[Illustration: Cover: Under the Red Crescent 1877-78] UNDER THE RED CRESCENT. [Illustration: Charles Ryan Walker & Boutall, Ph. Sc.] UNDER THE RED CRESCENT: ADVENTURES OF AN ENGLISH SURGEON WITH THE TURKISH ARMY AT PLEVNA AND ERZEROUM, 1877-1878. RELATED BY CHARLES S. RYAN, M.B., C.M. EDIN., IN ASSOCIATION WITH HIS FRIEND JOHN SANDES, B. A. OXON. WITH PORTRAIT AND MAPS. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 153-157, FIFTH AVENUE. 1897. DEDICATION. THIS RECORD OF THE STIRRING ADVENTURES OF MY EARLY YEARS I DEDICATE TO MY SON RUPERT. C. S. R. PREFACE. In submitting to the popular verdict this book, which aims at being a plain, straightforward account of the experiences of a young Australian in the last great battles which have been fought in Europe, I feel that a few words of explanation are necessary. In the first place, it may be asked why I have allowed twenty years to elapse before giving these reminiscences to the world. I must answer that, as a hard-working surgeon leading a very busy life, I had but little "learned leisure" at my disposal; and I must also admit that I did not feel myself equal to the literary labour of writing a book. Indeed it might never have been written if my friend Mr. Sandes had not agreed to my suggestion that he should reproduce in a literary and publishable form the language of the armchair and the fireside, and so enable me to relate to the world at large some of the incidents which my own immediate friends, when listening over the cigars to my recollections, have been good enough to call interesting. So much for the matter of the book, and also for its manner. In the second place, military critics as well as the general public may be inclined to wonder how it was that a young army surgeon, a mere lad in fact, should have been allowed to play such an independent part in the field operations at Plevna as is disclosed in the following pages, and should have been permitted to move about the battle-field and engage in active service, with the apparent concurrence of the general staff and of the officers commanding the different regiments. In reply, I have to explain that the Ottoman army was not guided by the hard-and-fast regulations which no doubt would render it impossible for a junior surgeon in any other European army to act on his own volition and carry on his work as he might think best himself. Furthermore, I may mention that through my close friendship with Prince Czetwertinski, who was the captain of Osman Pasha's bodyguard, I was always kept in touch with the progress of the military operations; and I am also proud to say that I enjoyed the confidence of Osman Pasha himself, and was on terms of the closest intimacy with that gallant and true-hearted soldier Tewfik Bey, who won the rank of pasha for his magnificent courage when he led the assault that drove Skobeleff from the Krishin redoubts.