'After the explosion, which took place at noon, the fort was subjected to a heavy fire, and our men ran to the retrenchment and held it. To this timely occupation of the retrenchment I ascribe the death of many of the Japanese "forlorn hope." Having jumped up on to the parapet and seen that we were there to meet them, they hesitated for a moment, but this moment was long enough for them to be wafted into eternity. They were buried under the falling débris of the explosion. At the same time the Japanese guns opened fire on all our near batteries; and when these were silenced, whole regiments of the enemy stormed the parapet, but were repulsed with case shot and rifle-fire. A few men only reached the craters, whence they began throwing grenades, while we, from the glacis and caponier, fired torpedo-heads and bombs.'
The storming by whole Japanese regiments is pure imagination on the part of Fock, who was at the time at least four miles from the scene of action. Mr. Norregaard,[47] who watched the attack, says that, after the destruction of the first party of stormers by the falling débris and the fire of our batteries, the Japs busied themselves clearing the approaches to the fort and did not assault till evening.
'The heroic garrison were almost all annihilated, when a reserve of sailors was sent up to the fort. I regret that I cannot say to what ship they belonged or what officers were with them; I can only say that from first to last they were heroes.
'They had to go from the Chinese Wall through Kuropatkin Lunette, and what was this lunette like by now? Stones, planks, sand-bags, corpses were all jumbled together in the trenches, and at the entrance of that communicating from Fort No. 2 there was not a vestige of a parapet. These men at first ran along the trench, and then, seeing that it was filled up, jumped out to right and left, and under a murderous fire doubled along in the open, officers in front. They rushed to where it entered the fort, which was full of killed and wounded. Some crossed the bridge, others went down into the ditch, jumping from heap to heap.
'They entered the fort in order to fill the thinned ranks of the defenders, and seventeen of them were at once blown up by a mine. With their arrival one might have felt confident that the fort would not easily be seized by the Japanese; but darkness came on and the shouts of "Banzai" could still be heard, mingling into one continuous and increasing roar.
'The wounded now came back less frequently, but those that came told of horrors. From what they said I understood how difficult it was to cross the ditch, and that few would succeed in doing it; and so, fearing that all means of access would be closed, I asked for the bamboo ladders to be sent up, which had been taken from the enemy on November 26, when they tried to storm Fort No. 3.
'The position of the garrison got worse and worse. To get an order taken we had to call for volunteers and offer the Cross of St. George to those who succeeded in carrying it. It was clear to me and to every one else present that the fort could not be held longer under such conditions, and so I thought it my duty to withdraw the remnants of that gallant band at night. I reported this to General Stössel and asked his permission to abandon the fort; he agreed.
'I then ordered Colonel Glagoleff to hold on till night, when, after removing everything possible in the way of supplies, he was to withdraw the men and blow up the fort.
'At 11.30 p.m. the garrison moved out of the fort, which was blown up at 2 a.m., and retired on Kuropatkin Lunette. It had held out for four months, despite the Japanese having seized the caponier in October, and established themselves in the ditch. Military history contains few instances of such a dogged and prolonged defence.
'Next day General Smirnoff had the above quoted conversation with me. In reply to his question as to why I had surrendered the fort, etc., I said:
'"I did not need your men; they would only have hampered me."
'He seemed surprised at this answer and asked, "Why?"
'"Because," I said, "the men would never have reached the place, and then what should I have done? They wouldn't have gone because they couldn't have done it."
'"Ah, your men are wasters—runaways!" said he, and then began to talk of them in his usual manner.
'I quoted a few instances from history to him—among them some of Austerlitz—in order to show him that some things always had been and always would be; and I finished my remarks by saying:
'"It was a pity that you were not taught psychology at the Academy."'
No one denies that the fort was in a very bad way, but such conditions are only to be expected in war where the path to glory is not strewn with roses. As soon as the situation became critical the garrison should have been reinforced, and this Fock did not do. He had decided during the day that the fort could not be held, and for this reason abandoned it.
In repeating his conversation with Smirnoff he perverted the facts, which were, as I have already described in detail in a foregoing chapter. Since he touched on the question of psychology, it would be interesting to know what kind of psychology he himself understood—that of police-work service or of war? Smirnoff certainly did occasionally call the men 'runaways' in conversation with his intimate friends, but he was far from thinking that the troops could be disobedient. In saying that 'the men would never have reached the place, and then what should I have done?' Fock was himself accurately describing the very demoralization of which he was accused of being the cause. During Kondratenko's life there had been no suggestion of such a spirit.
'After this I felt it was useless to attempt to persuade Smirnoff of anything, for the simple reason that both he and Colonel Khvostoff look upon every one who was not a General officer or an officer of the General Staff in the same way that our great-grandmothers looked upon their serf-handmaidens.'
What General Fock meant by this I really cannot tell.
'Our great-grandmothers said and believed that it was impossible for Palashka to fall in love. In the same way General Smirnoff and Colonel Khvostoff believed that the common soldier had no instinct of self-preservation, and that such need not therefore be taken into consideration. It need only, they thought, be reckoned with in Generals and General Staff officers, who alone have a right to possess it.
'Colonel Khvostoff preached this doctrine to General Nickitin in the following words: "Officers of the General Staff are of great value to the Empire, and they should, therefore, take care of their lives."'
'From General Smirnoff's words, "It undermined the root of the principle which I have always insisted on," it is evident that General Stössel did not harass General Smirnoff as much as the latter sometimes makes out. Moreover, all who went through the siege would like to know in what way Smirnoff insisted on the observance of this principle. Principles can be driven into men by orders, speeches, and examples. He did not do it in his orders, for such as he issued were generally taken up with the transfer of nursing-sisters from one hospital to another. And he was wise, for such orders can only be written by leaders like Tsar Peter, Suvoroff, Napoleon, who are well known to their men. He did not attempt it by speeches; for where, when, and to whom could he speak? Church parades were few, and were rarely attended by more than twenty to thirty men per regiment. For a new, unknown man like General Smirnoff there was only one way left—"example"; but this method was out of date, and its uselessness was shown by Gustavus Adolphus, Nakhimoff, Korniloff, Istomin, and therefore it did not find favour with him!
'All this proves that he did not inculcate his principle to the garrison of Arthur, though undoubtedly future generations will know of it through the medium of Roop's Commission.'
It is perfectly true that Smirnoff did not take to speechifying. Together with Kondratenko he worked at the fortifying of the place while General Stössel was haranguing the troops at church parades and writing long orders and detailed telegrams. This principle was not published in orders, as it was well understood by all good officers. Of this there could be no two opinions. Generals Smirnoff, Kondratenko, Gorbatovsky, Irman, and Tretiakoff, who stood at the head of their troops in Arthur, supported by their fearless example—fighting desperately for every inch of ground entrusted to them—and not by their words, this principle, which according to Fock was incomprehensible and silly.
The next generation will know through this Commission how well the garrison of Arthur lived up to that principle, and it will, at the same time, know on whom the responsibility of surrender rests.