Under the Red Crescent: Adventures of an English Surgeon with the Turkish Army at Plevna and Erzeroum 1877-1878Ryan, Charles S. (Charles Snodgrass)
History
Under the Red Crescent: Adventures of an English Surgeon with the Turkish Army at Plevna and Erzeroum 1877-1878
Ryan, Charles S. (Charles Snodgrass)
Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878 -- Personal narratives
We in our turn had to send out some of our lightly wounded men to
relieve the congested hospitals and to diminish the chances of an
epidemic. On Christmas Day we sent away sixty-six, most of whom were
wounded in the hands or arms, and they started to march to Baiburt. We
were able to give them warm jerseys, under-clothing, long stockings, and
woollen comforters, thanks to the generosity of Lord Blantyre; and three
days later we sent out another thirty, each of whom got ten piastres
from Lord Blantyre's fund in addition to the clothes. All of the men
reached Baiburt safely.
The hospitals were soon so crowded that typhus and typhoid fever raged
with added violence, and hospital gangrene, that I had seen before in
Plevna, once more made its dreaded appearance. We had eight cases in our
hospital, and lost three of them. Pyæmia and frostbite were the other
chief causes of mortality.
Pinkerton and I, with Morisot and Williams to help us, managed our three
hundred beds fairly well; but it was a great blow to us when Williams
took the fever, and was added to the sick list. When Pinkerton and
myself met Fetherstonhaugh and Denniston in the evenings at dinner, we
used to look at each other curiously, wondering which would be the
first. It was Fetherstonhaugh. He was attacked by a kind of remittent
fever, but tried to shake it off and went about his work as usual. One
night, when the rest of us were at dinner, Fetherstonhaugh came into the
dining-room, and remarked that there were three men with their throats
cut in his room. We rushed in, but found nothing, and came to the
conclusion that it was time Fetherstonhaugh left off work, so we sent
him down to Trebizond.
That was the last that I saw of him for a long, long time; but the
curious agency that for want of a better name we call coincidence
brought us together again after many years in a strange way. It happened
in Melbourne, when I had settled down to steady work at my practice, and
had almost forgotten the stirring days in Asia Minor, except for a few
rare glimpses when memory lifted the veil. I was engaged one day at the
Supreme Court as a professional witness in some case; and when I stepped
out of the box, it occurred to me that I knew the face of a man who was
sitting below me in the body of the court.
"Hullo, Ryan, how are you?" he said.
I looked again, and recognized Denniston, who told me that he had come
out from England on a trip, and had just strolled into the court out of
idle curiosity. As he was talking to me, I looked through the door
leading into the passage, and saw another face that I recognized.
"I wonder what has become of Charlie Fetherstonhaugh?" said Denniston.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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