The Origin of the Red Cross: "Un souvenir de Solferino" — John Shaqi
The Origin of the Red Cross: "Un souvenir de Solferino"Dunant, Henry
History
The Origin of the Red Cross: "Un souvenir de Solferino"
Dunant, Henry
Red Cross and Red Crescent; Solferino, Battle of, Solferino, Italy, 1859
In the streets, on the roads, blocked by wagonloads of wounded, by
convoys of supplies, are rapid transport wagons, horses flying in all
directions, amid cries of fear, of anger and of pain. Baggage wagons
are overturned, bread and biscuits fall into the gutter. The drivers
detach the horses, dashing away with hanging bridles on the road to
Brescia, spreading the alarm as they go. They collide with carts of
provisions and convoys of wounded. These latter, trodden under foot and
frenzied with terror, beg to be taken with them. In the city some of
them deaf to all orders tear away their bandages, go staggering out of
the churches, into the streets where they are jostled and bruised and
finally fall from exhaustion and pain.
* * * * *
What agonies! What suffering during the days of June twenty-fifth,
twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh!
Wounds poisoned by heat, by dust and by lack of water and care, have
become intensely painful.
Suffocating stenches pollute the air in spite of efforts to keep in
good condition these local hospitals.
Every quarter of an hour the convoys sent to Castiglione are bringing
new loads of wounded. The insufficiency in the number of assistants, of
hospital orderlies, of servants is cruelly felt.
In spite of the activity of the Commissary Department, which is
organizing transportation to Brescia by means of ox-carts; in spite of
the spontaneous care of the inhabitants of Castiglione, who transport
the sick, the departures are much less numerous than the arrivals, and
the crowding grows unceasingly greater.
On the stone floors of the churches of Castiglione are placed, side
by side, men of every nation. French, Germans, Slavs and Arabs are
temporarily crowded to the most remote part of the chapels. Many have
no longer the strength to move themselves and cannot move or stir in
the narrow space where they are lying. Oaths, blasphemies and cries
which can be interpreted by no expression, are sounding beneath the
arches of the sanctuaries.
"Ah, sir, how I suffer!" say to me some of these poor fellows. "We are
abandoned, left to die miserably, and yet we fought bravely!" They can
get no rest, in spite of the nights they have passed in sleeplessness
and long-endured fatigue. In their distress they beg for help which
is not given. Some, in despair, roll in convulsions which will end in
tetanus and death. Others, believing that the cold water poured on
their festered wounds produce worms, which appear in great numbers,
refuse to have the bandages moistened. Others still, whose wounds
were dressed at the improvised hospitals on the battle-fields, are
given no further attention during the halt they are obliged to make
in Castiglione, and as these bandages are very tight, in view of the
roughness of the transportation and have not been changed, they are
suffering veritable tortures.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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