British soldiers pushing an ambulance through the mud. A mounted horseman is on the road ahead.

Helping an ambulance through the mud.

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Heavy rains have often made the British front a quagmire, and our 'Tommies' have had to put their shoulders to the wheels of ambulance and other wagons.

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Series 6 No. 45

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Wednesday, March 3, 1915

"On March 2 [1915] Dr. Bergfeld reported from Trebizond:

Spotted typhus is raging in all the hospitals of the city. The extent of the epidemic is approaching a catastrophe. With an average sick report of 900-1,000 soldiers the daily death rate is between thirty and fifty.

The Red Cross surgeons, Dr. Colley and Dr. Zlocisti, reported on March 3 from Ersindjan:

Lack of sanitary arrangements and of sufficient medical help is decimating the ranks of the Turkish soldiers in a manner unthinkable under German conditions."

Quotation Context

Excerpt from the memoir of German General Liman von Sanders who had been in Turkey since December, 1913. He had advised Turkish War Minister Enver Pasha against his disastrous winter campaign against Russia in December and January, a campaign that ended in a Russian victory in the Battle of Sarikamish. Enver wanted von Sanders out of Constantinople, the capital, and tried to send him to the eastern frontier to take command of the remains of the Turkish Third Army whose commander had died of spotted typhus on February 12. Trebizond (Trabzon) is a city in eastern Turkey on the Black Sea. Ersindjan (Erzincan) is due south, in the interior. In the winter of 1914-15, typhus took a terrible toll including in Serbia as well as Turkey.

Source

Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, page 49, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)

Tags

1915-03-03, 1915, March, von Sanders, Liman von Sanders, Turkey, German medical corps, medical corps, medic