Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun

by Collingwood Harry

The Bohr began the day’s proceedings by opening fire with her 9-inch gun upon the artillery of our 3rd Division, which had taken up a position upon the lower slopes of Mount Sampson, from which it could reach the Russian batteries established upon the crest of the Nanshan Heights. The gunboat’s fire did very little mischief, but it seemed to be regarded by both sides as a signal to begin the fight, for at once our batteries got to work, their shells dropping with most beautiful precision upon the guns and trenches of the Russians. I was so stationed that I had a most excellent view of practically the entire scene of operations, and no sooner did our artillery open fire than the Russian batteries replied with a crash that seemed to make the very air quiver.

A land battle is a very different spectacle from a sea battle, in this respect: that, in the latter, a shell either hits or misses its mark, and if it misses there is a splash or two and that ends the matter, so far as that particular shell is concerned. But ashore, every shell, whether or not it finds its mark, hits something, though it be only the ground, and immediately there is a violent explosion, a flash of fire, a great cloud of smoke, and a violent scattering of dust, clods of earth, and stones—if nothing worse. Thus, I must confess that for a few seconds I was perfectly amazed to see the slopes of Mount Sampson, on the one hand, where our artillery was placed, and the Nanshan Heights, on the other, where were situated the Russian batteries, suddenly burst into great jets of flame, clouds of smoke, and flying débris, as the shells showered down upon them. The explosions of shrapnel were easily distinguished from those of common shell, for the former almost invariably burst in the air, the smoke from the explosions standing out against the background of sky or hill like tufts of cotton-wool that had suddenly sprung into existence from nowhere.

Very shortly after the artillery duel began, I saw the Japanese infantry moving out to storm the Nanshan Heights, and I smiled to myself at the acuteness of their leaders, for the men began their advance in such open formation that a shrapnel shell seldom succeeded in accounting for more than one man, and often enough it failed to do even that. Of course they were seen from the trenches, and a terrific rifle-fire was opened upon them, but for the same reason it was very ineffective—at the outset at least, for a rifleman had to be a crack shot to bowl over his man at a distance of close upon a mile. And if one wished to get his man, he had to aim at him, and correctly judge the distance too. This, of course, was at the beginning of the attack; later on, matters became a good deal more favourable for the defenders and correspondingly adverse to the attacking force.

I was interestedly watching the development of the attack upon the heights, when a galloper dashed up to me with a message from the General requesting me to signal our ships in the offing to concentrate their fire upon the Nanshan ridge; and so smart were our men, and so keen a lookout were they maintaining aboard our ships, that within three minutes of the receipt by me of the order, their 10-inch, 5-inch, and 6-inch shells were dropping all along the ridge, busily searching it for the Russian batteries, the positions of which, unfortunately, could not be seen from the western side.

For the next half-hour I was kept incessantly employed in signalling our fleet, directing their fire; but the shoal water of Kinchau Bay was all against us, and although our ships drew in so close that they touched the ground several times, they were still too far off to actually silence the Russian batteries, although they contrived to give them a very severe punishing and, to some extent, distract their attention from the stormers. Unfortunately, they could only muster six heavy guns between them, and these, at the extreme range at which they were obliged to fire, were not nearly enough, though they certainly helped.

When at length I was once more free to turn my attention to what was happening on the eastern side of the heights, I saw that our foremost line of skirmishers had reached a spot about a mile distant from the first Russian defences, consisting of a perfect maze of wire entanglements, and were signalling back to the main body. Almost immediately a detachment of Cossacks appeared, advancing at a gallop toward the signallers, from the direction of Linshiatun, a village on the shore of Sunk Bay, and as the horsemen appeared every Japanese soldier vanished, as if by magic, having flung himself down upon the ground and taken cover. On swept the Cossacks, yelling, lashing their horses with their whips, and brandishing their long lances. Suddenly, down went a horse and rider, the next instant a Cossack flung up his arms and collapsed inert upon his horse’s neck, then another reeled and fell, then two or three went down almost at the same instant, then half a dozen. And the curious thing about it was that there was nothing, no sudden spurt of flame, no smoke wreath, no crack of a rifle, to account for these casualties. That is to say, I could neither see nor hear anything; but the fact was that those Cossacks were going down before the calm, deliberate rifle-fire of the concealed Japanese infantry-men. Then a flash from one of the field-guns of our 3rd Division caught my eye, and before the sharp bark of it reached my ear, a white tuft of cotton-wool-like smoke suddenly appeared in the air above the galloping Cossacks, and more of them went down. Another flash, and another, and another, more tufts of cotton-wool leaping into view, tremendous disorder and confusion among the Cossacks, men and horses falling right and left, and then the survivors suddenly wheeled outward and galloped back at headlong speed, leaving behind them a mangled heap of men and horses, the greater number dead, but here and there a prostrate, kicking horse might be seen, or a wounded Cossack crawling slowly and painfully away from the scene of carnage.

