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About The Sunday Oregonian. (Portland, Ore.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 4, 1904)
12 Glimpses of the "Heal Thing"? at Port Arthur Graphic Sketches by First Correspondent Leaving "Besieging. Army. (Continued from First Page.) see the mountain side and road below livid. Two horses arc lying In the roaa, killed, I suppose, by the flash. But, no. I remember that a shell laid them out yesterday. RIcalton cries: 'They've begun." "No." I yell, "It's the storm," and my voice Is lost in the thunder. Is It thunder? Is it cannon? Who can tell1 The vivid flashes, too great for artillery, lighting up the- whole moun tain, come In now on all sides, and as fast as the lanyards of a battery could bt pulled. The horrid grandeur rises. Prayerfully thankful to be in It, I desperately resolve not to run. How the molten sheets drag me from that hole in the rocks! Surely every glass in Port Arthur Is leveled here! The next instant the Russian fire v.Vl concentrate on the Phoenix. Tes. There it is a flash from Golden Mount,- like a dynamic spark from one electrode to another, pointed this way, lost in the Ink of night. A double fear the fear of Bhame and the fear of death consumes me. I 'shiver. But I grow brave, for I am not alone. RIcalton leaps to his feet, wrapped in the trailing cart cover. "Sublime!" he cries, waves his arms aloft, laughs at the storm. More flashes from the Russian hills, the Japanese answer. The vast night Is hideously alive. Artillery, flicks as fireflies apark, spits tongues of flames, answering thunder with thunder, light ning with lightning. The rain beats down a torrent. In the intermittent flashes the ugly eye of a searchlight looks In, licks phosphorescently about us and ambles eff Into the valley, as a cow might run tho fur of her tongue over a rocklcburr and calmly go to grass. No taste for rocks over there. They are out for softer game. Six more fling their deviltry from the head of Cy clops and down the Valley struggle with mist and rain. By Light of Star lombs. Then, mid the sky's and cannon's blch, as a fairy Jnto the land of de mons, a thin red line is tossed grace fully over the valley from the Russian side. It reaches high over the moun tains from the seaforts and above the center of the great plain falls, as a sailor casts a halyard over the yard arm to the dcok beyond. In midair bursts the feu de Jolc. the delight of fireworks, in war a spy. On other nights this deathly star bomb revealed all secret movements, but now the Jap anese have allies in the mist and the rain Neither searchlight nor bomb can penetrate the storm velL Now comes the cackle of Infantry Are, followed by the pop, pop, pop of quick firers, the clatter of Hotchklss howit zers, the more sprightly click of the Maxims. Another assault and tbey have had 11 in a week! Will they win this time? They are going for the "ockscomb, whose crest stands out vain-glorlously against the sky. STOESSEL'S Three Months and One-Half of Dreadful Carnage Japanese Yet Patiently Creep On Their Prey What It Cost to Achieve 203-Meter Hill By Richard Barry. ON August 19 I ran eight miles to see the fall of Port Arthur. Most of this was up a mountain. It took me a month to get my breath; not from the climb, that was over in an hour, but from the spectacle, an Iron chain of forts hung on the brow of a mountain range, and spitting fire at hosts of tiny brown figures swarm ing up as ants swarm over a pile of moldy crusts. By night there was a change, searohlights playing pitch and toss In the dark, and star bombs mumblety-peg with the mountains. Thus It went day and night for three months and a half. After a while I got down into the action and saw the human Impetus, the pallor and ag ony of it, the unspeakable bravery. I saw four grand assaults, eight skir mishes, seven bombardments, two na val battles, and the sweat and toll of monster heroism in downright hard digging of dirt and shale such as 'la borers for money dnjam not of. There fore some excuse exists for the fol lowing conclusions. Romance Outdone. ' I did not see the fall of Port Arthur, but I saw something greater the stand of Port Arthur. Looking back It seems a dream, at times ugly like a nightmare, more often a celestial bar let through the coating of man's life. For I learned that the tales his tory records and romance weaves Thermopylae, Areola, Syracuse, Troy. Jerusalem are not the curlycues of a poet's dream, cut with a burnt stick at night, but that these things actual ly do happen. What Is more, that you and I have touched shoulders with an age that has produced men as willing to fight and die for the grand old cause as any that ever trod the earth. Yet it was glory too costly for Joy. When I think of that mighty panorama, of batteries peppered by