The Project Gutenberg EBook of Port Arthur, by Richard Barry This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Port Arthur A Monster Heroism Author: Richard Barry Release Date: November 23, 2017 [EBook #56038] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PORT ARTHUR *** Produced by John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE Some minor changes are noted at the end of the book. PORT ARTHUR From a painting by Massanovich From Everybody’s Magazine, by permission GOING INTO ACTION Out from the maize, on a dog trot, springs a battalion, pushing across the winnowed terraces, over the stubble. Scientific fanatics, they, pressing on up to the griddle of death. PORT ARTHUR A MONSTER H E R O I SM BY RICHARD BARRY Illustrations from Photographs taken on the field by the Author NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 1905 Copyright, 1905, by Moffat, Yard & Company Published April, 1905 TO FREMONT OLDER Grateful acknowledgment of permission to reprint some of the articles and photographs which enter, with additional new material, into the redaction of this volume is made to the Century Magazine, Everybody’s Magazine, Collier’s Weekly, the Saturday Evening Post, the Scientific American, the London Fortnightly Review and Westminster Gazette, the Paris L’Illustration and Le Monde Illustre, and the London Illustrated News, Black and White, Sphere and Graphic, in which journals they in part originally appeared. The reproduction of the frontispiece in oils by Mazzanovich, redrawn from Mr. Barry’s snapshot on the field, is here made by courtesy of Everybody’s Magazine. C ONT ENT S PREFACE PAGE The Siege at a Glance 15 INTRODUCTORY The Investment, Siege, and Capture of Port Arthur 17 CHAPTER I The City of Silence 33 CHAPTER II The Invisible Army 40 CHAPTER III Two Pictures of War—A Glance Back 67 CHAPTER IV The Japanese Kitchener 81 CHAPTER V Camp 108 CHAPTER VI 203-Meter Hill 118 CHAPTER VII A Son of the Soil 142 CHAPTER VIII The Bloody Angle 152 CHAPTER IX A Battle in the Storm 164 CHAPTER X The Cremation of a General 183 CHAPTER XI The General’s Pet 191 CHAPTER XII Courting Death Under the Forts 198 [Pg 7] [8] CHAPTER XIII From Kitten to Tiger 211 CHAPTER XIV Scientific Fanatics 234 CHAPTER XV Japan’s Grand Old Man 253 CHAPTER XVI The Cost of Taking Port Arthur 276 CHAPTER XVII A Contemporary Epic 289 CHAPTER XVIII The New Siege Warfare 316 EPILOGUE The Downfall 339 [9] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS OPPOSITE PAGE Going into Action. From a Painting by Massanovich. Out from the maize, on a dog trot, springs a battalion, across the terraces, over the stubble, these Scientific Fanatics press on, up the Griddle of Death Frontispiece Richard Barry and Frederick Villiers. They were mess-mates during the siege. Mr. Villiers, the veteran war artist of seventeen campaigns, was dean of the War Correspondents at Port Arthur. The photograph shows them before their Dalny home 34 Starting for Port Arthur. Reserve regiment leaving Dalny for the firing line, eighteen miles away 46 General Baron Nogi, Commander of the Third Imperial Japanese Army, studying the Defenses of Port Arthur in his Manchurian Garden in the Willow Tree Village 62 General Baron Kodama, Chief of the Japanese Staff, standing on his door step 84 Bo-o-om! Discharge of the Japanese 11-inch mortar during the Grand Bombardment of October 29th. This gun stood a mile and a half from Port Arthur and is shown firing into the Two Dragon Redoubt. The vibration made a clear photograph impossible 112 The Hyposcope. Lieutenant Oda looking from 203-Meter Hill through the hyposcope at the Russian fleet in the new harbor at Port Arthur 120 Orphans. Driven from home by shells which killed their father and mother, these brothers tramped from camp to camp selling eggs 148 Human Barnacles. Clinging to the bases of the forts, like barnacles to a ship, these sturdy Japanese existed in wretched quarters throughout the summer, autumn and half the winter 160 Ammunition for the Front 180 How They Got in. Eighteen miles of these terminal trenches were dug through the plain before the Russian forts 202 The Last Word. The officer is giving last instructions to his men before the Grand Assault of September 21st. This photograph was taken in the front Parallel, 300 yards from the Cock’s Comb Fort 222 Preparing for Death. A superstition holds that the Japanese soldier who dies dirty finds no place among the Shinto shades; so, before going into action, every soldier changes his linen, as this one is doing 241 A map of Port Arthur. Showing the defenses and the direction of the Japanese attack 281 Home. The shack, 800 yards from the firing line, occupied for three months by the fighting General Oshima, Commander of the Ninth Division 290 Plunder. Showing Adjutant Hori, Secretary to General Oshima, standing near plunder taken from the