With the capture in the preceding month of Nos. 1 and 2 Redoubts the enemy had got close up to our positions, and the salient angle of the north-east front was almost in their hands. I say 'almost,' because the ruins of these works remained the greater part of the time untenanted, neutralized by the gun-fire of both sides. As soon as they were abandoned by us, Smirnoff, appreciating their importance, decided, whatever it cost, to recapture them, and compel the Japs to retake them, and he considered the importance of this warranted the loss of even 2,000 or 3,000 men. He had accordingly arranged for a sortie in force, but St?ssel intervened, and prevented this by his Order of August 31, already quoted, in which he would only permit sorties in small parties. To attack these redoubts with small numbers was quite ineffectual, and could only result in useless loss of life, and Smirnoff tried in vain to persuade St?ssel to alter his opinion. Had we only been able to recapture those works the effect on the moral of the men would have been great, as they would have realized that they could attack as well as defend; as it was, they had seen nothing but continual retirements ever since the war began. It would not have been impossible, for we possessed an excellent place d'armes[Pg 192] in rear and on the flank of these places in Rocky and Water Supply Redoubts. The Japanese meanwhile did not waste time; they sapped right up to the glacis of the two latter, then started the first parallel, and, surrounding them with trenches, gradually endeavoured to work their way to Water Supply and Temple Redoubts. Here, again, the only course for us was to hamper and delay the enemy's steady trenchwork-advance by means of well-timed night sorties. But not only had St?ssel paralyzed any attempt at a sortie in force by his order of the 31st, but he also managed to stop all small sorties by his action after one such had been attempted. Order No. 590 of September 9 read as follows:
'On the night of September 8-9, Lieutenant Endrjievsky, of the 26th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, on his own responsibility, and without even reporting it to his commanding officer, took 100 men of the Scouts and performed various pointless gallant acts. This only shows: (1) That there are officers who do not consider the lives of the soldiers entrusted to them to be of the least value, and do not consider themselves responsible for them; to such gentlemen the sacrifice of a number of men for a quite useless undertaking means nothing; this proves their youth. (2) That in some units strict discipline is not maintained; for anyone to be able to take a company away from a bivouac without the knowledge of the commanding officer is very extraordinary.
'This officer is deprived of his appointment for taking his company out without permission, and for losing 5 men killed and 19 wounded to no purpose; he will not be recommended for any rewards, and will be transferred to the 27th East Siberian Rifle Regiment for duty. Colonel Semenoff, commanding the 26th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, will be good enough to look to the internal discipline of his regiment.'
This order excited intense indignation, all that was most honourable and most sensible in the garrison was outraged. Thus was a gallant young officer, who had[Pg 193] risked his life to try and assist us to hold Temple Redoubt a little longer, held up to ridicule. Individual initiative was absolutely frozen up by this treatment, and no one attempted to carry out what, after all, is one of the most dangerous of operations, for all knew what the slightest piece of bad luck would mean for them. Had its author at all considered the after-effect of this order, he would probably not have issued it.
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PANORAMA OF NORTH-EAST FRONT.
Tumulus Battery.          3. Fortification No. 3.  5. Chinese Wall.
Bombproof of the Officer Commanding the Section. 4. Rocky Ridge.          6. Fort, Erh-lung-shan.
It has been said that St?ssel was liked by his subordinates, but he was feared, not loved, and he in his turn cared so much for the men under him that he did not consider it necessary to ride round the positions. And yet when telegraphing to the Tsar his thanks for his promotion in the Order of St. George, etc., he said that he had that 'day, on the positions, made the Tsar's telegram known to all.' He never went nearer the front than the barracks of the 10th Regiment, the safest spot in the whole Fortress!
On September 9 I, as usual, accompanied the Commandant on his inspection of the positions. As we went round, the men, taking advantage of the lull, were resting, having, wherever they could, burrowed under ground. The Chinese Wall had been repaired, and was held all along its length by infantry. Life at the front, though possibly exciting, was now neither amusing nor pleasant. The air all round reeked with the mingled stench of decomposing bodies, garlic and disinfectants, for on all sides hung pieces of linen steeped in carbolic acid. At first the men could not eat, but they gradually became acclimatized. Dogs had long ago fled.
On the 15th I spent some time on the splendidly appointed hospital ship Mongolia, and was much struck with the perfection of the arrangements, and the contrast between the comfort and cleanliness on board and the squalor and filth at the front. I met one of the nurses who had served with the Red Cross in the late war in South Africa. I asked her which she thought was worse, this war or the other.
[Pg 194]
'There, in comparison to what is going on here, things seem trifles: the wounds there were generally small; here they are dreadful.'
Meanwhile, on land, the enemy were, generally speaking, quiet. The reconnoitring patrols of both sides frequently came into contact, and each tried to snatch surprises and ambush the other. But the results were small. They shelled our defences, and we in turn did our best to foil them and delay their siege-works. On the 17th I accompanied Smirnoff on a visit to Colonel Yolshin, who had been wounded, and a good deal was said about the inactivity of our engineers.
If we had only had good men here, in six years what might we not have done, seeing what had been accomplished in four months? Our senior as well as junior engineers entirely forgot that enormous progress has been made of late years in ballistics, and apparently had no knowledge of modern artillery. They quietly pursued the prehistoric dogmas of ancient manuals.
In a fortress with a stony soil like Arthur—soil which cannot be touched with entrenching tools—all the mobilization defence works, especially those of heavy profile, should have, to guard against such assaults as we had experienced, been prepared beforehand. The mobilization works in Arthur were only begun on the arrival of the new Commandant on March 17, up till which time they had not been touched. The whole attention had been directed to the central wall, and on the forts and intermediate works.
