STÖSSEL DISOBEYS--PROGRESS DURING AUGUST
I have mentioned in an earlier chapter how General Stössel was recalled
from Port Arthur in June, and I will now explain the circumstances
under which this happened.
When the Japanese began landing, and in particular after the _débâcle_
at Kinchou, Stössel began showering telegrams on Kuropatkin, in which
he made out affairs to be very critical, and implored for help. Later
he sent Lieutenant-Colonel Gurko, of the General Staff, who was on the
Fortress Staff, to him with despatches. (Before this Prince Gantimuroff
had succeeded in breaking through and returning with despatches.) When
Gurko left he reported his departure to the Commandant, and--knowing
well what Stössel was like--asked if Smirnoff wished him to give any
particular reports to the Commander-in-Chief.
'Tell him,' said Smirnoff, 'everything that you have seen. And if you
hear that they want to make a separate command of the District, tell
him the best man for it is General Subotin, who knows the peninsula
thoroughly.'
In June Captain Odintsoff was also sent to the north by Stössel with
very alarming despatches, and he also, in reporting his departure
to Smirnoff, was given the same instructions. After reading these
despatches, and hearing from Odintsoff a corroboration of what he
had heard from Gurko, Kuropatkin came to the conclusion that Stössel
must be ill. But before deciding to recall him he consulted others,
and after their reply he had no option left him as to how to act. He
decided with great regret that he must sever his friendly relations
with Stössel, which dated from the time when they had been boys
together in the 1st Cadet Corps, and when he used to spend his holidays
at the latter's home. Realizing that it was inevitable, he made up his
mind to recall his old comrade, but before doing so he unfortunately
made for him the appointment of Officer Commanding the District.
On June 18 he sent two cypher messages to Arthur, one addressed to
Stössel, ordering him to hand over everything to Smirnoff and leave
the place, and the other to Smirnoff. The former, having received
both of them, concealed their existence. Shortly afterwards two more
telegrams from Kuropatkin to him and Smirnoff were received, brought
by a subaltern officer of the reserve on the _Lieutenant Burakoff_.
This time General Stössel came to the conclusion that silence could not
longer be kept and that he must act, so he destroyed the messages to
Smirnoff, and sent the following letter to Kuropatkin:
'Your despatch of July 2 was handed to me on the positions as I
was repelling an attack in force by the enemy. I was anxious to
leave Arthur, but as things are at present I consider my presence
here essential for the good of the Fatherland and our troops. Every
one here knows me, Chinese as well as Russians, and they trust me,
knowing that the Japanese will never get into the place save over my
dead body. Neither Fock nor Nickitin believes in General Smirnoff,
who is unknown to the officers and men, and who calls the latter
cowards. He may be all right in his way, but he is a professor and
not a fighting general. If you are determined that I should come to
Liao-Yang, I will do so on receipt of fresh instructions to that
effect from you.'
[Illustration: ON THE ATTACKED FRONT: AFTER AN ATTACK.]
Meanwhile, as might have been expected, the enemy were not going to
wait for the reply to this to come, and, having cut our communications
at Kinchou, they occupied Dalny, and before the letter reached
Liao-Yang General Nogi had begun to operate on Green Hills. Stössel,
of course, was not very sure as to its reception and whether good or
evil would result to him. Taking advantage, however, of it being a
time of war, he now began reporting direct to the Tsar, to whom he
sent telegrams describing an absolutely untrue condition of affairs.
He turned the defeats and retirements in the district into victories,
and telegrams of congratulation began to come in from their Imperial
Majesties.
On the night of the 23rd, the Japanese made the most desperate of all
their attacks so far. They made three separate and most determined
assaults on Zaredoubt Battery, on the line between it and Big Eagle's
Nest, and on Ruchevsky Battery. Though temporarily successful at one
or two points, they were finally driven back out of all with shocking
slaughter. They then again concentrated a gun-fire on these points,
and our men took whatever cover they could find, anxiously awaiting a
fourth assault which did not take place. When the sun rose the heaps of
corpses in front of the works were revealed. In the heat the smell from
them was appalling: even the cotton wool with which our men had plugged
their nostrils was not of much avail.
