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PORT ARTHUR




[Illustration: _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
  HEROISM

  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.




CONTENTS


  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


  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




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




      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!




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.




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 <DW72> 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 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,”