captured Turban Fort 290 In action. Loading a 4.7 gun of the ordinary field artillery during the assault of September 20th 312 The Osacca Babe. Loading the 11-inch coast defense mortar during the general bombardment of October 29th, two miles from Port Arthur 332 [10] [11] [12] Cloud girt among her mountains, Nippon, in wrath as of old, Unleashes her young warrior; Lo, the world’s champion behold! He comes abysmal as chaos, A boy with the smile of a girl, Tumbles his man with a handshake, And spits him up with a twirl. Nourished on rice and a dewdrop, He fans him to sleep with a star, Believing the fathers of Nippon Created things as they are. So up and across the short ocean He sails to the land of can’t, To keep up the name of his fathers And smash down the things that shan’t. Ah! What a freshet of glory When into the noisy fray Against a shaggy old giant Comes this youth asmile and gay! [13] [14] [15] PREFACE THE SIEGE AT A GLANCE The sea attack on Port Arthur began on February 9th, 1904, at noon. The land isolation occurred on May 26th, when the Second Army, under General Oku, took Nanshan Hill. Four grand series of Russian defenses from Nanshan down the peninsula were then taken by the Japanese. The capture of Taikushan on August 9th, of Shokushan two days later, and of Takasakiyama the following day, drove the Russians into their permanent works. The real siege of Port Arthur began, thus, on August 12th, and continued for four months and nineteen days. The failure of the first grand assault, continuing seven days from August 19th, forced Nogi and his army to go slowly about the terrific job of digging a way into the fortress. In the following four months there occurred six more grand assaults, the periods between them being occupied in mining, sapping, and engineering. What was known as the second assault was made from September 19th to 25th; the third from October 29th to November 1st; the fourth from November 28th to 30th; the fifth from December 4th to 9th; the sixth from December 18th to 20th; the final assault from December 28th to 31st. The morning of January 1st, 1905, General Stoessel, the Russian commander, asked for terms of capitulation, and the following day these terms were submitted and ratified. The grand strategy of the Japanese operations was simple. It comprehended one brief design: to demonstrate on the west, where 203-Meter Hill is, while the infantry and the heavy ordnance smashed the Russian right center, where are located the principal Russian forts, Keekwan (Cock’s Comb), Ehrlung (Two Dragons), and Panlung (Eternal Dragon). Four and a half months of sapping, mining, bombarding, and hand-to-hand fighting, than which history holds no record of more desperate contest, won the forts of the Cock’s Comb and the Two Dragons for the Japanese. The fall of the Two Dragons on December 31st brought Stoessel to his knees. [16] [17] INTRODUCTORY THE INVESTMENT, SIEGE, AND CAPTURE OF PORT ARTHUR In all the long history of military exploits, there is not one that can compare, in point of difficulties surmounted, with the reduction of Port Arthur. That this fortress should have been taken by assault entitles the Japanese operations to rank with the finest work done by any army in any age; that it should have been taken in five months from the day on which the investment was completed (the day on which the Russians were driven into their permanent works) is an exploit which has never been approached. For Port Arthur’s defenses had been laid out on the most modern plan. Nature, moreover, has cast the topographical features of the place on lines that are admirably suited to defense. The harbor is surrounded by two approximately concentric ranges of hills, the crests of which are broken by a series of successive conical elevations. The engineers took the suggestion thus offered, and ran two concentric lines of fortification around the city, building massive masonry forts on the highest summits, and connecting them by continuous defensive works. The inner line of the forts lay at an average distance of one mile from the city, and constituted the main line of permanent defense; the outer line, at an average distance of a mile and a half from Port Arthur. Beyond these again were the semi-permanent defenses. The positions of the various forts were chosen in such a relation to each other that they were mutually supporting—that is to say, if any one were captured by the enemy, it could not be held because it was dominated by the fire from the neighboring forts; and, indeed, it often happened that the Japanese seized positions from which they were driven in this way. In the majority of cases the slope of the hills was very steep, and what was even worse for the Japanese, smooth and free from cover; so that if an attempt were made to rush the works, a charge would have to be made over a broad glacis, swept