BATTLE OF THE SHA-HO.
THE RUSSIAN ATTACK.
On October 8th General Kuropatkin issued an address to the army in
Mukden giving reason for the retreat from Liao-yang, and announcing
that the time had come to roll back the advancing tide of Japanese and
restore the fortunes of Russia. Hitherto the enemy had been able to
keep the initiative by reason of their numbers. But the Czar had at
last given him a force great enough to abandon the defensive and to
ensure victory. Papers found on the body of a Staff Officer were more
precise. The orders from St. Petersburg were to take the offensive
as soon as possible, to march to the relief of Port Arthur, and on
no account to retire from Mukden. The army that was to attempt this
herculean labour consisted of sixteen divisions of infantry, and one
division of cavalry, the strength of which may be put at two hundred
thousand rifles and four thousand sabres.
One month had passed since General Kuropatkin retreated from Liao-yang
and, fearing pursuit, withdrew his defeated and demoralised troops
to the North. Finding that the Japanese were not pressing close upon
his heels, the Russian leader took measures for defence. Tieh-ling,
forty-five miles North of Mukden, was chosen as a base, and the hills
on both sides of the road were fortified. Wushun, thirty miles East, on
the upper reaches of the river Hun, was garrisoned by a large force to
guard against a flanking movement and connected with Tieh-ling by a new
road. The mountain pass that had served as the means of communication
with Wushun was strengthened with earthworks. Near Tahaitun, seven
miles South of Tieh-ling, the range of hills that cross the road from
East to West were entrenched; the right bank of the river at Ilu,
twenty-two miles South, was fortified; defences were made in front of
Mukden, and trenches were dug on the North bank of the river Hun. At
the end of September General Kuropatkin had completed his preparations,
and in the first days of October the army began to move South. Small
parties of Cossacks and infantry appeared on our front, which extended
from Pintaitsu, North of Ponchiho, to the railway at Yentai--a distance
of about thirty miles from East to West. Their mission was to ascertain
our strength and disposition. On October the 4th Japanese patrols
on the Mukden and Wushun roads were attacked, and two days later
the brigade on our right wing was ordered to fall back on the river
Tai-tsu at Ponchiho. The enemy on that day established themselves
along a line stretching from Pintaitsu through Sankwaisu to the North
of Yentai.
The advance of the Russian army had begun in earnest, and we were to
witness a struggle that has few parallels in the annals of war. For one
long week half a million of men held one another in close and deadly
grip, and night and day before our eyes were performed deeds of heroism
that have never been surpassed. Attack and counter-attack followed
with bewildering rapidity; position after position was stormed and
stormed again; now a brigade and now a company pressed forward with the
bayonet, and on the hill tops, clear against the sky, men faced each
other within a dozen paces or rushed together in one bloody scrimmage.
The Russians fought with the courage and fatalism of their race. Never
have they displayed such reckless bravery and resolution. But they have
lost their aptitude for war. Within twenty-four hours they had ceased
to be the assailants and were fighting for their lives against the
irresistible tide that swept toward Mukden and covered mountain and
plain for thirty miles with dead and dying.
The plan of attack was simple and resembled that of the Japanese
on the Yalu. General Mistchenko was to turn our right flank in the
mountains near Ponchiho, and crossing the Tai-tsu to threaten us in
the rear at Liao-yang. A strong force was to engage our centre East of
the coal mine at Yentai, while our left flank on the railway was to
be held and prevented from giving help. Against our right wing, from
Ponchiho to the coal mine, were hurled nine divisions of infantry with
one division of cavalry and a detachment of mounted infantry under
General Renenkampf; four divisions confronted our centre and left
flank and three divisions were in reserve. The assault was made with
energy and determination on our extreme right, and until the morning
of the 14th the force defending that flank was in serious danger,
General Mistchenko having succeeded in isolating it from the main body
and crossed the Tai-tsu with a brigade of infantry and a regiment of
cavalry. The failure of General Kuropatkin’s plan may be ascribed to
the obstinate courage of the brigade on our extreme right, who fought
for days against overwhelming numbers, and to the fact that, as on the
Tang-ho before Liao-yang, General Kuroki drove a wedge into the heart
of the enemy’s front.
At noon on October the 9th I left Tong-kin-ryo, the Tomb of the Eastern
Capital, a village four miles East of Liao-yang where ancestors of the
Emperor of China sleep in the shadow of pine trees and marble tablets
recording their virtues. The tide of war had swept over the hamlet,
leaving it silent and deserted. From the Temple of Buddha, which had
been my solitary abode since the Japanese entered Liao-yang, I heard
the sound of rifles in the hills two miles away and learned that
mounted bandits or Hunghutse had encountered the Chinese troops and
were being driven into the mountains whence they had emerged on the
departure of the Japanese.
At Taiho, a squalid collection of houses South of the coal mine, where
I arrived in the afternoon, were evidences of the battle. That morning
the brigade on our right had been attacked from three sides by a great
force, and a brigade of the enemy’s infantry with a division of cavalry
and two guns, had crossed the Tai-tsu and was threatening Ponchiho from
the South. Our right wing was practically surrounded, and a division
was ordered East to reinforce the garrison. At the same time the enemy
appeared on our front. They occupied Shaliuho, a hamlet North-east of
the coal mine, and Pachiatsu, further to the East, and strengthened
their force at Ponchiho.
