Port Arthur

by Richard Barry

Not fifty yards up the Russian lookout scouts them, and then we see we are not facing a beaten foe, but a waiting one. Until that moment no sound came from the enemy. No shells chucked away at hidden batteries, no rifle ammunition plumped into the sandbags of parallels, no shrapnel sent hit-or-miss over the fields searching for an unseen foe—not any of that stupid, wild game for them. They have let the preparation go on, all the fuss and fury, the bombardment, the sapping, and now we see what they are up to. It is all hit with them, no miss, they have no ammunition to waste. Their backs are to the wall. Their defense is determined, great. Deadly purpose is in that silence.

The sun is out for a moment, the smoke has lifted. Through my glass I see it all as perfectly as though on a chessboard; the sprawling blue ants creeping up, rifle-butts dragging, the line officers ahead, the field behind. Far in advance of the squad on the P fort a young lieutenant is running, carried out of himself in passion, foolish in zeal, waving his sword. Almost fifty yards behind him, his nearest file-sergeant lumbers stolidly on, as stolidly as my two companions of the morning lumbered with their bags of rice. At that moment they meet what they changed their linen for the night before. From all the Russian batteries, from silent nooks, from huge, open emplacements, from mountain recesses, from the entire line of parapets, it comes—the Russian reply. So here is the why of that previous ghostly silence. Every shot must tell. Bursts directly above send vitreous blue shoots of smoke as of strata sidewise, then curl voluminously upward, the edges unfolding to the breeze; the deadly shrapnel downward shooting bits of lead and steel. Enfilading from all crests, over the shoulders of the slopes, come shells, plowing the ground, hurling stones and fragments. From above rattle the Nordenfeldts and Maxims, spraying bullets into the advancing ants as kerosene is sometimes sprayed from a hose nozzle on the tribe of real pests.

It was to be expected. Not a man lives. The fire ceases. They all lie prone—some hid in the shell holes, some lost in the gullies, some face down bare on the open sand. Most of them lie lengthwise, their heads upward, shot apparently as they stumbled forward. On the second slope in one place the legs and trunk of a man are sprawled, armless, headless. An entire shell must have met him halfway. Occasionally the figures are huddled, piteously deprived of action, sending upward the silent, unanswerable appeal that death makes. But most of them have that curious upward slant, bodies rigid, as of determined men hugging the ground. Were they bulleted straight? Anyway, it is a glorious death—this of the infantry soldier storming Port Arthur, lifted on the crest of the world’s fiercest passion, puffed into vapor as the crest of a storm-tossed wave! Painless, too. A touch and all is over. But can they all be dead, all of those figures slanted curiously upward? There must have been remarkable sharpshooters above to pick every man off, for shells are notoriously extravagant of bravado and bluff.

Ten minutes pass—fifteen—twenty—and only the giant shells wheezing through the sky to distant, unseen marks remind one that here is indeed a battlefield.

Then suddenly those figures with the curious upward slant come to life. Another handful of war corn is fed from the human hopper below. The young officer waves his sword. The line-sergeant stolidly climbs. The deploying lines curl their microbe grip more firmly into the slope. There was a hitch in the machine. Now it moves, slow, inexorable.

The piteously huddled figures remain. The comrades go on, with never a look down, never a look behind, half-stooped, rifle-butts dragging, laboring with the terrific climb. Ten paces from the fresh start, and that hail of bursting steel meets them again. They struggle on, perhaps a hundred feet, perhaps a hundred and fifty, then commence dropping one by one, by the dozen, fifteen at a time, two by two. They rest again. Again the time drags. Again the fresh start, with more piteously huddled figures. So it goes, the hopper below supplying every loss.

At length the young officer pauses. Just for a moment he lingers and then digs his boots into the crater that one of those friendly shells tore out for him an hour before. Without waiting for his men, fifty yards beyond the nearest, he leaps to the parapet, reels for an instant on the skyline, then plunges out of sight. I never see him again. What must have been his fate inside there, alone, before his men came up? Was he shot down as he entered? Did he keep the Russians at bay till his supports came up? Dear, foolish boy, did you think that, single-handed, with that bit of toy steel, you could take Port Arthur?

It seems ages and ages before the line-sergeant and his deploying figures leap to the skyline, reel for an instant, and disappear. The grist from the hopper below hastens and the rifle-butts spring from ground to shoulders. It was the first man who was needed. Now that the charm is broken, they no longer skulk, but run eagerly to the crater and tumble in. The hopper has fed well-eared corn into the mill, and it has come out ground meal. The grits lie scattered all along the slope. Some move. The most lie still, their battle with cold nights in exposed trenches finished, sentry duty done. And in many a thatched cot among the rice paddies across the sea the old hataman will tell to his gray wife how their boy helped take Port Arthur, and both will make a little journey to the sacred mountain to assure the fathers they are thankful to have bred brave stock.

At a quarter-past one the young lieutenant started on his mad errand, supported by the same mechanism. At a quarter-past two the flag of the Rising Sun floated from both north corners of the P fort. At a quarter-past three the stretcher-bearers are on the slope searching among the huddled figures. They move swiftly along, turning a figure over, giving it a quick look and dropping it with business precision; to another, dropping it; to another, pausing, out with the lint, perhaps the hypodermic needle, perhaps a sip from the tea flask, the arms of one bearer hastily passing under the arms of the figure of the other under the knees, dropping it on the stretcher, passing in and out among the shell holes, down the hill, while back on the slope the carrion figures lie with the slant of the setting sun struggling through the clouds to flash over the bayonets beside them!

Meanwhile, over the rest of the vast field, of which the P fort was but a fragment, the assault had been continuing. The Russian fire had not abated. As soon as they saw the P fort was gone they turned their shells into the redoubt itself, and cut up our forces where they were seeking cover in the very places their own shells had previously destroyed. But the slopes of the other three forts were kept just as hot as in the beginning. The moment the thin line advanced, that moment the hail commenced, and it ceased only when the line ceased; nor did it entirely cease then, for shrapnel was dropped above the forms, those huddled and those lying curiously straight.