwertinski
politely drained a glass to the health of his entertainers, and all sat
down for a few minutes' pleasant chat about the weather and the crops,
the latest story from the clubs, and the legs of the last new
ballet-dancer at the Paris opera-house. Then Tewfik Pasha took out his
watch, and thought that it was really time to be going; so the Russian
officers bowed, and wished their visitors _au revoir_, while Tewfik
Pasha and Czetwertinski with their escort of a couple of troopers
trotted back towards the Turkish lines. It is pleasant to reflect that
the disagreeable necessities of war cannot blunt the exquisite
politeness of true diplomacy.
Day by day the Russians, who were beginning to recover their lost
_morale_, worked up closer and closer towards our entrenchments. Taught
by the example of their adversaries, they began to make a more extensive
use of the entrenching spade which had already revolutionized the art of
warfare; and seeing the completeness with which the Turks protected
themselves by means of the shield which they carried with them, the
Russians too rapidly adopted the same practice.
One morning the Russian outposts were so close to our lines that they
could see our men laying out fresh lines of shelter trenches, and
working parties commencing their tasks with a will. Skobeleff
accompanied by his staff, was examining these works, and, feeling
irritated by the tenacity of the Turks, he ordered a gun to be brought
up to the outposts. The gun was placed in position, and fired several
rounds of case shot at the working parties, killing a couple of men and
wounding three others. Our fellows replied energetically, and the
workers presently returned to their burrowing with fresh zest.
Day and night a desultory bombardment continued. During the night the
Russians used to fire from ten to twenty shells into the town, and at
intervals during the day also the shells arrived, knocking down a few
houses and killing a good many men, more Bulgarians, however, than
Turks.
Very shortly after the battle we found that the 4th division of the
Roumanian army was entrenched about six hundred yards to the east of the
Bash Tabiya. Owing to the terrible stench caused by the dead bodies
which lay unburied, we had to change the entire garrison of the Bash
Tabiya, numbering four thousand men in all, every forty-eight hours; and
as the approach to the Bash Tabiya was exposed for about thirty yards to
the fire of the Russians, the operation of relieving the guard was
always exciting.
I often paid a visit to the Bash Tabiya in the afternoon to have a cup
of coffee and a cigarette with old Sadik Pasha, who was in command, and
these afternoon calls were always attended with a certain amount of
risk. The fellows in the Grivitza redoubt used to keep a look out for
visitors; but the range was over eight hundred yards, and I used to skip
across those thirty yards of exposed space, dodging like a strong blue
rock before the barrels of the pigeon-shooter, and always coming through
safely. It did not take me more than three seconds to cover the
distance, and before they could sight their rifles I was across.
At about three o'clock every afternoon Ahmet brought my horse down to
the hospital, and I went for a ride out to the redoubts, and paid my
respects to one or other of the commanders. One day a Turkish major in
one of them consulted me about an eruption on his chin. He was mightily
concerned about it, and I promised to bring him some ointment to allay
the unpleasant symptoms. As a matter of fact, I believe it was barber's
itch that he had. Accordingly I rode out on the following day with the
ointment to the redoubt, which was commanded by a Russian redoubt built
on the slope of a hill about a thousand yards away. As I got up to our
redoubt there were three soldiers sitting on the rear wall smoking
cigarettes, and I called to one of them to come and hold my horse. The
one who came was a magnificently built fellow. He was in great good
humour, laughing and chatting with his comrades, and he came out of the
redoubt and held my bridle while I walked into the work. As I did so the
officer in command of the Russian redoubt, seeing a horseman approaching
the work opposite to him, thought that it would be good fun to have a
shot at him; so he let drive at me with three field-guns. I saw the
three puffs of smoke together as I walked into the redoubt. One shell
buried itself in the front wall of the redoubt without exploding,
another burst in the redoubt, and the third passed over the redoubt and
exploded just behind it. The casing of the shell that exploded inside
wounded a man in the heel, taking half the boot off and cutting the heel
to the bone. He was a black soldier, a Nubian. I was looking after him,
when some one called out to me to come outside; and the first thing I
saw was my horse quietly grazing about fifty yards at the rear of the
redoubt. The man who had been holding him had been cut in two by the
third shell. He was quite dead. I went back into the redoubt, and
dressed the Nubian's heel. Then the Turkish major and I had coffee and
cigarettes together, and I gave him the ointment for his chin, whereat
he was much gratified. We were so much accustomed to whole hecatombs of
victims in those days, that we were callous to a single casualty.