Next day the struggle on our extreme right grew more severe and the
position of the brigade became very serious. The division sent to its
aid had not reached its destination when the Russians made a determined
assault from all sides. Prince Kun-in led his cavalry brigade East and
crossed the Tai-tsu in pursuit of the enemy, who had gained the South
bank of the river, but before effective help could be given Ponchiho
might fall and the Japanese army be compelled to retire to a defensive
position before Liao-yang.
[Illustration: A Buddhist Shrine.]
[Illustration: Figure of Buddha.]
Our situation on the 10th looked extremely critical and called for
decisive measures. Field Marshal Oyama showed himself equal to the
gravity of the occasion. He determined to rob the enemy of the
initiative by delivering an attack upon their centre. Once more the
brunt of the battle had to be borne by General Kuroki’s army. From the
uniforms of dead and wounded soldiers, from papers found upon officers,
and from statements made by prisoners, we learned that in the Russian
fighting line were thirteen divisions:--1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 9th
Sharpshooters; 1st, 2nd and 3rd Siberian; 22nd, 35th and 71st Line; one
division of cavalry and a detachment of mounted infantry. In reserve
were three divisions:--The 9th and 31st of the Tenth Army Corps, and
the 54th of the Fifth Army Corps. Nine divisions of infantry and one
cavalry division confronted General Kuroki from the coal mine to
Ponchiho.
The scene of these operations lies to the South of the Sha or Sandy
River and East of the railway. Though within twenty-two miles from
Mukden, the country may be described as mountainous. Ranges of hills
run in broken lines from West to East with a tendency to the South as
they approach the rising sun. The hills are bare of vegetation and have
many spurs shaped like the spine of some monstrous saurian--a semblance
that doubtless gave birth to the Chinese superstition that certain
hills are the backs of dragons and may not be disturbed with impunity.
The ranges are divided by cultivated valleys dotted with villages and
farmsteads, and seamed in many places with ravines and nullahs that
give excellent cover. From the plain West and for five miles East of
the railway, rise isolated and rocky hills that command a wide field
of fire and make good infantry positions, while toward Ponchiho the
ranges draw closer together and are loftier and more precipitous.
On the morning of the 10th, the two armies lay among the hills South
of the Sha-ho, our left wing resting on the railway and our right in
the mountains near Ponchiho. Both armies were entrenched and on our
front were few signs of activity. Our batteries were masked at the foot
of the hills near the coal mine and in the Eastern heights across the
plain, while our infantry was concealed in trenches on the level ground
and on the slopes. Early in the day the enemy’s guns displayed great
energy, their fire being directed against the ridges and villages that
might shelter riflemen. The key to the Russian position was a hill
about six thousand yards from the coal mine--a broad shouldered height
crowned by a rocky escarpment that looked like a fort.
Bastion Hill, as we named it, is flanked on the East by a range
traversed by spurs on which the Japanese artillery and infantry had
established themselves. Fronting it on the South rose a mount connected
with the Eastern range by a saddle. Behind this lower eminence is a
ravine and a dense grove. The Western slope of Bastion Hill descends
into a plain through which flows a shallow stream almost washing the
walls of a village hidden among trees to the North-west. The approach
from the South is over the flat commanded from a deep gully running
like a trench under the hill. On the North stretches another plain with
a range of mountains beyond, where the enemy’s guns were posted.
The scene might have tempted an artist and would have taxed his
palette. Before us lay the valley shaded with russet and amber. The
sun caught the sheaves of harvested millet and transmuted them into
gold, and from beds of dappled brown rose groves of willow and fir
whose green branches threw dark shadows over the homesteads. And beyond
towered mountain and hill which Autumn had tinted with purple and
amber. It was a scene of pastoral beauty into which the spirit of war
had entered unbidden. The husbandmen were leaving their houses among
the trees and hastening through the stubble, but not to garner their
sheaves which stood ripe in the sunshine. They were fleeing with wife
and child like Lot from the city of Gomorrah, “and the smoke of the
country went up as the smoke of a furnace” as gun answered gun.
After noon there appeared on the plain to the West of the Bastion
Hill a large force of the enemy. Their serried lines made a dark mass
against the russet fields on the right of our batteries, from which
leapt yellow tongues of flame that seemed to lick the lowest slope.
In front of this mass, near a cluster of trees, rode two squadrons
of cavalry, who appeared to have made up their minds to show us that
Cossacks have some use in war. Knee to knee they came onward and we
held our breath. At the trees they drew rein, broke line, reformed
and rode back. Presently they returned and treated us to the same
performance. It was a pretty spectacle, but the meaning of it was
beyond our comprehension. The dark lines of infantry behind also began
to move. For a moment we imagined that they were about to advance
across the valley, but they wheeled to the right, and, marching and
counter-marching, went back to their original position near the guns.
On our left, within range of our artillery, several companies were
digging trenches on the side of a low hill. They were at no pains to
conceal themselves or their work, and our guns left them unmolested.
Whatever the night might bring forth, it was soon clear that the
Russians had no intention of renewing the attack on our centre, and we
concluded that their immediate purpose was to demonstrate to a watchful
foe that they were present in force. Soldiers who go into battle with
brass bands are capable of extraordinary things.