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.
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,
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.
Talks with my Patients—A Candid Kurd—Grim Confessions—How he killed his Enemy—Dr. Robert's Cave of Refuge—He loses his Dinner—The Spy's Death—Canards in the Town—The Second Battle of Plevna—I take a Hand—Turkish Women as Water-carriers—A Woman shot in Action—My Veiled Patient—Osman Pasha's Bay Cob—A Sign of Hot Fighting—The Attack on the Village of Grivitza—Czetwertinski and his Cigarette—Retreat of the Russian Infantry—A Cavalry Pursuit—Mustapha Bey waves his Sword—I join in the Charge—An Exultant Ride—The Retreat sounded—We retire—A sauve qui peut—Horrible Fears—The Ride through the Maize-field—Our Infantry Panic-struck—Osman Pasha's Method of rallying Men—A Timely Reinforcement—The Day is ours—Tremendous Russian Losses—Russian Physique compared with Turkish—Wounded Horses on the Battle-field—Back in the Hospital—Many Operations—Osman Pasha decorated—The Muchir makes a Speech—I shift my Quarters again—Bulgarian Hospitality—A Youthful Friend—A Terrific Rainstorm—The Tutchenitza runs a Banker—A Ghastly Find in a Gooseberry Bush.
Although I could speak Turkish sufficiently to make myself understood for ordinary purposes, I found myself in difficulties when my patients began to talk to me about their private affairs, or to go into long accounts of their adventures on the battle-field. Sometimes, however, I was able to gather a few startling illustrations of the ferocity with which the engagement had been fought.
One of my patients was the colonel of a Kurdish regiment, a magnificent specimen of a man, who had been shot in the thigh by a rifle-bullet. The ball had entered the left thigh on the outside, passed clean through it, and also through the right thigh, making four distinct wounds, which had occasioned a great deal of hæmorrhage with inflammatory conditions and high temperature. I refrain from giving this patient's name as he may be still alive, and he probably would not desire to remember the incident which he related to me.
He told me that he received his wound in the height of the action, and became for a while unconscious. When he came to himself, he commenced to crawl on his hands and knees towards the Turkish lines, and on his way he came to a Russian officer lying wounded on the ground. I give the story now in his own words. "I saw him lying there before me," whispered my patient to me as I dressed his wounds, "and the impulse to kill him came into my mind. I suppose he read my purpose in my face, for he pointed to his wound, and then he held up his hands to me as if to ask for quarter. As I crawled over on my hands and knees, I knelt over him and pointed to my own wounds in reply. Then I drew my revolver and shot him through the head. My servant, who had come to look for me, was close behind me. He was a Kurd, and he took his long Kurdish knife and cut off the Russian's head before he was dead. The air made a gurgling, bubbling sound as the knife went through the windpipe. The Russian officer had a long fair beard. He was a fine man, and I shall never forget his face. You are horrified. Well, it was war. I was not a man then, I was a wild beast. I killed him as he lay there because he was in my power. If I had been in the same position, he would have killed me. It was destiny."
Each of the members of the medical staff had a similar hospital to attend to, and all were managed on much the same lines. As a rule I finished my work in the forenoon, and had the rest of the day more or less to myself, except when it was my turn to attend at the main hospital, where once a week I had to be in attendance all night on emergency duty.
I was on friendly terms with the colonels of most of the regiments, and especially with Tewfik Bey, who used to keep me supplied with the latest news until he went to Lovtcha, and then I was thrown back on my own resources; but I found plenty of entertainment in watching the progress of the fortifications, trenches, and redoubts, which the troops were constructing with ceaseless activity under the direction of Tewfik Bey, who laid out the works before he went to Lovtcha.
Although not very particular as to what I ate, I got very tired of the incessant pilaf and scrambled eggs which my Circassian cooked for me, and both Weinberger and I always looked forward with lively pleasure to an invitation to dine with Dr. Robert, who was certainly very liberal in his hospitality. On these occasions we had European food admirably cooked by the Viennese housekeeper, and Robert always produced his best Bulgarian wine. I think I can see him now, dressed in his dirty yellow suit of Bulgarian frieze, with his long, sinuous fingers flying over the keys of his piano as he yelled out song after song in half the languages of Europe until far into the early hours of the morning. Peace to his ashes! He used to give us capital dinners; but I never could find out what happened to him eventually.
