Under the Red Crescent. John Sandes
Character—A Splendid Belvedere—View from the Seraskierat Tower—Scutari and Florence Nightingale—Stamboul by Day and Night—Scene in a Bazaar—Three Sundays a Week—A Trip to Sweet Waters—Veiled Beauties—I am gazetted to a Regiment—An Official Dinner—Off to the Front—A Compulsory Shave—My Charger—The March to Sofia—My First Patient—Prescription for a Malingerer—Mehemet Ali—My Soldier Servant—Diagnosing my Cases—Bulgarians at Home—At Sofia—MacGahan the War Correspondent—Learning Turkish—A Dinner in Camp—Leniency to Bulgarians—A Lady Patient—So near and yet so far—From Pirot to Nish—The Wounded—My First Operation.
People have often asked me how it was that I, an Australian, came to take a part in the defence of the Ottoman Empire, and to serve as a military surgeon under the Red Crescent, which, as every one knows, is the Turkish equivalent of the Red Cross of the Geneva Convention. Red Cross and Red Crescent are alike the symbols of a humanitarian spirit, in which philosophers and students of ethics profess to see the small beginnings of a future age of universal peace; but as for me, I have seen how Cossacks and Circassians fight, and I cannot help regarding the future prophesied by the philosopher as an impossible dream. When one has seen a soldier of a civilized force sawing off the head of a wounded but still living enemy with the edge of his sword-bayonet, it requires an unusually optimistic nature to believe in the abolition of war and a perpetual comity of nations.
It was as the outcome of my Wanderjahr—the sweet old German custom which sends every young man roaming when he has completed the technical training of his future avocation—that I first smelt powder and saw the glint of the Russian bayonets. The Wanderjahr of the German seems to be an unconscious survival of the nomadic instinct of primitive man—a small concession, as it were, to the roving habits that took his ancestors the Huns and Visigoths to Rome. It lets a young man escape from the fixed atmosphere of "staying point," as our American friends call it in one locality, into the "largior æther," the wider life of travel. And here I must be excused for introducing a little bit of necessary autobiography.
I must record that, after spending three years at the Melbourne University, I went to Edinburgh to finish my medical course; and having taken my degree there, I was launched at the age of one and twenty, as an expressive colloquialism puts it, "on my own hook." Thus it was that I began a period of wandering over Europe which ultimately landed me in my ambulance at Plevna in July, 1877. I need not dwell upon those early travels, except to say that the allowance which my father made me enabled me to go far and to see much. Like Odysseus of old, I could say that "many were the men whose manners I saw and whose cities I knew."
After a run round Norway and Sweden, I spent a few months in Bohemian Paris, and then went on to Bonn, where I attended the clinic of Professor Busch, and indulged in all sorts of romantic visions under the shadow of the castled crag of Drachenfels and the Sieben Gebirge. Next I made my way down to Vienna, where the sight of some Servians in their national costume gave me my first glimpse into the romance of the proud and chivalrous peoples of the Balkan States, and fired me with a desire to see Constantinople itself. During those months at Vienna I knew my "Schöne Blaue Donau" well, and often made excursions as far as Pressburg and Buda-Pesth, looking forward to the day when I could get an opportunity to follow the great water-way down to Rustchuk, and so into Turkish territory. But for the time being I got no chance, and travelled instead through Styria and Bavaria, finally turning southward, and finishing in Rome.
It was about this time that I met a Spanish surgeon, Senhor Garcia C——, who was connected incidentally with the events immediately leading up to my appointment as a surgeon to the Turkish troops. He was a delightful companion, but improvident in money matters; and I hope he will pardon me after this lapse of years for disclosing the fact that he made me his banker, inasmuch as it reduced me to such a low financial ebb that, had it not been for his gold watch, I am afraid I should never have seen the inside of the Grivitza redoubt. I remember that he and I put up when at Rome in a very fashionable and exclusive "pension," to which I had been introduced by a French count whom I met in Paris. I was always regarded, perhaps on account of my name, as a good Roman Catholic; and but for an unfortunate little contretemps I might have married into a princely Italian family there and then, and never had to eat dead horse on a campaign at all.
