Stories of the Ships

by Lewis R. Freeman

Lieutenant X——'s account of the work he had charge of in the Emden shows Von Müller in a better light, but reveal a terrible callousness and negligence on the part of his medical officers. As he must always be the most weighty witness as to how things were on the stricken ship at this juncture, I shall set down his account of what he saw and did in some detail.

"It was the morning after the fight before we had cleaned up all the other incidental business and were free to give our attention to looking after what was left of, or rather who was left in, the Emden. Fortunately, her stern was lying out beyond where the surf broke, so that, with a line they threw us from the deck, it was possible to ride under one quarter, with the boat's bow to seaward. I had rather a hard time getting aboard, once nearly falling into the water through getting a hawser between my legs, but I finally managed it through a hand which one of the German officers standing aft reached down to me. I told Von Müller that the Captain of the Sydney was prepared to take the surviving officers and men to Colombo provided they would give their parole. At first he rather stuck over the word, as though he would like to make out that he did not understand it, a perfectly absurd bluff in the light of the fact that he was fluent in both English and French, and that the term is in common use by the Germans themselves. He quickly came round, however, when I hastened to explain exactly what the Captain would require of him. Ultimately he signed a paper agreeing that for such time as all officers and men of the Emden remained in the Sydney they would cause no interference with ship or fittings, and would be amenable to the ship's discipline. This parole was substantially observed.

"The surgeon of the Emden, though unwounded, was doing nothing at the time of our arrival, and, from the appearance of the wounded, it was evident that he had done very little during the twenty-four hours which had elapsed since the action. By way of excuse, he claimed that his staff were all killed and his dressings and instruments destroyed. Accepting this as the literal truth, we made a signal for more medical supplies to supplement those already brought, and Dr. Ollerhead, the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company's surgeon, who had come with us from Cocos Island, set to work to get the wounded ready to be transferred. Neither at that time, nor during the three days in which the surgeon of the Sydney worked without rest to save as many as possible of the Emden's eighty wounded, did the German surgeon render anything like the assistance that might have been expected from him under the circumstances.

"What disgusted us most, however, was to find before we left the Emden that there had been ample supplies of uninjured dressings all the time. The action station of Dr. L——, the surgeon in question, had been in the stokehold, which was quite undamaged. A bent and twisted ladder or two formed the only obstacles to reaching and utilising the considerable stores of dressings, lotions, etc., which were still available there. Although it was true that the assistant surgeon was missing (he had come on deck after his station in the tiller flat aft had been struck, and was blown overboard by an exploding shell), it was not true by a long way that there was not ample help, skilled and unskilled, available for at least first-aid dressing all around, and on this they had hardly made a beginning."

A brief quotation or two from the report of the surgeon of the Sydney may be interesting while on the question of the neglect of the Emden's wounded by their own surgeon. Referring to the wounded which had just been brought aboard, he says:

"In cases where large vessels of the leg or arm had been opened, we found torniquets of pieces of spun yarn, or a handkerchief, or piece of cloth bound around the limb above the injury. In some cases, I believe the majority, they had been put on by the patients themselves. One man told me he had put one on his arm himself. They were all in severe pain from the constriction, and in all cases where amputation was required, the presence of these torniquets made it necessary to amputate much higher than one would otherwise have done. There was little evidence of any skilled treatment before they arrived aboard."

Again he writes:

"Some of the men who were brought off to the Sydney presented horrible sights, and by this time the wounds were practically all foul and stinking, and maggots 1/4 inch long were crawling over them, only 24 to 30 hours after injury. Practically nothing had been done to the wounded sailors, and they were roughly attended to by our party and despatched to us as quickly as possible."

Professional etiquette evidently operated to restrain the surgeon of the Sydney from stating in his report what he thought of these very palpable evidences of neglect on the part of his "opposite number" in the Emden. When I met him in the Sydney last winter I heard him express himself in no uncertain language on the subject, but I do not feel at liberty to quote him without his permission, and he has recently returned to Australia. I take it that he reckoned that to his medical brethren, to whom his report was especially addressed, the plain statements of the facts were sufficient to speak for themselves.