THE BEGINNING OF THE GENERAL ASSAULT
WHEN a correspondent of the “Novoe Vremya” inspected the defenses of Port Arthur, his remark is reported to have been: “It is like an eagle’s nest that even a sky-scraping ladder cannot reach.” Yes, it was even so. As far as the eye could reach, every hill and every mountain was covered with forts and ramparts; the landward side was encircled with iron walls of tenfold strength, and its defenders were brave soldiers trained by the veteran General Dragomiloff,—courageous men, the strongest and quickest,—the flower of the Russian Army. We were now in front of this “impregnable” fortress to prove that it was “pregnable” after all. The 19th of August was the first day of the general attack, the starting-point of the historic incident of the fall of Port Arthur. The struggle that was to be characterized in the world’s history of warfare as the most difficult and most horrible of all struggles began on this day and lasted for more than four months. During this period our desperate attack was responded to by as desperate a defense, and our army paid an immense price for its victory, turning the mountains and valleys of Port Arthur into scorched earth honeycombed by shells, butchering men and capturing the fortress at last with bullets of human flesh shot out by the Yamato-Damashii itself. The gazing world was astonished by the wonderful efficiency of such a mode of warfare!
We, at the foot of Taku-shan, were hurrying on the various preparations for attack. We were making a special investigation of the ways and means of encountering the wire-entanglements, upon which the enemy depended as the most efficient of their secondary defensive works, and by the stakes and wires of which so many of our men had been killed in previous battles. All the hills in our sight, large or small, high or low, were wrapped about with these horrible things, that looked at a distance like dark dots on the ground.
We had to break these entanglements, step on them, and proceed. The cutting properly belonged to the engineers, but their number was limited while that of the wire-entanglements was almost limitless. So the infantry had to learn to cut them for themselves. An imitation entanglement was made on the bank of the river Taiko and we were taught by the engineers how to break it down. First of all, a group of shears-men would march up and cut the iron wires, then the saw-men would follow and knock down the stakes or else saw them through. When a part of the entanglement was thus opened, a detachment of men would rush through the opening.
This kind of work was of urgent necessity for us and we practiced it with zeal and diligence. But in actual fighting the work cannot be done so easily. The forlorn-hope engineers, who march up to destroy the entanglements, are always annihilated without exception, because they have to work before the very muzzles of the machine-guns. Moreover, it was discovered that these wires were charged with electricity. There were, however, two opinions about the electric current: one was that the electricity was strong enough to kill whoever touched the wires, and the other that it was only intended to inform the enemy’s watchtowers, by a weak current of electricity, of the approach of the destroyers. Whichever it might be, we could not cut the wires with ordinary scissors so long as they were charged with electricity, so we contrived to bind bamboo sticks to the handles of the shears to make them non-conducting. In spite of all these precautions, we found in actual fight that the wires were charged with a very strong current; some of our men were killed instantly by the shock, others had their limbs split like brushes of bamboo. We also practiced methods of crossing the enemy’s trenches with ladders, but again in actual fight we found that their trenches were too wide or too deep for these ladders to be of much use.
The fortress was protected by earth-mines, which were buried everywhere. They had to be destroyed by our engineers, by cutting off the fuse. Until the very day of our attack we could see through field-glasses groups of Russians at work here and there, burying these explosives in the ground with picks. We marked those places on our maps. We found out and remembered everything that we could; for instance, that each of the stakes of the entanglements was beaten down with twelve blows of a hammer, or how many earth-mines were being buried in any particular valley. Our reconnoitring parties found that every ravine up which our infantry was likely to march was set with mines, and that the methods of disposing them were very clever. To cite one example, where the ravine was narrowest there was buried a mine that would explode when stepped on. When the first man was killed in this way, the rest would of course divide themselves on either side of the ravine, where a series of mines would burst and kill all of the attacking party. It was extremely hard to go through these places in safety. On the top of all this, all the guns and rifles of all the forts and skirmish-trenches were so directed as to be able to aim at every ravine and every rock, so that none of us could escape the concentrated cross-fire from three directions. Their defense left almost nothing to be desired.
At dawn on the 19th of August, the whole line of our artillery opened fire simultaneously, with East Kikuan as our chief objective, but bombarding other forts at the same time. This was the first step in our general assault. Soon, our assaulting columns pushed on their way under cover of the artillery fire, approaching the enemy inch by inch, ready to rush upon them with one accord as soon as our fire began to take effect upon the Russians. Therefore our batteries devoted their whole energy to breaking the forts, shattering the bomb-proofs, and opening breaches in the skirmish-trenches through which our storming parties could enter.
No sooner had our firing begun than the enemy responded from all their batteries and tried hard to silence our artillery and impede the progress of our infantry. What a terrible scene presented itself when huge shells were exchanged between the heavy guns of both sides! Explosive shells as big as saké-casks[54] and spherical shells caused great vibrations in the air, and their groaning reverberation set at naught the fury of pealing thunders. The bursting of shells scattered lightning everywhere, and the smoke covered the scene with thick steamy clouds, in which it seemed impossible for any living thing to breathe. We nicknamed the enemy’s shells “train shells,” because they came moaning and shrieking just like a train leaving the station with sharp whistling. When we heard such a sound near us the whole earth shook, and in the tremendous roaring men, horses, rocks, and sand were all hurled up together. Everything that came into collision with these terrible trains was reduced to small fragments; these fragments would fall to the ground and then go up again, as if they had wings to fly with. One lieutenant’s neck was torn by a fragment of shell, and his head hung by the skin only. Both arms of a private were cut off clean from the shoulders by the same process.