shrapnel, but hanging to their work like microbes to disease; of the wounded whom no first aids could touch, and of the dead whom no burial squad came near; of the sappers creeping, digging In the n'ght hounded by shells of the. infant rymen In assault, losing comrades, right-hand messmates, never pausing, onward going, the dots of foetid clay livid along the slopes until a handful out of a host crawls up and flings Itself, fanatical with he lust of battle and worn In the charge so that life can never be the same again in sweetness, Into the redoubt paid for a dozen times In blood, and which oven then Is but Introduction to ago ny more terrible, for far beyond, rising tier on tier, series on series, are re doubts and forts, moats and batteries until the soul grows sick to think that Port Arthur must be bought with sacrifice so vast Nature's Mighty Fortifications. The Japanese did not take Port Ar thur on August 19. as previously ar ranged, because they were fighting not man alone, but God, who did well ty the Russians. They had not only forts and batteries and a great foe to face, but a mountain range. A moun tain" range so devised by some power greater than the military engineer that every eminence was commanded by at least two and some by a dozen others. The forts were built on the shoulders of these mountains, and it Is notorious th-tt though earthworks may cave, mountains are not much affected by shell fire. That Is why the fact that the Japanese have thrown 20 tons of Eteel and Iron burst ing into Port Arthur has not sufficed to reduce the fortress. I do not be lieve the Japanese shell fire has done much harm. I know that only about JAPANESE BATTERY OF 11 Boom! Bo-o-o-m! Far out of the distance a deep treble. "The navy. That's a 12-lnch sun. Togo's with us tonight!" RIcalton HEROIC STAND AT PORT one in 400 of the Russian shells has done damage. A shell appeals to the imagination and lets the hotel corre spondents hear the cannonading at Chefoo, SO miles away, but for icasual ,tles we must look to bullets. Bullets make little noise and little wounds. There have been about S0. 000.000 discharged at Port Arthur in three months. And 30,000.000 bits of steel flying about are bound to hit a few hearts In Japan and other hearts In Russia. Even though men have been known to get them In the brain and walk off, many are sure to find arteries and spines. Some 30,000 Jap anese have got them thus, for good and all, or for the action. How many Russians. Stoessel alone knows. 203-Meter Hill. Dispatches said four days ago that 203-Meter Hill was captured, and that this was a strategic move which gave the Japanese command of the town. We have had these dispatches very frequently for three months. They are from the Japanese, who must re port progress. The command of the town is not essential. It Is not Port Arthur, but Stoessel that Nogl is after, just as It was not Richmond, but Lee that Grant was after. As for the strategic position, no one can say that any one fort at" Port Ar thur is the key. Very clever engineers were assisted by God In devising those forts, and the result Is that no single one can be said to be the key. All are so arranged that each is commanded by two or three or a dozen others, so that when one Is taken the Russians turn their guns on It and make it un tenable. Such Is the condition at 203 Meter Hill. The Japanese have driven the Russians out, but they may not be able to mount guns there, nor do aught but use the place for an advanced po sition for another assault. Tea years ago, when the Japanese took Port Ar thur from the Chinese In a single day, one fort, Issuzan, taken, the others fell. That was the key. Today no single fort Is the key. 203 is dominated by the Table fort, the Table fort by the Chair fort, the Chair fort by Golden Hill, and Golden Hill by LJaotlshan. And after all this Is taken only the west has fallen; there remains the East. Months of Patient Sapping. Yet the 203 Is an advance. I walked ten miles on September 19 to see the taking of 203. Two months and a half of sapping and waiting, then- one day of assault has turned the trick. Though it may not mean the fall or Port Arthur or the command of the city. It means the beginning of the end. This for the reason that, math ematically, every contraction In the Russian line means a gain In Japanese strength. The smaller the circum ference the less the resistance. And. after all, it is simply a question of mathematics. The loss of llfe appals, the spectacle attracts, the glory en thralls, but the keen interest com mands. A chessboard and two mas ter minds such Is Port Arthur, Nogi and Stoessel. And the checking move was made as long ago as May 26, when the battle of Nanshan was fought The fate of Port Arthur was sealed then just as it was again sealed the other day when 203 