The provision of technical troops in Port Arthur, their employment, and their reward for the work done are points which deserve some mention. Their provision is a matter which it is in some ways difficult to separate from the ludicrous idea of the way to defend a fortress which held with those in authority. It was, one would have thought, patent that to defend Port Arthur it was necessary to defend the peninsula from sea to sea and from Kinchou to Liao-tieh-shan, or an area of some eighteen miles in breadth by forty in length. As it was unlikely that an attacking enemy would advance on the Fortress held by a civilized power such as Russia with the same impetuosity as was shown by the Japanese in 1894 against an effete nation, it was equally obvious that as many delaying positions as possible, from the most excellent one of Kinchou right away back to the actual enceinte of the place, should be held. Such is the nature of the country that there is a whole series of positions. Even if general principles were not to be regarded, it might be thought that the man?uvres of the years preceding the war would have shown in actual practice how valuable these positions were to any force defending Port Arthur. The enemy were evidently of opinion that we would take every advantage of what Nature had given us,[Pg 293] and would supplement these natural advantages with all the resources of art. It follows, therefore, that in the preparation of these successive positions, quite apart from the defence of the Fortress proper, there was an immense amount of work to be done which would necessitate the skill of technical troops.
Within and round the place itself also, even supposing that all the permanent defences had been ready at the commencement of war, [which they were not by any means], there would be during a siege great scope for the employment of technical troops. It is largely for siege-work that such troops are included in the organization of an army. On the whole, therefore, both the more distant defences of the district and the closer defence of Port Arthur appear to have called for the provision of a very large number of sappers. The district was large, from a point of view of the amount of defensive work that was necessary, and the Fortress was large. Let us see what the higher authorities in St. Petersburg and the local authorities in Arthur apparently thought sufficient.
Of sapper officers not with units there were altogether fifteen in the Engineer Department of the whole district. Of these, the following were not available for general sapper duty: six officers employed in the Naval Construction Yard, and six others specially employed, thus leaving three officers available for sapper duties over the whole area. Of troops for the work over this huge area there was one sapper company—the gallant Kwantun Sapper Company, consisting of 9 officers and 450 non-commissioned officers and men. Even from this number 2 officers were detached and sent up north to Manchuria, and 50 men detached for special duties; that leaves 7 officers and 400 men at the commencement of hostilities! Had the subject ever been considered in St. Petersburg? This number was all that were available for the defensive works on miles of[Pg 294] field and semi-permanent positions, on many permanent forts and intermediate works, and for the construction and repair of all defence buildings.
It must be remembered that under the Engineer officers trained technical foremen are required, and that these have to be paid according to their skill. St?ssel regarded the more expensive article as unnecessary, and thought it sufficient to employ the ordinary sappers from the company as foremen. The proper employment of these technical troops seems also scarcely to have been grasped. As a rule, for defence works the sappers, both officers and men, do little unskilled manual labour themselves; they organize, supervise, and direct the unskilled labour of the troops or of hired civilians. The extent to which the capabilities and powers of sappers was understood by some of the staff in Arthur is illustrated by the following incident:
When the enemy were on the eve of their assaults on Kinchou the Officer Commanding the Sapper Company got a telegram on May 24 from Arthur:
'To Colonel Jerebtsoff.
'General St?ssel directs me to request you immediately to arrange for the blowing up of the southern wall of the town of Kinchou. It should be carried out at once.
'Kondratenko.'
The next morning Jerebtsoff went with his subaltern to inspect this wall. Kinchou was situated in front of the left flank of the position of that name. Like the majority of Chinese towns, it was surrounded with a loopholed stone wall, like a tower of medi?val times. Upon inspection this wall proved to be a solid erection of stone laid in mortar, 19 feet high, 21 feet thick at the bottom, and 19 feet thick at the top. This was what St?ssel wanted[Pg 295] blown up 'immediately.' To demolish it meant blowing up some 1,435,000 cubic feet of stone masonry!
When Colonel Jerebtsoff went into Arthur to report the impossibility of demolishing this wall at once, he was told:
'We will give you as many men from the 5th East Siberian Rifle Regiment as you like.'
'But, sir,' said the Colonel, 'I shall want more than two men to lay the charge in every chamber. For 1,200 yards of wall I should want not less than 500 chambers—that ............