“Fifty thousand hunted, terror-stricken refugees had passed on; the desolate, rocky mountains loomed above us, darkness was all about us and heaven seemed too far away for prayer to reach.  A deserted baby wailed all night not far away.  When the doctor came he gave two hypodermic injections and returned to the camp saying we should wait there for him to catch up to us in the morning.  After the injections Mr. Shedd rested better but he did not again regain consciousness.

“When the light began to reveal things, I could see the awful change in his face, but I could not believe that he was leaving me.  Shortly after light the men told me that we could not wait as they heard fighting behind and it was evident the English were attacked, so in his dying hour we had to take him over the rough, stony road.  After an hour or two Capt.  Reed and the doctor caught up to us.  We drew the cart to the side of the road where soon he drew a few short, sharp breaths—­and I was alone.”

So the British officers, with a little hoe, on the mountain side dug the grave of this brave American shepherd, who had given his life in defending the Assyrian flock from the Turkish wolf.  They made the grave just above the road beside a rock; and on it they sprinkled dead grass so that it might not be seen and polluted by the enemy.

* * * * *

The people Dr. Shedd loved were safe.  The enemy, whose bullets he had braved for day after day, was defeated by the British soldiers.  But the great American leader, whose tired body had not slept while the Assyrians and Armenians were being hunted through the mountains, lies there dreamless on the mountain side.

These are words that broke from the lips of Assyrian sheiks when they heard of his death: 

“He bore the burdens of the whole nation upon his shoulders to the last breath of his life.

“As long as we obeyed his advice and followed his lead we were safe and prosperous, but when we ceased to do that destruction came upon us.  He was, and ever will be, the Moses of the Assyrian people.”

He lies there where his heart always was—­in that land in which the Turk, the Assyrian, the Armenian, the Persian, the Russian and the Arab meet; he is there waiting for the others who will go out and take up the work that he has left, the work of carrying to all those eastern peoples the love of the Christ whom Dr. Shedd died in serving.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 63:  Born January 25th, 1865.  Graduated Marietta College, Ohio, 1887, and Princeton Theological Seminary, 1892.]

CHAPTER XXVI

AN AMERICAN NURSE IN THE GREAT WAR

E.D.  Cushman

(Time 1914-1920)

The Turk in Bed