TURKS AS FIGHTERS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1583, 29 October 1912, Page 5

TURKS AS FIGHTERS.

SOME REMINISCENCES. CHRISTCHUHCH RESIDENT'S EXPERIENCES, My Telegraph.—Special GorreipoDdonU Christchurch, October 28. A' Christchurch resident, who as a member of an ambulance organisation, saw some of the fighting in the TurcoRussian war of 1877, in the course of a conversation with a representative of the "Press," narrated some of the more interesting personal experiences that befel him as a member of the Red Crescent Ambulance with the Turkish forces. "I was upon .n. walking tour," he said, "when I received notice that my application was accepted, and within- 2i hours I had abandoned my tour, gone to ymdon, improvised an outfit, arranged business matters, got my passport, and had it vised at the Turkish and Russian Embassies and left by tho night mail for Paris, travelling via Marseilles to Constantinople. Originally 1 was attaohed to tho Kod Cross Society, but tho funds of that organisation being low wo (the last-comers) were offered the choice on arrival at Constantinoplo'of returning or transferrins our eervices to the Red Crescent Society. We accepted the latter course. The Red Crescent i Ambulance was collecting at Phillopopolis, and , it proved a long .wearisome process before leaving for the front. Wo put in several weeks of heavy work attending the patients in the hospitals and in public and private buildings scattered in all parts of tho city. During the hot, dreary days our chief relaxation was the bazaar and wo never tired of wandering about its mazy intricacies. "When the ambulance reached Orkwnio tho first of a series of wagons bringing the wounded, from Plovnii were arriving, for three days and three nights the procession of pain and death tiled sadly past, and the ambulnnces, ten in number, worked without intermission. One or the other would go away for a few minutes for, a breath of fresh air, a bite of food, or a few minutes' sleep, but the work was never stopped until all the wounded were attended to. They were roughly classed into, first, those well enough to go on, and their wounds were- carefully dressed and. everything possible- was dono for their comfort; second, those whoso only chance of recovery was immediate removal to a temporary hospital; and third, those so near death that it seemed useless cruelty o disturb them. The patience of hese Turks and their endurance of suffering were marvellous. Let trained soldiers talk of their wonderful fighting qualities, the finest raw material in the world! I see them as they lay in. tho nativo hospitals, very often on tho baro floor without even a blanket, still dressed in their uniforms, and absolutely uncared for; the Government ration served to ono and all alike, regardless of their injury. Fancy three hard biscuits and ono pint of water night and morning, and no ono to givo any assistance! I have seen a man with a badly shattered jaw hungrily eyeing tho biscuits. Hβ could by no possibility eat, and other similar scenes by scores, but never did I bear any complaint. It was 'Kismet' and the will of God and the Padishah; that was sufficient to account for and excuse everything. One sees at once why the Turks, ' brave, kind, patient, hospitable, and intelligent, aro a doomed race. They have ceased to struggle . against fnto. 'Kismot,' the glorious word, the talisman that had led them so often to victory, lends no less surely to national apathy and extinction. "Several months afterwards saw Plevna hopelessly beleaguered, and the two armies facing one another on thq heights of Kamosli' Skirmishes irero almost a daily occurrence, and the ambulances were' kept hard at work. Not infrequently in the oomwe of events the English surgeons while dressing the wounded wero left between the combatants, to the grent admiration of the Turks, whose doctors kept modestly in the base hospitals. The weather was iatensoly cold, end there were heavy falls of snow. In our tents, with a fire always going, the brandy froze and the moat had to be cut up with an axe. The roadsides were strewn with the bodies of men frozen to death. Up on tho hilltops, 700 feet above us, and not less than 5900 feet above the sea-level, where the armies stood facing one another, the sentries were changed as often as every fifteen minutes. Yet as many as forty men per night would be found frozen to death at their stations. The Egyptian 'troops suffered terriblv, as might be expected. In their longing to get away from the awful cold, they were ready to take almost nny risk; one method adopted was self-mutilation. A hand would be placed over the muzzle of the rifle, the trigger worked with tho fcot, two or three fingers blown into space. These men at first were sent to the rear, but the evil grew to such an extent Hint one morning six of them were shot, and thereafter the practice ceased. It was not thai the men wero cowards, or that they could not bear pain, for they would stand mid have their hands attended to, and amputation* performed as found necessary, without flinching. Tlw poor croatures were probably taken from the Equatorial districts and sent straight into Polar regions."