In several other houses in the same street similar scenes were met with; and in one an Armenian family consisting of a father, mother, and three children were unconcernedly eating their dinner—a bowl of grain boiled into a kind of sticky porridge—while the corpse of a Russian soldier who had just died lay on the floor in the next room.
Captain Pizareff was petrified with astonishment, and reported the circumstances to General Melikoff at once. I sent word to the Russian Red Cross doctors, and they despatched a party of ambulance men to collect their sick and bring them into the hospitals. How it was possible for the absence of the men from roll call to remain unnoticed I cannot understand; but I heard afterwards that the colonel of the regiment to which these unfortunates belonged got into serious trouble over it.
Denniston, Stoker, and myself found plenty of work to do among the Russian sick as well as among our own men, and were glad to lend the Russian doctors our assistance. We found our Russian confrères capital fellows, and also excellent surgeons. They had worked on bravely while their army was outside Erzeroum and afterwards at Kars, though their resources were severely taxed by the number of the wounded at Devoi Boyun, as well as by the fevers and frostbite that decimated the troops during the long intervals between the different engagements.
They spoke of General Melikoff in terms of the highest admiration, praising his administrative ability as well as his military capacity; and I felt that their opinions were well founded, when I reflected upon the difficulties under which he had laboured, especially in the transport and commissariat department. On one occasion General Melikoff said to me himself, "I am prouder of having been able to feed my army than I am of any of my victories." When it is remembered that everything in the shape of supplies, including provisions and medical stores, had to be brought over the snow from Tiflis, four hundred miles away, it will be conceded that the general's pride in his achievement was justified. General Melikoff was most appreciative of our medical services on behalf of his troops, and told us on one occasion that he would recommend us for decorations at the hands of the Russian Government. However, during the anxious political times which ensued the Russian Government had something else to think about besides the services of three unknown English doctors in far away Erzeroum, and the decorations never came.
Gladly and willingly as I gave my services in the cause of humanity, it was nevertheless a real pleasure to find that they were appreciated by the Russian troops as well as by the Stafford House Committee, and also the Turkish Government. Captain Morisot, who returned to Erzeroum from Constantinople, brought me up, not only fresh supplies of money, but also the news that the Stafford House Committee had passed a special vote of thanks to myself and the other doctors of the Erzeroum section. The document setting forth this vote of thanks, signed by the Duke of Sutherland as chairman of the committee, is couched in most complimentary terms; and, needless to say, it forms one of my most cherished mementoes of the war. Similar special votes of thanks were accorded to Dr. Stiven and Dr. Beresford for their great bravery during the fighting at Rustchuk. I had already received the fourth order of the Medjidie, and to this the Turkish Government were afterwards pleased to add the fourth order of the Osmanli and also the Turkish war medal.
We were reinforced during March by the arrival of Dr. Roy and a party of doctors sent out by the Red Cross Society. They had undergone a good deal of hardship since they left Constantinople, and one of their number, a Dane named Price, had died. I shall always remember Roy through a remarkable incident of which I was informed by him some time after I had left Erzeroum. In my quarters I was accustomed to sleep on the floor on a mat, and even in a besieged town I had kept up the early habit of reading in bed. The usual military candlestick was a bayonet, which was stuck in the floor, with the candle jammed into the socket; but I found a more convenient receptacle in a Turkish conical shell, which I had picked up somewhere, and which made a capital candlestick when the brass cap at the end was unscrewed. Into the orifice of the shell I stuck my candle every night, and read Vanity Fair—which I got out of Mr. Zohrab's capital library—for the first time. I never can think of Becky Sharp to this day without a shudder, not on account of her treatment of Rawdon Crawley or her dubious relationship with the Marquis of Steyne, but simply owing to the circumstances under which I first met her. She was certainly a risky acquaintance for me. A week or two after I left Erzeroum my candlestick fell into other hands, and one night it exploded, fortunately in an empty room, which it wrecked without damaging any one in the house. My first introduction to Becky Sharp was effected by the light of a candle stuck in the mouth of a live shell!