by the shrapnel, machine gun, and rifle fire of the defenders. Once across the danger zone, the attack was confronted by the massive masonry parapets of the fort, over which the survivors, cut down to a mere handful, would be powerless to force an entrance. The defense of Port Arthur, however, did not stop at the outer line of fortifications, but extended no less than eighteen miles to the northward, to a point where the peninsula on which Port Arthur is situated narrows to a width of three miles. Here a range of conical hills, not unlike some of those at Port Arthur, reaches from sea to sea; and these had been ringed with intrenchments for troops and masked (or hidden) emplacements for artillery. Between Nanshan and Port Arthur the Russians had built four more lines of intrenchments, reaching from sea to sea, all very strong and admirably suited for defense. Now it must be borne in mind that all this wonderful net-work of fortifications, strong by nature of the ground, strong by virtue of the great skill and care with which it had been built, was distinguished from all other previous defensive works by the fact that in this fortress, for the first time, were utilized all those terrible agencies of war which the rapid advance of science in the past quarter of a century has rendered available. Among these we may mention rapid-fire guns, machine guns, smokeless powder, artillery of high velocity and great range, high explosive shells, the magazine rifle, the telescopic sight giving marvelous accuracy of fire, the range-finder giving instantaneously the exact distance of the enemy, the searchlight, the telegraph and the telephone, starlight bombs, barbed-wire entanglements, and a dozen other inventions, all of which were deemed sufficient, when applied to such stupendous fortifications as those of Port Arthur, to render them absolutely impregnable. The Russians believed them to be so—certainly the indomitable Stoessel did. And well he might; for there was no record in history of any race of fighters, at least in modern times, that could face such death-dealing weapons, and not melt away so swiftly before their fury as to be swept away in defeat. But a new type of fighter has arisen, as the sequel was to tell. On February 8, 1904, the first blow fell upon Port Arthur in that famous night attack by the torpedo boats. On February 9th occurred the engagement between the remnant of the Russian fleet and the Japanese fleet under Admiral Togo which ended in the Russian retreat into the harbor and the closing of Port Arthur by sea. On May 26th the Japanese Second Army, which had been landed at Petsewo Bay, attacked the first line of defense at Nanshan, eighteen miles north of Port Arthur, and gave an inkling of the mettle of the Japanese troops by capturing the position in a frontal attack. The Japanese pushed on to Port Arthur and there followed, in quick succession, a series of bloody struggles at the successive lines of defense in which the Japanese would not be denied. The fiercest fight took place at the capture of a double height, Kenshan and Weuteughshan, which Stoessel re-attacked vainly for three days, losing three times as many men as were lost originally in the attempt to hold the position. On May 29th Dalny was occupied, and became the base of the besieging army. A railway runs from Dalny for three miles to a junction with the main line from the north to Port Arthur. On August 9th to 11th the outlying semi-permanent works Taikushan and Shokushan, lying about three and one-half miles from Port Arthur, were taken, and the Russians driven in to their permanent positions. The army detailed for the capture of Port Arthur was 60,000 strong; Stoessel at the date of the battle of Nanshan probably had 35,000 men. Encouraged by their uninterrupted success in capturing Russian intrenchments by dashing frontal attack, the Japanese, particularly after their brilliant success of August 9th to 11th, believed that they could storm the main defenses in like manner. They hurled themselves against the Russian right center in a furious attack upon the line of forts stretching from the railway around the easterly side of the town to the sea. For seven days they battled furiously. But the wave of [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] conquest that had flowed over four lines of defense, broke utterly against the fifth; and after a continuous struggle, carried on day and night, beneath sunlight, moon, and searchlight, they retired completely baffled, with an awful casualty list of 25,000 men. On September 1st the Japanese, finding that they could not take Port Arthur by assault, settled down to reduce it by an engineering siege. This latter was carried on by means of “sapping and mining,” supported by heavy bombardment, its object being to shake the defense by terrific artillery fire, blow up the parapets