There was no mobilization scheme in the Fortress. Perhaps General Bazilevsky knew of one, as he had seen the gradual development of the Fortress works, which had gone on for over ten years. Unfortunately, all records of these[Pg 195] matters had been despatched to Harbin, and no one in Arthur, not even the Commandant, knew anything of them. It may be asked why the new Commandant was not entrusted with the plan of mobilization works? Why did General Bazilevsky—if he had such a plan—not give it to St?ssel? Why did Kuropatkin when he went round the Fortress not ask for the plan of its works, even though only roughly drawn out? Because in all probability one never existed. As to General St?ssel, it is quite possible that he did not know that a fortress ought to have a mobilization scheme, or did not even appreciate what a mobilization scheme was. He knew nothing about the works of the Fortress; they had been entirely under the control of Bazilevsky, who worked absolutely independently, and was subordinate only to the Viceroy. For him, it was a sufficiently important duty to dismiss and abuse the cab-drivers on the streets, to order private soldiers who were improperly dressed back to barracks, and to order men walking about in the streets to keep step. To march out of step he considered such a crime that he thought it necessary even to make a special report on this subject to the Viceroy. He was therefore very busy, and of course could not trouble himself about a defence scheme.
During September 18 and 19 heavy firing took place all along the line, and the attack on Water Supply and Temple Redoubts was fiercely pressed. The enemy mounted artillery within 100 yards of the former, and after changing hands six times, it remained on the 19th a smoking ruin, in the enemy's hands. Temple Redoubt was captured on the 20th, on which day furious attacks were made on Long Hill and 203 Metre Hill, and Pan-lun-shan was shelled. In the evening the first was seized by the Japanese. With the capture of Water Supply Redoubt the town was deprived of the usual water-supply, but Fresh Water Lake and the wells dug[Pg 196] by Smirnoff's orders gave us plenty of water for the requirements of the garrison and civil population.
From the early hours of the 21st the Japanese attacked 203 Metre Hill, upon which their gun-fire was also concentrated. The whole of the western front and part of the eastern replied by massed fire. The assault increased; column after column rushed forward on to 203 Metre Hill, covering all its fore hills and slopes with heaps of dead, but at 8.45 a.m. they were repulsed. This assault was distinguished by particular obstinacy. I myself saw how, when their attack was repulsed, instead of retreating, the enemy began to build parapets of their dead and wounded comrades on the granite slopes of the hill, for they had no sand-bags. From this parapet they kept up rifle-fire all day on 203 Metre Hill and its spurs, on Fort No. 5, and on the Military Road, making all communications impossible. From morning till late in the evening the Japanese guns kept up a constant bombardment on 203 Metre Hill, and its position became more critical with every hour. Having got three-quarters of it, they meant to get possession of the rest at all costs: they slowly crawled upwards, fell dead, rolled back, and others dashed forward; they lay concealed and waited for reinforcements, nothing would drive them back. All their thoughts, all their endeavours were to get possession of this hill. Our men began rolling down great boulders from the top. These bounded down, flattened out the dead, and sought out the living, who, in trying to dodge, exposed themselves, and were shot by our men on the look out.
There you have the poetry of war—the reverse of a battle picture.
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A CANET GUN MOUNTED ON FORT V., SEPTEMBER 22.
The following is what Colonel Raschevsky wrote on the 21st: 'In two days, the 18th and 19th, we have fired 70,000 rounds. As we have for long been short of shells, batteries were often unable to reply to the enemy.[Pg 197] From May 26 (the battle at Kinchou) our losses have been: killed, 3,200 men and 59 officers; wounded, 8,500 men and 286 officers. Of the wounded, up to the present not less than 2,500 to 3,000 have recovered and returned to the front.'
During the night of the 21st about 900 corpses were collected under 203 Metre Hill. At 2 a.m. on the 22nd Colonel Tretiakoff reported that the enemy were again advancing on to it, and that our men had great difficulty in holding on. Fort No. 5 was bombarded all day. On the 22nd the town and part of our line were being bombarded, when Smirnoff started to reconnoitre 203 Metre Hill himself. Under a hot fire we reached Fort No. 5 (by courtesy a 'fort,' for it had no masonry shelter, and was even now a ruin), but had to wait until the fire slackened at the enemy's dinner-hour before we could venture to watch over the parapet; he then saw how 203 Metre Hill was surrounded. To relieve Fort No. 5, which was being heavily shelled, he decided to telephone to Electric Cliff to turn their fire on the enemy's guns, but the time taken to get the telephone message through was disheartening. (I have seen an article in the Voenny Sbornik by a M. Timchenko-Ruban, to the effect that the Fortress was supplied with materials for telegraph and telephone construction on a luxurious scale!)
The General was disturbed about the position of 203 Metre Hill, though for that front, as a whole, he had no fear. He thought that the enemy would storm this hill that night, and that they must therefore have large masses of reserves collected somewhere close by: he wanted to find those reserves. His theory was justified, for at 1 p.m. a report was received from an observation post at Pigeon Bay that, from a small peak half a mile away, a good view could be had of a deep ravine running to the foot of 203 Metre Hill, and that in it the enemy's reserve of[Pg 198] almost two regiments was hiding, waiting apparently till dark to make a fresh attack on the hill.
Smirnoff at once telephoned to Colonel Khvostoff to send a section of quick-firers from Liao-tieh-shan or Fort No. 6 to shell them, and at the same time told him to warn all guns on the west front to be ready to sweep the south-west foot of 203 Metre Hill, where the enemy were bound to first show themselves on leaving the ravine. The section of quick-firers moved cautiously towards the ravine without being seen from the enemy's siege-batteries. It then suddenly opened rapid fire on the crowd of reserves massed in the ravine, and cause............