We were beginning to get a little short of food in Plevna; and though I
was not very particular about my cuisine and got on fairly well on
boiled beans and rice, I felt sorry for poor Czetwertinski, who had been
very bad with dysentery, and for whom I prescribed nourishing food in
vain, for there was no one to make up the prescription. However, one
morning I noticed a fine flock of geese in the yard of a Bulgarian house
between my place and the hospital, so I approached the proprietor with
an eye to purchase. He was a sour-tempered fellow; and though I offered
him a medjidie apiece for the geese, he declined to trade. When I got
home again that night and sat down to more boiled beans, I casually
mentioned to Ahmet that there were a nice lot of geese in a Bulgarian
house not far away. Next night all the geese were in our yard. I did not
inquire too closely the motive which impelled the toothsome birds to
seek for change of scene; but it flashed across me that Ahmet and his
mate Faizi were young and strong, and also that they were Circassians.
We ate four of the geese in our house, and gave the rest away to my
brother surgeons. There were a dozen of them originally, and I sent the
Bulgarian goose-farmer a couple of Turkish liras for them, so that he
did not do so badly after all out of his forced sale.
Although big engagements seemed at an end for the present, and the
Russians evidently intended to starve us out, instead of attempting to
take Plevna by assault, still we had plenty of casual skirmishes to keep
us in form and remind us that we were not at a picnic. Towards the end
of September, Mustapha Bey was ordered to go out with a squadron of
cavalry across the Vid and reconnoitre the Sofia road, to see what sort
of a force the Russians had placed there. I was a great favourite with
old Mustapha, and he made an application to Osman Pasha that I should be
allowed to accompany the column.
Permission was readily granted, and one beautiful morning I found myself
cantering out of Plevna, with Mustapha Bey and Czetwertinski at the head
of a troop of four hundred regular cavalry and three hundred
Circassians. We rode out to the foot of the Janik Bair colline below
Opanetz, and from that point we could see the village of Dolni-Netropol,
about a mile away.
As we were riding towards that village the troop suddenly halted, and
Czetwertinski declared that he could make out a regiment of infantry
drawn up about three-quarters of a mile away. We held a consultation,
and Czetwertinski said that he could see a battery of Russian artillery
in position as well. I had a great reputation for being sharp-sighted in
those days, and was generally the first to see the enemy; but I fancied
that what Czetwertinski saw was really a herd of the small black cattle
of the country.
"Wait here a moment while I go on and have a look," I shouted; and
sticking the spurs into my horse, I galloped forward by myself.
When I had gone about two hundred yards, I caught sight of a Russian
vedette, galloping for his life towards Netropol. The Circassians saw
him too, and in a second they were after him like greyhounds coursing a
hare. The whole troop followed them; but before we had gone a furlong we
heard the sharp crack of the rifles, and the piff-paff of the bullets
striking the ground all round us.
Old Mustapha was taken by surprise, and was quite disconcerted for the
moment; but we galloped on to the next ridge, and we found that the
Circassians had thrown themselves on the ground at the top of the ridge
in skirmishing order, and were busily blazing at a Russian cavalry
regiment about five hundred yards away. We all took up the same order,
lying down and firing away as fast as we could pull our triggers at the
dense masses of the enemy scarcely a quarter of a mile away. I was on
the extreme right, and I kept at it with my Winchester, vaguely
wondering how long that sort of thing could last before we were driven
back by the vastly outnumbering Russian force.
The fusillade only lasted about ten minutes; but during that time no
fewer than thirteen Russian horses came galloping towards us riderless,
showing that we had emptied that number of saddles at least. The
Russians were giving us volley after volley; but they had not got the
range, and our casualties were few.
I saw a very fine roan charger, which had lost his rider, come galloping
towards us; and I started out to catch him, reckoning that he would do
capitally for an extra mount, and to give my own horse a spell.
Circassians, however, are keen judges of a horse, and a fellow on my
left started out at the same time as I did and with the same object. It
was a curious experience to be dodging bullets between the two lines;
but the prize was worth the risk. However, when the roan saw the
Circassian and myself running up with outstretched arms to stop him, he
took fright, and, wheeling round, galloped back to his own lines,
sending the earth flying behind him in all directions. The Circassian
and I, looking rather sheepish, bolted back to the cover of the friendly
ridge, which we both reached in safety. We only had two casualties so
far. One man was shot through the thigh and another through the
shoulder. I treated them both on the spot; but the man who was wounded
in the shoulder died almost immediately.
