My Experiences at Nan Shan and Port Arthur with the Fifth East Siberian Rifles

by Nikolaĭ Aleksandrovich Tret'iakov

At this time the regiment was disposed as follows: in the town of Chin-chou, the 10th Company under Major Goosov, the 3rd Scout Detachment under Captain Koudriavtsev, and a mixed force of sixty men under Lieutenant Golenko, an officer who had distinguished himself against the Hunhutzes. The 3rd Company occupied the village of Lu-chia-tun, in front of the centre of the position, while the 2nd Company was in the village of Ma-chia-tun, in front of the right flank, and the 6th Company in the village of Ssu-chia-tun, behind the left flank, the remainder being quartered behind the centre of the position. Major Schwartz, with about a dozen men, was quartered in some shelters in the centre of the position. All the regimental and officers’ baggage was stored near the position and in Port Arthur. Lieutenant-Colonel Eremeiev, who had voluntarily joined the regiment from the reserve, and whom I had personally known at the Academy and the Engineer College, I appointed commandant of the town.

As soon as the men of the regiment had settled down in their various quarters, work on the position was pushed forward with feverish haste. Every day thousands of Chinese[11] and soldiers worked at it; they brought up building material, constructed obstacles, dug wells, and the soldiers concurrently underwent musketry and field training; and all this at a time when we expected a landing every moment either in front or in rear. As the regiment might have to withstand a regular siege, we set to work to make splinter-proofs for storing food, supplies, and small-arm ammunition, though the means at our disposal were very limited. We had in hand no more than 60,000 roubles, and so we only made two splinter-proofs, neither of them remarkably long or broad, and began the construction of four wells without, however, much hope of finding water. The cold weather hampered us sadly. The soil was frozen hard, and our shovels and picks, of which we only had a limited supply, kept on breaking. The companies occupying the town, too, worked hard at putting it also into a state of defence. It was proposed to strengthen the existing caponiers and the corners of the town wall, and to build bomb-proofs for the protection of the reserves against splinters.

The enemy was evidently waiting for something, and we felt more secure every day. We improvised an entertainment hall from one of the barrack rooms, decorated it as well as we could, and put a gramophone in it; hence our dinners and suppers went off in right merry style. We used to get a lot of people coming out to see the position, and gladly received them, as we got news from them of what was going on in the outside world. Of course, one could not be sure that the information was exactly correct, but, such as it was, it generally emanated from the staff. The majority of our informants held the opinion that we should never see a shot fired, and that the whole action of the war would be limited to sea fighting and the occupation of the southern part of Korea by the Japanese, as the latter could never raise more than 300,000 men, and, when our battleships had been repaired, we should smash up their fleet and they would have to make terms. No one doubted that our fleet would destroy the Japanese navy, because our naval commanders were more active than the Japanese, our sailors infinitely better at gunnery, and, finally, our ships’ armour was very much stronger, as it was “annealed.”[12] Our naval experts told us all this. No attention whatever was paid to the fact that the Japanese had five first-class battleships while we had only two,[13] and that torpedo craft, of which the Japanese possessed a hundred, had not yet proved their full power of independent action. Our informants did not say how they had come by their knowledge, but they always laid particular stress on the bravery of our sailors.

“Never mind if you do see drunken sailors on shore, nor how rudely officers may answer to any remark addressed to them—on shore; on their ships they cultivate an iron discipline.”

If any one stated that the Japanese fleet was considerably stronger than ours, our tellers of fairy tales would contemptuously answer, especially if the individual was a naval man: “A lot you know! Why do you think the Government refused to buy the Nisshin and Kasuga from Argentina? Because we are strong enough without them; otherwise they would not have refused such a purchase.” And we listeners, satisfied with such arguments, were quickly laughing and joking and telling stories. I always sat at the head of the table, and it was a pleasure to me to listen to the stories and watch the happy faces of those round me, many of whom felt no forebodings then of the destiny awaiting them.

While fortifying the position we made some experiments on the effect of rifle fire directed against targets sheltered by loopholed parapets, as compared with that against targets in the open. It always happened that at a range of 200 yards the effect was considerably greater against loopholed targets, while at longer ranges the latter suffered most. Since, in addition, we ran the risk of hostile shrapnel, we also experimented with this type of fire, and found that 20 rounds at a range of 1 verst put out of action half the defenders of the earth-work, when they stood in the open on the glacis. It was therefore decided to make loopholes everywhere and to provide the detachments with plank overhead cover, which, with General Fock’s approval, was carried out on the succeeding days.