This day was to come to an end with bombardment only. It had been our plan to employ the first day or two in bombarding the enemy and then to go on with an infantry attack. That evening I went on business to the headquarters of our division, that is, the place where our artillery was posted. It was a dark night, and through the sky whitish-blue bars of fire were flying to and fro between the contending parties; it looked to me like the highway leading to hell. The Russian search-lights were being thrown over the position of our artillery from Kikuan-shan and Hokuginzan. These terrible lights would turn every now and then toward our infantry, who were approaching the enemy step by step. We, too, used the search-lights captured from the enemy and tried to counteract the power of theirs and also to expose the Russian battery to view, but they were far inferior to those still in the enemy’s possession. Star-shells were shot off from time to time by the enemy, which illuminated the sky far better than the annual display of fireworks at Ryogoku.[55] They were like great electric lamps hanging in the air, making the whole place as light as day, so that even the movement of an ant could easily be detected. They were powerful in thwarting the progress of our assaulting column, because every movement of the detachment was exposed by this light and could be accurately seen by the enemy, and the usual machine-guns were sure to pour a rain of horrible shot upon the invaders. Therefore, as soon as we saw the star-rocket burst in the sky, we used to caution each other, saying, “Don’t move! don’t move!”
When I reached headquarters, the division-commander and his staff were standing at our artillery position and watching this scene of night fighting without the cover of darkness. As soon as a search-light was seen in a Russian fort, our chief-of-staff would order, “Hit that! Smash that fellow!” He said, folding his arms in utter unconcern: “I feel like a young bride! Exposed to such a full glare of light, I am awfully shy and bashful!”
Our detachment marched as far as Yangchia-kou during this night. Soon after we reached there, a shell came near us with a tremendous noise. We said to each other: “Some must have been killed. Who are they? Who?” When the smoke cleared, we found four or five men lying dead or wounded, two of them recruits who had arrived only a few days before from home. One of the two was killed in a horrible manner; the half of his body below the waist was entirely gone. The legs of the other were shattered and the blood was gushing out like water. His captain went to him and encouraged him, saying: “Don’t be afraid! Be brave!”
“Captain, I am very sorry to be thus disabled without having fought at all. I will come back healed as quickly as possible. Please let me be in your company again.”
“Even without having fought, your wounds are honorable. Get well quickly and come back!”
Why one is shot on the battle-field and the other not seems an inscrutable mystery. Some there are who in one severe fight after another do not sustain a single scratch; others seem to be followed by shot or to draw shot to themselves. Some are killed very soon after landing and before knowing how it feels to be shot at. When once you become a target for shot, forty or fifty may come to you, as to that man in the battle of Taipo-shan of whom I have already spoken. Is this what is called fate, or is it mere chance? On the 19th, when the headquarters of the division were removed to the northern slope of Taku-shan, the division-commander was observing the enemy, with a staff-officer on either side, when a projectile came and both the staff-officers were killed on the spot, while the general in the middle was not even slightly hurt. In an assault on a fortress those in front have of course the highest probability of being hit, but even those in the rear sustain more injury than in a field battle. Napoleon said: “A shot may be aimed at you, but cannot pursue you. If it could pursue you at all, it would overtake you even if you fled to the uttermost parts of the earth.” Yes, a shot is an uncanny thing, like an apparition. With our human power we cannot tell whether it will hit us or not. It depends entirely upon one’s luck. There is another incident that I recollect in this connection. After the battle of Taipo-shan, five or six of the retreating Russians were walking off in a leisurely way, without hurrying, and swinging their arms. This behavior we thought very impudent, and each of us aimed at them as carefully as in drill-ground practice and fired at them with our rifles resting on something steady, but all in vain. One officer was sure he could hit them, but he too failed, and the Russians continued to walk off slowly and were eventually lost sight of. Several times after this, we tried our skill in musketry on a Russian standing on a fort and waving his handkerchief to challenge us, or on some audacious fellow who would dare to come out of the breastwork and insult us. In spite of our skill, indignation, and curiosity combined, these impudent fellows often escaped in safety. Such being the case, those who have been through several battles become naturally careless and fearless. At first we involuntarily lower our heads a little at the sound of a small bullet. Even the officer who scolds his men, saying, “Who is it that salutes the enemy’s shot?” cannot help nodding to the enemy at first. Of course this does not imply timidity at all; it seems to be the result of some sort of reflex action of the nerves. But when the shot begin to come like a shower of rain, we can no longer give each shot a bow, but become bold at once. The boom and roar of big shells excite in us no special sensation. When we know that by the time we hear these horrible sounds the projectiles have gone far past us, our courage is confirmed and, instead of bowing to an empty sound, we begin to think of standing on the breastwork and munching rice-balls to show off to the enemy! And the shot seems to shun those audacious ones as a rule, to go round them and call upon others!
Ch. XXV.