KUROKI CROSSES THE TAI-TSU.
The part assigned to General Kuroki in the attack on Liao-yang was
worthy of his brilliant record. For five months his army had marched
and fought in the mountains, driving back the enemy to his base and
suffering not a single reverse. Our position was often hazardous,
and since the attack on Mou-tien-ling in July we had confronted a
superior force. We had to feed one hundred thousand men--including
non-combatants and coolies--and were dependent on a line of
communications always difficult, always vulnerable, and, in the rainy
season, always precarious. Yet only for a few days at Lien-chen-kwan,
when the rivers were in flood, were the soldiers reduced to short
rations, and never once were our communications seriously threatened.
At no time were we in a position to avoid an engagement had the
Russians cared to attack. Retreat in such a country would have meant
disaster. General Kuroki staked all on the chance of victory.
I have described in some detail the movements of the First Army from
August 25th, when the energies of the Japanese were bent on bringing
into united action the armies of the West, the South, and the East,
and on completing their strategy by leaving General Kuropatkin no
choice but to accept a decisive battle that under conditions that
would involve the capture of a large part of his defeated army. Driven
back along the railway, the Russian leader showed a disposition to
stand at Anshantien where he had a strong and well fortified position.
But his ability to hold that position rested on his power to check,
if not to repel, the advance of General Kuroki on his left flank.
Once the Japanese penetrated the line of defence on the Tang-ho,
they could menace the rear of the enemy’s position and Anshantien
must be evacuated. To protect himself against this danger, General
Kuropatkin detached a considerable force to oppose General Kuroki, and
was evidently satisfied that he could hold the line of the river Tang
while his main body engaged and defeated the inferior force marching
on Anshantien. We have seen how this plan was brought to naught by
the rapidity and success of General Kuroki’s operations after leaving
Tien-tshu-tien on August 25th, and how three days later the Russians,
outflanked on their left near Am-ping, became uneasy about their base
and withdrew to their last defensive line in front of Liao-yang.
On August 29th--the enemy having withdrawn from Anshantien on the
previous day--General Kuroki prepared to cross the Tai-tsu. His orders
were to threaten the enemy’s flank and to strike at the railway. Such
a manœuvre, if successful, must have turned defeat into disaster, and
the mere threat of it was likely to disconcert the enemy and arrest any
offensive measures he might be contemplating. But in order to gain the
point aimed at it was necessary to deceive the Russians and to act with
the utmost rapidity: while to ensure the destruction of their direct
line of retreat a strong force was imperatively demanded. Every one of
these conditions was absent. The enemy knew the hour and the place of
our passage over the Tai-tsu: our attack was delayed for two days, and
General Kuroki’s force was not more than one and a half divisions. The
Guards were in difficulties and the Unizawa brigade was watching the
flank near Ponchiho, which was threatened by a considerable force of
the enemy. There remained only the Twelfth Division and a brigade of
the Second Division. The river is broad and deep, and on the North bank
are mountain ranges and isolated hills, beyond which lie the plain and
the railway to Mukden. Having driven back a small party of observation,
the Twelfth Division forded the stream near Kuanton at eleven o’clock
on the night of the 30th and proceeded to occupy the hills East of that
place. Half the Second division crossed over at the same ford and took
up a position to cover their comrades in case of attack. Next day the
artillery passed over by a pontoon bridge masked by a rocky escarpment
out of range of the enemy’s guns. The crossing was made without
difficulty or opposition. General Kuroki was fighting with his back to
the river and in front of him was an overwhelming force of the enemy.
This was the position when I crossed the Tai-tsu and came to the
General and his Staff on a bold eminence crowned by the walls of a city
from which had long vanished every trace of human habitation. We were
at Kakuanton, about fifteen miles east of Liao-yang. In front of us,
across a broad plain dotted with groves and hamlets and brown with the
giant stalks of ripe millet and Indian corn, rose a long low hill with
a conical peak in the centre. This was Manjuyama--the scene of a bloody
struggle. On the left, divided from Manjuyama by a narrow valley, ran a
lofty range of mountains, and far away to the right another range with
five peaks, at the Northern extremity of which was the Russian coal
mine connected with the city by a railway. These positions were in the
hands of the enemy, who had strengthened them with trenches, and had
joined Manjuyama with the mountains on our left by a deep trench so
that men might move from one position to another unseen. In the plain
beyond the Northern spur of Manjuyama were posted two Russian field
batteries, and, concealed in a ravine in front of the mountain on our
left, was another battery. The range on our right was also trenched,
but was not so strongly held as on our front and left, where the
enemy’s force was four and a half divisions.
The capture of Manjuyama must be the first step in our advance and
the attempt was made at once. Three batteries of field guns opened a
cannonade from our front and soon came under the enemy’s fire from the
plain beyond. The range of the Russian guns was fairly accurate, and
to an observer at a distance must have appeared to do great damage.