The Russians brought up their infantry and artillery, and we retired as
hard as we could upon the village of Netropol with the enemy in hot
pursuit. We were only a handful, and things were looking pretty
serious, when, to my great relief, I heard the boom of answering
artillery and caught the sound of shells screaming overhead. I found
that we were under the protection of our own guns, which commanded the
whole of the plain, and had opened on the advancing Russians. We
exchanged a few shots in the main street of Netropol, a dirty little
Bulgarian village from which the population had fled; and at one time
the Russians were so close to us that we fired our revolvers at them. We
retreated towards our own lines, and the Russians dispersed under the
fire of our artillery.
As we were riding back to Plevna, we looked down towards the Sofia road
about a mile away, and saw a long train of arabas winding along like an
enormous snake towards Plevna. This was the great train of provisions
and supplies of all sorts that Hakki Pasha brought up from Sofia and
Orkhanieh, opening up communication again with Plevna, and forcing a
passage through the Russian opposition with reinforcements of six
thousand fresh troops. The train of arabas was more than a mile long,
and the extent of the convoy may be gauged from the fact that there were
about three hundred waggons full of ammunition, rations, drugs, and
medical stores.
As we were watching the train winding along the road, a trooper came
galloping up and told Mustapha Bey that a couple of Russian regiments
had swooped down upon the tail end of the convoy, shot a few men, and
captured thirty waggons full of stores. We were ordered to go in
pursuit, and away we went at a gallop, with the object of intercepting
the Russian cutting-out party and recapturing the precious supplies. On
the way we surprised a squadron of about sixty Russian cavalry who were
camping in a maize-field. They had dismounted, and were resting when we
came suddenly upon them; but they had time to mount and gallop off, many
of them leaving their carbines behind in their hurry. As the cutting-out
party had rejoined their main body, it was hopeless for us to attempt to
recapture the waggons, and we had to return reluctantly to Plevna. It
was a fairly exciting day's work, taking it all through, and when I got
back I had spent fourteen hours continuously in the saddle.
We settled down to the routine of camp life afresh, with the prospect of
a long winter siege before us, and I was much disheartened to find that
our stock of medical supplies was already almost exhausted, and that
there was no chance of replenishing them. The stock of drugs, bandages,
and other appliances intended for our hospitals was unfortunately
contained in the thirty waggons which the Russians carried off.
Although the prospect was gloomy enough, the troops continued in
excellent spirits, and some of the daily incidents of the siege were
decidedly humorous. Two days after the Netropol expedition I was riding
out towards the Lovtcha road with Czetwertinski, when we came upon a
party of about a dozen Turks jabbering away in a great state of
excitement. They had got something with them, and from a distance I
thought that they had caught a hare, but when we rode up we found that
it was a Russian hussar. He spoke to Czetwertinski in Russian and told
his story. It seemed that he was with his company when he got some
vodka, and imbibed so freely that he speedily became drunk and went to
sleep. When he woke up, he had not the faintest idea where he was, and,
missing his company, walked right into our outposts, where the men on
duty collared him. He was still very drunk when we saw him, and he
regarded his adventure as a capital joke. The Turks had treated him very
well, and he was smoking cigarettes which they had given him, surveying
his captors with the fatuous smile of semi-inebriety, while they in
their turn laughed heartily over their strange find. In due course he
was escorted into Plevna, and lodged in durance as a prisoner of war. I
never heard what became of him afterwards; but he was doubtless more
comfortable than in the Russian trenches.
We were in hopes that we should be able to get our wounded men away from
Plevna now that the road had been opened, and Osman Pasha sent orders
to the medical quarters for us to select all the men who were able to
travel. However, before we could get them ready the Russians barred the
road again with a strong force, and once more we were in a state of
siege. During the two days that the road was open, however, I sent
Czetwertinski away invalided to Constantinople, and with him the German
artist Victor Lauri. It was a very good thing for Czetwertinski that he
left Plevna when he did, for as a Russian subject it would have gone
hard with him when the Russians finally took the town. When the war was
over, Czetwertinski met Skobeleff at San Stefano and lunched with him.
