October 1 was an epoch in the history of the defence of Port Arthur, for it was on that day that the first of the 11-inch shells fell into the Fortress, and so changed the aspect of affairs. It was during a conference held on the positions that a message was received that an 11-inch shell had fallen in Chi-kuan-shan Fort, destroyed the masonry, and killed and wounded several men. Those who were present suggested that a bombardment had again begun from seaward.
'No, no. These are newly mounted land guns—big guns. I am afraid they will do for the forts and the fleet.'
The majority of those present doubted it.
'You doubt it? It is no use. You will soon see.'
I walked with General Smirnoff back from this conference along the hills. As the bullets were whistling over the deep trench along which we were walking, I could not help thinking that there was nothing worse than this whistling—one got used to shells, but not to this ceaseless squeaking of invisible birds. We had scarcely got on to Mitrofanieff Hill when a pillar of smoke, sand, and stones rose up out of Chi-kuan-shan Fort, as if a gigantic tree had sprouted up and been thrown down. Then, with clockwork regularity, fantastic[Pg 207] trees grew up every few minutes in different directions along the north-east front, and we heard the roars of dreadful explosions. Eight of them occurred in Erh-lung-shan and Chi-kuan-shan Forts this day and did great damage to the casemates. They were different to anything I had yet seen.
About two o'clock in the afternoon a bombardment of the town began; the fire was concentrated near the Tifonty Mill and grew heavier every minute. As the area of the falling shells gradually contracted, it became clear that the target was this mill which supplied us all with flour. This was the first day of a special bombardment of the town: there were no 'shorts'; it was a deliberate cannonade. The fire continued steadily, and the mill was struck by several shells.
The result of the foreigners' visit to us was apparent!
The conditions in the besieged Fortress—the wearing, trying uncertainty, the want of confidence, and the constant, unavoidable danger began to tell. The younger men lost their nerve, and suicides commenced.
On October 2, nine 11-inch shells fell in Fort No. 4, and it was reported that a large howitzer was mounted to the right of, and in rear of, Sugar Head.
On October 5 a fire was caused on Tiger's Tail by the enemy's shells. In the morning we attacked Signal Hill, which we had abandoned the day before. After a fierce and bloody fight we recaptured it, and it remained ours till the end of the siege. On this day Raschevsky's diary says:
'The parallels and approaches of the gradual attack against Chi-kuan-shan Fort, Open Caponier No. 3 and No. 2 Battery, have got much closer. The Japanese are working with great perseverance, notwithstanding our fire and occasional sorties. It has been decided to make these oftener and of greater strength.'
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And on the 7th he continued:
'... The approaches also are being pushed forward with greater perseverance than ever toward our works; we can, in the daytime, even see the men digging, while we are not strong enough to concentrate our gun-fire on them. The situation of the approaches is particularly dangerous in front of No. 3 Open Caponier, where the distance between the enemy and ourselves is only 50 yards.'
In the afternoon the enemy suddenly began to shell the quarters of St?ssel and Smirnoff by rafales from their small guns. Their sudden and extraordinarily accurate shooting is proof that they had learned from the 'correspondents' where St?ssel and the Commandant were living, for up to this they had always fired on the Viceroy's house. As soon as the first shells began bursting near St?ssel's quarters he at once gave orders that General Volkoff's house, which was at the foot of Quail Hill, should be got ready for him, and he began to move. However, an 11-inch shell happening to strike this house, compelled him to abandon the idea.
On the 8th Raschevsky wrote:
'Since 9 a.m. their big howitzers had been busy firing at our howitzer batteries Nos. 20 and 21. By 1 o'clock they had fired about fifty-five shells at them. The left half of the masonry battery, No. 21, afterwards presented a picture of complete destruction: the concrete is in many places destroyed, and has fallen down in great masses.'
