[Chapter Ten]
THE CREMATION OF A GENERAL
Before Port Arthur, Sept. 27th.—Major-General Yamamoto was shot and instantly killed two days ago. The brigade he commanded—one leading the right wing of the Army—had captured the outworks of “203.” This mountain had been long in dispute and was dominated by certain Russian forts, which made it, while Japanese territory, yet untenable by our forces. Yamamoto’s brigade, however, clung under the reverse ridges and occupied trenches at the top, keeping the foothold secure until artillery could be advanced to reduce the opposing positions. In this critical situation the General thought it best to be on the ground in person and advanced his headquarters to the base of the mountain, which exists on the map only under the figure “176,” denoting its height in meters, but which his soldiers had cherished “Namicoyama,” because of its resemblance to the trepang or namico, a long angular fish abundant in eastern waters.
The night of the move Yamamoto climbed the mountain and crept into the trenches for a look at the contested heights opposite. He came before he was expected and his engineers had not had time to prepare a bombproof shelter through whose chinks he could look in safety. He would not wait, but put his glasses through a rift in the trenches and settled into a comfortable seat to study the situation. There was no regular firing, but only the desultory popping that is heard night and day along the whole ten-mile front, where sharp-eyed pickets are keen and cautious. The General became bold, raised his head—whit—a bullet through his brain.
Neither officers nor men can be said to be reckless, or even incautious. The army is devoid of that extravagance expected of war, when each man’s courage seems in question and cowardice impels bravado. Evidently, there is not a coward in the army, for the bravery of each soldier and of each officer seems taken for granted. All make of war a serious business, in which lives are units to be kept for the Emperor and skillfully used, as a go-player advances his pawns, saving all he can for final victory. The labor done in a week to build cover would gather all the harvests of Manchuria, which just now are mellow ripe and gloriously beautiful in the keen sunlight. Whole mountains are tunneled, in some places through solid rock; in others through slanting shale, to afford covered ways. At each divisional headquarters, of which the army has three, the lookout has two bombproofs dug in the solid rock on commanding heights, buttressed by three layers of sand bags, covered with two feet of earth, all supported by poplar poles, with the loophole for lookout cunningly slanted so the sun will not show behind and indicate to the enemy—perhaps only 500 yards away—the precious eyes behind. These bombproofs sometimes are made quite comfortable with rugs and improvised stools, but mostly knees suffer and the wretched correspondent traveling from post to post comes to complain not of “writer’s cramp,” but of “general’s stoop.” A month ago on the left wing of the army two staff officers were killed in a bombproof by a bursting shell. The army was scared, for a staff officer is valuable freight. Since then care has been redoubled; sand bags have been laid a layer deeper on all lookouts, ramparts have been heightened, and now venerable, curious heads sink lower as they turn up for a view.
The death of the General, Yamamoto, was another warning. It was also a severe blow. He was one of the most competent men in the army, commanded a star brigade and was slated for early advancement. Last night his memory received a most distinguished honor: the corpse was cremated on the battlefield where he lost his life.
To appreciate how great the honor was it will be necessary to explain two conditions: First, wood on the peninsula here is worth its weight in cash. The country is not wooded to begin with, which is the cause of another difficulty the army has to face—scarcity of water. About the villages there are usually a few poplars, but the mountains have nothing but Scotch heather and the plains only Ventura County bean pods and San Joaquin wheat fields. Then two great armies have boiled water and savagely wrangled here for three months, until all the rotten timber of old Manchurian dwellings has gone for firewood. As a consequence a frequent sight is a transport cart with some stubs of spruce tied to the whiffletree, being carried from Dalny, twenty-two miles away. Dried maize stalks are the universal fuel. Cracker boxes sell for a dollar apiece and the other day I found my servant brushing the pencil whittlings from the floor to use for kindling. Second, it was the samurai’s belief that a warrior who sacrificed his life in combat should be honored by cremation on the spot of his vicarious atonement. And the difference between the army of to-day and a samurai clan of a generation ago is far less than the difference between cuirass and bombproof; you can’t wipe out the clinging beliefs of generations in forty years—not in the Orient. It may take hyposcopes and searchlights, wireless telegraphy and machine guns to win victories, but only funeral pyres and Shinto sacrifices will pay for them.
Wood-impoverished, the army cannot honor its humble dead; i. e., not immediately; wait till Port Arthur falls—but of that later. It is different with generals. As a daimyo in feudal times received the forehair of all his clan as a final offering, so to-day a general gone gets the camp fires of his soldiers. Last night the brigade which had lost its intrepid head ate its rice dinner cold and went without hot water for its tea. All the mess fires were contributed to make a pyre worthy the deceased.
Just as the sun went down, at the bottom of Namicoyama, whose heights war had swept but a day before, in sight and sound of the grim proofs of his last victory—emplaced batteries and occupied field hospitals—the body of the major-general was given to the flames, while his men in the trenches above sternly held the Russians at bay. Occasional cannon rent the air, infantry popping cracked in the stillness, myriad tent lights twinkled up into the moonlight; the blaze shot up, waned, crackled and died down. The midnight shift of sentries presented silent arms. A donkey brayed out of the valley. Miles to the left a howitzer boomed. The ocean lay black like ink beyond a fringe of shore gray under the moon. A line of coolies passed with bamboo stretchers carrying piteously mangled forms—the day’s harvest to which the coolies had been called from their maize and their millet. Embers gleamed from the brigade’s mess fire. Two orderlies stepped up with a wooden box, kicked the embers away, and placed in it some ashes.
A week hence a family in Tokyo—a quiet, dry-eyed Japanese lady with two half-grown boys—will receive the wooden box. It will be borne a few days later through the streets of the capital on a gun carriage to Aoyama Cemetery. There, after two white-robed priests have said a few words over it, a long shelf in a narrow vault will receive the wooden box. The widow will have notification by special messenger that his August Highness, the Emperor, sees fit to remember the illustrious deeds of the departed by conferring upon him—who is not dead, but who has passed on to wait—the order of the Rising Sun, and, in the absence of the husband the wife will be permitted to receive the pension attached thereto. Japanese history will record that Major-General Yamamoto, after a valiant career in the service of his Emperor, gave up his life at the Battle of Namicoyama, in Manchuria, Sept. 24th, 1904.