General Oku's attack was ferocious. To him had been assigned the task of turning the Russian right back upon Mukden at the centre to make it impossible for this force to assume an offensive initiative and swing northward to cut off Nogi when the culminating attack had been delivered. Sandiapu, that had been the scene of the desperate failure of Gripenberg, was the pivot for the Japanese attack. General Oku avoided the Russian right centre just left of the railroad, because these positions were in part commanded by Putiloff Hill, and the taking of the Russian fortifications here would only mean a falling back under the protection of Russia's impregnable centre. With Sandiapu as a pivot, however, Oku drove the attack in a northeasterly direction, rather than northward, parallel to the Russian lines. His assaults began simultaneously with Kuroki's attack at Tsinkhetchen, and in one tremendous dash the Russian line was broken, crumbled in the plain five miles north of Sandiapu, and the struggle had begun which after ten days' fighting had doubled the Russian flank back until its line, beginning at a point five miles west of the railroad, was bent back at right angles to the line it had occupied at the opening of the battle. This achievement had been accomplished in the face of a determined resistance. Throughout the struggle the artillery was rendered useless for hours at a time, while the infantry engaged in hand-to-hand struggles. The story of the attack on a single of the score or more of villages is typical of all of them.
Village by Village Taken
There was a brief lull just at dawn. Then for an hour field guns roared all along the line searching for the infantry lines and batteries of the enemy. House and walls were the targets. Shells in deadly showers ground walls to dust, ploughed the fields, shaved the crowns from broken ground that might hide creeping lines of troops. An hour of systematic, sweeping bombardment, then the army was ready for the business of the hour. From cover on every side little squads of Japanese troops dashed into the open. Ten yards they sped then threw themselves prone on the ground wherever any approach to protection could be found.
Now it was the turn of the Russian guns to bark. From all along their lines in the dusk of dawn resounded the din of artillery. The open, when the advance had begun, instantly grew lividly aflame with bursting shrapnel. It seemed that nothing could live under that awful baptism of steel. Then the din subsided before the Japanese, glasses glued to their eyes, could catch telltale feathers of smoke that even the smokeless powder sends out from big guns. The echoes of the guns are still reverberating far away among the foothills, when up from the ground again spring those lithe, invincible shadows that speed once more ten yards or more and then vanish as they hug the earth. Where there were five, three have survived; here and there a single one gets up to continue the advance where a group had been. But from behind others are making these short dashes, too. The plain finally is fairly alive with troops, dashing forward, taking cover, dashing forward again. Five hundred yards away when they started, their numbers are already thinning when the first hundred yards has been crossed. Others fill the gaps and two hundred yards are crossed, and in the growing light it can be seen that strewn all along the line of the advance are forms that lie stark and still when the living spring to action for those unhalting sprints.
Now Russian riflemen are heard from. Rifles crackle from every side, and then death begins high carnival. But the advance goes on. No rising now and speeding those few yards. The Japanese are crawling. The living use the bodies of the dead for protection. Often pushing these before them they cover yard by yard, the zone of death. Now only a hundred yards divides them from the outermost huts of the village. Hotter and hotter becomes the fire of the defenders. In a moment the assault has begun. A hundred, two hundred, are on their feet. Bullets eat holes in their ranks, but only the dead falter. Presently, with the ring of steel on steel, the ranks close. The rifle fire is fitful in the disorder of hand-to-hand fighting. Then up from all parts of the open rise scores of Japanese. They sweep into the midst of the fray, whole companies still coming press the fight. Back through the village from house to house, from wall to wall, goes on the hand-to-hand, man to man duel. Never once did the Japanese fail in the early days of the struggle to drive back the Russian defenders, for when one such attack failed there were countless others eager to begin again the same tactics.
Russian Artillery Impotent
The Russians seemed demoralized by the apparent impotency of their artillery to prevent these advances. Often the Russian lines suffered by their shrapnel, so thoroughly was the ground in front of their positions searched by their gunners. Nevertheless, the guns had hardly hushed before men seemed to spring from the ground and speed on toward them. To the more superstitious there was something uncanny about this little foe. The only solution was the open ranks, the each-man-for-himself, the use of every fragment of shelter. Russian solid formations fairly melted as they rushed into the Japanese shrapnel fire. A single shell mowed down a score. It took ten shells at least to disable a single Japanese because of the way they scattered out over the field.
Just behind the final advance of the main force which never moved until the skirmish attack had engaged the Russians too closely for either artillery or a destructive rifle fire, came the engineers with telegraph and telephone equipment. Bamboo poles were swiftly in place, and yard by yard the wire followed the advance. Presently at Oku's headquarters, usually the shelter of a hut within a mile of the actual fighting, would come the thick click, click of the telegraph or the jingle of the telephone. "We have taken the village" was usually the message.
Thus village after village was taken in this memorable struggle, until, as has been told, the Russian line had been driven from miles of positions upon which months of labor had been expended and in the closing days of the battle were paralleling the railroad from the Sha-ho to a point five miles northwest of Mukden. Oku had done his part.
When the Crushing Blow Fell