For six days now the town had been bombarded with 11-inch shells—great masses of metal of awful destructive power. Nowhere could we find real safety from them except, perhaps, in the bomb-proofs of Madame Subotin, dug out of the rock. The concrete of the forts, the armour on the battleships, were penetrated clean through. From October 1 life in Arthur was any[Pg 209] thing but pleasant. On the evening of the 9th the enemy seemed to be concentrating near Rocky Redoubt, Water-Supply Redoubt, and the village close by.[26] We had made an attack, but as they were in great force, we had to withdraw. They were also active on the west front. The following is the entry in the diary for the 9th:
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BOMBARDMENT: JAPANESE SHELLS BURSTING ON HILL.
'It was quite quiet up to 12 o'clock. Exactly at noon a salvo was fired at the town. After a short time it was repeated, and then, at 2 o'clock, the enemy turned all his nearest batteries on to the trench in front of Erh-lung-shan Fort, which we had recently recaptured, and we were obliged to abandon it again. To-day a sortie was ordered on the Redoubts with the object of seizing them and some of the Japanese trenches in front. In the event of success the enemy would, of course, have had to evacuate his parallels and approaches to Chi-kuan-shan Fort, from which they were now only 150 yards distant. The attack failed.'
On the 10th the 11-inch shells did much damage on the north-east front. General St?ssel published the following order this day:
'On the 7th instant I received the following telegram from the Commander-in-Chief, dated Mukden, September 20:
'"I have received your despatch of September 16, and I congratulate you warmly on your fresh success. We are making energetic preparations for an advance. The 1st Army Corps has already arrived. God be with you! Trust to me to succour you."'
When Kuropatkin received General St?ssel's piteous despatch asking that he might be allowed to remain on in Arthur, he had forwarded it to Petersburg, asking what he was to do (St?ssel had by this time been made Aide-de-Camp to the Tsar, and had been promoted to the Third-Class Order of St. George), adding that he had already twice recalled him from the Fortress. Petersburg replied that it left the matter entirely to him. Kuropatkin naturally did[Pg 210] not think that St?ssel had changed his spots by having had the above distinctions conferred on him, but being a clever and experienced diplomat, he did not wish definitely to recall a newly-appointed Imperial aide-de-camp, and so kept silence.
On the 11th and 12th there was fighting round Chi-kuan-shan and Erh-lung-shan forts on the east, as well as Fortification No. 3 and Tumulus Redoubt, where the enemy gained ground. On the west they were entrenching on the slopes of 203 Metre and Long Hill. The following is an extract from the diary for October 12:
'The enemy's approaches are getting closer up. With wonderful energy and perseverance they are digging them towards Chi-kuan-shan Fort, Open Caponier No. 2, and B Battery. Early this morning two additional approaches were made towards Kuropatkin Lunette, and parallels were begun. Our artillery fire is not continuous enough to stop them. Sorties are not often made, and when made few scouts go with them, so that they are carelessly carried out, and have little result; consequently the siege-works are progressing rapidly. In the last parallel in front of B Battery the Japanese have built a thick bomb-proof with a covering of Chinese wood, apparently with the object of protecting the gun crews from hand-thrown grenades.
'We are all alarmed for the condition of the caponier of the main faces of Chi-kuan-shan. They have mined behind the counter-scarp, and evidently mean to blow it up. In anticipation of this we are making two counter-mine galleries from the corners of the caponier, which, running for twelve yards, ought to hit their main gallery, but as the soil here is almost rocky, progress is slow, and we may be late in intersecting the enemy's gallery. In order to ascertain the position of their shaft, and the direction of their gallery, orders have been given for a sortie to-morrow, in which the sappers will take part.'
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RESULTS OF A BOMBARDMENT.
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This sortie failed through the clumsiness and noise of the men who were not specially trained scouts.
From Chi-kuan-shan we made another sortie on the night of the 15th. This also failed, owing to the majority of the men turning tail. St?ssel's order about sorties undoubtedly had a good deal to do with the poor spirit shown on this occasion. An attempt was also made to stop the work on the sap-head by firing the war-head of a torpedo charged with 70 pounds of pyroxiline out of a torpedo-tube on the parapet. On the 17th General Gorbatovsky took the place of General Nadein as commander of the right flank of the defences.
