The Turkish Army | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 33.

The Turkish Army.

A RECENT letter to the Missionary Herald, from a gentleman in European Turkey, speaks as follows of the condition of the Turkish army, and of the relation of the soldiers to the towns in which they are quartered:—

"Fifteen thousand Turkish troops are in the border towns,—Djumaa, Bansko, etc.—but I have never known traveling so safe and business so undisturbed. Forced labor is paid for, and the Turkish soldiers often quartered in stables, etc., leaving, so far as possible, the homes of the Bulgarians free to their owners. The people of Bansko were not even required to draw wood from the near forests to supply the soldiers who, coming from the warmer regions of Smyrna and vicinity, poorly clothed, were suffering and dying without the hospital care they needed. I saw the rooms of the hospitals in which the only means for warming them was a stove for each room, made of a tin oil-can. In Djumaa we saw a squad of soldiers digging graves as we approached the place, and a Turk told us that 1,300 of the 10,000 soldiers who had come there had died since their arrival two months before. These soldiers, it seems, have received but one franc a month."