One little incident connected with him is perhaps worth recording here, though it occurred at a later period in the campaign. When the shells were falling fast in Plevna, Robert dug a large hole in his garden, and was accustomed to bury himself in it like a mole whenever the firing became particularly hot. One day, when I was watching outside his garden, I saw the housekeeper bring in his midday meal, steaming hot and very appetizing. Just as Robert sat down to it a shell exploded on the top of the house, and Robert was off to his hole in the ground like a fox with a pack of hounds at its heels. As he lay there quaking, it seemed a pity that the dinner should be allowed to get cold, so I vaulted the fence and ate it myself. The cutlets were simply delicious.
Of course Robert had nothing to do with the wounded men. He was simply a Bulgarian doctor, and was, moreover, strongly suspected of Russophile proclivities. Long afterwards I heard a rumour that he was shot as a spy before Plevna fell.
In those days of comparative quiet which preceded the second battle we only gleaned stray pieces of news from the outside world. The telegraph wire was closed to all private despatches, and the information which filtered into the town was consequently of the vaguest. The soldiers who came up from Sofia certainly brought us news as to the progress of the campaign in other parts of the Turkish Empire; and we learnt that while the army of the Lom was doing fairly well, Suleiman Pasha's forces had sustained a serious disaster at the Shipka Pass. The untrustworthy nature of the news, however, may be understood from the fact that for some days a persistent rumour was current that Great Britain had declared war against Russia, and that twenty thousand British troops were even then at Sofia.
In order to get a clear idea of the significance of the second battle of Plevna it is necessary to comprehend the position from the point of view of the Russian commanders, who realized that if they did not blot out their crushing defeat of June 20 by a great victory they would be compelled to abandon the initiative and fall back upon a tedious defensive policy with all its attendant disadvantages. It was clear that the most natural course to attempt was to crush Osman Pasha's army, for Plevna was much more accessible than either Rasgrad or Eski-Zagra; it was easier to concentrate a force there, and there was no immediate danger in any other quarter. To attack the Turkish army of the east would probably necessitate protracted siege operations; while if Osman Pasha were defeated, it would be easy to reinforce General Gourko, and afterwards advance against Suleiman Pasha's army. Thus it was that the Russian general staff, who were sixty miles away at Tirnova, resolved to attack Plevna, and entrusted the task to Prince Schahoffskoi and General Krüdener. Let us see with what result.
On the 27th and 28th of July our scouts reported the proximity of large bodies of Russians coming from Nicopolis and Poradim, and we all recognized that an attack was imminent. The 29th was quiet; but on the morning of the 30th, as I was at breakfast, I heard the boom of the heavy guns once more, and recognized that the Russian artillery preparation for the attack had commenced, and that the Turkish batteries were replying. The early morning had been damp and foggy; but when the fog lifted the sun came out strongly, and it became blazing hot. I had received no special instructions from Hassib Bey, my superior officer, and I resolved to see as much of the fighting as possible. So, when I had finished my work at the hospital, I saddled my horse, and galloped off as a free-lance with my pocket-case of surgical instruments and two large bags, one containing tiftig, or lint, and the other bandages. For weapons I carried a sword and a revolver, but no carbine. No field ambulance had been organized, and it occurred to me that I might be of some service to the wounded. So I headed in a south-easterly direction, where the firing seemed particularly heavy; and about a mile from the town I rode up the slope of a small colline, below the crest of which a regiment of Turkish infantry were lying under cover. The day was very hot, and the men had had nothing to drink since they took up their position five or six hours before. When I got there it was about ten o'clock, and the first thing I saw was a long procession of Turkish women of the poorer class, who were carrying earthen pitchers of water from a small stream at the foot of the hill to the thirsty troops lying in position. Some were ascending with full pitchers, and others were descending again with the empty vessels to replenish them at the stream. At this time the roar of the guns was terrific, and the Russian shells were screaming over our heads, some of them exploding in the air and others striking the ground behind us. The women, who were all dressed in white, with their yashmaks over their faces, and only their eyes showing, went steadily on with their self-appointed task, carrying their pitchers of water up to the men and back to the stream without a falter. When I was about two hundred yards from the crest where the troops were lying, a shell burst within a few yards of me, and a fragment of it struck one of the women in the arm. She screamed out as the artery spirted up over the white dress, and I made her my first patient in the battle.
