The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1905-07-12
SOME WAR
HORRORS
Description Of Wounds
From japanese
Shooting.

The Vancouver News-Advertiser
prints an interview with a British sea
Captain from China telling some
stories of the frightful wounds infict-
ed by the deadly accurate fire of the
japanese in battle:
Some instances of the terrible inju-
ries survived by some Of the soldiers
were given by Captain Sheldrake.
They presented awful spectacles.
There were men with both legs gone,
shot off at the hips, some with both
arms off close to the shoulders, others
who had actually lost both arms and
both legs; others, again, whose faces
had been mashed out of all human
semblances by rifle butt, fragment of
shell or explosion. Some were totally
blind
Two men especially excited the
deepest interest amongst the surgeons
i of Shanghai owing to the extraordi-
nary character of their injuries, and
loud were the praises sounded for the
marvellous japanese surgeon who had
saved those poor wretches from death.
In each case rifle ball had pierced
tHt ShuIl ,uol OCuluu tiIC CScS, PdSScu
clean through the brain and out on
the other side of the skull, carrying
, away certain portion Of the brain
substance, -cGtting the optic nerve, or,
at all events, wrecking the plexus of
nerves that control vision; escaped the
large artery that runs along behind
the frontal bone, and all other vital
parts, leaving the men blind beyond
hope of even Japanese surgery. Those
poor fellows, big. strapping men, were
led about by comrades. Strange to
say, although the bullets had actually
pierced the brain substance they were
practically capable of exercising all
the ordinary functions of life.
Another case that would have melt
ed heart of stone was that of two
bonnie little Russian boys, evidently
employed in the Port Arthur garrison
as drummers or sutler s mates. They
had been walking hand in hand one
day just before the capitulation on
one of the military causeways inside
the forts, when Japanese 11-inch
shell came screaming through the air
and passed directly between the ur-
chins, taking the right leg off one of
them and the left leg off the other,
close to the hip, as clearly as if the
operation had been performed by
skilled surgeon. That the lads recoy-
cred from the tremendous nervous
shock and the reaction is wonderful,
but luckily they were in the hands of
the japanese before their CHASTITY
hurts could get the mastery.
One man who was carried aboard
was nothing but trunk and head,
and he, before war exacted it's hideous
toll from his suffering body, must have
been a grand specimen of manhood.
He will have to be fed like an infant,
and put to bed, have every little of
fee of life done for him until he meets
once more, face to face, the unkind
and tickle chooser of the brave VINO
denied him kindly death in the
trenches of Port Arthur.
All the. wounded displayed the some
stolid resignation, the silent patience
characteristic of Ivan, the man who
tills the fields of Russia, and does the
bidding of his masters, with never a
doubt through his dull wits that he,
too, might possibly have been meant
by his Maker to be free man. and
not mere thing of the soil, living
the pleasure of those set over him.
Captain Sheldrake has no doubt that
after the war everything will boom
along the Eastern Asiatic coasts. Bus
mess has not suffered much from the
fact of the war, and for steam vessels
especially there has been plenty of
work