American Rifle - Alexander Rose [98]
Beside each Turk lay a Winchester, fully loaded, with five hundred spare rounds within reach. At 200 yards the Turkish officers commanded their men to lay aside their single-shots and use the repeaters. The Russians came on, bayonets fixed. With the Winchesters squirting bullets, the Russians were suffering enormous losses, yet goaded by their officers, they kept advancing. At 50 yards the Turks fell back to the second line of entrenchments and continued firing. Now the Russian push was stalling, as had the attack from the east. General Baron Nikolai Krudener, in charge of the reserves, threw the Serpoukhof Regiment into the center to restore his side’s flagging spirits. They got no closer than 100 yards. By seven that evening, harassed by Turkish sharpshooters, Prince Schachowskoi’s forces were in full retreat, and every one of his bodyguards lay dead on the field. The prince dispatched a rider to Skobelev with the panicked message “Extricate yourself as best you can. My companies (originally 200 strong) are coming back 5 and 10 men strong!” Later that evening the Russian wounded were killed by the Turks: Turks did not take prisoners.
The official Russian report on the day’s fighting declared that “Turkish rifle fire was infernal on the flanks and center and seemed to increase greatly as our men neared the trenches.” Tsarist losses this time dwarfed even those of July 18: 169 officers and 7,136 enlisted, fully 30 percent of all the troops committed to action.
On September 7 the Russians again gamely attacked. Now they were determined to crack this small but exceedingly troublesome nut at Plevna. Joined by Romanian units, the Russians now numbered 80,000, divided into two divisions, each of 40,000. Digging in to the north, south, and east, their artillery bombarded the Turkish positions for four days nonstop but killed few of the enemy. The Turks were entrenched in zigzag trenches fifteen inches wide; nothing but a direct hit could hurt them. The battle’s third phase was virtually a repeat of the second: long-range fire followed by close action with Winchesters—only this time losses increased to 300 officers and 12,500 men, with another 56 Romanian officers and 2,500 men added to the butcher’s bill. The sole bright spot was Skobelev’s storming of two Turkish redoubts in the south, but he was soon forced to relinquish them, losing 8,000 men—half his force—in the process.
Russian doggedness, understandably, was faltering, but the Romanians had not yet had the stuffing knocked out of them. It took more than a month, but their sappers eventually succeeded in burrowing under one of the largest Turkish redoubts. The Turks, unfortunately, were well aware of this and waited until the Romanians expectantly approached their position before opening up with their Winchesters. In the subsequent twenty-minute fight some 400,000 bullets were launched at the Romanians, who retreated with the loss of 1,000 men. This .25 percent hit rate was not impressive by traditional American military standards, but by now the Turkish high command was so impressed by these magical, murderous Winchesters that they ordered 140,000 more from the maker.
The latest bloodbath was quite enough for the Russians and Romanians. They mounted no more assaults. Instead, they besieged Plevna and waited for tens of thousands of reinforcements to arrive. When they did, their combined army had swollen to 150,000; this against the 40,000 defenders of the town. By December, Osman Pasha knew he must abandon his positions. On his way out he surprised the Russians with a beautifully planned frontal assault, but the attack