As soon as the other women saw that she was wounded, they made a great fuss, chattering away like magpies. They placed her under a tree, and at first refused to let me attend to her, for a Giaour must not touch a Turkish woman under any circumstances; but when they could not stop the bleeding themselves, they became alarmed, and offered no objections when I approached with my bags of lint and bandages. I slit up the sleeve of her dress with a pair of scissors and stanched the bleeding; but the injury was only a flesh wound, and not serious. Osman Pasha got to hear of the women being there somehow, and presently an aide-de-camp came galloping up and cleared the whole lot of them off. They went back into the town, and I saw no more of them.
When I reached the crest of the hill and looked round, I saw an immense panorama of country thickly sprinkled with hills, and from every individual summit a battery of field-guns seemed to be roaring. No Russian infantry were visible, and it was impossible to say which were the Russian guns and which the Turkish. The noise was terrific, and everywhere I saw clouds of dust, with here and there a Russian battery with six horses going at full gallop, as the guns came into action at a new position. Over towards Grivitza and over by Radishevo and on the crest of every hill we had men placed, and our batteries were answering the Russian fire. I attended a few wounded men who had been struck by fragments of shells, and then I rode off due east towards the village of Grivitza, which was the objective of both the attacking columns.
On the way I met Osman Pasha and his staff, and saluted them. Osman looked careworn and very anxious. He was riding a little bay cob, which he always used when any specially dangerous operations were in progress, preferring not to run the risk of getting either of his two other valuable chargers killed. That little bay cob was a capital barometer by which to gauge the warmth of the fighting; and whenever he made his appearance on the battle-field, it was safe to assume that affairs were pretty critical. Just as I passed Osman Pasha, I heard the whistle of rifle-bullets for the first time in the engagement.
Looking over towards Radishevo, I could make out a strong Russian force in the village. They were sending their guns on in front, and the infantry were advancing, also following the guns, which were going at a furious gallop. I could see Osman Pasha and his staff riding over towards the Bulgareni road, which lay at the foot of the Janik Bair, with the Grivitza brook running alongside it. As I followed them I met several wounded men dragging themselves slowly and painfully from the front to the hospital at Plevna, and I was able to reduce their sufferings a little, though of course I could not attempt any operations even of the simplest kind. Gradually I became aware of the general disposition of the opposing forces, and found that the Turks, roughly speaking, occupied the arc of a circle south and south-east of Plevna, while the Russian troops were advancing in converging lines upon them with the village of Grivitza evidently as the main object of their attack. From the top of the hill where I stood I could make out the advancing lines of the Russians, while our troops by this time were below me, standing in hastily constructed trenches which they had dug for protection against the increasingly heavy fire. Some idea of the infernal tumult which was going on may be gathered from the fact that over one hundred and fifty heavy guns were firing incessantly, while the infantry fusillade extended in an unbroken line from one end of the arc of defence to the other. From where I stood I could see the attack on the village of Grivitza quite plainly. The Russians attacked in column of front half a mile wide, while our men waited grimly breast high in the trenches in front of the village. The whole place was so thickly covered with smoke, and the area of the battle-field was so extended, that sometimes I scarcely knew who were Turks and who were Russians. I rode back a little way from the crest of the hill to get cover, and presently my friend Czetwertinski galloped up with eighty troopers, who formed the bodyguard of Osman Pasha. We had a talk together, and presently, as we could not see much from where we were, we agreed to go up and inspect our first line of defence. Just below the crown of the hill we found four thousand Turkish troops entrenched and blazing away at the Russians who were developing the attack on the position. Czetwertinski and I rode together to the extreme end of our line of infantry, and I could hear the bullets whistling like hornets all round us. Czetwertinski, as he sat there on his horse, leisurely rolled a cigarette for himself, and then looked round for a light. Seeing that the soldier in the trenches nearest to us was puffing calmly at a cigarette himself in the intervals of business, Czetwertinski sang out to him, "Verbana a-tish," meaning, "Give me a light." The man clambered out of the trench, saluted, and handed his lighted cigarette to Prince Czetwertinski. As he stood there in the act of saluting a rifle-bullet went through his head, and the man threw up his arms and fell dead. Czetwertinski remarked to me that it was not good enough to stop there any longer; so we retired to the other side of the hill again, and rejoined the cavalry, who were waiting there under cover.
