The Cryptic Doctor

1812 AD, somewhere near the Battle of New Orleans

I am sitting at this rickety wooden table with a guttering tallow candle for company writing in this diary. All I can hear around me are the moans of the suffering, the bubbling torturous breaths of the lung shot and the screams of the shocked and mentally distressed men. My nose is enduring the all pervasive smell of rotten flesh and carbolic soap. There are hundreds of men lying on the ground and the demons of typhus, dysentery, measles, small pox and yellow fever are gleefully feasting on their flesh and here I am sitting here in this freezing weather trying to fight the demons off.

The carnage has reached a barely imaginable scale. It is difficult to describe without monotony, for it varies so little. The graves on the little plain and on the hillsides are marked with small plank crosses if lucky and if not, with a hastily thrust in rifle. There is no symmetry to the graves, no neat lines of preparation. They are scattered across the landscape as if by a demented evil spirit, one of death. The howling wet wind makes an eerie sound as it whistles across that forest of rifles and crosses. The trees are leafless, shattered by cannon shots and burnt, all standing in a moonscape of filthy water filled shell-holes, dead horse and mule bodies and deep gun carriage tracks.

Now, I am a bitter man, damning myself for being a doctor and looking over the rotting stinky detritus of the battlefield without being able to help. A far cry from the day the militia came to Carthage, Tennessee in those halcyon days of 1814. I was overwhelmed by the patriotic feeling and signed up leaving Nancy, my darling wife, behind. My dearest wife, whom I miss so much, has by now given birth to our twin daughters. I have never seen them, but what is the point of bringing them into this devastated dirty rotten world?

There is nothing much to say about the Battle of New Orleans of January 8, 1815. Surgeons like me, rarely if ever, see the cannon firing. We just hear the battle cries invading our tent, the makeshift hospital. All we see are shattered arms and legs, voiding bowels, faceless creatures bubbling cries of mercy, men bawling in pain and a lucky few who are beyond needing any of our services. The front-line trenches, wherever they lie, are only gashes in the earth, fenced by wire, beside a greenish strip of ground, pitted with shell-holes. At night, from every part around, one saw a lightning winking over the high ground from the ever-ceasing flashes of guns and shells. There was no quiet moment, but roaring, crashing, hissing and screaming from guns, shells bursting or passing in the air. And now the battles have ended, the treaties have been signed and the grand brass clad men are off to their mansions, leaving me, a poor disillusioned doctor, behind to look after these thousands of men abandoned by their leaders. Extraordinary men and incompetent tyrants served on both sides. Their power to fascinate, inspire, or exasperate, remains undimmed.

I remember reading the story of Emperor Ashoka in Ancient India, looking over the detritus of the Battle of Kalinga. He was horrified with the devastation he had wrought and was so overcome with grief and horror that he became one of the foremost disciples of Buddha and took up non-violence as a creed with a vengeance. That took courage and is the reason why he is considered to be one of the greatest men who have ever walked the earth. But the commanders and generals in our armies are far lesser men. And those men led these lions who now lie diseased, ill and injured in the tents. Lions led by donkeys indeed.

How I wish I was back home, eating hot food, clasping Nancy in my arms at night, playing with my two little angles. How I wish I had a warm surgery to look after my patients in, medicines to dull their pain and the time to tend to them properly. How I wish I was back in Carthage - that lovely city, those wonderful autumn woods and those lovely long walks. I am a big man with big appetites and big opinions, but here I have to be careful. Yet I have to speak out my mind; and say what I feel out loud otherwise I will go mad. But perforce some items have to remain hidden.

Today was a bad day. There are no medical supplies whatsoever. I simply have no more medicines, no pain relievers, no syrups - nothing. I have no clean bandages left at all. The water is filthy for miles around, because of the corpses and rotting animals who have fallen into the wells and streams. The ground is foul with excrement, due to the lack of privies. I do not have sufficient nurses to care for the wounded. I watch helplessly as men just die where they lie. And the brave lions that they are, most - who are conscious - do not complain.

There is that great tyrant, Napoleon Bonaparte. Remember what he did on the great retreat from Moscow? What was left of his Grand Armée, over 500,000 men strong, withdrew from Russia with its tail between its legs. Napoleon had lost about 80,000 men altogether from diseases alone. While he was nicely ensconced inside his carriage during the retreat and only suffered a mild flu, he kept on leaving thousands of men behind at every stop, men who were injured, diseased, hungry, frostbitten suffering from typhus, diarrhoea and dysentery. The road from Moscow to Paris was signposted by the frozen bodies of hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen. What curses did the widows and children of those dead Frenchmen rain down on Bonaparte?

