NANGALIN RAILWAY-STATION
Along the roads and paths and across the fields the remnant of the 5th
Regiment dribbled towards the Tafashin Heights. Behind these hills
confusion was worse confounded. The whole 4th Division streamed away
past this wonderful natural position, the strength of which can be
seen at once, even from a map; but no one seemed to have noticed its
tactical importance before, and nothing was now done to take advantage
of it to resist the invaders further. Back, back streamed all. When it
was quite dark, when the men of the different units were thoroughly
mixed up in the disorderly retreat, so that control was impossible,
some one shouted that the Japanese cavalry were coming. What then
happened it is difficult to say, but the infantry opened fire on their
own men, there was a lot of miscellaneous shooting, and a convoy of
wounded from under Tafashin was taken for the enemy and fired on.
Batteries hearing the firing and having no infantry escort hurried off
to Nangalin. Colonel Laperoff's battery, marching ahead in good order,
was almost swept away by the other batteries galloping on top of it in
the dark; all was blind panic till daylight. It was indeed lucky for
us that the Japanese did not pursue: the results of such a pursuit are
painful to think of, and the enemy might have got into Port Arthur on
the heels of the 4th Division.
Nangalin Railway-station presented a scene of dreadful chaos. Trains
loaded with wounded were leaving for Arthur. Owing to the suddenness of
the retirement and the disorganization, no arrangements for food had
been made, and men of all branches of the service, badly wounded and
exhausted by the long battle, lay tortured with hunger, thirst, and
cold. The dim forms of the gunners of Kinchou could be seen prowling
about the platform as they searched for food; others were lying huddled
together, sleeping. The first and second class refreshment-rooms were
filled with officers, whose numbers were being momentarily increased by
fresh arrivals by train, on horseback, on bicycles, and on foot. Nobody
knew anything or what to do; every one waited for orders which did not
come, for none of the commanders were there. The majority of the senior
officers, having eaten, were lying on the floor.
A long train filled with wounded was standing at the platform ready
to start; it had been there for some time. The medical officers were
performing acrobatic feats in their efforts to pass along from one
goods waggon to another, and were doing their best by the dim light of
the lamps to alleviate the terrible suffering.
'Tell them to get us some water; the men want something to drink, and
we have only got distilled water required for doing the dressings,'
said one of the doctors to a railway official.
'There isn't any. We never expected this rush, and what we had has been
used. There is only dirty water.'
'But the men are dying of thirst, to say nothing of hunger. How much
longer is the train going to stop here? It is torture to the wounded.'
'Captain ---- won't allow us to start.'
Opposite the station buildings I saw a group of men gesticulating and
heard angry voices. I went towards them, hoping to find out what the
delay was.
'... I ask, I demand that the train be started at once. In the name of
humanity all haste must be made to get the wounded into a hospital as
soon as possible. Every moment with some of them means life or death.
It is utterly absurd to talk of _issuing rifles_ to them, and it would
take hours.' It was the senior doctor of the hospital train speaking.
Taking advantage of his authority as a staff-officer of the district,
Captain ---- insisted that the rifles piled up on the platform
should be issued to the wounded men. Both men got angry, and the
staff-officer, annoyed that a doctor should attempt to question his
arrangements, assumed a haughty and peremptory tone.
'Don't torture the wounded. The train is a long one, full of awful
cases, and they are lying all on top of one another. There's no room
for rifles,' implored the doctor.
The captain was furious, and striding to the telephone, returned after
a few minutes to insist on his orders being obeyed; but the medical
officer, losing patience at what seemed to him pigheaded cruelty,
flatly declined to allow the wounded to be disturbed, and insisted on
the immediate despatch of the train.
'Even the regulations of the Peace Conference lay down that wounded
sent by hospital trains must be disarmed,' he shouted.
'I care nothing for the Peace Conference, or any other damned
conference. I must send these rifles into Port Arthur, to prevent them
falling into the enemy's hands,' was the reply.
Boiling with indignation, I could remain no longer a spectator of
this disgraceful scene, and walked off along the train. It was an
unusually long one. Wrapped in my thoughts, I strolled some way from
the station. Suddenly I heard a noise--neither groans nor screams,
but more like lowing. Where I was and what had happened suddenly came
back to me. It was a very dark night, and close to me were standing
some waggons, from which were proceeding these noises. Have you ever,
when travelling by rail, stopped in a station or at some siding at
night alongside a cattle train, and heard the noise of the cattle? If
you have, I need not attempt a further description of the sound of the
hospital train at Nangalin station that night. I walked slowly along
it. In the unlighted goods-waggons crowds of men were lying about, some
on straw and some on the bare floor. One heard choking sighs, groans,
sobs, prayers, curses, and calls for help, combined with the howling of
men in unbearable physical agony.
'Drink, drink! something to drink--I'm burning!' was jerked out at
me in a hoarse voice from an open door. With difficulty I clambered
up, and then almost fainted at what I came upon. In the dimly-lighted
waggon lay a shapeless heap of men, coats, boots, canteens,
great-coats, heads, arms, and the place reeked of blood.
'Sir, a drink--a drink, for God's sake!' The cry stabbed me. From the
indistinguishable pile of flesh and--other things--I saw at my feet a
blood-stained head, a sheet-white face lit up by two burning eyes, and
an arm stretched towards me. I gave it--this thing--my water-bottle.
The wounded man seized it with both hands, but after a second let
them fall helplessly, his head lolling back on someone's enormous and
blood-smeared boots.
'Ach! cold. Cover me.' He was in an ague.
It was sickening, revolting, horrible. I tried to slip out, but
involuntarily my eyes were caught by the sight of a grinning face on
which danced the expiring light of the flickering wall-lamp. A smile?
and amid such surroundings? Stepping carefully across the wounded men,
I went up to it. No! it was not grinning: 'twas the play of light
and shadow on the face of another cold corpse. The rows of teeth, the
half-opened lips, and the fixed, glazed, staring eyes--a ghastly grin
indeed.
Along-side, with his face turned towards and almost touching this--this
grin--lay another mangled man, groaning piteously and breathing fast.
Every now and then he opened his eyes, but apparently did not know
where he was. What would have been his feelings, I wonder, if on the
way to Arthur he had come to himself? Throwing my handkerchief across
the dead face, I jumped out of the waggon and hurried to the station,
to find the wrangle still continuing. I was boiling with fierce
indignation. I kept hearing the animal noises and groans of hundreds of
suffering men imprisoned in this train, which till a few hours before
had been, as was amply evident, filled with cattle.
I left this inferno and went off and joined the artillery. We soon
started, and marched through the moonlight night, along with troops,
transport, and herds of cattle, all hurrying, scurrying towards Port
Arthur, passing many Chinese villages, seemingly quite deserted. Once
we heard a shout, 'The Japanese cavalry are on us!' By dawn on the
27th, having again gone more than thirty miles, we arrived at the
station of Inchenzy. Worn out and hungry, and finding no food at the
station, we lay down on the platform. At six o'clock some hot food was
provided for the men. The officers were asked to have some refreshment
in a saloon carriage, the very one in which, three days ago--little
expecting what was in front of us--I had gone to Kinchou. At seven
I left for Port Arthur in one of the trains of wounded coming from
Nangalin, and at nine o'clock I reached the Fortress. The town was
stupefied.