Just at this juncture the Russians, who were advancing in two lines of company columns, a formation totally unfitted for modern warfare, began to falter under the terrific fire from our trenches. The faltering grew more decided, and in a few moments the advance was changed to a retreat. This was our opportunity. The bugles sounded for the Turkish cavalry to advance; and almost before I could realize what was happening, I saw old Mustapha Bey, the colonel of the regiment, and the eighty troopers, with Czetwertinski among them, going off at full gallop straight towards the retreating Russian infantry, who had already begun to run. For a moment I hesitated what to do. Then old Mustapha Bey waved his sword, and sang out to me to come along with them; so I forgot that I was a simple medical officer. I drove the spurs into my horse, and in half a minute I was riding alongside Czetwertinski in a wild charge against the flying Russians. We climbed the hill at a gallop, rode through our own men at the top, and charged down the slope towards Schahoffskoi's fugitives. There was a large field of ripe maize on our right as we went down the hill, and I could see the Russians running through it as hard as their legs could carry them, believing of course that a strong body of cavalry was swooping down to cut off their retreat. Next to the field of standing maize was a field of barley, which had been reaped and piled in stooks. I could see the Russians dodging in and out among the stooks as we rode towards them, our troopers yelling and cheering as they emptied their carbines and revolvers into the mass of the fugitives. The Russian officers were trying to rally their men, and parties of them began to make a stand under some trees and to reply to our fire. In a moment more, when the most venturesome of the troopers had got within forty or fifty yards of the fugitives, the Russians suddenly faced round, and, recognizing that they were attacked by a mere handful of men, took up a formation and poured their fire into us in earnest. Hassan Labri Pasha, who was watching the whole thing, foresaw that our retreat was likely to be cut off, and he sounded the retreat. We wheeled our horses just in time, drove the spurs in, and galloped back for our lives.
Probably no man except one who has been in a similar position can even faintly guess at the rapid change of feeling which comes over one at such a crisis. A few moments before, while we were galloping forward against the fugitives, I felt as brave as a lion; but when once I had turned my back to them and heard their bullets whistling round me, a mortal dread came over me, and if I had had a hundred millions in the bank I would have given it all to be a furlong farther from the muzzles of those Russian rifles. It was every man for himself of course, and we did not attempt to preserve any sort of formation. The instinct of a hunted animal flying for cover made me turn towards the maize-field, and I galloped into the friendly shelter of the tall stems, bending my head low over my horse's neck and urging him forward with voice and spur. The maize was tall enough to conceal a horse and man completely, so that the Russians could not take aim at any individual mark; but they poured incessant volleys into the field, and many a bullet fired at random found its billet. As these hundreds of bullets cut the maize stalks in all directions round me, I must confess that my previous recklessness had given place to a ghastly, overmastering terror. Wherever I turned, danger was by my side, and I could only press blindly forward and hope for the best. A trooper close by me suddenly threw up his arms, and seemed to spring several feet up from the saddle before he fell with a thud among the blood-soaked maize stalks. It occurred to me then that he must have been shot through the heart.
By this time the entire Russian force which had been attacking our position on the hill was in full pursuit; and as I came out on the other side of the maize-field with the other survivors of that mistaken charge, I saw with dismay that our retreat had affected our own infantrymen with a panic. They had held their ground stubbornly while the Russians were developing the original attack; but when they saw us galloping back pell-mell with the returning Russians behind us, the moral influence of our retreat was too much for them, and they started to run from the position. It was a critical moment; but the threatened retreat was stopped as quickly as it began; for Osman Pasha, who had been watching the affair with his staff from the top of the hill, took prompt steps to rally the men. The slope of the hill, from the crest down to where the men were entrenched, was extraordinarily steep; but when we rode up it, and the men in the trenches began to follow us, Osman Pasha and his staff came down it at full gallop, with shouts and direful threats, emptying their revolvers at the advancing body of their own men. This drastic remedy had the desired effect, and the men rallied, took their places again in the trenches, and opened fire upon the Russians.