But what rips my heart out are the cries of the young delirious men. They came to fight with dreams of glory and battle cries of patriotism ringing in their ears. They are left with shattered legs or arms, never ending pain, lying in their own filth, with nobody to listen to them and before slipping into blessed death, they cry out for their mothers.  Who is responsible for this? I am tired; I have been operating for three days and have barely managed to grab two hours of sleep. There isn't much I can do anyway, all I can do is to operate the saw to hack off the injured limbs or use the needle and thread to sew the injuries together. My hands are shaking now. My fury is more powerful than my fatigue, but still tempered by the need to be careful. I pick up the quill and pen my first cryptic note.

123dwfkdsfa asd asdlkj asldase09qwelk aq saqlidsjqpowue09q3 qsd asldksaldj asidq qwe109283 qwdea alsdj asd9aqew098qwe aqdsi alskdj alskdj alkdj alskdj q

Yet another day

Why is it that when one is depressed and tired, one's dreams are as bad if not worse? Surely dreamland is where you go to dream wonderful things and see magnificent instances? Somewhere you can escape to from this horrible stinking diseased battlefield? I look at these young men, almost children, who are lying all around me moaning in pain. What kind of a world are we creating? I just had twin daughters. What am I bringing them into? One day they will be mothers, or wives of men like those I see in front of me. They will be crying and screaming, pained at the loss of their men. How I wish I could wrap my little girls in my arms and protect them from every hurt, but I cannot even fulfil my duty as a doctor here. How can I protect them as a father? I am crushed under the sheer hopelessness of it all, the depressing reality of the cold winter and the constant cries of pain and terror which have surrounded me for the past three months.

I fell asleep on my chair last night and woke up with a nightmare going in full flight through my mind. Typically, the day and night before were a blur of ice-covered ground, men dying with their steaming entrails exposed in the icy air, the blood flaking off on my hands, frozen fingers unable to clench around my surgical instruments. No firewood available or corpsmen to go far to get wood to heat water so we are forced to operate and wash men using the filthy rainwater.

When I first arrived at the battlefield, I used to keep myself going with the thoughts of my Nancy and the twins in my mind. That would sustain me for the first few days of the war. And I would think about the day I would return home after weeks and months of being in the middle of the war. The carriage would stop on the road in front of our white wooden house in the evening. I could see the windows softly lit by the warm inviting light of the fires burning in the fireplaces of the two front rooms. And then the door would open with my darling showing her lovely face to me. I would stand there and drink her beautiful face in. I miss her so much. She would be wearing a dark blue wraparound tiny white polka dotted dress with white leather high heeled sandals. Her lovely little toes, coloured red, would be peeking out from the white leather sandals. She must have picked that up from the Indian mehendi night she was invited to once and has grown to like since. Her long tresses would be piled up high on her head and combined with her long neck, it would make her look like one of the lithographs I saw of a statue of Athena, the Greek goddess. I would simply gaze at her and then rush up the drive way to embrace her.

She would shed tears while we kiss deeply. I would just bury my face in her neck and sniff and inhale and breathe in her absolutely bewitching perfume. She has an absolutely unique fragrance around her, a deep mystical and dreamlike combination of coconut, ivory, silk, mother of pearl, chocolate covered dates, Hibiscus flowers and Amarula. So many times I had wished for a tiny Nancy whom I could keep around my neck and go around my day surrounded by her fragrance. She would laugh and complain about my bushy beard reddening her skin and that all the neighbours would know that her husband has now come home. For the past many months, her silky skin was unblemished but now she will have these red splotches. How on earth will she ever explain it, she would laugh while nuzzling into my beard.

And then she would draw me into the drawing room where I would finally look at my two tiny little angels in their bassinets, their shining wispy curls cradling two angelic sleepy faces. I look at my hands, which confidently destroy and exorcise demons of disease deep inside delicate bodies and organs, my hands which can wield a scalpel with consummate ease and delicacy, and they look like giant shovels compared to these two tiny perfect angels in their bassinets. I would reach down and Nancy would gasp in horror, exclaiming that she has just about managed to get the twins to sleep and for me not to disturb them. She then would wrinkle her fine patrician nose at my odorous smell (not surprising, I have been unable to take a hot bath for the past two months) and then would threaten me with dire curses if I touch the twins with my dirty hands.

She would take me to the warm kitchen where I would get a hair cut, a beard trim, my nails cut, all while I would be gorging on this thick stew and warm bread. What a difference food makes. I could spend hours in the kitchen just watching Nancy cook her wonderful meals. She has this amazing ability to pinch, sniff, grab, spin and then out pops an amazing meal. It is like she is handling a philharmonic orchestra of gastronomic delights. Absolutely wonderful! And then, barbered, fed, bathed and cleaned, we would repair to somewhere else to finally be close as two people can be and let our passions take us over.

