S. Excuse me, colonel, I have told the truth, and if you will take the pains to walk into the rear yard you will see the corpses.
The colonel went and convinced himself of the correctness of my statement. He returned in the greatest anger, addressed some officer in Russian, gave some orders and went along the front to hear Schehl’s report confirmed by several other prisoners. The officer who had received orders returned, accompanied by six Uhlans, each of the latter with hazelnut sticks. Now the jailors were called and had to deliver everything which they had taken from their prisoners; unfortunately, Schehl’s clarinette was not among the articles that were returned. And now Schehl witnessed the most severe punishment executed on the jailors. They had to remove their coats and were whipped with such cannibal cruelty that bloody pieces of flesh were torn off their backs, and some had to be carried from the place. They deserved severe punishment, for they had sold all the food which during six days had been delivered to them for 800 men.
The surviving prisoners were now treated well, the colonel took Schehl with him to do service in his castle.
The case of Karl Schehl is a typical one.
Holzhausen has collected a great many similar ones from family papers, which never before had been published. All the writers of these papers speak, exactly like Schehl, in plain, truthful language, and the best proof of their veracity is that all, independent of each other, tell the same story of savage cruelty and of robbery. All, in narrating their experiences, do not omit any detail, all give dates and localities which they had retained exactly from those fearful days which had left the most vivid impressions. There is much repetition in these narrations, for all had experienced the same.
All tell that the Cossacks were the first to rob the prisoners. These irregular soldiers received no pay and considered it their right to compensate themselves for the hardships of the campaign by means of robbery.
Besides the tales collected by Holzhausen I can refer to many other writers, Frenchmen, the Englishman Wilson, and even Russians among them, but the material is so voluminous that I shall confine myself to select only what concerned physicians who were taken prisoners.
The Bavarian Sanitary Corps, captured at Polotsk, after having been mercilessly robbed by Cossacks, was brought before a Russian General, who did not even take notice of them. It was only after Russian physicians interfered in their behalf that they obtained a hearing of their grievances.
Prisoners tell touching stories how they were saved by German physicians, in most instances from typhus. In almost all larger Russian cities there were German physicians, and this was a blessing to many of the prisoners. Holzhausen gives the names of several of the sick and the names of the physicians who spared no pains in attending to the sufferers.
In the course of time and with the change of circumstances the lot of the prisoners in general was ameliorated, and in many instances their life became comfortable. Many found employment as farm hands or at some trade, as teachers of languages, but the principal occupation at which they succeeded was the practice of medicine. Whether they were competent physicians or only dilettantes they all gained the confidence of the Russian peasantry. In a land in which physicians are scarce the followers of Aesculap are highly appreciated.