Sending away the Wounded--Osman Effendi--We perform Operations--Amputating Fingers--A Warning to Malingerers--Trial and Execution--Discipline in the Town--Round the Bazaars after the Battle--Some Pathetic Souvenirs--The Punishment of Looters--Circassian and Bulgarian--A Cold-blooded Murder--The Work of Fortification--Out with the Burial Parties--A Walk over the Battle-field--Fresh Reinforcements arrive--The Lovtcha Expedition--Rifaat Pasha's Success--My Quarters near the Hospital--I have a Flitting--Arrival of Olivier Pain--A Pretty Bulgarian Girl--Limitations of a Vocabulary--Hospital Routine--Soldier Nurses. We sent away about eight hundred of the wounded to Sofia within a few days after the first battle; and of those who remained behind many died, and the remainder resolved themselves into cases for simple operations. Amputation of the arm or leg was necessary in many instances, and whenever the sufferer would permit it this was carried out. With the large medical staff attached to the army, the work ought to have been very easy; but as a matter of fact many of the surgeons could not or would not undertake any important operation, and in the few instances when they did muster up courage to lop off an arm or a limb the spectacle was not an edifying one. Almost all the operations were performed either by Osman Effendi, a Circassian, who was a really brilliant surgeon and a capable anatomist who had learnt his profession in Paris, or by myself. Both of us were very young and inexperienced; but in spite of these drawbacks it is not too much to say that we saved many lives which would otherwise have been lost. The foreign doctors seemed to lose their heads in an emergency; and it was not an uncommon thing for Osman Effendi or myself to find some poor unfortunate wretch, who had been smashed up by a shell or drilled through by a Berdan bullet, absolutely rotting away in a hospital ward simply because the surgeon in charge would not operate. Whenever we made a discovery of this kind, we used to bring the patient out to the operating table under the willow tree, and do the best we could for him under the circumstances; but it cannot be denied that, owing to our lack of experience, we often made serious mistakes. I will candidly confess that if I had possessed my present knowledge at that time, and if I had had command of all the best appliances, I could have saved many lives which unfortunately flickered out in that shady little grove on the banks of the Tutchenitza.