Powder was unnecessarily burnt more than once during our last month in Erzeroum. One night I was awakened by a terrific explosion, and almost before I could collect my senses a frantic knocking at the door showed that somebody wanted the doctor in a hurry. We all jumped into our clothes, and followed the guide to a place where an Armenian house had stood a few minutes before, but which when we reached the spot was a mere heap of wreckage. One of the few survivors explained what had happened. He told us that a lot of Armenians had got hold of some Turkish cartridges, and were endeavouring to convert the powder to their own use. Sixteen men were sitting in a circle on their haunches in the middle of a big room, busily pulling the bullets out of the cartridges and emptying the powder into a heap, which was gradually increasing in size in the centre, when the desire for a cigarette came upon one of them, and he struck a match. The next instant the house was in the air, and ten of the Armenians were in paradise—or somewhere else. There was a good deal of confusion in the darkness; but I recollect finding myself down on my knees in a stable at the back of the house examining two of the sufferers who were still alive. One of them lay between the legs of a cow, and while he was in that position I dressed his injuries. The crowd had been very troublesome, and I had locked the door of the stable on the inside to keep them away, when I heard a tremendous hammering and some one demanding admittance. I called out that there was strictly no admittance; but in a very few minutes a file of soldiers burst the door in, and General Duhoffskoy, very angry at being kept out in the cold, stood before me. He was good enough to accept my apologies when I explained why I had locked the door, and also to thank me for attending to the sufferers. General Duhoffskoy was appointed to act as a kind of chief commissioner of police at Erzeroum in addition to his military duties, and whenever there was any excitement in the town he was always on the spot. One night we had a very big fire; in fact, half the street seemed to be burning. There was plenty of water, however; and if it had not been for the crowd, there would have been no difficulty in extinguishing the flames. An Armenian crowd at a fire is very much like any other crowd, and the people indulged in sudden stampedes and all sorts of "alarums and excursions" to such a degree that the work of the soldier firemen was greatly hindered. General Duhoffskoy took in the situation at a glance, and at once announced that if the crowd did not disperse it would be blown to pieces, as one of the burning houses contained an enormous quantity of powder and other explosives. The effect was instantaneous, and the miscellaneous mass of Turks and Armenians melted away as if by magic.
Soon after the return of Captain Morisot, I received a telegram from the Stafford House Committee saying that we had done enough for honour and glory, and that we had better go back to Constantinople, as the Turkish administration was able to cope with all the hospital work that remained to be done in Erzeroum. I was instructed to place the balance of our medical stores at the disposal of the Turks before leaving, and accordingly I handed everything over to Hakki Bey, receiving a receipt, and also a grateful acknowledgment of our services to the Turkish troops, together with a special letter for presentation to the Seraskierat.
My last week in Erzeroum was a busy one, as we had to make extensive preparations for the journey to Trebizond, which was quite a formidable undertaking. I had collected a great deal of personal baggage during my travels, and our equipment was considerable; so I arranged with a Persian caravan which was going down to Trebizond for the conveyance of the heaviest of our impedimenta, retaining only my valuables and the curios which I had got together to take down under my own supervision with the caravan. There were many Persians in Erzeroum, and as a rule they got on very well with the Turks, though occasionally racial antipathy was responsible for those minor persecutions known as practical jokes, of which the Turks were very fond. One day in the hammam, or Turkish bath, I met an old Persian, who was in a deplorable state of grief in consequence of the treatment which he had received from two young Turks. The Persians all grew very long beards, of which they were inordinately proud, and they were accustomed, after coming out of the bath, to dye them a fine rich brickdust colour with henna. One never saw a Persian with a white beard. Now this particular old Persian had carefully rubbed his beard with henna, in blissful ignorance of the fact that two mischievous young Turks had been to his henna-pot and had mixed a quantity of corrosive acid with the dye. The consequence was that when the Persian applied the dye the beard came away in pieces, and left the poor man beardless in his old age and disgraced.