THE HORRORS OF WAR.

Te Aroha News, Volume XI, Issue 1725, 27 March 1895, Page 2

THE HORRORS OF WAR .

Sir Evelyn Wood continues his' in* teres ting reminiscences of the Crimean war in the Fortnightly Review, and gives a terrible description of the horrors of war. He savs ;

“ During the second bombardment, it was computed the allies threw 130,000 projectiles into Sevastopol, the Russians answering with about three to'our four shots. The Russian losses were terrible. The French had about 1,500, and the English under' 300 casualties, but our foes lost over 6,000 men in these ten days of fire. Those Russians who were -killed outright were buried near where they fell, and these, by the end of the war, amounted to over 50,000. The scenes inside the city were ghastly beyond adequate description.' Sir Edward Hamley, quot- * ing the words of an eye-witness, writes ‘ During these days and nights the great ball room of the in Sevastopol was crowded with the wounded incessantly arriving on stretchers.- The floor was half an inch deep in coagulated blood. In ah adjoining room, set apart for operations, the blood ran from three tables where the wounded were laid, and the severed limbs lay heaped in tubs. Outside, fresh ai’rivals thronged the square on their blood-steeped stretchers, their cries and lamentations mingling with the roar of shells bursting close by.’ He entered the Mamelon soon after it had been captured by the- French- A and says: -r

* Inside the scene was indeserible • in its horrors. Dead men were lying heaped in every attitude imaginable ;—. some half-buried in craters foimed by shell; other bodies, literally cut into two parts;' and one I noticed had been blown twenty yards by the explosion of a mortar-shell. Some corpses were lying crushed under overturned cannon while others hung limply over injured guns, but which were still on their carriages. The allies lost from the ji. cannonade between the 6th and the 10th of June,'7so men, while the Russian casualties amounted to 3,500 men. When we read these figures of such terrible import, it is easy to understand the bittei feelings expressed in the reply a Russian officer made to one of our own people who, during the flag of truce, observed our losses had been heavy. 1 You talk of your losses ! Why, you don’t know what loss is in comparison with what we are suffering !’ ”