The flight of the Cossacks was the signal for the resumption of the advance by the Japanese, whose skirmishers reappeared, still in very open formation, a man here and a man there showing for a few seconds as, in a crouching attitude, he rose to his feet, scurried forward a few yards, and then again took cover, while the fire of the Russian guns swept the ground over which he was passing. As yet, however, there appeared to be very few casualties among our men; here and there I noticed a prostrate form lying motionless, while others crept up and scuttled past him; he had been found by a shrapnel shell, and his share of the work was done; but even shrapnel cannot do much harm if the formation is kept sufficiently open. And as man after man pushed forward, others crept out, following, until the whole of the ground between our lines and the base of the heights was dotted with Japanese infantry-men creeping ever closer up to the first line of the Russian defence, the terrible maze of barbed wire entanglements.

Meanwhile, the whole of the Japanese field artillery, as well as that of our ships, was concentrating its fire upon the crest of the heights, covering the advance of the stormers; and now my attention was once more diverted from that advance by the necessity for me to signal directions to the fleet. And now it was that the full value of my previous labours began to be manifested; for I had but to signal the ships to direct their fire upon such and such a point—wherever, in fact, a Russian battery was proving especially troublesome—and all that the gun-layers had to do was to refer to the maps with which I had supplied them, and they were at once informed of the exact range of that point, with the result that a hail of shells instantly began to fall upon that particular battery with the most deadly precision. Thus, after a little while, every battery on the heights became in turn the focus of a terrific crossfire from the ships and the field batteries, the effect of which soon became manifest in the silencing of several of the Russian guns, either by dismounting, or, as we afterwards discovered, by the complete destruction of the men working them.

With the guns of our fleet playing such havoc among the ten forts which crowned the heights, it now became possible for our field artillery to turn its attention upon the trenches, tier after tier of which lined the eastern slope of the heights, up which our stormers would have to pass. Those trenches were quite formidable works, roofed over with timber and earth to protect the occupants from artillery fire, and loopholed for rifle-fire; yet, thanks again to my labours of the previous day in determining the exact range of them, our guns were able to search them from end to end, blowing the parapets to dust and matchwood, and hurling the wreckage among the gunners who were working the Russian quick-firers and machine-guns, many of whom were thus killed or wounded. The carnage must have been—indeed was, as we later saw for ourselves—frightful, yet the Russians maintained a most gallant defence, and clung to their trenches with unflinching determination. A lucky shell from one of our field-guns fell upon and exploded one of the many Russian mines which were scattered pretty thickly over the hillside, and the explosion blew a big gap in one of the lines of wire entanglements, a circumstance which without doubt resulted subsequently in the saving of many lives.

Hour after hour the artillery duel proceeded, our gunners doing their utmost to cover the slow advance of the stormers, while the Russian artillery systematically swept with a crossfire every inch of the ground which our men would have to traverse. The crash of the artillery was continuous and most distracting, and the effect was intensified by the incessant scream of the shells and the sharp thud as they burst, interspersed with the everlasting hammering of the machine-guns and quick-firers; Nanshan was ablaze with the fire of the Russian guns and the bursting of our shells, and the entire hill was enwrapped in fantastically whirling wreaths of smoke which were every moment rent violently asunder by the explosion of bursting shells.