The Puppet Show of Memory

by Maurice Baring

There was something infinitely quiet and beautiful in that temple, with its enclosures of trees and grass, bathed in the October sunshine. The time we spent there seemed very long and very short, like a pleasant dream. The weather was so soft and fine, the sunshine so bright, that had not the nights been chilly we should never have dreamt it was autumn. It seemed rather as if the spring had been unburied and had returned to earth by mistake. I remember one of the officers saying: “Thank Heavens we were in the deepest reserve.” We seemed to be sheltered from the world in an island of dreamy lotus-eating; and the only noise that reached us was the sound of the tinkling gongs of the temple. We lived a life of absolute indolence, getting up with the sun, eating, playing cards, strolling about on the plains, whence the millet had been reaped, eating again, and going to bed about nine. Then the calm was suddenly broken, and we received orders to start for the front and join the First European Corps, which formed part of the reserve.

We started for the front on the afternoon of the 6th of October, and we did not reach any place where fighting was going on till the 12th. Those intervening days were spent in marches and halts in Chinese villages. At one of our halting-places I was billeted with Kislitski, who always lived apart, as he could not bear the public life and the public food of a mess. He sat up all one night making a mysterious implement of wood, something to do with rectifying the angle of sight of the guns, and singing to himself passages from Lermontov’s poem, “The Demon,” as he worked.

On the evening of the 11th we arrived at a Chinese village, where to the south of us there was a range of hills which continued like a herring-bone right on to Yantai. In these hills a desperate battle was going on. The battle was drawing nearer to us, and we were drawing nearer to the battle. Firing went on all night. The next day, at six o’clock in the morning, artillery fire began, and from a small hill in front of our position I got a splendid view of the fighting. The kowliang was reaped, and one could see to the east successive ranges of brown undulating hills, and to the west a plain black with little dots of infantry. In the extreme distance, to the south-west of the hill on which I stood, were the hills of Yantai. On a higher hill in front of that on which I was standing the infantry was taking up its position, and the Japanese shrapnel was falling on it. The infantry retired and moved to the south-west, and it looked at first as if there was going to be a general retreat.

The firing went on without interruption until ten minutes to seven in the evening. In the night it rained heavily; the noise of thunder was as loud as the noise of the guns. News of terrific fighting kept on arriving—a battery was lost and a regiment cut up, and the wounded began to stream past our camp. Rifle fire went on all night.

The next morning punctually at half-past six the guns began once more. The battle had got still nearer. The shells were falling closer and closer. I turned round and saw through my field-glasses that our camp was astir. I ran back and was met by my Buriat servant, who was leading my pony. Shells began to fall on the hill where I had been standing. It was half-past eight in the morning, and we were just ready and expecting to start when we were told to remain where we were. The shelling stopped. A little before one o’clock a regiment of the First Corps which was in front of us were told to retreat. It was said that the enemy was beginning to turn our right flank. The battery were ordered to fire on a Japanese battery to the south-west, to cover the retreat of a Russian field battery.

The battery went into action at twenty minutes to three. The guns were masked behind the houses of the village, and Colonel Philemonov climbed up a high tree, so as to get a better view. Knowing how ill he was and that he might have a paroxysm of pain at any moment, my blood ran cold. He could not see well enough from the tree, and he moved up the slope of the hill. He began to give out the range, but after two rounds had been fired he fell almost unconscious to the ground, and Kislitski took over.

The Japanese were firing Shimosé shells. We saw a torn mass of a tree or kowliang scattered into fragments by the explosion of a shell. But when at three o’clock we left the position we saw it was not kowliang nor a tree that had been blown up, but a man. We took up our position on another and higher hill, and the battery fired west, at the farthest possible range, on the Japanese infantry, which we could see moving in that direction against the horizon. This lasted till sunset. At dusk we marched into a village. The infantry was lying in trenches ready for the night attack. Some of the men had been killed by shells, and at the edge of a trench I saw two human hands. The next morning the noise of firing began at four o’clock. We moved into a road and waited for the dawn. It was dark. The firing seemed to be close by. The Cossacks made a fire and cooked bits of meat on a stick. At dawn, news came that the assault of the enemy had been repulsed and that we were to join later on in an attack. The Colonel went to look for a suitable position. I went with him. From the top of a high hill we could see through a glass the Japanese infantry climbing a hill immediately south of our former camp. The Japanese climbed the hill, lay down, and fired on the Russian infantry to the east of them. The Russians were screened from our sight by another hill. The battery fired at first from the foot of the hill, and the enemy answered back from the east and the west. We had to move to a position on a hill farther north, whence we fired on a battery three miles off. The battery went into action at eight. Colonel Philemonov, Kislitski, and I lay on the turf at the top of the hill. Kislitski gave the range. The Colonel had begun to do it himself, but had fallen back exhausted. “I love my business,” he said to me, “and now that I get a chance of doing it, I can’t. All the same, they know I’m here.” About an hour after the battery had begun to fire, the Japanese infantry came round through the valley and occupied a hill to the north-west of us, and opened fire first on our infantry, which was beneath us and in front of us, and then on the battery. The sergeant came and reported that men were being wounded and horses had been killed: an officer called Takmakov, who had just joined the battery, was wounded. The Japanese infantry were 1200 yards from us. Three of the guns were then reversed and fired on the infantry. This went on till noon. You could see the Japanese without a glass. With a glass one could have recognised a friend. At noon the infantry retired, and we were left unprotected, and had to retreat at full speed under shrapnel and infantry fire. My pony was not anywhere near. I had to run. The Colonel saw this and shouted to the men to give me a horse, and a Cossack brought me a riderless horse, which was difficult to climb on to, as it had a high Cossack saddle and all a Cossack’s belongings on it.

We crossed the river Sha-ho, and just as everyone was expecting a general retreat to Mukden, we were told to recross the river. It began to rain. As we crossed the river, one of the horses had the front of its face torn off by shrapnel. We took up a position on the other side of the river; the first few shots of the enemy fell with alarming precision on the battery, but the Japanese altered the range, and their shells fell wide. Twenty minutes later the enemy’s fire ceased all along the line. Afterwards we knew that the reason why it ceased was because the Japanese had run short of ammunition. Kislitski and I walked towards the south to see what was going on. We climbed to the top of an isolated cottage, but could see nothing. Then we came back, and the battery set out for a village south-west by a circuitous route across the river. Nobody knew the way. We marched and marched until it grew dark. The Colonel was in great pain. Some Cossacks and Chinese were sent to find the village. We halted for an hour by a wet ploughed field. At last they came back and led us to the village. We expected to find the transport there. I was hoping to find dry clothing and hot food, as we were drenched to the skin and half-dead with hunger and fatigue. When we arrived at the village I was alone with one of the officers; we dismounted at a bivouac, and the officer went on ahead, expecting me to follow him. I thought he was to come back for me. I waited an hour; nobody came; so I started to look for our quarters. The village was straggling and mazy. I went into house after house, and only found strange faces. At last I got a Cossack to guide me, and, after half an hour spent in fruitless search, we found the house and the officers, but no transport, no food, and no dry clothing. I gave way to temper, and was publicly congratulated by the battery for doing so. They said that it was the first time I had manifested discontent in public.

I spent the night in the Colonel’s quarters, and we discussed Russian literature: Dostoievsky, Gogol, and Dickens. He was surprised at a foreigner being able to appreciate the humour of Gogol. I was surprised at a foreigner, I told him, being able to appreciate the humour of Dickens.

At dawn we received orders to hold ourselves ready. Half an hour later we were told to join the First Siberian Corps, which had been sent south to attack.