But from our position we could see that the direction was invariably
wrong, and never changed even by accident. Hundreds upon hundreds of
shrapnel burst to the right of the Japanese batteries and made the air
hum with the hail of their bullets, yet at the end of the day only one
man was killed and seven were wounded. Our guns gave no heed to the
enemy’s artillery, but turned their energies to Kuropatkin’s Eye, where
the Russians showed themselves boldly on the sky-line. Again and again
the slope was swept with shrapnel and common shell that drove the men
from the trenches and sent them hot-footed to the shelter of the crest.
Reinforcements came from the mountain on our left, moving unseen along
the trench to Manjuyama and appearing on the slope and summit in long
dark lines. They had to pass through an inferno. Every foot of the hill
was flecked with tiny white clouds of shrapnel, and threw up showers
of black earth from common shell charged with a terrible explosive.
It seemed madness to face such a fire, yet the Russians came and went
and moved along the summit and disappeared behind the conical peak as
though proof against shot and shell. Meanwhile, our infantry were
making ready for a desperate enterprise. We saw them moving forward in
front of the guns--line after line, in close formation.
Now they blackened some green field and looked a target that none could
miss. But the country was broken and the corn was uncut, and though the
enemy’s guns searched for them again and again they passed unscathed.
Now the giant millet hid them, and they vanished as if the earth had
opened under their feet. Again they came into view above the green
bean stalks, they halted as if uncertain of their direction--for you
can soon be lost in the corn--came back and plunged once more into the
millet. Their objective was the North slope of Manjuyama, to the right
of a village almost in the shadow of Kuropatkin’s Eye.
So the hours dragged on, our guns covering the advance until rifle
shots were heard, and the movements of the enemy, like ants disturbed,
showed that our infantry was engaged at close quarters, and the fight
for Manjuyama had begun in earnest. Wildly and with frantic haste the
Russian guns in the ravine searched the fields in front of us, and a
battery on our right joining the fray, tore up the crest of Manjuyama
with deadly explosions.
The sun sank blood-red below the horizon, and the Western sky was
flooded with a crimson glow. The guns were silent, and we heard only
the rifles like the crackling of thorns in the fire. Suddenly, and
with one accord, every battery opened, and out of the darkness leapt
tongues of flame. Hill and plain shook with thunder, and the air was
filled with the roar and shriek and snarl of shells. It was a splendid,
yet a dread spectacle. All night Russian and Japanese fought for
possession of that hill, charging and counter-charging until the ground
was sodden with blood and the trenches were filled with dead.
At two o’clock next morning the enemy fell back under cover of their
artillery and Manjuyama was ours. Meanwhile, reinforcements were
hurrying out of Liao-yang, and a strong column marched against the
division on our right. With sixty guns the Russians defended the
five-peaked range near the coal mine, and our position looked critical.
But help was coming--another brigade was marching to the rescue--and
the fight went on with renewed confidence. The Unizawa brigade had been
ordered to seize Ponchiho and to join the main body without delay.
It was imperative that we should secure this range of hills, and on
September 2nd General Kuroki endeavoured to take it with one-and-a-half
battalions. From three positions the enemy shelled our advance, and
in front were three Russian battalions. Under a devastating fire from
flank and front the Japanese infantry fought heroically, but without
avail, and were finally compelled to withdraw. Then, indeed, we began
to feel the need for an army, and in the words of a brave General, the
meal of rice “tasted bitter in the mouth.” We still held Manjuyama--won
at terrible sacrifice--though stormed at by shot and shell from every
side. Night and day the Japanese infantry endured this ordeal on a few
handsful of uncooked rice, and at night were called upon to repel two
terrific assaults.
Fully appreciating the danger that threatened his retiring flank,
General Kuropatkin had given orders that Manjuyama must be retaken
at all costs. Covered by darkness, six regiments hurled themselves
upon the position held by four Japanese regiments. It was a combat of
heroes. Charge and counter-charge were delivered with fury on summit
and slope and among the corn below. So close were the combatants
that they intermingled and the utmost confusion prevailed. Leading a
regiment from the brigade that had crossed the river by a forced march,
the General found it impossible to distinguish friend from foe until
the bugle had sounded “Cease fire,” and the flash of the enemy’s rifles
in the darkness revealed the point of greatest danger. Placing himself
at the head of two companies, the brigadier charged across this zone
of fire, and the fight went on through the night with unabated fury.
While the fate of Manjuyama still trembled in the balance, an assault
was made against the mountain on our left, and one battalion succeeded
in gaining a foothold. But their ammunition gave out, and only a few
stragglers returned to tell the story of how they captured the enemy’s
guns, and had to flee just when victory was within their grasp.