So I was carried down to the lower dressing station, feeling a stream of warm blood trickling down my neck, and on arrival there my head was bandaged. Of what happened after that, I have not much recollection, but I remember people talking from time to time as I lay in a semi-conscious condition. Finally I lost all consciousness, until I heard some one say: “That is Colonel Tretyakov.” I then opened my eyes, and at the same moment felt a sharp, stabbing pain on the left side of my face and head. I was being carried along on a stretcher. Some one was riding behind me, and the sound of hoofs on the hard road beat painfully into my head. “Who is riding?” I asked. They told me I heard my own chargers, which were always kept under shelter near the kitchens when I was on the hill. By the time we reached the town, consciousness had completely returned, but the pain in my head and neck increased, and one of my eyes throbbed badly. I thought that it must have been put out, and touched it with my hand, but it seemed to be all right. I could not see with it, because my head and that side of my face were covered with bandages.
A few minutes afterwards, my stretcher was put down, and a doctor bent over me. “How do you feel?” he asked. “My head is very painful.” The doctor examined me and said that I was going on well. Feeling somewhat encouraged by this, I sat up on the stretcher, but my head ached terribly and I felt dizzy. I heard some one say in a whisper: “Well, there’s no hope; the brain is severely lacerated.”
I involuntarily felt my head, but it seemed to me to be all right. Then it dawned upon me that they were referring to the unfortunate commandant, Veselovski. Soon afterwards, I was taken to the Red Cross Hospital and comfortably installed there.
On examination the surgeons found a number of small splinters in my head and neck, as well as a very large one in my eye, which they removed at once. There was one big splinter in my neck, which had lodged near the spinal column and prevented me from turning my head. I could even feel it with my hand. Then they applied the X-rays and extracted it, but a bit of splintered bone was left, which I can feel even now.
For three days I lay racked with pain, but after that the pain grew less and I began to take an interest in what was going on around me.
But I am going on too fast.
Lieutenant-Colonel Saifoolin took my place on the hill, but he was wounded in the same arm, and almost in the same part, in which, during the battle of Nan Shan, he had been wounded before.
On the evening of December 6 I heard a rumour that 203 Metre Hill had been captured, and on the 7th my adjutant arrived and confirmed this disastrous intelligence.
On the fall of 203 Metre Hill we abandoned Akasaka Yama, as well as Division and False Hills. Division Hill was an irreparable loss to us, as it was not only capable of being defended step by step, but, moreover, it protected Ta-an-tzu Shan Fort. Without doubt, the defenders could have held out for some time longer. Colonel Irman himself tried to recapture it, but was unable to collect sufficient men for the purpose. I also heard that the following men remained in the commandant’s bomb-proof: Lossev, a telephonist, Second-Lieutenant Goudkov, the wounded commander of our 6th Company, and part of our 1st Scout Detachment, who refused to leave the hill and remained at their post in the right breastwork.
With these men in the work it might have been possible to drive out the Japanese once again, but apparently General Kondratenko considered it inexpedient to continue holding the hill at a possible cost of 500 men per day, and this, perhaps, was a sufficient reason for evacuating it. Colonel Irman had to send several men to the breastwork with direct orders to the 1st Scout Detachment to leave the hill, before they would forsake their post.