On the night of May 5 three wounded men of the Mounted Scout Detachment, two of the 14th Regiment, and one of ours, were brought in. The enemy had sent out his magnificently mounted cavalry from the eastern to the western shore towards the railway. It was said that a battalion, to which had been added a mounted scout detachment, with which we never obtained touch, had detrained at Shih-san-li-tai station, having come from General Kuropatkin’s army.
General Fock decided to make a reconnaissance in force, as nobody knew the exact strength of the troops which had landed. The enemy’s cavalry, in very considerable numbers, strengthened by infantry and Hunhutzes,[17] completely screened from us the landing points and the early movements of the Japanese. It was reported that they were moving towards Shih-san-li-tai, and that their landing place had been strongly fortified.
Towards evening on May 8 all the regiments of the division, except the 15th which was with Stessel in Port Arthur, and I with my two battalions, moved out along the road leading towards the place of the landing, and all had to pass the night in positions detailed to them along that road. Having reached their allotted destinations, the regiments received further orders to continue their night march, the object of which was, apparently, to sweep the stretch of country to the south-east of Shih-san-li-tai station (this operation was termed “Manœuvre” in the order). The enemy, in unknown strength, was somewhere between Chang-chia-tun and Shih-san-li-tai. Up to the time our regiments had occupied their positions, our scouts had reported nothing trustworthy about the enemy, and I expected to meet them every minute. The 5th Regiment, like all the others probably, was ordered: “At 1 a.m. to move from its bivouacs and be at dawn at height No. so-and-so.” I did not know what to do; all our maps had the names of the villages defaced, the contours were scarcely marked, none of the heights of the various hills were given, and how to find, at night, a certain unknown height No. so-and-so, which might be a good 10 versts from where we were, was too much for me. I must add, too, that we had no guides with us; no amount of money could buy them. So I repaired to General Fock with my doubts. The staff had already settled down to sleep, and fatigue and the certainty of the forthcoming battle had made them all very irritable. Be it said, however, to the honour of the staff, they realized fully the difficulties of the night march, and an order was sent out immediately, postponing the time of the advance until 3 a.m., when they knew that the dawn would just begin to break, forgetting, however, that the dawn comes very quickly, and that it is quite dark till just before the sun actually rises. It was decided that the chief of the staff would himself guide the leading column. Returning to my staff, I gave the necessary orders, and tried to get some sleep, but I could not, as one alarming thought followed upon another. Should we succeed in reaching height No. so-and-so? What if the enemy suddenly fell upon our rear from Chang-chia-tun, or our flank from Shih-san-li-tai, or the surrounding country (all was quite possible)? It was doubtful if we could make good our retreat to our positions at Nan Shan, the more so, as the road from Chang-chia-tun to Chin-chou had been left absolutely unprotected by us. These thoughts were justifiable in view of the fact that the enemy had landed from forty transports north of Terminal Point, under our very noses, and, supposing there was a battalion in each, that meant forty battalions to our eleven or twelve.
At 2 a.m. I got up. Every one was sound asleep. Reaching the men’s bivouacs, I saw them served out with a pound of meat and a large quantity of bread; they had no tea, as orders had been given that fires were not to be lighted, and from this it was clear that General Fock expected a brush with the enemy. About 3 a.m. the battalions stood to arms, but, as it happened, there was some delay, and the chief of the staff did not turn up until 5 o’clock, when we at last made a start.
LIEUT.-COLONEL BIELOZOR, KILLED AT THE BATTLE OF NAN SHAN.
[p. 25
I was put in command of a detachment consisting of the two battalions of the 5th Regiment and a battery under Lieutenant-Colonel Romanovski. We started off well enough, but the trouble was that the horse of the chief of the staff was a particularly good one, and the column fell considerably behind him; the country was very intersected and covered by a regular network of roads, and very bad ones at that. The chief of the staff, leading the way with his map, forgot to leave guides at the cross-roads, the result being that the column stopped when it came to a cross-road, not knowing which direction to take. We lost a lot of time owing to these halts, but we nevertheless preserved the right direction. (I do not mention the order of march, as that was as usual: skirmishers, advanced guard with mounted scouts, and main body.)
To the north and north-west was our screen of scouts, and as they constantly showed themselves on the skyline we kept wondering: “Are not these the enemy’s scouts?” Two hours had already passed since we started, and we had gone down into a wide valley, when Lieutenant-Colonel Bielozor, commanding the 2nd Battalion, came up to me and drew my attention to the peculiar movements of our artillery. Instead of following us, it had moved off to a height lying on the left flank of our line of march; behind it was a chain of skirmishers from the rear of our column, and behind this line compact companies. Not understanding its doings, I galloped up to the battery, and in the midst of the moving columns, unaccompanied by his staff, I saw General Fock. I had hardly got up to him, when he shouted to me: “What kind of a company commander have you got? See how he lets that battery get in front of him; he is a perfect fool! Such officers are a curse to us!” I answered that I would overtake the company at once, but I wished to know what was happening, as the battery under my command was going off somewhere, and I had not been informed of it. “That is its right position,” answered the general, pointing to the hill the artillery were making for. “Then we are going to stop there?” “No,” replied General Fock; “we are going on farther under cover of this battery.”