To the onlookers standing on the hills behind Wiju the wide field of battle spread before them presented a highly picturesque spectacle, and as the attack developed the interest became intense. Hardly had the advance of the Guards begun upon the Island of Kulido when a long serpentine line of dark forms could be seen winding in and out of the heights on the right bank of the river to the north of Tiger Hill. They were the men of the 12th Division slowly but surely creeping upon the Russian left. For miles they pressed forward without coming into view of the Russian artillerymen on Tiger Hill, but at last the first detachments, rounding the shoulder of one of the nearer hills, were exposed to the enemy. Instantly a terrific burst of shrapnel fire broke out from General Kashtalinsky's field batteries. Steadily, however, and without a check the brave Japanese advanced from height to height, and at the same time the batteries on the left bank above Wiju came to their aid. The fire of the Russians had unmasked the position of their guns on the hill, and the Japanese artillerymen rained upon them a terrible hail of shells which soon reduced them to silence and effectually covered the advance of the infantry.
Two Thousand Deadly Thunderbolts
But now the Guards, who were engaged in effecting a lodgement on the lower slopes of Tiger Hill, came in for the attentions of General Sassulitch's field batteries at Makau and Chiu-lien-cheng. Believing that the Japanese possessed only guns of the same calibre, and totally ignorant of the deadly engines of warfare which Kuroki had so skillfully concealed behind the innocent-looking belt of trees on the delta, the Russian Commander took no pains to mask his ordnance. Therefore when his shrapnel swept the Island of Kulido and played havoc among the Guards, his whole position in this part of the field lay exposed. At once the howitzers on the delta close to the opposite shore began to belch forth a terrible fire of shrapnel and common shell, which tore up the ground all around the Russians, killing their gunners and dismounting their guns. This bombardment was afterwards described by General Kashtalinsky, in a dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief, as "extraordinarily violent and prolonged," and he added that in its course more than 2,000 shells were fired upon the defenders' position. The fearfully destructive and demoralizing effect of this cannonade was indeed patent at once to the observers upon the left bank of the river. The Makau Hill was described by one correspondent as transformed in appearance into an active volcano, from which belched forth clouds of grey-black smoke.
Inferno Set Loose
It was Inferno let loose. The sides of the hill were riddled and scored, solid rocks were smashed like crockery, as the screaming missiles of death burst among the trenches and filled them with dead and wounded. Yet amid it all the Russian artillerymen stood steadily to their guns as long as their guns were left in their places, and as long as any men remained to work them. But the best troop in the world could not endure such a murderous fire for long. The heavy pieces of field ordnance were knocked from their carriages like ninepins, the soldiers fell around them in scores, and at last the batteries sank into silence and the dark forms of the defenders were seen from afar fleeing for refuge behind the further line of the heights.
Howitzer High-Angle Fire
This fierce artillery engagement lasted about half an hour, and while it produced such deadly and demoralizing effects on the enemy it left the Japanese practically unharmed behind their screen of trees. Their howitzers, unlike the Russian field guns, could do the maximum of execution by means of high-angle fire and their battery emplacements were so carefully and skilfully masked that the shrapnel of the enemy, effective as it may have appeared to be from the right bank, did them scarcely any damage. Their casualties, indeed, were only two men killed and twenty-five wounded. It was a remarkable triumph of scientific warfare, and proved that in the artillery branch of the service at all events the Japanese had nothing further to learn from European models.
RUSSIANS COLLECTING WOUNDED ON THE NIGHT AFTER THE BATTLE.
Co-operation of Gunboats