But those are dreams or perhaps memories of the good and early days if one could say that. Those days, I was flush with motivation and patriotism. I was like a tiger after every wounded soldier, not letting them die. I was doing it for my country first and for my commanders second. I trusted them and still believed in the flag. But now? After months of loneliness and surrounded by constant pain, tears, blood, death and cries of dying men, my vision has been taken away and some evil spirit has taken over even my dreams.

“I dreamt consistant that I will record it. . . . I went home and was met by Nancy who appeared very serious and I think cried. I look’d for the little

Twin Girls she told me the oldest was dead and that it died of the same footsore she wrote about. The other babe she showed to me it was very small. Though three months old, I thought – I thought no so very small so small as I expected Its features more expressively course {sic} and I think it was the ugliest face I ever saw – I did not like it and did not take it in my arms, I had Nancy a little while of evening in my arms”

I see what I have written in my diary and give a twisted smile at the page. It obviously came from the time that we lost our other baby. Our first baby was conceived when we were visiting Charleston to see the sights of that lovely city. It was a lovely trip and we left the city with memories enough to last our lifetimes. A city full of lovely buildings, cemeteries, churches, the first museum in America and beautiful promenades. Little did we know that our happiness will be doubled immediately as soon as we got home when Nancy announced that she was with child. We were giddily happy - but then it was not to happen, because God unmercifully tore our baby away from Nancy. She suffered a bad miscarriage and other than tears; I could not do anything to help. It must have been that memory of Nancy losing her baby which lodged inside my mind and caused me to relive those horrible days.

But that was then, now I am in a different mood. I have not been with Nancy for months on end. I look around and see savagery, blood, wounds, rotten flesh and all surrounded with a miasma of corruption bathed in disgusting smells. And this is perfect the breeding ground for demons of bad memories and lust. All elements of tenderness, love, adoration and softness have been driven out by lust and desire. Me, who was well known to be a gentleman have become a barbarian, but I cannot explain what I saw myself doing in my dream. I pick up my pen and code

123dwfkdsfa asd asdlkj asldase09qwelk aq saqlidsjqpowue09q3 qsd asldksaldj asidq qwe109283 qwdea alsdj asd9aqew098qwe aqdsi alskdj alskdj alkdj alskdj q

and then finish by:

Behold it was a dream and well it was as I was, and was as she would not do . . . I do not know what evil Genius should Thus excite my fancy my waking thoughts . . ..

I slam the diary shut and throw the book inside my trunk, reach for the rum bottle and then let the mists of time and sleep take me….

2007 AD, City University of New York

Dr. Kent Boklan peered closely at the photocopies of the four pages of the diary of Dr. William Pitt sent over to him by the Tennessee State Library and tried to make out the writing. He raised his eyes and thought back on his long career in cryptography. He had never seen something so personal yet evocative in his life. He started doodling to try to understand the coding that Dr. Pitt had used.

Many days of complex calculations later.

Dr. Boklan looked with pleasure and also profound sadness at the decoded text. Pleasure because he had managed to decode a very complex cryptographic code and sadness because of what was revealed. He looked at the first block of decoded text which he had written on a clean sheet of paper:

O, I WISH I WAS AT HOME. I AM TIRD OF SEEING WRETCHEDNESS. CAROLL, AS GREAT TYRANT AS {Bonaparte}. {He}’S TO ANSWER {for 500} LIVES. HE MUST BE {great} ONLY {with} BARBARIANS. {No Literature. No erudition. The Lord have mercy on liturg(illegible) subject to nigh a} [CIPHER]. {The} CRIES {of the} WIDOW AND ORPHAN {will} PERSUE {him to his} GRAVE. {History a knowledge of and Literature are indispensably necessary to constitute a commanding Officer.}.

And the second one

IN BED, I EAGERLY URGED [NANCY] [spectacles symbol] [FROM] [SEX]. NANCY WAS ICY COLD, UNWILLING, I [WITH] FORCE HELD HER [spectacles], PRESSD [double box] INTO [NANCY’S] GROTTO, PAST AND EXQUISITE PORTAL, AND ABOUT [WITH] TASTE AND EXTACY AND DIE [WITH] BLISS WHEN SHE TORE HERSELF [FROM] ME, I TURND [FROM] HER WITH DISGUST AND, IN EXECRATING, AWOKE AND.

He slipped the two pages into an envelope along with the four photocopied ones of Dr. Pitt’s diary, sealed it and sat back in his chair staring at the envelope but thinking about a desolate man in a medical tent two centuries ago.

Note: This story has been inspired by the paper in which Dr. Kent Boklan describes how he broke a complex code (“How I Broke an Encrypted Diary from the War of 1812” published in the journal Cryptologia, 32:4,299 — 310, not available online)

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