Under the Red Crescent / Adventures of an English Surgeon with the Turkish Army at Plevna and Erzeroum 1877-1878

by Charles S. Ryan; John Sandes

I walked through the narrow streets of Plevna on the day before the first battle, and saw a town already deserted by most of the wealthy inhabitants. Here and there I noticed a Turkish civilian dressed in the long, loose caftan, and the wide trousers tucked into high boots, which formed the universal dress of the Turks; while the Bulgarians wore the sheepskin caps and suits of coarse yellow frieze which I had seen before in Widdin and Sofia. The streets were paved with cobble-stones, and the main street formed the principal bazaar of the place; while sundry evil-smelling lanes, running off to the right and left, were inhabited by scowling Bulgarians, who looked as though they would have cut my throat with the greatest pleasure. The Tutchenitza ran right across the main street; and here I saw the women washing clothes and chattering together, apparently unconscious of the dreadful trials before them.

At the lower end of the long, straggling main street, however, there was a collection of dirty little huts occupied by the Gypsies; and when they saw the troops coming, they seemed to recognize that the horrors of war were near, for they set up a prolonged wailing, while they wrung their hands with gestures of the deepest grief.

Leaving them to their lamentations, I proceeded to investigate the resources of the town, and was overjoyed to discover a European doctor, upon whom I promptly called and introduced myself. He was a very original character this Dr. Robert, and how he came to Plevna in the first instance I never found out. Born at Neuchâtel in Switzerland, he disappeared from the paths of European civilization when he had finished his medical course, and eventually settled down in Plevna, where he had been for ten years before I met him. He was not a bad-looking man, apparently about thirty-three years of age, with a fair beard and moustache. He had a good practice among the Bulgarians, and had evidently become a fashionable physician who commanded his own price. Dr. Robert lived in the best house of the town, and drove the finest team of four black cobs that I ever sat behind. He had a regular menagerie in his gardens, which were fenced with wire, and contained a collection of storks and herons, a tame animal which I took to be a jackal, and four deer, which we afterwards ate. He had some good ideas as a landscape gardener too, and had tapped the Tutchenitza for water to irrigate his domain by means of channels.

After calling on Dr. Robert, I went off to pay my respects to the kaimakan, or Turkish governor of the town, who had his quarters in the konak, or townhall, a fine structure, built from the stone taken from an old Roman ruin which once occupied the site. We afterwards used this building as a hospital. The kaimakan was very courteous, and placed a clerk at my disposal, who found me quarters in a small, isolated Bulgarian house at the extreme north of the town.

After making these necessary arrangements I joined Weinberger, and we both went to dinner with Dr. Robert, who had not seen any European except his housekeeper for ten years, and was naturally eager to meet visitors who could tell him of the haunts of his youth. The housekeeper was a Viennese woman, decidedly unprepossessing in appearance, but a most excellent cook; and Weinberger and I, who had quite recovered our appetites after eating the two geese at Veltchiderma, enjoyed that dinner thoroughly. The doctor's house was furnished with every luxury. There were knives and forks and chairs, not to mention a piano; and as it was the first European meal that I had eaten for many months, with the exception of my dinner with the Roumanians at Kalafat, it is needless to say that I made a first-rate repast. We drank a great many bottles of Bulgarian wine, and the more Dr. Robert drank the more loquacious he became, recounting his early bacchanalian and amatory exploits in German with a particularity of detail that was most edifying. Then he sat down at the piano and thumped the keys furiously, while he roared out convivial ditties in French, German, and Bulgarian until the whole house shook as if under the concussion of a bombardment. Even the Viennese housekeeper, who made her appearance upon the festive scene with a threatening aspect, failed to keep him quiet; and Dr. Robert was still chanting the praises of "Wein, Weib, und Gesang" when I made my way to my new quarters and sank into a deep and dreamless slumber, which even the manifold insects of Bulgaria were powerless to disturb.

Next morning I rode out to my regiment, which was camped on the hills, and asked the colonel to supply me with a servant. He ordered up six men for my inspection, and I chose a particularly smart-looking young Circassian named Mehemet, who afterwards became my faithful adherent, and performed his duties as groom and cook most satisfactorily. Then I rode away to the bridge over the Vid, and watched the arrival of Osman Pasha with the main body. They were all pretty well fagged out with fatigue and want of food and sleep; but there was no time to be lost, for the Russians were already advancing from Nicopolis upon Plevna, so Osman Pasha and his staff rode out at once and selected tactical points for the disposition of the troops. A strong force was sent out to the Janik Bair facing due north, another detachment was sent to the village of Grivitza in the hills facing east, and there was also an outpost in front of the village of Opanetz.

