The partial mobilization proved unsatisfactory, but it was not merely an accident of the war. Owing to the enormous extent of our frontiers, we might have been drawn just as easily into a European struggle that would have necessitated a general mobilization as into a war which required only a partial one. Thus, in addition to having a plan for general call to arms, we had to work out different schemes for partial mobilization to meet certain contingencies. It was laid down as a basis for these schemes that their application should not interfere with a general mobilization if that also proved necessary, so certain areas had to be selected for the calling out of reserves which would not interfere with the general and more important scheme. The number of these areas could only be kept down by taking from them the maximum of reserve men—i.e., those of all categories irrespective of age. The first scheme for partial mobilization on these lines was drawn up and approved in 1896, when General Vannovski was War Minister, and when it was found necessary, in 1903, to work out fresh plans in case of complications with Japan, they were naturally based upon the old scheme. Having at that time complete faith in the reliability of the 2nd Category reservists, I (then War Minister) concurred in the general lines adopted, and submitted the new plan to the Tsar for approval, but only as regards the first reinforcements to be sent to the Far East. After I had seen the first consignment which actually reached the front, I asked that no more 2nd Category reservists or men with large families should be sent. When the second partial mobilization (54th, 61st, and 71st Divisions) took place, a half-hearted attempt was made to reject men with large families; but it was not till the fifth and sixth mobilizations that 2nd Category reservists and family men were, by the Emperor’s wish, left behind. Neither the people nor the reservists could understand why 2nd Category reservists with families were taken from one district or one set of villages, and bachelors who had only just passed into the reserve from the colours were rejected in others. Future schemes for partial mobilization must be drawn up on entirely different lines from those of 1896 and 1903. Although 2nd Category reservists were being sent to the front, we continued to allow men to pass as usual from the regular army into the reserve, even letting them go before they had completed their five years with the colours. This state of affairs was extremely harmful to the army, but can be partly explained as follows:—In the spring of 1904, just after the commencement of the war, the recruits of that year should have begun to join all units in European Russia. In peace, infantry soldiers are usually passed from the colours to the reserve at the end of the manœuvres when they have done only three years and a few months’ service out of five (four manœuvres and three winters). It did not occur to the Headquarter Staff to make use of these men for the army in the field, though there were more than 200,000 of them—young soldiers, splendidly trained—who might have been enrolled in reserve units and then sent as drafts to the front. In this matter Headquarters were guided by considerations quite unconnected with the war. The advisability of retaining in their regular units the men about to pass to the reserve was indeed considered, but it was put down as having many disadvantages. The political side of the matter was what carried most weight at Headquarters; moreover, questions of finance were involved, for the men so retained with the colours would, upon arrival of the recruits, have been supernumerary to the establishment. But, owing to the shortage caused by the formation of new corps, it was found difficult to carry out guard and other duties, and in some units the men due to leave were retained with the colours till the young soldiers had joined the ranks. General officers in command of districts gave various replies when asked for their opinions on this matter; some were for retaining the men, others for letting them go. In the summer of 1904 the War Minister asked the Tsar’s permission to authorize commanding officers to pass men of the infantry, field artillery, and engineers into the reserve if they thought fit, provided that men were not kept with the colours longer than March 31, 1905. The transfer in other arms of the Service was to be as usual. Thus the retention in the ranks of these time-expired soldiers was the exception, and was not dependent on the war. Always fearful of a European war, we replaced the troops sent from Russia to the front by forming a large number of new divisions from the reservists. This course was also necessary for the maintenance of internal order. On August 23, 1904, officers commanding districts were authorized to transfer men retained with the colours into the newly formed infantry and artillery units, and thus to get rid of the same number of 2nd Category reservists. Thus the reserve divisions formed for service in the interior of Russia began to be filled by good men and rid of 2nd Category men before the divisions at the front were. In the autumn of 1904, at the request of the authorities in the field, authority was given to transfer men retained with the colours up to March 31, 1905, into the units mobilized and expanded by the seven partial mobilizations, and to discharge from these units the 2nd Category reservists and men of large families. It was only on December 27, 1904, when the young soldiers joined the ranks, that arrangements were made to transfer the men retained with the colours into the units that were not mobilized or expanded. These men were available for despatch to the front as drafts in the summer and autumn of 1904, but they only arrived a year later, after the Mukden battles, when they were too late. These splendid men saw no fighting at all.
