'Mesopotamia Commission. Report of the Commission Appointed by Act of Parliament to Enquire into the Operations of War in Mesopotamia, together with a Special Report by Commander J Wedgwood, DSO, MP, and Appendices. London: HMSO, 1917.' [‎39v] (78/248)

76
PART X.—MEDICAL BREAKDOWN.
D. The Misuse of Reticence.
and a scarcity of blankets, the wounded in these engagements suffered very considerably..
Some of the fighting units were without stretcher-bearers, and there was a lack of co
ordination in some of the medical arrangements. Wounded men were left on the field
of battle all night, some of them being stripped, maimed and killed by Arabs. These
defects were so well-known that they resulted in a telegram from General Nixon, in which
he said, “ I see no possible excuse for what I am forced to look on, as the most indifferent
work done in the collection of the wounded.” Colonel Hehir, who was in charge of the
medical arrangements on the battlefield, officially explained that these incidents were
largely due to shortages of field ambulances and transport. The matter must have been
well-known to the D.M.S. in Mesopotamia, General Hathaway, who was actually at General
Nixon’s Headquarters when the explanation of the officers concerned was received. More
over, some time after the battle, Colonel Hehir personally brought to Surgeon-General
Hathaway’s notice the shortage of field ambulances on this occasion. At the end of
October, Surgeon-General Hathaway sent in to Surgeon-General MacNeece, D.M.S. ; in
India, an official report dealing with this period. He sets out the casualties in the engage
ments in question, and comments on the small proportion of killed to wounded. But in
the whole of his report there is no single word, which gives any inkling that there had been
deficiencies in the medical arrangements or that anything untoward had happened.
Battle of Ctesiphon.
57. There are two methods of concealing a failure. The first is to suppress all mention
of it. The second is to obscure its significance by the glare of a contemporaneous achieve
ment. The first method was, as we have seen, used at the first battle of Kut. It was the
second method which obtained after the battle of Ctesiphon, when the military success of
withdrawing all the wounded in the face of a pursuing enemy diverted attention from the
grave medical defects which were disclosed in the course of that operation.
58. We do not here enter fully into the details of the Battle of Ctesiphon
and of the lamentable breakdown of medical arrangements which followed it. This is
done at length by the Vincent-Bingley Commissioners and elsewhere in our own Report.*
It will be sufficient to recapitulate that a tactical victory was turned into a strategical defeat:
General Townshend was obliged to retire before superior forces with casualties amounting
to approximately one-third of the force with which he entered into battle. Over 3,500
wounded had to be removed from the battlefield to the river bank, in some cases a distance
of ten miles, without proper ambulance transport, and with an insufficiency of medical
personnel, of food and of comforts, so that a large proportion had to make their way on foot
in spite of their injured condition. When they arrived at the river, the available steamer
accommodation was gravely inadequate. The wounded and weary men had to be crowded
into steamers and barges without sufficient medical attention, appliances, or conveniences.
Some of the wounded were disembarked at Amarah, but the majority went on down to
Basra, a journey from the battlefield, which, in some cases, took as much as fourteen
days, and the discomforts of which were aggravated for the wounded by the presence on
board of many cases of dysentery and other sickness.
59. Thus the sick and wounded were put to great sufferings during the evacuation
from the battlefield to the river bank at Laj, and also during the protracted journey down
the river. Though the successful evacuation of the wounded in the face of a superior
and pursuing enemy was a fine military performance, it was carried out in a manner wdiich
involved for the sick and wounded conditions of neglect, misery, and suffering, which
were lamentable. Not a hint of this regrettable breakdown is to be found in the official
report sent to England after the battle.
60. We are reluctant to describe the details of the condition in which many of the
wounded arrived at Basra, on account of their sickening horror ; but we deem it necessary
to quote one witness on this subject, because it brings home the appalling nature of the
sufferings which were thus glossed over by the authorities. Major Carter, I.M.S., who was in
medical charge of the hospital ship “ Varela ” at Basra, waiting for the wounded from
Ctesiphon, thus describes the arrival of one of the river convoys :—
“ I was standing on the bridge in the evening when the ‘ Medjidieh ’ arrived. She had two steel barges*
without any protection against the rain, as far as I remember. As this ship, with two barges, came up to us
I saw that she was absolutelv packed, and the barges too, with men. The barges were slipped, and the " Med
jidieh ’ was brought alongside the ‘ Varela.’ When she was about 300 or 400 yards off it looked as if she was
festooned with ropes. The stench when she was close was quite definite, and I found that what I mistook
for ropes were dried stalactites of human faeces. The patients were so huddled and crowded together on the
■hip that they could not perform the offices of Nature clear of the edge of the ship, and the whole of the ship’s