was taken. A lot of sealing, you say. Good wine always needs It. Nogi a Man of Granite. Nogl has fought the campaign In masterly- fashion. It has been said he looks like Grant. So he , does. A grim smile, taciturn ' jowl and power In the joints. He Is a soldier and. a philosopher, that is to say a piece of granite cast in human mold. He is a Japanese and jH'ARDEST HITTING Photo by Richard Barry. -INCH SIEGE MORTARS THESE MORTARS WERE HAULED BY SOLDIERS THREE MXLES OVER PRECIPITOUS , HULLS, AND MOUNTED UPON EIGHT-FOOT BEDS OF CONCRETE. ought to know, but who can tell? Is it a Japanese siege mortar, a Russian coast defender, field artillery, star bomb., machine gun, howitzer or that ARTHUR a samurai, that is to say a veneered savage. " He has held consistently to his plan of campaign from tho first. This plan was to demonstrate on the west, where 203 is, while he Merced the Russian right center. He has been piercing that right center for three months. He tried it first on August 19, lost 20,000 men, because God, the engineers and the desperate back-to-wall fighting were In the way. He tried it again on September 19, again on October 9, again on October 29, and finally on November 28. He fought It out on that line though it took all Summer, a regular Grant. Now it looks as if he would take all Winter at It. But he will have to turn from Grant to Hannibal and weather tho Alps, for he will find the Man churlan mountains bleak with wind, sleet and snow and bare of cover. He is fortunate in soldiers They are marvels of endurance, seem to stand anything, exist on promise and a prin ciple, and conquer all things save when God reinforces the clever engineers. No Massacre Likely. Of course silly reports come front Port Arthur. One of the silliest Is that the Japanese will massacre the garrison when the citadel surrenders. To massacre means to kill wantonly. They will not kill wantonly, but they will kill. So would you kill and vi ciously, as they do, had you had your red cross flags and your flags of truce fired upon, had you seen your wounded comrades shot before your eyes, had you been held above your own dead, unable to bury them, while the stench from a broiling midsummer sun stifled you; had you been held to stew for months In your own Juice under the forts allied with God. No. You would not massacre, but you would kill, be cause war is not an afternoon tea or a Queensberry c-;:.,?7t. Ajid you would kill as many and as long as you could, because you would be out for blood with your throat on the razor edge of death. I make- no criticism of the Russians for holding the Jap anese in the stench of their own dead, for shooting wounded lying between the lines, for using handballs of dung In defense of their forts. I merely record the facts which I saw and was a part of. Every war Is a horror. These grew some details are but a part of what the world must expect. Archimedes was not dishonored In the use of Greek fire nor Bayard- in the use of boiling pitch. Japanese Have Abandoned Swords. Late dispatches tell also of an assault in which trained swords men entered the Ehrlung and Keekwan forts. There are no trained swordsmen, as such. In the Japanese army. Every officer car ries a sword, usually a shining, deadly thing gotten through an cestors, forged in mysticism. But no privates carry swords. When officers get In opposing trenches, they use their swords, snipping heads off clean as boys snip weed tassels. But there are no trained bodies of these swordsmen. It Is a civilized army, a highly civilized army, as Russia and the world is learning. Port Arthur! The Japanese soldier! Could I ever finish telling of either? One the apex of the' world, the climax of all things political, scientific, poet ic, human; the other the apothesls of soldierly virtue. And when we say soldierly virtue do we not sum up manly virtue? The subject calls. The place, the man calls. Is the world deaf? Can It forever sec these hero isms performed In Its dooryard, maps obliterated, continents swamped, a new civilization created, and not take notice? ARM OF ATTACK grander ombardmcnt from the heavens? e all in action tonight. Is it r victory? Can they take tho I canvanswer none of these questions. I only lcnow that "a child could under stand ihc de'll had business on his hand." V As tAv crashes increase, the wind rising, W'i furor mounting, I throw the carPiover aside, wrap the blanket more closely about me and run down the mountain. RIcalton calls, but I hear him not. The reality of this din must be known. Qver my shoulder, as I run, tho Phoenix looms up mon strous, haughty, wise and terrible, sil houetted as she was born, anon In Are. At the foot a regiment Is drawn along the road, the men squatting on their heels, ponchos over heads, their rifle-barrels, brass-capped, peeping from the