I have endeavoured to explain ([Chapter VII.]) on what a large scale the Japanese made use of their reserve troops, and how rapidly they replaced casualties. The organization of the reserve units in the Russian army, on the other hand, was not fully completed before the war, for we had only been able to go ahead as funds permitted. The number of reserve troops in the Far East corresponded to the small number of units stationed there in the first instance, but while we increased our numbers out there it was not considered convenient to increase the reserve units, the number of reservists living there and in Siberia being insufficient to fill them. But if we had had the cadres of a large number of reserve units there, it would have been easy to send the reservists to them from European Russia. The six reserve battalions stationed in Pri-Amur had lost most of their permanent cadres in the first fights. The army generally had to operate with a constantly decreasing establishment, due to a variety of causes:
1. Units arriving as reinforcements sometimes came with a shortage of 15 to 20 per cent. among the men, and 25 per cent. among the officers. The 10th Army Corps in particular arrived very short—a fact which I immediately reported to the War Minister.
2. Owing to the shortage of men in the administrative services and of the auxiliary troops, many duties had to be carried out by the regiments in the field—i.e., duties in rear, at camps, on the line of communication, at hospitals, in the commissariat and transport, as well as guards for the different store depôts. Advantage was taken of these duties to get rid of the 2nd Category reservists.
3. A large number of men had to be told off to guard property left in the staff quarters of the Viceroyalty, and the stores, supplies, and droves of cattle collected for the troops at work on the railways, bridges, and for other odd duties.
4. On the days of heavy engagements the shortage increased by tens of thousands, and even in periods of comparative quiet the number of killed and wounded in some units was very high.
5. Sickness.
All these reasons combined necessitated a continual stream of reinforcements to the front. But owing to the state of the railway there were intervals, and fairly long ones, when the army received no drafts—as, for instance, in July, August, and September, 1904, when, as I have already mentioned, we lost 100,000 men, and only received 21,000.
The advance at the beginning of October, 1904, was made when the army was much below strength, some regiments having only half, and even less, of their proper complement. And this shortage of men was increased on the eve of a battle by the large numbers left with the transport, at the staff quarters and as officers’ servants—men who were in reality combatants. Curiously enough, many commanding officers showed no particular anxiety to take their units into action as strong as possible. But what was most serious was the speed with which some units melted away as soon as they came under fire; directly casualties happened this dissolution commenced. Men were told off, with the knowledge of their commanding officers, to assist company and divisional stretcher-bearers in carrying the wounded out of action. If the number of wounded were large, an enormous number of unwounded men went to the rear. The cowardly and the skulkers did their best to get detailed for this duty, or went off with wounded men without orders, or left the ranks without any excuse. I have seen stretchers with wounded men accompanied by as many as ten unwounded soldiers. In some regiments the numbers thus voluntarily retiring from the field amounted to hundreds; in one regiment[88] more than 1,000 men left the ranks in the first fight in which it took part. These were generally reservists, and chiefly those of the 2nd Category. The men with the colours, as a rule, did most of the fighting, and fought magnificently; sometimes even when companies were reduced to a handful of men they continued fighting. Of course, there were some gallant men amongst reservists, but, as a rule, any brave deeds that were performed were done by the men with the colours and 1st Category reservists. Even for the drafts, the men sent to the front were not selected with adequate care, and many were quite unfit for active service. In 1905, of some 76,000 who arrived for the 1st Army, 4,100 were sick or otherwise unfit. The following statement by the Adjutant-General of that Army is interesting:
“The drafts sent to the Army before the battle of Mukden were composed of 2nd Category reservists who left the colours about 1887. They were quite ignorant of the present rifle, and their training was in other ways far below the level of the men forming the permanent cadres of their units. Many of them were physically quite unfitted to endure the hardships of a campaign or of any military service, being chronic sufferers from diseases such as rheumatism. But those who arrived after the battle of Mukden were splendid. Reservists were sometimes drafted to an Arm of the service in which they had not served before passing to the reserve; for instance, men were put into the artillery who had done all their colour service in cavalry or infantry, while to engineer units were sent men who had served in the infantry. This, of course, caused considerable complication as regards training, and could not but militate against our field operations, especially in the case of the technical troops.”