In some places now the enemy were face to face with our men, with only a distance of twenty to thirty yards between them. Taking cover behind sand-bags, the Japanese were doggedly continuing step after step, yard after yard, and fresh earth was constantly being thrown up out of the deep saps which hid the men working. Occasionally one would see the glint of a spade, or a black forage cap, and along the communicating trenches here and there would run a Japanese dressed in black.
On the 20th Raschevsky wrote:
'At 3 a.m. a sortie was made from Chi-kuan-shan. Its arrangement was entrusted to me, as its main object was to reconnoitre the enemy's works nearest to the fort: 40 infantry and 5 sappers took part in it. Owing to the failure of the two preceding sorties, this one was most carefully prepared. The men were ordered to go round the foot of the glacis and its slopes, and to dash on to the head of the enemy's three approaches. If possible they were to destroy the works, and not attempt to pursue, but immediately to return. A party of 25 infantry and 3 sappers, under the command of Ensign Marchenko, were to go round the fort from the left, and to lie concealed on the glacis. The other portion, under the command of a non-[Pg 212]commissioned officer, was to break through the wire entanglement placed along the glacis of the right face, and to lie down there silently and wait for the signal for the general attack by both parties. The signal was to be a ray of searchlight thrown on to the nearest peak of Ta-ku-shan. The first flash, at 2.45 a.m., was to be a warning for the men to be ready: the second, at 3 a.m., was to be the signal for the general attack. Both parties were then to dash simultaneously down the glacis right on to the appointed place. By doing this we hoped partly to escape the fire of the enemy's machine-guns, which in the previous sorties had fired along the direction of the salient angle of the glacis, and along the slopes under the flanks of the fort. Our men were not to fire till discovered, but directly the Japanese opened fire, the guns and infantry from the neighbouring works were at once to concentrate their fire on their near trenches—not, however, closer than a certain given direction towards the foot of the glacis—in order to divert their attention. At the same time a demonstration was to be made from the covered way of the salient angle by raising dummies up above the glacis, and throwing stones tied with string on to the wire entanglement to make it appear as if we were trying to advance from the centre and not from the sides.
'As all the members of the sortie parties knew beforehand where to go and what to do, everything turned out almost as we had hoped. The sortie was a complete surprise to the enemy, and, when our men dashed on to the heads of their approaches, they were seized with panic. From the glacis I could hear their shouts of fear distinctly, and their fire was comparatively weak, no machine-guns being used. After these shouts we heard a few cheers, and then, after five or ten minutes, our men appeared at the caponier, where they rushed, fearing that the Japanese would recover themselves and get to work with their[Pg 213] machine-guns. However, they successfully went down the ladders into the ditch and got round the caponier. They had ascertained that the Japanese were making galleries under the caponier of the fort. The direction of one was along under the axis of the caponier; the direction of the other we did not discover. The heads of their galleries were found covered by bomb-proofs, into one of which a sapper managed to throw a six-pound bomb. We lost 3 killed and 7 wounded, amongst whom, to our great regret, was Marchenko, very dangerously wounded. The result of the sortie was so far very successful, and our countermining will now no longer consist of groping blindly.'
Colonel Raschevsky was inclined to judge our men severely, because they dug slower than the Japanese; he called them absolute children. I cannot agree. The Russian soldier, when he came to Port Arthur, was physically strong, though intellectually starved. By this time he had become physically starved as well. No soldiers of Western Europe would have done what he did.
Extracts from Colonel Raschevsky's Diary.
October 22.—'The Japanese approaches are being particularly developed these days in front of Kuropatkin Lunette. There are scarcely any new ones in front of Chi-kuan-shan, but the men saw from Caponier No. 2 that stones were bei............