Over the coffee and cigars the conversation naturally turned upon the
recent experiences of both, and Czetwertinski ventured to ask his host
with a smile what would have happened if they had met earlier.
"Oh!" said Skobeleff pleasantly, "we knew that you were in Plevna all
the time, and we were always on the look out for you. If I had happened
to come across you there, I should have had you shot of course."
Kronberg was one of the most companionable of my medical colleagues. He
was a regular dare-devil, always ready for any adventure; and one
afternoon he and I decided to go and pay a visit to the Bash Tabiya, the
second redoubt opposite Grivitza which commanded the main Grivitza
redoubt, at this time in the hands of the Russians. We rode up the slope
of the Janik Bair, tied our horses to a tree under cover from the
enemy's fire, and advanced cautiously over the exposed ground. We had to
run the gauntlet as usual for about thirty yards; and though it did not
take us more than three or four seconds, several bullets whistled past
us from the Russian works. They used to watch the exposed space with
field-glasses, and never missed an opportunity of having a "pot" at any
one who showed himself either there or above the parapets of the redoubt
or trenches. Our men of course used to return the compliment from the
Bash Tabiya. When Kronberg and I had safely passed this dangerous Tom
Tiddler's ground, we struck the trenches in which my regiment was
encamped, facing north, and I went to call on my colonel. I found him
living like a prehistoric troglodyte in a neatly dug hole in the ground
about four hundred yards from the redoubt. The hole was connected by a
trench with the redoubt, so that the colonel could go forward and come
back without drawing the fire of the enemy's rifles. It was about seven
feet deep, and comfortably furnished with Turkish rugs and brightly
coloured praying-mats to keep out the damp. After a cup of coffee and a
chat, I walked along the connecting trench, which was about six feet
deep, and wide enough to allow the men to move about freely. In the
clay inner walls tiers of bunks had been hollowed out like
sleeping-berths on board ship, and the "watch below" were lying asleep,
wrapped in their great-coats and looking like mummies, while the watch
on deck kept their eyes open for squalls. Steps were constructed to
enable the firing parties to aim over the parapet, and taking off my fez
so as not to attract fire I cautiously peered over the parapet. I took
up a rifle and had a few shots without seeing the result, and then I
walked on through the trench and entered the redoubt. The first sight
that met my eyes was a gruesome one, for the bodies of ten men who had
been killed that day were lying at the entrance awaiting burial.
On my way to Sadik Pasha's abode I saw a Turkish soldier wearing a very
fine pair of Russian high boots that had evidently belonged to a Russian
officer, and without inquiring too closely how they had been procured I
proceeded to do a deal. My own boots were thin patent leather
riding-boots, which looked very nice, but were quite unsuitable for
walking; so I persuaded the Turk to accept them, together with three
piastres, or sixpence, in return for the more useful if less ornamental
pair. The faithful servant of the Prophet was delighted with his
bargain, and strutted about in my fashionable Bond Street patent
leathers admiring himself, while I, for my part, had changed my
nationality by stepping literally into the boots of a Russian.
Old Sadik Pasha gave me a warm welcome. I found him squatting on his
haunches, with a praying-mat under him, looking the picture of contented
cheerfulness. As the weather was pretty hot, he had rigged an awning
over the top of his subterranean domicile to keep the sun off, and
Kronberg and I squatted down beside him to hear all the news.
It was like dropping in to see a man at his club--with one or two slight
differences. Sadik Pasha ordered coffee for three; and though we were
six feet underground, the Roumanians in the Grivitza redoubt must have
divined instinctively that we were having refreshments, for they decided
to serve dessert. Finding it impossible to do much with the ordinary
shells, they had pressed a mortar into the service, and just as the man
was coming with the coffee they fired another projectile from this
ingenious engine of warfare. Now the specific charm of the mortar is
that it throws a shell with a very high trajectory, so that the
projectile can soar like a hawk into the heavens and swoop down
perpendicularly upon its prey. With all their ingenuity the Turks had
not succeeded in devising a protection from this mode of annoyance; and
as the Turkish soldier was coming along like a well drilled waiter with
a tray on his arm containing three cups of coffee, the mortar-shell
exploded in the redoubt. No one was killed, but a fragment of the casing
knocked the tray and the cups and saucers into smithereens, and Sadik
Pasha had to order "The same again, please." This time the coffee
reached the consumer without any interruption in transit; and I was in
the act of drinking mine when another shell exploded in the redoubt
about ten feet distant from where we were sitting, and made a hole in
the ground big enough to bury a man in. I was so startled that I poured
the greater part of my coffee over my breeches instead of into my mouth,
and old Sadik Pasha chuckled mightily over my want of _sang-froid_. He
gave me a cordial invitation to come and stop with him for a week,
assuring me that I would soon get used to little accidents like that.