By this time it was beginning to get dusk; and as the firing showed no signs of diminution, I made my way back to Plevna as fast as I could go, in the full conviction that it was all up with us, and that the Russians would be in the town soon after me. What actually happened was this. The Russians took our first line of trenches, when Osman Pasha, seeing that the northern attack had died out, ordered down two fresh regiments along the Nicopolis road to reinforce the position. The men were quite fresh, and they "doubled" the whole way, covering the intervening two miles in about twelve minutes, and arriving just in time to bar the farther advance of the Russians, who fell back after some desperate hand-to-hand fighting.
When I reached the town, the bullets were falling pretty thickly in the streets, showing that the Russians had penetrated unpleasantly close. I saw a Bulgarian coming out of a house with a bucket to fill it with water from a small fountain in the middle of the street; but before he reached the fountain he fell dead drilled by a rifle-ball.
Coming to the hospital, I was soon up to my neck in work. Gradually the firing died away, and all night long the wounded kept coming in, some walking and others in arabas. We had thirty-seven medical men on the staff at this time, and there was plenty for all to do. No one knew exactly what had happened; and I remember telling several of the wounded men, who inquired how the day had gone, that we had been beaten. Later on, however, I found that we had won a great victory, and that the Russians had been decisively beaten all along the line; Krüdener's and Schahoffskoi's columns having suffered terrible loss, while Skobeleff who had been fighting on the Green Hills, had retired his force in good order, and with lighter loss. The Russian total loss was given as one hundred and sixty-nine officers, and seven thousand one hundred and thirty-six men, or about one-fourth of the total force. Even this figure, however, is believed to be largely under-estimated. The Turkish loss was about eight hundred killed and nine hundred wounded.
In spite of this splendid victory, the great chance of the campaign was missed owing to the want of cavalry. If we had had a strong body of cavalry, scarcely a Russian would have reached the Danube alive; and even as it was the panic among the Russians at Sistova was so great that a rush was made upon the bridge, and many waggons were actually pushed over into the river by the crowding fugitives.
As for my little troop of cavalry with whom I made that desperate charge and still more desperate retreat, it had been absolutely decimated, though Mustapha Bey the colonel, Czetwertinski the captain, and the Turkish lieutenant, all escaped as fortunately as myself.
In the town of Plevna we had plenty of accommodation for the wounded, and all the arrangements for attending to them were in far better order than on the occasion of the first battle. When the main hospital was full, we sent the men off to the smaller hospitals, and many of the less serious cases lay out in the open air all night. It was a repetition in many respects of our experience after the first battle; for we had forty-eight hours of almost continuous work, and then the great bulk of the men were put into carts and sent away to Sofia. On the first night after the artillery firing had ceased, all was quiet, and the only sounds to be heard in the town were the cries and moans of the wounded and the loud creaking of the great wooden-wheeled waggons as they rolled over the cobble-stones outside.
As I have said, we were much better prepared for the reception of the wounded than after the first battle; for we had plenty of instruments, chloroform, antiseptic solutions, and bandages, and, moreover, we had trained a number of the soldiers to act as an ambulance corps. These assistants were able to help us very materially, and had become quite expert dressers. In the majority of cases the wounds were very severe, as the men had fought principally in the trenches, and when hit they were generally shot either through the head or right through the chest.
On August 1 I got away from the hospital at about five o'clock in the afternoon, and rode out to have a look at the battle-field. Near the spot where the Grivitza redoubt was afterwards built the Russian dead lay thickest, and within a space of about two acres on this rising slope I counted fifteen hundred bodies. The spectacle was a horrifying one. Turkish burial parties had already been out burying our dead; but the Russians were left where they fell. Nearly all of them were absolutely naked, for the Bashi-Bazouks had been there already, and had stripped them of arms and clothing completely. I could not help noticing the difference in physique between the Russian soldiers and the Turks. The Russians were far less robust, and many of them seemed to be mere lads, hardly equal to the task of carrying the heavy Berdan or Krenke rifle. Broken gun carriages lay on every side, and the ground was scarred and torn in all directions.
A number of wounded horses, lying on the ground unable to rise, were neighing pitifully, and farther off two or three more with broken legs and entrails hanging out were dragging themselves slowly and painfully to a pool of water that had collected in a hollow at the foot of a hill. I shot four of the unfortunate creatures with my revolver, and put them out of their misery.