After seeing the troops arrive, I went to lunch with Dr. Robert, who had arranged to go with me and see the fighting if there should be any. At one o'clock I heard the boom of the Russian cannon which marked the opening of the protracted hostilities round Plevna, and the challenge received an immediate response from our batteries. Immediately all the Bulgarians in Plevna retired to their cellars, or any other place of security that they could find; and Dr. Robert and I rode off along the Nicopolis road to the Janik Bair, where the Turkish batteries were in position. By keeping just below the crest of the hill, Robert and I were safe from the shells, which either fell short on the far side of the hill, or else flew over our heads in the direction of the town. The hills were lined with our troops, who were all under cover, and, tying my horse to a tree, I walked up towards the summit. On my left I could see the villages of Bukova and Opanetz, while on the rising ground in front of me a mile away I caught an occasional glimpse of the gleam of Russian bayonets.

Looking out from the crest of the hill on which the Turkish batteries came into action, I saw the ridge of a smaller hill in front of me, and beyond it a second slope of rising ground, upon which the Russian artillerymen had planted their guns. These formed part of the force which General Schilder-Schuldner had under his command, and with which he advanced next day with the greatest confidence to a crushing defeat. The hill upon which the Russian guns were planted was thickly timbered, and at first I could see nothing but puffs of smoke followed by leaping flashes of flame. Then came the scream of the shell, which in the great majority of cases either buried itself in the hill-face below our batteries, or else flew overhead and dropped half a mile behind us in the valley towards Plevna. We had eighteen guns right on the summit of the hill extended in line, with hastily thrown up entrenchments in front, and the firing was almost continuous. I made my way to the extreme left, where I took up a position in rear of the battery, and watched the firing. The artillery horses had been left under cover in the rear, and the men settled down steadily for an afternoon's practice at long range. It was the first time that I had been under fire in the open field, and I watched the proceedings with the closest interest, having my box of instruments and my packet of tiftig, or lint, ready for treating the wounded. Both sides were firing common shell, apparently rather as an evidence of willingness than with any hope of doing serious damage at so long a range. I counted about forty Russian guns in action, and after a while I could see the shells in the air quite plainly, and could pretty well judge where they would fall. When they struck the hill-face below us, a cloud of dust would fly up as they exploded in the earth; and when they flew over us, I could hear them buzzing like hornets as they sailed away into the valley behind. While I was making my way up to the left of our line, I saw three Turkish artillerymen lying dead. One had been shot in the abdomen, and presented a terrible spectacle with his intestines all hanging out. The two others had had their legs carried away by shells. When I reached the farthest battery, I found one of the gunners with his hand ripped open by a splinter of iron, and I rendered surgical aid to my first wounded man under fire, washing the injury with water from my water-bottle, sewing up the hand, and dressing it with tiftig from my wallet. Then I sent the man to the rear, and told him to report himself at the hospital.

Here it was too that I saw my first man killed in the open field. It happened this way. I was lying on my stomach exactly on the summit of the hill, and about twenty-five yards from the end gun of the battery, watching the Russian practice, when I saw six simultaneous puffs of smoke and six flashes of fire dart from the oak wood on the distant slope. One of the gunners at the end gun in the battery next to me was in the act of "laying" it, and was squinting along the sights to get the elevation of the Russian battery, when the six shells started on their journey. Those flashes of fire were the last things he ever saw on earth, for one of the shells struck him full in the face and took his head clean off. There was a spirting from the blood-vessels in the neck, and then the headless corpse spun round in a circle, the legs moving convulsively like those of a chicken when its throat is cut. I was so close to the man that I could see every movement, and the sight affected my nerve centres in the way that the normal system is affected by any sudden and horrible sight; that is to say, I turned cold all over, and was very sick on the spot. A few months later the frequent repetition of similar spectacles had so dulled the sensitiveness of my nerve centres, that I could look upon the most shocking casualties without experiencing the slightest physical inconvenience. We dragged the gunner's headless corpse to the rear, where it was buried the same evening.

Both sides ceased firing at about six o'clock, at which time we had only nine men killed and three wounded. I heard afterwards that the Russian loss was also small. The demonstration hardly rose to the dignity of an engagement, and doubtless the Russians regarded it more as an appetizer for the solid fare to follow than anything else. At Russian dinner parties there is always a preliminary course called the zacuska, consisting generally of caviare or sardines devilled with cayenne, with which the guests are expected to sharpen their appetites. This artillery duel was the zacuska to prepare the combatants for the pièce de résistance on the morrow.