'Captain —— won't allow us to start.'
Opposite the station buildings I saw a group of men gesticulating and heard angry voices. I went towards them, hoping to find out what the delay was.
'... I ask, I demand that the train be started at once. In the name of humanity all haste must be made to get the wounded into a hospital as soon as possible. Every moment with some of them means life or death. It is utterly absurd to talk of issuing rifles to them, and it would take hours.' It was the senior doctor of the hospital train speaking.
Taking advantage of his authority as a staff-officer of the district, Captain —— insisted that the rifles piled up on the platform should be issued to the wounded men. Both men got angry, and the staff-officer, annoyed that a doctor should attempt to question his arrangements, assumed a haughty and peremptory tone.
'Don't torture the wounded. The train is a long one, full of awful cases, and they are lying all on top of one another. There's no room for rifles,' implored the doctor.
The captain was furious, and striding to the telephone, returned after a few minutes to insist on his orders being obeyed; but the medical officer, losing patience at what seemed to him pigheaded cruelty, flatly declined to allow the wounded to be disturbed, and insisted on the immediate despatch of the train.
'Even the regulations of the Peace Conference lay down that wounded sent by hospital trains must be disarmed,' he shouted.
'I care nothing for the Peace Conference, or any other damned conference. I must send these rifles into Port Arthur, to prevent them falling into the enemy's hands,' was the reply.
Boiling with indignation, I could remain no longer a spectator of this disgraceful scene, and walked off along the train. It was an unusually long one. Wrapped in my thoughts, I strolled some way from the station. Suddenly I heard a noise—neither groans nor screams, but more like lowing. Where I was and what had happened suddenly came back to me. It was a very dark night, and close to me were standing some waggons, from which were proceeding these noises. Have you ever, when travelling by rail, stopped in a station or at some siding at night alongside a cattle train, and heard the noise of the cattle? If you have, I need not attempt a further description of the sound of the hospital train at Nangalin station that night. I walked slowly along it. In the unlighted goods-waggons crowds of men were lying about, some on straw and some on the bare floor. One heard choking sighs, groans, sobs, prayers, curses, and calls for help, combined with the howling of men in unbearable physical agony.
'Drink, drink! something to drink—I'm burning!' was jerked out at me in a hoarse voice from an open door. With difficulty I clambered up, and then almost fainted at what I came upon. In the dimly-lighted waggon lay a shapeless heap of men, coats, boots, canteens, great-coats, heads, arms, and the place reeked of blood.