In the Yellow Sea

by Henry Frith

THE CHINESE WERE LYING ANYHOW

These are common instances which indicate the temperaments and courage of the two nations. The Japanese shot in the forehead or chest falls forward and dies. The Chinese I saw were fugitives who had cast away their weapons and clothing the more easily to escape and to be mistaken for civilians. I must add that the Japanese wounded never seemed to complain or cry out. Their fortitude under the most deplorable conditions, amid terrible injuries and wounds, was Spartan-like—heroic.

That cold night, for which all were unprepared, found those on the hills badly off, though wearied to death they lay, some beside watch-fires some in the darkness, dead asleep; while the soldiers in the waking town conducted themselves like absolute fiends. As already stated, the soldiers were exasperated by the brutality of the Chinese, but that was scarce a reason for the wholesale and deliberate murder of civilians, women, and children in cold blood.

Next morning, under the guidance of a soldier and the interpreter, I essayed to reach the town. We descended the hill, my companions looking triumphantly upon the devastation and the evidences of death, which, though now familiar to me, were none the less terrible.

The town was reached, and we entered it near the dock where is a reservoir of water, a kind of lake, one may say, at the foot of the sloping ground. There even my callous companions halted. The pool was full of dead bodies floating in all kinds of attitudes, head downwards, or extended on the back or face bleeding or bloodless, many women, and even young children. There they lay, some floating, as I have said, some pressed down by others, some lying half in and half out of the bloodstained water, all killed by violence, by the rifle-shot or bayonet, and hacked as savages would not have thought of doing.

And this was the act of the merciful Japanese! I turned sick and faint with horror, rushed away into the town to escape from this most fearful scene. Presently I was compelled to seat myself in sheer illness, my companions were also ashamed I believe.

After a while I rose and made my way through the streets, but here again were horrors piled up even if possible more awful than the first experience. Houses, shops, inns were pillaged, fired, plundered! Men and women dead—mutilated—every possible shame had been inflicted, and even then, in daylight, the Japanese soldiers were looting and killing all in their way, binding up bundles of plunder, or chasing an unfortunate Chinaman to death amid the laughter of his fellows. Fortunately I was properly protected, else my doom had been sealed, for the dead lay so thickly in the streets and passages, that one had to tread carefully for fear of stepping upon a body; and if a Chinese was discovered seeking his dead friend, relative, wife, or child, the first Japanese butcher would kill him, and then slash him into slices with his sword.

For true barbarity the inflamed Japanese countenance in a passion of killing is the most repulsive. What the night had witnessed I tremble now to think. Of what we witnessed of the awful results it is impossible even to do more than name, the details are quite unfit to describe. The dismemberment of the bodies even of children and women will always remain a stain upon the Japanese, on the soldiers for executing such awful rapine and murder, on the officers for not stopping such scenes of bestial violence.