I was too polite to tell Sadik Pasha that, much as I liked his company,
the smell round his house was so unpleasant that I felt obliged to
decline his invitation. Owing to the inability of the _parlementaires_
to come to terms at the conference which I have already described, the
bodies of the Turks and Russians lying between Sadik's redoubt and the
Grivitza work remained unburied, and the stench was so terrible that
Kronberg was actually sick while we were calling on our hardy little
entertainer, and I myself was very nearly guilty of the same solecism.
Owing to the vigilance of _nos amis les ennemis_, who saluted us so
warmly on our arrival at the redoubt, Kronberg and I prolonged our call
until it was dusk, and amused ourselves as well as we could in the
redoubt. Occasionally we elevated a fez on a bayonet, and drew the fire
of a dozen Roumanian rifles at once. Then we returned the compliment
with much _empressement_. In this pleasant interchange of civilities the
day wore to a close; and when it was dark we said _au revoir_ to Sadik
Pasha, slipped out at the back, found our horses, and rode into the town
again.
Kronberg was, as I have said, a capital fellow, plucky as a lion and
generous to a fault. He hated the Bulgarians bitterly, but never allowed
his detestation of them as a class to outweigh his sense of justice.
There was a Bulgarian of some rank and standing in Plevna whom Osman
Pasha suspected of allowing his Russophile inclinations to go too far.
In fact, the Muchir believed that the man was a Russian spy, and he gave
orders to have him shot. Kronberg and Rookh were quartered in this
Bulgarian's house; and when the sentence was made known, the man's wife
went to them in a terrible state of grief and anxiety, imploring them on
her knees to save her husband, and swearing with the most solemn
protestations that he was absolutely innocent. Kronberg and Rookh were
of the same opinion; and knowing that I had a little influence with the
headquarters staff, they came to me and asked me to see Osman Pasha on
the subject, and ask him to reconsider his decision. Osman Pasha
listened to my representations very courteously, and I was so far
successful that he consented to the man being simply locked up instead
of being shot. The Bulgarian's life was spared, and he was sent down as
a prisoner to Constantinople when the road was opened up by Chefket
Pasha.
It was at this period that my hospital work, which had previously
proceeded on regulated lines, with a hopeful measure of success
attending my efforts, began to degenerate into a desperate,
single-handed struggle against wounds, want, filth, disease, and death.
I was sent to take charge of a large building which had been converted
into a hospital, and was already overcrowded with the most pitiable
cases. The building stood in several acres of ground on the bank of the
Tutchenitza, and about a quarter of a mile from the town, up stream. It
had previously been occupied by a wealthy Turk, and consisted really of
two large houses, one behind the other, and connected by a passage. The
house in the rear had been the harem, while the one in front had been
occupied by the old Turk and the male members of the household. There
was a small well kept garden leading up to the central entrance, and a
picket fence with a gate shut it off from the road. There were two
large rooms, one on each side of the front door, and two more behind the
staircase, with others upstairs and in the building attached at the
rear. Altogether there must have been about twelve large rooms, high,
fairly well ventilated, and whitewashed; but more than half of them had
no beds, and the forms of the tortured soldiers were huddled together in
their clothes on the bare boards. When I went there first, I had two
hundred and fifty men to look after, and the task appeared such a
hopeless one that my heart sank within me.
We had a hundred beds in the hospital, and a small supply of extra
mattresses and blankets; but those were soon apportioned, and for the
other unfortunates nothing remained but to lie huddled up on the floor
in the clothes in which they had been shot. They lay on the floor of the
passages as well as in the rooms, and were packed so closely that it was
most difficult to pick one's way through the hospital without treading
on them. In one room, fifteen feet by fifteen feet, I had sixteen men,
all hideously wounded, dying hard on the hard boards. The bare,
whitewashed walls were splashed with blood, which had turned to rusty
dark brown stains, and the horrors of the place can only be faintly
hinted at. I was the only medical man on duty in that hospital, with a
couple of jarra bashis, or dispensers, to assist in dressing, and a
squad of Turkish soldiers as hospital nurses. I had chloroform, it is
true, but no other drugs of any kind; for the first supply of medicines,
as I have explained before, fell into the hands of the Russians when
they captured the tail waggons of the convoy. Worse than all, I saw with
dismay that the stock of antiseptic dressings was giving out, and that
unless it could be replenished the fearful scourge of hospital gangrene
was already threatening us closely.