and other defenses by subterranean mines, and capture the fortress by fierce assaults delivered from concealed trenches close to the fortifications. Sapping and mining may be described as a method of attack by tunneling. The Japanese found that they could not get into the forts by a rush above ground, so they determined to burrow in below ground. The main attack was directed against the line of forts to the east of the city, or the Russian right center. The first operation was to cut a deep trench, not less than six feet in depth and a dozen or more feet in width, roughly parallel with the line of forts, and at a distance of about 1,000 yards therefrom. From this trench three lines of zigzag trenches were dug in the direction of the principal forts of Ehrlung, Keekwan, and Panlung. These trenches were about six feet deep (deep enough to hide the sappers from view) and eight feet wide (wide enough to allow the troops to march to the assault four abreast). The zigzag consisted of an alternate approach and parallel, the former extending diagonally toward the fortification, the latter parallel with it. The angle of the diagonal approaches was always carefully mapped out by the engineers, and was so laid with reference to the enemy’s forts that it could neither be seen nor reached by shell fire. The digging was done chiefly at night, and the soil was carried back through the excavated trenches in gabions and on stretchers, and dumped out of sight of the enemy. As the parallels were advanced across the valley or level spaces, they were roofed at intervals, with planks covered with soil and grass, so that as the Russians looked out toward the ravine in which the army was supposed to be encamped, there was nothing to indicate that the enemy was cutting a series of covered roadways, right up to the base of the forts themselves. Of course in many cases the trenches were located, and desperate night sorties were made in the endeavor to break up the work. But it went remorselessly forward. When the foot of the fortified slopes was reached, a second great parallel, extending around the whole face of the fortified eastern front, was cut—this latter for the purpose of assembling the troops for the final dash upon the forts. From this parallel the Japanese cut tunnels straight through the hills until they found themselves immediately below the massive parapets of such forts as they wished to reach. Here cross tunnels were cut, parallel with the walls and immediately below them, in which tons of dynamite were placed and the wires laid ready for the great explosion—much of this being done, it must be remembered, entirely unknown to the Russians, secure in their great fortifications overhead. The work of the sappers and miners was now complete. It must not be supposed that while this slow work was being carried on, the garrison at Port Arthur, or the city itself, or even the fleet in the harbor, was being left in peace, or had any respite from the harassments of the siege. For as soon as the investment was complete, the Japanese erected hidden batteries in various carefully-selected positions, until they had no less than 300 guns trained against the city. All the furious assaults that failed so disastrously were preceded by bombardments, the like of which had never been witnessed in the history of the world. These batteries consisted of regular siege guns of from 5 inches to 6 inches caliber, a large number of naval guns of 4.7-inch and 6-inch caliber, and the regular field ordnance of the three divisions and two independent brigades composing the Third Imperial Army. By far the most formidable pieces used in the bombardment, however, were the powerful 11-inch mortars, which were mounted in batteries of from two to four in various positions behind the ranges of hills which effectually screened the Japanese from Russian observation. The pieces are the Japanese latest type of coast-defense mortars, such as are used along the Straits of Shimoneseki and about the Bay of Yezo. They were brought by sea to Dalny, carried by railroad for a distance of fifteen miles to the end of the track, and from thence were hauled by hand over special tracks laid direct to the emplacements. In some cases, indeed, the guns were dragged on rollers through the sand, as many as 800 men being required to haul a single mortar; for the mortar barrels, without the carriage, weigh eight tons apiece. This task was accomplished under fire, in rainy weather, and in the night, to the accompaniment of bursting shrapnel and other discouragements which would have daunted a less dauntless race. Even when the selected site of the batteries was reached, every one of the eighteen mortars had to be placed upon a concrete foundation eight feet in depth and eighteen feet in diameter. In each case an excavation had to be dug, the concrete prepared and rammed into place, the