corners. I make for the val ley. In the Midst of tho Fire'. Seeking a trench where I have been before, between the lines of fire, I hurry for the village of Shulshing, the location two days before of our out posts. No living thing Is to be seen, but overhead the big bullets crash from behind and lumber in from the front Down here between the two Hne3 of batteries the way grows long, the village distant the desire to return manifold. The artillery of two armies conter on you; not a pleasant sensa tion! Of course, they are not on -you, but you are not aChristian Scientist nor yet a veteran. It gets on your nerves. You turn back. Then, through the dark, you feel a file of soldiers near and go on. Starting at every sound, in the purest darkness, not knowing whether we or the enemy occupies the village, and yet so far by this time I could not go back, I entered the village. A dull light around the first corner shows me the headquar ters of the Infantry line officers, com manding -the reserve a place I had been two days. before. I go up. Only a Ser geant is there, answering tho telephone. "My friends? Where?" He waves an arm toward the front I tumble out of the -village and there arc the advanced reserves drawn up, squat ting on heels, poncho covered, rifles un capped. A movement Is beginning. I fall In with the young Lieutenant I know. Tho regiment quickly breaks Into charg ing formation squads of 12 and deploys single file into the mealle fields to tho left I am discovered, ordered to the rear. I protest The sentry orders arms, bay onet fixed. I go back. The regiment goes ahead. A Fort Manned by Dead. But why be foiled? Why come half way round the globe, to be turned back at the summit? There Is another way to the right I hurry along it as day be gins to break. The mists heavy, the rain drizzling, the first light struggling. I find the conical hill In the center of the plain, quite detached from the fortress proper, taken by our troops the day before, and called the Kuropatkln batter'. I struggle through battered abattls and entangle ment for the elevation. The foss Is filled with water the only moat before Port Arthur that has the traditional morass. The place Is deserted and If I can reach the front trench tho whole action will lie before me like a chessboard. Across the parapet lies a line Sergeant, his head gone. There has been no time for the- dead. The trail Is thick with khaki bodies. Picking my way slowly forward, halting at each yard to be sure that I am not in range of the musketry whose wild rattle .is now filling the air, I at length find myself near a bombproof par tially splintered by shells. The plain now luminous, I pause for rest and safety, the din not lessening. But no eooner do I look around than I scramble quickly on into danger. Two figures are rigid there in the half-light of the bombproof, one In khaki uniform, They ai defeat q fort? one in blue blouse and marengo pants. The one in khaki has his teeth In tho throat of tho other, whose eyes popped like peas from the pod, peer,, over, rak lshly curious, at his limp hand dropped over the khaki back and holding a pis tol. The khaki hip is drenched with blood, partially dried The sun is come and gone and Is now here again since that t . .f? -2? " Photo by Richard Barry. GUARDING THE WATER. So scarce Is cood water on the road to Port Arthur that the Japanese have posted Bentrles over all the puro water, and none of It can be taken without an order from an officer in charge. To the front of the sentry in the photograph may be seen soldiers making use of a stream of Impure water; the good water being to the sentry's rear. Japanese soldier running from bombproof with powder charge for 11-lnch siege mortar, which was engaging a Russian battery as the photograph was taken. v happened. The faces are ghastly with bloat I leave the shelter of half-light and go out where the bullets are. The star bombs cease, the searchlights die away, the artillery flags, the infan try grows noisier. Then I see the re serves falling back, the squads of 12 es caping from one terrace to another. In good formation, continually firing, but JAPANESE SIEGE OPERATIONS AGAINST RUSSIAN RIGHT CENTER The Japanese building of the ayaiem of siege parallels and approaches mapped here is the greatest feat of military engineering since the invention of gunpowder. Each line represents a. permanent trench, from 6 to 18 feet deep, sometimes covered, sometimes running through solid rock. In one place through a mountain, along the- banks of a creek, through a village, and under three forts. There are 18 miles of these saps along a four-mile front and In them the Japanese army lives In full sight and range of the Rus sian batteries, yetafe. The saps are made to take advantage of every economic angle of advance, eo that a raking Are