Some of the wounded men were in very strange attitudes. One man was kneeling as if in prayer; another was on his hands and knees; another was lying in his own brains. All three had been stripped by the Bashi-Bazouks. The Russian line of retreat could be easily distinguished, for it was marked out by a track of dead bodies laid as plainly as the track of a paper-chase. Here and there I could see where groups of them had tried to make a little stand, and had been shot down thirty or forty or fifty at a time. I saw one dead man in a most extraordinary position. He was stuck in the fork of a tree about fifteen feet from the ground, having evidently climbed it for safety, and then been shot by a stray bullet.
Returning from my visit to the dead, I devoted myself again to the wounded in the hospitals, and performed a number of amputations together with Osman Effendi, who worked splendidly with me. In the intervals of work next day I rode out again to the battle-field, which was beginning to smell terribly, so that we had to send out more burial parties to bury them in large trenches containing eighty or a hundred bodies each. So terrible had been the slaughter that some Russian regiments had literally ceased to exist.
Within a very few days after the battle we had sent away the greater number of the wounded, and only the cases for operation remained. All of these were removed to the main hospital, and Osman Effendi and myself resumed our work upon this new supply of patients. All our operations were done out of doors in the same place under the willow tree near the bank of the Tutchenitza. A great number of cases ended fatally which in a civil hospital would probably have resulted differently; but we did not attempt any intricate operations, and we were also hampered by the fact that the patients frequently preferred to die rather than undergo the amputation of a limb. If a man had a bullet in his knee, for instance, such a thing as excising the knee or laying it open was never thought of, and we simply took the leg off. This is a legitimate course for a surgeon to adopt in time of war, because the skilled attention necessary to the after treatment of a delicate operation was not available, and it was often better surgery to take a man's leg off and preserve his life than to perform an intricate operation in order to save the leg with the probability of the patient succumbing for want of careful nursing afterwards. As in the case of the wounded in the first battle, there were a large number of men whose fingers we had to amputate.
Trade revived quite briskly as soon as things began to settle down again in the town, and the bazaars were all in full swing. Many Spanish Jews, scenting large profits from afar, put in an appearance, and bought Russian coin and arms from the Circassians who had secured the plunder. A Russian rouble was to be had for twopence, and an officer's sword could be had for a franc. I myself bought two beautifully mounted Russian revolvers, which I still possess.
Osman Pasha was overwhelmed with congratulations upon his brilliant victory from all quarters of Europe, and I was a witness of an impressive scene when he was the recipient of the highest military honour that the Sultan can bestow. It was a few days after the battle, and I was standing close to the headquarters camp, behind which all the reserves were stationed, when I heard the bugles sounding the "fall in." Everything had been perfectly quiet, and there was no sign of the proximity of the Russians, so that I was at a loss to understand the meaning of the order; but it was carried out with astonishing celerity. Within five minutes several thousand men were on parade under arms, and I was looking round to see what was the matter, when I saw a Turkish officer in gorgeous uniform galloping up to the headquarters camp accompanied by a troop of cavalry. It proved to be an aide-de-camp of the Sultan, who had come up from Constantinople with an escort bearing despatches for Osman Pasha. Soon all the camp was in motion, and as the bugles repeated the call troops came pouring down to the parade-ground from the different redoubts and the earthworks on the Janik Bair and at Grivitza, and formed up into square. All the field officers were present, including Adil Pasha, the second in command. The Sultan's aide-de-camp and some of the officers went into the tent of Osman Pasha, who presently appeared with the first order of the Osmanli, the highest Turkish military decoration, pinned upon his breast, with the cordon. The aide-de-camp read out a special despatch from the Sultan, congratulating Osman Pasha upon his recent brilliant victory. He then presented him with a splendid sword, the hilt of which was set in diamonds, and he presented Adil Pasha with a brace of magnificently mounted pistols as a token of the Sultan's appreciation of his soldierly qualities. All the officers came forward with the standard-bearers, and Osman Pasha then delivered a stirring address to the troops. He said that his Imperial Majesty the Sultan had done him the honour of decorating him with the order which he then wore, and had presented him with that magnificent sword in token of his pleasure at the decisive defeat which had been inflicted upon the Russians. Though the Sultan had decorated him personally, yet the credit of the victory did not belong so much to him as to his brave officers and troops, who, he felt certain, were still eager and ready to try conclusions again with the enemy. He added that the battle which they had just fought was not to end the campaign. They were fighting for hearths and homes, for wives and children; and though the fighting still in store for them would probably be even more severe than that which they had already gone through, still he placed the fullest confidence in their bravery and their patriotism. The troops all cheered their leader lustily, and the ceremony came to an end with a great, united shout of "La ilaha illallah Mohammed Rasul Allah."
