The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
History
The treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Armenian question; Armenians; World War, 1914-1918 -- Atrocities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Refugees
Our hospital, which had a normal capacity of fifty beds, was made to
accommodate one hundred and sixty-seven, beds being borrowed and
placed on the floor in every available space. Such of the wounded as
could walk or be brought to the hospital came regularly to have
their wounds dressed. Many complicated operations were required to
repair the mutilations inflicted by an unimaginable brutality and
love of torture. Dr. Ussher, as the only physician and surgeon in
the besieged city, had not only the care of the patients in his
hospital, the treatment of the wounded refugees and of the wounded
Armenian soldiers, but his dispensary and out-patients increased to
an appalling number. Among the refugees exposure and privation
brought in their train scores of cases of pneumonia and dysentery,
and an epidemic of measles raged among the children. Miss Silliman
took charge of a measles annex, Miss Rogers and Miss Ussher helped
in the hospital, where Miss Bond and her Armenian nurses were worked
to the limit of their strength, and after a while Mrs. Ussher, aided
by Miss Rogers, opened an overflow hospital in an Armenian
school-house, cleared of refugees for the purpose. Here it was a
struggle to get beds, utensils, helpers, even food enough for the
patients. Indeed all this extra medical and surgical work was
hampered by insufficient medical and surgical supplies, for the
annual shipment had been stalled at Alexandretta.
DARK DAYS.
At the end of two weeks the people in the walled city managed to
send us word that they were holding their own and had taken some of
the government buildings, though they were only a handful of
fighters and were cannonaded day and night. About 16,000 cannon
balls or shrapnel were fired upon them. The old-fashioned balls sunk
into the three-feet thick walls of sun-dried brick without doing
much harm. In time, of course, the walls would fall in, but they
were the walls of upper stories. People took refuge in the lower
stories, so only three persons lost their lives from this cause.
Some of the “teerks” in the Gardens were also cannonaded without
much damage being done. It seemed the enemy was reserving his
heavier cannon and his shrapnel till the last. Three cannon balls
fell on our premises the first week, one of them on a porch of the
Usshers’ house. Thirteen persons were wounded by bullets on the
premises, one fatally. Our premises were so centrally located that
the bullets of the Turks kept whizzing through, entered several
rooms, broke the tiles on the roofs, and peppered the outside of the
walls. We became so used to the pop-pop-pop of rifles and booming of
cannon that we paid little attention to them in the daytime, but the
fierce fusillades at night were rather nerve-racking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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