An officer of the 30th with a damaged arm was partly supporting an officer of the Scots Fusilier Guards. This officer was leaning forward and dripping blood from his mouth. He could not speak but wrote with a pencil in a small book that he was the Hon[oura]ble Annesley and that a ball was lodged in his throat after having knocked away some of his teeth and part of his tongue. He wanted to know what part of the field (if I may so call it) the Fusilier Doctor had his stand and whether I could convey him there. I could not tell him anything of the Doctor … I also told him I had no discretion as to the use of the mule cart but to fulfil the duty I was there upon.
Hugh Annesley after his return from the Crimea, the black patch covering his wound
Annesley was left to find a doctor on his own. What treatment he received remains unknown, but it would not have involved more than cutting out the ball, probably without the use of proper dressings or any chloroform to dull the shock and pain. Treatments on the battle-field were rudimentary. The staff surgeon of the Light Division, George Lawson, carried out his operations on the ground, until an old door was discovered which he made into an improvised operating table.28
Early the next morning, Somerset Calthorpe, a nephew of Lord Raglan and one of his aides-de-camp, filled his flask with brandy and ‘sallied out to walk over the field of battle’.
The poor wounded were far more quiet than the previous evening; many doubtless had died during the night, and many were too weak and exhausted to do more than moan. I found all glad of something to drink … It was a horrible scene – death in every shape and form. I particularly observed that those shot through the heart or forehead appeared all to have died with a smile on their faces, generally speaking lying flat on their backs, with the arms spread out and the legs rather apart … Those who appeared to have died in the greatest pain were those shot through the stomach; these had always their legs and arms bent, and with all expression of agony on their faces.29
The Russians were unable to collect their wounded from the battle-field. z Those who could walk were left to look for treatment on their own, many of them staggering to the dressing stations set up on the River Kacha, 15 kilometres south of the Alma, or limping back to Sevastopol over the next days. A Russian orderly recalled the scene on the first evening, as he set off with his vehicles for the Kacha:
Hundreds of wounded had been deserted by their regiments, and these, with heart-rending cries and moans and pleading gestures, begged to be lifted into the carts and carriages. But what could I do for them? We were already packed to overloading. I tried to console them by telling them that their regimental wagons were coming back for them, although of course they did not. One man could hardly drag himself along – he was without arms and his belly was shot through; another had his leg blown off and his jaw smashed, with his tongue torn out and his body covered with wounds – only the expression on his face pleaded for a mouthful of water. But where to get even that?
Those who could not walk, about 1,600 wounded Russian soldiers, were abandoned on the battlefield, where they lay for several days, until the British and the French, having cleared their own, took care of them, burying the dead and carting off the wounded to their hospitals in Scutari on the outskirts of Constantinople.30
Three days after the battle, William Russell described the Russians ‘groaning and palpitating as they lay around’.
Some were placed together in heaps, that they might be more readily removed. Others glared upon you from the bushes with the ferocity of wild beasts, as they hugged their wounds. Some implored, in an unknown tongue, but in accents not to be mistaken, water, or succour; holding out their mutilated and shattered limbs, or pointing to the track of the lacerating ball. The sullen, angry scowl of some of these men was fearful. Fanaticism and immortal hate spoke through their angry eyeballs, and he who gazed on them with pity and compassion could at last (unwillingly) understand how these men could in their savage passion kill the wounded, and fire on the conqueror who, in his generous humanity, had aided them as he passed.31
