VI
After nightfall I followed them; but not to eat or to rest. For nobody in Alexanitz that night was there either food or rest. Poor little Hélène was sobbing in a corner over a young Servian sergeant who had been brought in sore wounded, and who, she told us with streaming eyes, was her sweetheart. The townsfolk, spite that shells were dropping in their streets and firing their houses, were loth to quit the place to which were linked all their associations and all their interests. The night was one long horror: cannon roaring through the fire-flecked darkness, shells whistling through the air and crashing into the houses, the rumbling of the waggons carrying in the wounded, the groaning of the poor creatures torn by bullet or shattered by shell. We spent the whole of it in the hospital, for the claims of common humanity had converted Villiers and myself into nurses, and in company with a most resolute, tender, and composed Russian lady, we did our best to help the surgeons. It was a dread experience, even to one who had seen much war.
The hospital and its vicinity were littered with broken and mangled human beings. Through the long terrible night, Baron Mundy, Mr. Mackellar, and their young comrades toiled on unremittingly, amputating, extracting, probing, bandaging. No sooner was a batch of wounded attended to and cases affording a chance of life disposed of, than fresh cargoes were in waiting, now from the other side of the river, now from the other scene of action in front of the entrenchments on the heights. Several hundreds of cases were hurriedly seen to during the night by the English ambulance surgeons alone; but the proportion of wounded brought in was but small compared with the numbers of poor wretches left to the ruthlessness of the Turks during the sudden retreats of the Servian soldiery. The Russian ambulance was doing its work of humanity as assiduously as were our own countrymen, and a few Servian surgeons were behaving with courage and assiduity, in marked contrast to too many who were good for nothing in any sense. Although daylight was certain to bring an exacerbation of the long struggle, there was surely no human being in Alexinatz that night who was not glad when the young rays of the morning sun came glinting through the lurid pall of smoke that overhung the town.
To this fearful night succeeded a bloody day. The Turks had been massing all night behind cover, around the fringes of the bare slopes in front of the entrenchment line, and, after a preliminary artillery duel, their gallant infantry darted forward to attempt the storm of their strong position. It was a bold undertaking, fought out with stubborn valour, for the effort was renewed over and over again.
There was little variety in the method of the Turkish assaults. Let a sketch of one which I find in my note-book serve for a description of them all. The short jotting was made while I watched. “The Turks, in loose order, jump out of the lateral hollow and come on at the double, under cover of a shower of shells. The Servian guns open with shrapnel, and a Gatling mitrailleuse rains bullets on the charging Turks. At five hundred yards the Servian infantry behind the breastworks open fire. The Turk reply, and still keep pressing forward, falling fast as they come. They make a rush, headed by a gallant leader. A hundred yards more, and the forwardest of them are on the lip of the ditch. The leader rolls into it, shot, and his voice rings no more above the din of the strife. His followers waver, stagger, then turn and run. The assault has been repulsed.”
These efforts lasted till sundown, when the slopes leading up to the entrenched line were strewn with Turkish dead. In the early evening, Tchernaieff, rightly believing that the Turks were discouraged, took the offensive, and attacked them on both banks of the Morava. There was desperate fighting all night; but when morning dawned it was apparent that the Turks were slowly and sullenly falling back from every point. Tchernaieff, striking them hard as they went, sent them “reeling up the valley” till they had recrossed their own frontier. No longer for a time did the people of Alexinatz hear the cannon thunder, or start at the near rattle of the musketry fire.