It was this way. Among the other residents in the "pension" was an old Italian marchioness, who had brought her two daughters to Rome to introduce them to his Holiness the Pope. She was kind enough to take a great interest in me; and there is no knowing what might have happened—the elder daughter was really a charming girl—if it had not been for that unlucky incident of the mutton chops. On the second Friday that I was there an elderly Scotch lady, who was a rigid Presbyterian, and took no trouble to conceal the aversion with which she regarded all Papists, ordered mutton chops in the middle of the day for her lunch. When I came in from a visit to the Vatican I was very hungry. The chops were brought in, and they smelt very good; so, as the Scotch lady was late, I forgot the consideration due to age and rigid Presbyterianism, I forgot my scruples as a supposed good Catholic, I forgot that it was Friday—and I ate them. Next day the marchioness stuck me up in a corner, and asked me how I could disgrace myself by eating grilled chops on a Friday; she led me to understand that I had deceived her, and she withdrew an invitation which she had given me to visit her and renew my acquaintance with her charming daughter. Thus ended my first and last chance of a dukedom.
After a few weeks in Rome, I began to get seriously embarrassed from a financial point of view. Garcia was a charming fellow; but he was a poet, and, like all poets, he had expensive habits. He even challenged me to a duel once for laughing at some of his verses; but when I threatened to kick him, he fell on my neck and embraced me. However, my purse was not long enough to sustain the two of us, and I was sitting in a little café one day considering the position and glancing idly over the Times, when my eye fell on an advertisement announcing that the Turkish Government had vacancies for twenty military surgeons, and inviting applications. I read the advertisement again with delight, and at once determined to send in an application. Here was a chance of seeing life with a vengeance. But my spirits fell at once. I had only a few liras in my pocket; and how on earth was I to get to the Turkish Embassy in London? C—— was in his usual poetic condition of impecuniosity, and I was afraid to think how much he owed me. But I could not afford to be chivalrous, or I might lose the opportunity of a lifetime; so I tackled him at once. He assured me with tears in his eyes that he had not even the price of a flask of Chianti in his pockets; but I was inexorable. I pointed out to him that he had a very fine gold watch—it was really a remarkably valuable timepiece, and had come down to him as an heirloom from some haughty old Castilian grandee. I impressed upon him that a gold watch is a most unsuitable adornment to a penniless person, who is moreover in debt, and I indicated to him a means by which it could be converted into currency of the realm. I think he felt it very much, poor fellow; but it was not a time for being over-scrupulous, and the heirloom of the Hidalgo of old Castile was duly deposited with the Roman equivalent for "my uncle" in a small and stuffy establishment situated in a narrow street with the suggestive name of the Via del Poppo. In return we received twenty-five napoleons—it was certainly an extremely handsome watch. Garcia gave me enough to take me to Neuchâtel, where I counted on receiving fresh supplies, and I let him keep the balance. So I left my Spaniard with a flask of wine before him in the city of the Cæsars, and I never saw him again. Peace be to his soul! He was intended by nature for an Irishman.
I wanted to go through to Neuchâtel; but when I got to Turin, there was a fresh difficulty to be overcome. The Po had overflowed its banks, and the railway was washed away, so that there was no possibility of continuing the journey until next morning. I had not enough money to go to a hotel, so I walked about the streets of Turin all night. Shakespeare has something to say about people who
wallow naked in December snow
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat.
And as I wandered through the cold, dark streets of Turin, I warmed myself by imagination in the sunbeams that played on the gilded pinnacles of the Seraglio and the marble towers of St. Sophia in far away Stamboul.
At Neuchâtel I found supplies awaiting me at the post office, and I hurried across to London at once, where I sought out the late Mr. J. E. Francis, of Melbourne, who was an old