After one night attack the Japanese left 7,000 dead and wounded on the hill-side. They could not fetch them in, though they were within call. Some few crawled back to their friends at night; many lay out for days, being fed by biscuits and balls of rice thrown from the Japanese trenches—the Japanese were fed almost entirely on rice.
A naval surgeon tells a story which explains the conduct of the Japanese when suffering intense pain. He says:
“When the battleship Hatsure was sunk in May, a sailor was laid on the operating-table who had a piece of shell 2½ inches long bedded in his right thigh. I offered him a cigar as he came in, which he eagerly took, but the surgeon told him not to smoke it just then. His smaller injuries were first attended to, and then the surgeon turned to the severe wound in the man’s thigh.
“In order to pull out the piece of steel still embedded in the limb, he was obliged to pass his hand into the wound, which was deep enough to hide it as far as the wrist. During this painful operation the sailor never spoke or winced, but kept trying to reach the breast-pocket of his coat. At length the surgeon, irritated by his fidgety manner, asked: ‘What are you doing? Why can’t you keep quiet?’
“The sailor replied: ‘I want to give that English gentleman a cigarette in exchange for the cigar he kindly gave me.’ Even in the throes of that agony the Japanese sailor could not forget his politeness and gratitude.”
They are a curious mixture of opposites, these Japanese—one day facing machine-guns like fiends incarnate, or giving their bodies to be used as a human ladder in attempt to escalade a fort, the next day sucking sweetmeats like little boys. You come upon some groups by a creek: they are laughing and playing practical jokes as they sharpen up their bayonets with busy, innocent faces, making ready for the great assault at dawn to-morrow. A few yards further on you find them in all states of undress, their underwear fluttering to the breeze, some of them sitting on the stones and tubbing with real soap. You ask them, Why so busy this afternoon? They smile and nod their heads towards Port Arthur, and one who speaks English explains that they had been taught at school this proverb: “Japanese fight like gentlemen, and if they are found dead on the field, they will be found like gentlemen, clean and comely.”
There were so many forms of death in this siege—plurima mortis imago, as Virgil says—from the speedy bullet to the common shell, shrapnel, and pom-pom. But besides these common inventions there were mines that exploded under their feet as they walked, hand-grenades thrown in their faces as they approached the forts; there were pits filled with petroleum ready to be lit by an electric wire, and poisonous gases to be flung from wide-mouthed mortars. But the one which spread terror even amongst the bravest was what they called “the unknown death.” It was said that during the early attacks in August, one whole line of infantry which was rushing to the assault had fallen dead side by side, and that no wounds had been found on them. At last it was discovered the Russian chief electrician had ordered a “live” wire to be placed among the ordinary wire entanglements, furnished with a current strong enough to kill anyone who touched it.
Of course, it was liable to be destroyed by shell or cannon fire, but in many cases it proved fatal, and always made the attackers nervous. The Russians had such steel-wire entanglements placed at the foot of all their positions, and where success depended on the dash and speed of the infantry, they succeeded in stopping them and exposing them to a heavy fire. As a rule, volunteers went out at night with strong wire-nippers and cut the strands, or they set fire to the wooden posts and let them come to the ground together. Sometimes in a fierce charge the sappers used to lie down beneath the wires, pretending to be dead, and choose a moment for using their nippers; some even, in their desperate efforts to get through, would seize the wire between their teeth and try and bite it through.
The man among the Russians who was the mainspring of the defence was General Kondrachenko. He was an eminent engineer, very popular with the men, one of the bravest and most scientific of the Russian officers. On the 15th of December the General and his staff were sitting inside North Keikwansan Fort, in the concrete barrack just underneath the spot where a shell had made a hole in the roof. This had been repaired, and they had come to see if it had been well done. As luck would have it, a second 28-centimetre shell came through the same place and burst inside the barrack, killing the gallant Kondrachenko and eight other officers who were with him. This was the gravest blow that Port Arthur could have suffered, for this man was the spirit of resistance personified.
After his death Stoessel began to seek for excuses to surrender. He called a council of war, and proposed that, as the Japanese had taken so many forts and sunk their warships, terms of surrender should be proposed. Almost every one was opposed to it, and some officers were so disgusted that they privately suggested kidnapping Stoessel and locking him up.