Senior officers frequently visited the position. General Kondratenko came out before we started working, and said that we must occupy the town as strongly as possible. Generals Fock and Nadyein were frequently with us, sometimes staying two or three days. General Fock talked a great deal with the officers, giving his opinion on the way of defending the position and ground in front of it. He thought of meeting the enemy in front of the position, near the villages lying to the north of Mount Sampson, and we often went out reconnoitring with him, and thoroughly studied the ground, but though he insisted on the necessity of fortifying it, we had no means of doing so. The general, it seems, had not told off the regiments of his own division to any work. Only the 5th Regiment continued working, and the nearer the time of our meeting with the enemy approached, the further advanced and stronger became our field works. Judging from what I heard from superior officers, it was not intended to defend the Nan Shan position stubbornly; hence they would not let us have enough money for its fortification, and they sent up no artillery. But the closer our meeting with the enemy impended, the more I became convinced that the position would be stubbornly defended.

From certain remarks of General Fock it seemed as if it was not necessary to make a stubborn defence. The general, for instance, once said to me: “You know that less heroism is required to defend this position than to retreat from it. Those who do not understand the true position of affairs are beginning to call General Fock a traitor!”

Indeed, it was impossible not to fear a landing of the Japanese in rear of the position simultaneously with a landing at Pi-tzu-wo, and this was so obvious that the position was ordered to be fortified in rear. The regiment was in a bad way, and I felt downhearted at not being able to carry out many of General Fock’s suggestions as to the fortification of the position and the means of defending it.

Attaching great importance to the grazing effect of shell, General Fock insisted that the defensive line should be continued right down to the foot of the Nan Shan Hills. Without making a single exception, without taking into consideration that the slopes of the hills were long and gentle, and served as a most difficult obstacle to an attacker, and also completely losing sight of the fact that by carrying our trenches down to the foot of the hills we exposed our companies to fire from the opposite hills, and thus assisted the attackers, he stuck to his point and insisted on our extending our line to a total frontage of 8 versts. In speaking of them, he called our top tier of trenches “swallows’ nests,” and always added: “You, of course, are glad to put your regiment right up under the sky!” I at once pointed out to the general that he had completely ignored the fact that the heights formed a natural and difficult obstacle to pass, that every inequality in the ground below (of which there were many) gave the enemy cover from our fire, and that shot bursting on graze would not have any effect; that we had only one regiment with which to defend the position, and that we ought to make our dispositions with due regard to this unpleasant circumstance. Upon this, General Fock lost his temper, exclaiming that only traitors placed their men under the artillery fire of the enemy, and that the intervals between men in trenches should be 20 paces, or certainly not less than 10 paces, and then there would be no swallows’ nests for them to occupy. I answered that if we should place our unseasoned troops, the majority of whom were recruits and reservists, at 20-paces interval, each one would feel himself isolated and thrown out before an advancing foe without any support, and it might prove that in the moment of need he would be without the moral support of his commander. At the same time I did not lose the opportunity of saying that we had but eleven companies in the regiment, and that if they were spread out over a frontage of 8 versts I should have a very weak line of defence, liable to be broken through at the slightest pressure, and if I were to keep only one company in reserve, which was absolutely indispensable, I should then have a large gap in the line absolutely unoccupied; was a stubborn defence possible under these circumstances? Of course, I understood that General Fock, by throwing his firing line well forward, wished to lessen their losses from the enemy’s rifle and shrapnel fire. Granted, this was important, and was quite feasible at the beginning of the battle. If I had had only a few reserves with which to strengthen threatened points, I should have had nothing to urge against the 20-paces interval even. But there were no reserves told off for the 5th Regiment, although General Nadyein told me that I should be supported, and that the 15th Regiment would be posted near Ta-fang-shen[14]; but when I asked him, “Then, when they are needed, I can use them?” he said: “You want to command a whole division then, do you?” On the whole, therefore, the plan of action at Nan Shan was not very plain to me. One thing was at length clear—I had it from General Kondratenko—that we must defend the position to our last drop of blood, and to this end I prepared both officers and men. We began to make field kitchens in the trenches; we brought up provisions to the position and put them in bomb-proofs, cleared the ground for bivouacking in places covered from the enemy’s fire, and built shelters for the men in the trenches themselves and in the fortifications.