cannoj plunge Into troops coming forward. Along this creek bed on August 7 the Japanese lost-10,000 men in the open, but now. through parallels and approaches, they can- pour a division to the parapets without losing a man. A good idea of the parallels may be obtained from the accompanying photograph. R. B. still falling back. This Kuropatkln bat tery may see other dramas like the bombproof duel. I hasten down. In the village I find the Lieutenant, busy with trenches, improving the defense. He throws all bis English at me as I come up: "The Russians they come I fix them. They are very wild. Our men are very wild. Ah, it Is a wild war." The tele phone rings. He runs to speak with the General. Then the Sergeant informs me. Lured Into Trap. They had attempted an assault In the rain and dark. Beginning with shrapnel, tney had tried to And the searchlights. Charges burst above two nearest tho cockscomb, and they expired, as If hit. The guileless infantry then went In, sup posing the way clear. Half way up Iher glacis every searchlight, including the two apparently hit, converged on them, throwing them out. In spite of the rain, clearly against the red earth. More. They carried nippers capable of cutting all wire theretofore found before Russian posi tions, but here the wire was as thick as the. little finger,- not cuttable with their weapons. Thus, instead of. a lump of RUSSIAN LINE OF dough to be bowled over the first dark night, the advance regiment had found, even In the rain, that the cockscomb stood out Intact as a racing yacht .stripped for her tryout. Yet another Russian dodge, for a bat tlefield Is as full of Intrigue as a ball room, completed the disaster. Under our fire of the afternoon, which preceded the rivalry with the storm, Stoessel had hl3 batteries re,ply, but when we opened up with the storm he ordered his guns to cease, one by one, battery by bat tery. Soon our forces thought that, like the searchlights, the artillery was done for. So when the ad vance, after creeping through the nlp-per-defylng barbed wire, was about to leap with a "Banzai!" over the para pet they were met by light and fire. Turning to look for their comrades of the second regiment, they found these deep In the dunga. attempting, not to come on, but to cut their way back, for a battery of pompoms and a regiment of sharpshooters had sprtied, almost segre gating them from the command. At this moment the whole brigade was threatened with annihilation and at this moment the reserves I had joined were ordered to the relief. . The regiment under fire of the machine guns retreated precipitately, leaving one half Its number on the slope. Turmoil again through the barb wire and full plump into the rear of the. second regi ment, also retreating, not into its "own" lines, but into the Maxims and Norden- felds. Overwhelmed on all sides, tricked. defeated, two-thirds of the men killed or wounded, grimy with sweat and powder and almost fainting in the muggy Au gust, the brigade. Its regiments back to back, fought as Custer - fought on the Little Big Horn, with a coolness that comes to men In the supreme hour. Most of them died as Custer died, for out of that brigade of 6000 men there are today uninjured but 640. These were savea by the reserves from Shulshing, my Lieu tenant and hl3 comrades, who, as dawn came in. hammered the Russian rear and drove the Siberians, sullen with the joy of successful trickery, back Into their trenches. ' Wandering back toward -Ho-o-zan, the forenoon well on, the rain almost fin ished. I wondered; was it "reverse" or PERMANENT DEFENSE The heavy line was the Russian, front when I left November 8, and remains so to today with tho exception of 203-Meter Hill, taken by the Japanese November 28. R. B. "repulse?" Coming to the place where the rear guard had been at my descent of the mountain before dawn, I looked for them In vain. Instead of the greeting I expected, from the side of the road the dust about me, here and there, was flicked up,, as If stones were" thrown at me. "Is this a bit of soldier fun?" The pelting kept up. One of the stones struck a few inches from my toe, when I heard the well-known voice of RIcalton yelling from behind a shoulder of rock: "Here out of that, you young ass!" Then I saw him frantically waving, from behind his shelter. But why should he look for shelter there? The artillery fire was down. All I could hear was a 'counter attack of Infantry a mile and a half In the rear. ... o ..... y Photo by Richard Barry. POWDER TOR THE MORTAR. But as soon as I got near him he rar out and dragged me into the ditch at hlf side. "Where are the soldiers?" I asked. Then I saw his fun. "You were tossing thing! at me." I cried. "Those! Spent bullets! , You!" At this moment an orderly galloping along fell from his horse several hun- J HARBOR j