Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - X. The Japanese ambulance and hospital service
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116 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
each soldier on ambulance duty has worked alone.
Crawling up to a wounded man and taking advan-
tage of every little unevenness in the soil, of
every boulder or tuft of grass which would serve
for cover, he took hold of the wounded man by a
leg or arm or the collar of his coat and crawled
back in the same way, dragging the poor wretch
along the ground with hauls and jerks, to the
nearest place of safety where a dressing-station
had been established.
The sufferings of the wounded rescued under
these conditions were terrible. To be dragged in
that manner over the uneven ground, after lying
in the broiling sun during the long, endless day,
must have seemed to the poor fellows the very
climax of cruelty. For to many of them exhaus-
tion and the coolness of night may have brought
the first cessation of torture just when they were
thus disturbed. Yet they were well off compared
with the hundreds who of necessity had to be left
to rot on the hill-sides. I do not blame the
Russians. In the first place, it was not always
easy for them to know upon what errand the
soldiers moving towards them were bound ;
they
had some bad experiences with soldiers sham-
ming dead and cutting their entanglement wires.
Secondly, this war since the days of the battle of
Nanshan had been a was d I’oidrance. The main
object has been to kill, and very little quarter had
been asked for or given. A wounded man may
recover and take up arms again—a dead man is
finished with for ever.
Each division had an ambulance company of
200 men attached to it. This was divided into
three sections under the command of a captain
and two lieutenants, and besides these, each bat-
talion had a certain number of private soldiers who
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