heavy foundation plates, traversing racks, and the massive gun carriage, weighing much more than the gun itself, erected and adjusted, and the whole of the heavy and costly piece put together with the greatest nicety. All through the long months in which the sappers and miners were cutting their trenches, the engineers were putting in place these huge mortars, which were not originally intended, be it remembered, for such field operations as these; but were designed for permanent sea-coast fortifications around the harbors of Japan. The mortar itself has a bore of 28 centimeters, or 11 inches. The shells are designed to burst on contact. They are loaded with a high explosive designed by the Japanese Dr. Shimose, and corresponding in its terrific bursting effects to the English lyddite, the French melinite, and our own maximite. Each shell weighs 500 pounds. Its cost is $175, and the cost of each discharge, including that of the impelling power, is about $400. During the heavy bombardments, each gun was fired once every eight minutes, and as the grand bombardment lasted in every case about four hours, the cost for these mortar batteries alone must have been over $200,000, and for the whole of the batteries, including naval guns, machine guns, etc., the cost of each bombardment was approximately half a million dollars. The 11-inch mortar has a maximum range, with a moderate degree of elevation, of seven or eight miles; but as none of these batteries were more than three miles distant from the point of attack, they were fired at angles of as great as sixty degrees, the huge shells hurtling high into the heavens, passing over two ranges of hills, and falling like thunderbolts out of the blue sky, vertically [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] upon the devoted city. But if the batteries were located behind hills that entirely shut out the object of attack from view, how, it will be asked, could the guns be aimed with such accuracy, to sink, as they did, a whole fleet of warships, one by one? It was in this way: For the attack of stationary objects such as forts, docks, buildings, ships at anchor, etc., the artillery officers were provided with a map of the whole area of bombardment, which was laid out in squares, each square having its own number. The Japanese having, at the close of the Chinese war, been in possession of Port Arthur themselves, and having possessed during the past few years an excellent bureau of intelligence, knew the exact location of every building or object of importance in and around the city. Consequently, when the artillery officers were directed to attack a building in a certain square, or a particular fort, they knew exactly what angle of elevation to give their gun, and how far to traverse it, so as to cause the shell to fall with mathematical accuracy upon the particular object to be hit. The attack upon the warships, however, was another proposition, for they could be, and were, shifted, from time to time. To make sure of hitting them, it was necessary to have some direct line of vision. The Japanese knew that such a line of vision could be obtained from the top of a hill to the west of the city known as 203-Meter Hill—the Russians knew it, too. Hence that awful struggle for possession of this hill, which cost so many thousands of lives. The Japanese won the position. When they had taken it, they placed observers provided with the hyposcope—a telescope that enables the observer to observe the surrounding country with out exposing himself above the surrounding parapet— upon the summit, in suitable positions, and held the hill with sufficient force to prevent its being retaken. The batteries were then trained at the individual warships, and the effects of the shells was telephoned from 203-Meter Hill to the various batteries, and the errors corrected, according as they were long, short, or wide, until the huge shells commenced to drop with unerring accuracy down through the decks and out through the bottom of the doomed warships. The ships tried to escape observation by hiding on the outside of the harbor behind the Tiger’s Tail hills, and in a cove behind Golden Hill; but there was no escape, and ultimately every ship of the squadron was sunk. That was the beginning of the end. The 11-inch batteries when directed at the forts tore gaping holes in the parapets, and according to the testimony of General Stoessel, they were simply irresistible. One by one, after furious bombardments, the walls of the great forts were blown up by the explosion of the subterranean mines that had been laid by the sappers and miners, and the Japanese massed in readiness for the attack in the inner parallels swept in through the wide gaps thus formed, and seized the fortifications, from which, a few months before, they had been swept back in terrible and crushing defeat. [30] [31]