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
That afternoon—Thursday afternoon—we forded a wide and deep river,
then entered a narrow valley, from the mountains commanding which
Kurds suddenly began to fire down on the Red Cross caravan and the
thousands of foot travellers. One man in an ambulance was killed,
others wounded. The drivers of ambulances and litters whipped up
their horses to a mad gallop. It was a race for life. The sight of
those gasping, terror-stricken thousands was one never to be
forgotten. The teacher who had taken our bags of clothing threw
everything off his ox-cart in order to escape with his life. The
Armenians on our long wagon threw off much of the luggage to lighten
it, and thus we lost most of what we had brought with us.
Once out of the valley we were comparatively safe. We met a force of
volunteers and Cossacks who entered the valley to engage with the
Kurds. Mrs. Raynolds had been riding in the small cart. After the
danger was over, while getting out of the cart, she fell and broke
her leg below the knee. The Red Cross physicians set it at once, but
she suffered greatly during the remainder of the journey over the
rough roads, though lying at full length in one of our ambulances.
She was quite helpless. Mr. Yarrow lay, too, in his ambulance, which
he was unable to leave day or night during the journey, except when
he was carried into a Red Cross tent on Sunday.
On Friday all but the four helpless ones and the babies walked over
Mt. Taparez. On Saturday we again climbed on foot a high mountain,
from sundown till three o’clock the next morning. The caravan rested
on Sunday at a Red Cross camp near the top of Tchingli Mt. at the
foot of Mt. Ararat. Here Dr. Ussher had two severe operations on his
face without anæsthetics. On Monday at sunset we reached Igdir. Dr.
Ussher was taken to a military hospital for officers, and the
military sent him on to Tiflis on Thursday. We could not secure
carriages until Wednesday morning to take us to the railway station
at Etchmiadzin. We arrived in Tiflis the next morning.
SAFE!—BUT SORROWING.
Most of us had lost nearly everything but the clothes we stood in,
and these we had worn day and night during the ten days’ journey.
Small wonder that the first hotel we went to had “no rooms.” Mr.
Smith, the American Consul, was most kind and did everything he
could for us. He secured a room in a private hospital for Mrs.
Raynolds and a bed in the city hospital for Dr. Ussher.
Dr. Ussher was again brought to death’s door by very severe
dysentery contracted on the road. He had become a nervous and
physical wreck and in appearance the ghost of himself.
Dysentery was epidemic among the scores of thousands of refugees
from Van Province who had crowded into Transcaucasia. The very air
seemed poisoned; our children were all ill, and it seemed to us that
they would not get well until we could leave Tiflis.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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