My Circassian servant Ahmet had to go back to the ranks, much to his disgust, when I went away, and from that time forward his lot was by no means such a happy one as before. Instead of leisurely cooking my pilaf, grooming my horse, and occasionally raiding the country for hay, poultry, eggs, or anything else that he could get for his own benefit as well as mine, the poor fellow had to take his place in the wet trenches, with no bed but a hole scooped in the clay, and little to expect in the way of breakfast except a bullet.
Dr. Stoker had about twenty smooth-running ambulance waggons specially built for the conveyance of wounded men, and having loaded these up with the most dangerous cases he set out on the long journey to Sofia. Having no further use for a horse, I sold mine to Dr. Mackellar, and took my passage in one of the ambulance waggons. Then the night before I left Plevna the other fellows gave us a great send off and we had a splendid supper at the house of Dr. Robert, who, I regret to say, became hopelessly intoxicated, and insisted on yelling patriotic songs in half a dozen languages, while he thumped his piano until the yellow-faced Viennese housekeeper hauled him off in wrath and turned us all out. Poor Robert! Long before this we had eaten all his zoological specimens, his tame deer as well as his poultry; but he forgave us all. I never saw him again.
Old Mustapha Bey was quite concerned when I told him that I was going away. I had won the goodwill of this crusty old colonel of a regiment of cavalry some weeks before by the promise of a gift of some real Scotch whisky, which the old chap had read of but never tasted. He was an inveterate toper when he got the chance, being in this respect quite a rarity in the Ottoman army, and would drink raki or anything else with a fine, generous disregard of quality as long as the quantity was there. My friend Mr. Wrench, who was then the British consul in Constantinople, and who has lately died, promised to send me up a case of real Scotch whisky, and it came up in the previous train of arabas. At least the case came up all right, but of the dozen bottles only two remained for the disappointed consignee—myself. Of course we had a general jollification, and the last drop of genuine Glenlivet had vanished down the capacious gullet of an Austrian medico before I remembered with a pang of regret my promise to Mustapha Bey. Fortunately he had never tasted whisky, so there was still a possibility of keeping faith with him, at any rate in appearance. I confided my predicament to my comrades, and we brewed a special cuvée réservée for the Turk. The basis, I recollect, consisted of a decoction of prunes boiled with some of the wine of the country, which was heavily loaded with kerosene or some other mineral oil, and brought to the right amber hue by the addition of a little harmless colouring matter. This salubrious beverage I filtered through a sponge, bottled in one of the empty whisky bottles, and sent to Mustapha Bey with my compliments. When I next met him, he was smacking his lips with retrospective gusto, declaring that he had never tasted anything so delicious in his life. Poor old fellow! I felt quite guilty when I went to say good-bye to him, especially when he added at the last, "Be sure when you come back to bring me up another bottle of Scotch whisky."
Next morning I went away in one of the smoothly running ambulance cars brought up by Dr. Stoker. I had a pair of horses, and drove them down to Telish, where we stayed the first night. It was a mercy that we were able to get on in front of the long line of about three hundred arabas, each drawn by two small white oxen and laden with wounded. The carts creaked along at about two miles an hour, and as we passed them the groans and cries which the excruciating agony forced from the unfortunate sufferers were most painful to hear. Some of the men had fractures which remained unset, and the torture produced by the broken ends of bone jarring together as the waggon jolted and bumped over the rough road can be left to the imagination. Most of the men, however, bore their dreadful sufferings with a grim silence that was as painful as the cries. Oh that ghastly journey of wounded men to Sofia! And here and there a cart would stop while the driver lifted out a dead man from among his still living fellow travellers, and laid him down by the side of the road, at rest at last from the fearful jolting of the araba. There was no time to dig a grave, so the body was left there to soak in the rain and bleach in the sun, along the white road that wound from Plevna to Orkhanieh. I have no means of knowing accurately what proportion of the wounded died on the road, but I should estimate it at about 7 per cent. Had they been left behind at Plevna, probably at least 50 per cent, would have been swept away by septic disease and slow starvation.
At Telish, where we spent the first night, I found Hakki Pasha in command, and was very kindly treated by him. This was the scene of a severe fight about a fortnight after we passed through.
After three days' travelling we reached Orkhanieh, our first stopping-place of any considerable size; and here a number of the wounded who could go no farther were placed in the hospital. At Orkhanieh the hospital arrangements were a welcome change from those at Plevna. I met a man named Temple Bey there, an Englishman, who had been in the Turkish service for a great number of years. There were several English surgeons, and suitable houses had been turned into hospitals. I met a man named Roy, and another named Gill, now a well known practitioner at Welshpool; a man named Pinkerton, working at the hospitals in Orkhanieh; and there I said good-bye to my friend Dr. Mackellar, who remained behind to perform some operations, and stayed there for a considerable time. When I was leaving him, he kindly gave me a letter to Baron Munday, an Austrian doctor, who was an enthusiast in the cause of philanthropy, and who afterwards showed me great kindness in Constantinople.
At Sofia I met Lady Strangford, who had a well equipped hospital, worked by three or four English doctors and several English nurses. There were fifty or sixty beds in it, and the contrast between this hospital and the dreadful place that I had left behind at Plevna was as startling as the difference between an "Inferno" and a "Paradiso." Lady Strangford gave me a letter to the Baroness von Rosen, who had another hospital at Adrianople, and I spent a couple of pleasant days with that enthusiastic lady. Going on to Ichtiman, I met there Fano Bey, who was the second military officer in charge of the hospitals at Widdin; and as he arrived late at night, I was glad of the opportunity of repaying some of his past kindnesses by giving up my room to him. Next day we went on to Tatar Bazardjik, which was the terminus of the railway from Constantinople; and there, in the company of half a dozen jolly war correspondents, I shook off the last traces of the depression engendered by the horrors of my hospital work in Plevna.