In the large room in which sixty men were lying, some on stretcher-beds,
some on mattresses, and many on the floor, the boards were covered with
blood and filth like a shambles. Round many of the sufferers pools of
pus had formed on the floor, and the smell was terrible. Here, where
these brave men were dying, the atmosphere was intolerable, stifling,
asphyxiating. As their eyes roamed round that house of suffering
instinctively searching for relief, they rested at intervals on small
glass windows set high up in the staring whitewashed wall. Through the
latticed panes they could see small squares of far blue sky, and now and
then there flitted past one of the white doves that Moslems regard as
sacred, on its way to the willows on the bank of the Tutchenitza.
Presently the antiseptic dressings were exhausted altogether, and I had
to fall back upon coloured prints from the bazaars for bandages, and to
plug the wounds with plain cotton-wool, of which we had a large supply.
This was non-absorbent, and naturally when treated in this way the
wounds became frightfully repulsive. It was impossible to keep the
tissues healthy, and all I could do was to go round on my hands and
knees from one man to another, literally scraping the maggots out of the
wounds either with my finger or an instrument. The unfortunate men were
saturated with blood and pus from their wounds, and covered with maggots
which lodged in the festering tissues. Often and often, as I went round
the "wards"--save the mark--plodding on almost in despair against the
dreadful odds, I have taken the plugging of cotton-wool out of a gaping
wound, and found underneath it a nest of maggots, feeding on the flesh
of the still living man, who would thank me with a look for temporarily
relieving him of the torture.
In one small ward with five beds in it, I had five men who were the
finest specimens of humanity that I ever saw in my life. I became
greatly attached to them, as they did also to me; and it was pathetic to
see their gratitude for the most trifling service. One of them, with his
strong aquiline face and piercing eyes, reminded me very much of a
statue of Dante which I had seen in the market-place of Verona. My
patient had been shot through the thigh. The bone had been dreadfully
smashed, and the whole leg was a mass of gangrened flesh. If I could
have operated, I might have saved his life; but without antiseptic
dressings, and without the possibility of subsequent careful nursing, an
operation was out of the question, and I had to watch him suffering day
by day dying literally by inches.
In the next bed was an Asiatic Turk, whose wound was a peculiar one. A
rifle-bullet had struck the top of his skull, and cut a groove
longitudinally from front to back through it. I could do but little for
the man, except to keep the wound as clean as possible, and the poor
fellow suffered great pain. He used to be continually telling me of his
wife and children, in some distant Anatolian village, which he knew he
would never see again, and he was very grateful for a sympathetic
listener. I was always afraid of brain trouble developing, and after
about a week of suffering he became delirious through inflammation of
the membranes of the brain, and died at last in fearful convulsions.
Next to him was a man who had been hit in the shoulder by a piece of a
shell. The bone was smashed to pieces, and several days after the battle
I took a piece of iron as large as a hen's egg from a great hole near
the man's armpit. I asked him to let me amputate the arm at the shoulder
joint; but he would not let it be done, and he was still alive some
weeks afterwards when I finally left Plevna. The fourth man had been
shot in the thigh, and the wound had no chance of healing without proper
dressing. I used to squeeze out about a pint of matter from it every
day. The fifth patient had been shot in the clavicle, and had a huge
ragged wound in the shoulder. I used to stuff it with cotton-wool, and
try to keep the maggots from collecting in the cavity; but when I took
out the plug of wool, there were always maggots underneath it. Four out
of the five were dead before I left the town.
In the large room, which contained sixty men, though the space would not
properly accommodate more than twenty, I had several cases of
blood-poisoning due to the colours "running" in the cheap prints which I
was obliged to use for bandages. The dyes got into the wounds, and
pyæmia carried off the men like rotting sheep. The food up to this
period was still fairly good, and we had plenty of good water.