This was the state of affairs when Chefket Pasha opened up the road from Sofia again with a relief column bringing up under his escort a supply of medical stores and a party of English doctors who desired to volunteer their services. The head of the medical party was Dr. Bond Moore; and very picturesque he looked when he arrived in his Circassian dress. With him was Dr. Mackellar, who had gained a reputation in the Franco-Prussian war, and was a well known authority on gunshot wounds. Then there was Mr. David Christie Murray, who was at that time a war correspondent, but was introduced to me as a medical student, and in that capacity had an opportunity of inspecting my hospital, which he afterwards described very graphically in the Scotsman. A man named Smith, who was in the Indian Civil Service, and who had come up for the sake of the adventure, was another member of the party, which also included my old friend George Stoker, now a Harley Street physician. Last, but not least, there was Captain Morisot, a charming fellow, who was afterwards with me at Erzeroum.
The visitors hunted me up when they arrived, and we had a great supper at my quarters. It was an intense relief to meet some of my own countrymen at last, and I was so glad to see them that I distributed all my curios among them, presenting to these strangers the crosses in bronze and gold, the lockets, and the other trinkets that had belonged to Russian owners before they were sold in the Plevna bazaars as grim treasure-trove of the battle-field.
Dr. Mackellar was an old friend, for I had met him before the war when I was in Vienna; and I was delighted also to meet George Stoker, who was one of my fellow passengers when I came down the Danube. It is difficult for any one who has never been placed in such a position to form an idea of the delightful sensation which I experienced at meeting with English-speaking men again after a period of seventeen months spent out of the hearing of my mother tongue. Imagine the feelings of an Englishman when he first catches sight of the white cliffs of Dover after long travelling in foreign lands; or think of the sensations of an Australian returning after a couple of years in Europe when he sees the lights at Port Phillip Heads or the entrance to Sydney Harbour again. My feelings were similar when I dropped my Turkish and picked up my half-forgotten English once more in the presence of men of my own race, whose cheerful talk dispelled the gloomy thoughts which my daily struggle against the ever increasing forces of suffering and disease had engendered.
The wound on the back of my neck was very painful, and the large abscess which had formed on it had still further reduced my system. Dr. Mackellar lanced it for me the first night he was in Plevna, and this gave me great relief.
George Stoker had a bad attack of dysentery when he arrived, and he arranged to stop at my place so that I could look after him more easily. I opened up negotiations with my little fair-haired Bulgarian boy, who managed, with a good deal of trouble, to get me some milk, and thus I was enabled to provide proper diet for the invalid.
On the morning after the arrival of the English medical party, Dr. Bond Moore, with Mr. Harvey, a man of English parentage, who was born in the Levant and spoke Turkish like a Turk, together with Dr. Mackellar, waited upon Osman Pasha in his tent. Dr. Bond Moore explained to Osman Pasha through Mr. Harvey that they had been sent out by the Stafford House Committee, a large national organization in London which had collected £50,000 for the purpose of relieving the sufferings caused by the war in Turkey. They desired to undertake the care of the wounded Turks then in Plevna.
Now Osman Pasha was essentially a man of action. Though there was plenty of the fortiter in re about him, there was little of the suaviter in modo; and Bond Moore and Mackellar, who did not know him as well as I did, jumped to the conclusion that he was intentionally discourteous in his reception of them and in his reply to their representations. He pointed out to them that of the four thousand wounded men who were then in the hospitals, more than two-thirds would be sent away to Sofia on the following day, now that the road had been opened up by Chefket Pasha. This determination on his part, he explained, was dictated by consideration for the wounded as well as for the rest of the troops in Plevna. They would receive better treatment at Sofia, they would leave more rations for the fighting men, and there would again be room in the hospitals available for the wounded men who might be expected after future engagements. Probably, continued Osman, not more than four hundred wounded men would be left in the hospitals when the ambulance train went away, and meanwhile the medical staff at his disposal was quite strong enough to cope with the work. He also had another powerful reason for sending away the wounded in the overcrowding of the hospitals, which was causing terrible devastation by septic disease; and we knew that if the congested wards were relieved, we might get the upper hand of the gangrene and pyæmia which were doing all the damage.
Naturally enough Bond Moore and Mackellar were staggered to find that, after travelling all the way from England and incurring a good many hardships on the way, they were not to be allowed to do the work for which they had been sent. They represented to Osman Pasha the danger of sending away on a long and terrible journey wounded men who were quite unfit to travel; and Bond Moore, as the spokesman, entered a vigorous protest against the "gross inhumanity" of the course proposed by the Turkish commander-in-chief. Osman Pasha, however, was inexorable; and always a brusque and stern man at the best, he became still more forbidding in his manner when the English doctors reiterated their protests. The deputation left the tent in high dudgeon at what they regarded as the discourtesy of their reception, and were thoroughly disappointed after reaching Plevna in safety to be peremptorily ordered to quit it at once.
As a further protest, Dr. Mackellar waited upon Hassib Bey, our principal medical officer, and I was present at the interview, in which the English surgeon told the old Turk that it was a disgrace to humanity to send the wounded away by carts in the condition in which they were. The conversation was carried on in French, and Dr. Mackellar spoke very strongly, declaring that it was a barbarous and brutal thing to send the wounded men away, many of whom he considered, as a surgeon of large experience, to be quite unfit to travel. I felt quite sorry for poor old Hassib Bey, especially as I myself, with a full comprehension of the whole position, was thoroughly in accord with Osman Pasha's view. It was perfectly plain to me that the wisest course was to despatch the wounded men from out the crowded hospitals into the fresh air and away to Sofia. No doubt a percentage of them would die on the road from the actual hardship of travel; but if they were left in Plevna, a far larger proportion would inevitably die of septic diseases, while the congested condition of the hospitals would be still further aggravated, and slow starvation would add shortly to the sufferings of the unfortunates. The proof of the wisdom of Osman Pasha's action was very manifest afterwards; for though he was starved out eventually, he could not have held the town nearly as long as he did if he had not seized the opportunity when the road was open to send the wounded away.