During those days after the second battle the work of fortification proceeded with ceaseless activity under the direction of Tewfik Pasha, who was rapidly rearing a chain of redoubts connected by trenches and subterranean passages to bar the passage of the Russian troops into Turkish territory. These earthworks were marvels of intricate construction, and at this period the greater number of our troops lived underground like moles, tunnelling communications between the different redoubts, the largest of which was the famous one at Grivitza, which contained four thousand men.
When we had finished our work with the wounded and sent them all away, I had practically nothing to do, and used to spend my time riding about the hills either on Dr. Robert's trotting pony or my own charger. I got tired of my quarters in the Bulgarian house, and decided to flit to some place more convenient to the hospital. I found the place I was looking for in another Bulgarian house, situated in the extreme north-west of the town on the bank of the Tutchenitza, and within a couple of minutes' walk of the hospital. It was a remarkable house, for it had no front door and no staircase inside, although it was a two-story edifice. There was a large yard at the back, and in one corner of it was the shed, which did duty for a stable. I saw that there was a fine garden attached to the house, and that it was separated from the Tutchenitza by a fence. The ground floor was inhabited by a forbidding-looking Bulgarian and his family, and I took possession of the upper rooms, which were reached by a flight of stone steps from the outside. There I installed myself in the best bedroom as comfortably as possible under the circumstances, and Ahmet, my Circassian servant, occupied an adjoining apartment. He had no trouble about arranging the furniture in my room, because there wasn't any, with the exception of a wide divan running round the wall.
Cordial hospitality was not at that time the strong point of the average Bulgarian, and my host downstairs was an unusually surly person. I was a tenant at will—that is to say, at my own will, not at my landlord's—but the heads of the household took no more notice of me than if I had been dead—probably indeed not so much. There was one little chap, though, a yellow-haired, blue-eyed Bulgarian boy of about thirteen, who used occasionally to visit me; and he endeavoured without success to explain to me his views upon the position. I encouraged his confidences with an eye to subsequent advantages, and reaped the reward in milk, which the little chap used to bring me from his father's dairy cow. With the addition of the milk to my daily fare, I was enabled to boil my rice in a new way and to improve my menu considerably.
In the beautiful garden which surrounded the house were some of the most magnificent specimens of china asters, zinnias, and balsams that I have ever seen. I sent some of the seed home to Australia, and can still, even after long years, pluck flowers which are the lineal descendants of those that bloomed for the first time in the blood-stained soil of Plevna. But sometimes that garden produced another and a ghastlier crop. About ten days after the battle we had a terrific downfall of rain. It poured for about twenty-four hours in torrents, and the Tutchenitza was soon running a banker. Presently the flood-waters encroached, and poured across the low-lying flats, through the fence, and over our beautiful garden. When the rain stopped and the water receded, I walked in the garden one morning, and found débris of all sorts, which had been brought down by the stream, still sticking in my favourite gooseberry bushes. Among the flotsam and jetsam gathered there was a grisly relic from the battle-field a mile or two away. It was a human head, with most of the flesh worn off the skull by the action of the water, and the teeth set fast in a horrid grin. It was impossible to say whether it was the head of a Turk or a Russian, and I buried it under the gooseberry bush where I found it.
A day or two after this great rainstorm I rode out again over the hills and visited the battle-field. Far down on the lower ground, where the main Russian attack upon Grivitza was delivered, I came upon a gully, down which the recent rains had poured a miniature mountain torrent. The water had scooped away the earth that was thinly laid over the Russian dead, and had robbed the shallow graves of the corpses, carrying the bones away to the lowest lying ground, and depositing them there to whiten in the sun. Hundreds of skulls which had been separated from the bodies were lying there. I thought of the Kurdish colonel, and of the fate which his Circassian servant meted out to the wounded Russian officer, and I guessed the shocking reason. These were the heads of wounded men whom the Circassians had decapitated.