We marched to a village called Nan-chin-tsa, not far from a hill which the Russians called Poutilov’s Hill, and which the English called Lonely Tree Hill. It had been taken in the night by the Japanese. Through a glass you could see men walking on it, but nobody knew if they were Russians or Japanese. Two Cossacks were sent to find out. Wounded men were returning one by one, and in bigger batches, from every part of the field. It was a brilliant sunshiny day, and the wounded seemed to rise in a swarm from the earth. It was a ghastly sight, even worse than at Liaoyang. The bandages were fresh, and the blood was soaking through the shirts of the men. The Cossacks came back and reported that the hill was occupied by the Japanese. We marched back another verst (two-thirds of a mile) and found the corps bivouacking in the plain. All along the road we met wounded and mutilated men, some carried on stretchers and some walking, their wounds fresh and streaming. We marched another verst south again, and the guns were placed behind the village of Fun-chu-Ling, two miles north of the hill to which General Poutilov gave his name. On the way we met General Poutilov himself and the infantry going into action. Colonel Philemonov and I climbed up on to the thatched roof of a small house, whence he gave the range. Kislitski was not there. In front of us was a road; our house was at the extreme right corner of the village; to the right of us was a field planted with lettuce and green vegetables. Infantry were marching along the road on their way into action. A company halted in the field and began eating the lettuce. The Colonel shouted: “You had better make haste finishing the green stuff there, children, as I am going to open fire.” They hurriedly made off, as if they were to be the target, except one who, greedier than the rest, lingered a little behind the others, throwing furtive glances at the Colonel lest he should suddenly fire on them. The guns were in a field behind us, and immediately under the house where we were perched, two Chinamen, who had been working in the fields, had made themselves a dug-out, and towards tea-time they appeared from the earth, made tea, and then crept back again. The battery opened fire, and two other batteries shelled the hill, one from the east and one from the west. The enemy answered with shrapnel, but not one of these shells touched us; they all fell beyond us.
A little while later, three belated men belonging to a line regiment walked along the road. Our guns fired a salvo, upon which these men, startled out of their lives, crouched down. The Colonel shouted to them from the roof: “Crouch lower or else you will be shot.” They flung themselves on the road and grovelled in the dust. “Lower!” shouted the Colonel. “Can’t you get under the earth?” They wriggled ineffectually, and lay sprawling like brown fish out of water. Then the Colonel said: “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t you know my shells are falling three versts from here? Be off!” At sunset the battery ceased fire. Soon a tremendous rattle told us the infantry attack had begun. An officer described this afterwards as a “comb of fire.” We waited in the dark-red, solemn twilight, and later a ringing cheer told us the hill had been taken. Someone who was with us said it was just like manœuvres. But all was not over, as the Japanese counter-attacked twice. The hill was partly taken, but at what cost we were presently to see.
It grew dark; we sought and found a Chinese house to pass the night in. Men began to arrive from the hill, and from their account it was difficult to tell whether the hill had been taken or not. The Colonel told Hliebnikov to ride to the hill and find out. Hliebnikov said to me: “He is sending me to be shot like a dog.” We were just lying down to rest when a wounded man arrived asking to be bandaged, then another and another.
The doctor of the battery was with us. The nearest Red Cross Station was eight miles off. Soon the house was full of wounded, and more were arriving. They lay on the floor, on the K’angs, on every available place. The room was lit by one candle and a small Chinese oil-lamp. The men had been wounded by bullets and bayonets; they were torn, mangled, soaked in blood. Some of them had broken limbs. Some of them had walked or crawled two miles from the hill, while others, unable to move, had been carried on greatcoats slung on rifles. When one house was full we went to the next, and so on, till all the houses in the street of the village were filled. Two of the officers bandaged the slightly wounded, while the doctor dealt with the severer wounds. The appalling part of the business was, that one had to turn out of the house by force men who were only slightly wounded or simply exhausted. Some of them merely asked to be allowed to rest a moment and drink a cup of tea, and yet they had to be turned ruthlessly from the door, to make room for the ever-increasing mass of maimed and mangled men who were crying out in their pain. As a rule the wounded soldiers bore their wounds with astonishing fortitude, but the wounded I am speaking of were so terribly mangled that many of them were screaming in their agony. Two officers were brought in. “Don’t bother about us, Doctor,” they said; “we shall be all right.” We laid these two officers down on the K’ang. They seemed fairly comfortable; one of them said he felt cold; and the other that the calf of his leg tingled. “Would I mind rubbing it?” I lifted it as gently as I could, but it hurt him terribly; and then I rubbed his leg, which he said gave him relief. “What are you?” he said—“an interpreter, or what?” (I had scarcely got on any clothes; what they were, were Chinese and covered with dirt.) I said I was a correspondent. He was about to give me something, whether it was a tip or a small present as a remembrance I shall never know, for the other officer stopped him and said: “No, no, you’re mistaken.” He then thanked me. Half an hour later he died. One seemed to be plunged into the lowest inferno of human pain. I met a man in the street who had crawled on all-fours the whole way from the hill. The stretchers were all being used. The way in which the doctor dealt with the men was magnificent. He dominated the situation, encouraged everyone, had the right answer, suppressed the unruly, and cheered those who needed cheering up.
Each house was so small, the accommodation in it so scanty, that it took a short time to fill, and we were constantly moving from one house to another. The floor was in every case so densely packed with writhing bodies that one stumbled over them in the darkness. Some of the men were sick from pain; others had faces that had no human semblance at all. Horrible as the sight was, the piteousness of it was greater still. The men were touching in their thankfulness for any little attention, and noble in the manner they bore their sufferings. We had tea and cigarettes for the wounded.
I was holding up a man who had been terribly mangled in the legs by a bayonet. The doctor was bandaging him. He screamed with pain. The doctor said the screaming upset him. I asked the man to try not to scream, and lit a cigarette and put it in his mouth. He stopped immediately and smoked, and remained quite still—until his socks were taken off. The men scarcely ever had socks; their feet were swathed in a white bandage, a kind of linen puttee. This man had socks, and when they were taken off he cried, saying he would never see them again. I promised to keep them for him, and he said: “Thank you, my protector.” A little later he died.
When we gave the soldiers tea or cigarettes, they made the sign of the Cross and thanked Heaven before they thanked us.
One seemed to have before one the symbol of the whole suffering of the human race: men like bewildered children, stricken by some unknown force for some unexplained reason, crying out and sobbing in their anguish, yet accepting and not railing against their destiny, and grateful for the slightest alleviation and help to them in their distress.
We stayed till all the houses were full; at two o’clock in the morning a detachment of the Red Cross arrived, but they had their hands full to overflowing. We went to snatch a little sleep. We had in the meantime heard that the hill had been taken, and that at dawn the next day we were to proceed thither.