With regard to the firing from the battery on Golden Hill[21] a rather
amusing incident occurred. As prematurely bursting iron shells from
this battery had somewhat endangered General Stössel he gave orders
that it was not to fire. Major-General Biely, commanding the Fortress
Artillery, thereupon reported to Smirnoff that the 11-inch howitzers
were not to be used, notwithstanding the damage they were doing to the
enemy.
'Well, let us go to Stössel,' said Smirnoff; 'you tell him that in
future you will use steel shells.'
They accordingly went to the Officer Commanding the District and found
him very indignant about the premature bursts of the iron shells.
'May I use steel shells, sir, instead?' asked Biely.
'Will they be all right?'
'Oh, yes.'
'Very well, but are you sure?'
Smirnoff energetically supported Biely and they went out.
'That's splendid,' said Smirnoff, rubbing his hands; 'now you use the
iron ones as before because you have not got enough steel shells for
the battery, and remember--if there are any premature bursts they are
the _enemy's_!'
Biely did this with the result that Golden Hill continued to be of
great service to us, while the occasional premature bursts, which still
continued, were put down to the Japanese. Stössel was quite pacified,
but, unfortunately, soon found out that he had been deceived, and
roundly abused Smirnoff to his suite. He did not interfere, however, as
the hill was undoubtedly a great check to the enemy.
The night assault on August 23 on the centre of the north-east front
was the finale of the assaults in August, and what General Nogi had
said to the correspondent of the _Daily Mail_ when he first saw him:
'You have arrived most luckily, just at the right time, neither too
late nor too soon, you will see the end of our victorious campaign,'
was not justified by the event.
The results of the eight days' desperate fighting were inconsiderable.
On the western front we had lost Angle Hill and its foot-hills, and
Pan-lun-shan Redoubt remained neutral. On the eastern front we had
lost Redoubts Nos. 1 and 2, but only after an incessant and awful
bombardment and most bloody assaults, which cost the Japanese 22,000
killed and wounded. However, they at last learnt that the capture of
Arthur was not all plain sailing. They realized that Russians were not
Chinese, and it was a complete surprise to them that the Fortress which
in January might have been captured by a _coup de main_ had grown into
a stronghold against which tens of thousands of men had perished. Proud
in the knowledge of their superiority, they had on August 16 suggested
that we should capitulate, but upon counting up their losses at a
Council of War on the 26th, they came to the sorrowful conclusion that
it would be yet some time before they took the place.
Expecting to hear at any moment of the fall of Arthur, Japan had been
preparing lanterns and flags to celebrate a great national holiday;
but at last she had to confess that, although Russians are by nature
negligent and careless, they can in moments of emergency do wonders. In
the country of the Rising Sun complaints were raised that the besieging
army was not making such progress as it should, and the dissatisfaction
almost turned into something worse. The Government of the Mikado acted
wisely and promptly, proposing that those who were discontented should
go and join the besieging army in order to replace casualties and show
how things ought to be done. The _amour-propre_ of the proud Japanese,
especially the Samurai, was touched, and whole transports filled with
volunteers came to the Kwantun Peninsula.
Later, when the Chinese reported that these newly arrived recruits,
which included many old men and mere boys, were being drilled and
trained in the Lunwantun Valley, our battleships and Electric Cliff
shelled them at long range, just to remind them that Arthur was not
yet dead; when the October assault was repulsed, we found amongst the
killed and wounded numbers of old and very young men. Strong, indeed,
must have been the spirit of the nation, which in the moment of trial
could back up its discontent by example and action. During my residence
in Japan before the war, I had ventured to write that the Japanese were
a nation with a great future; but I was laughed at.
On the 25th, Big Hill, Little Eagle's Nest and B Battery were
bombarded, and the enemy were seen to be concentrating behind Sugar
Hill. During the night a sortie was made from 203 Metre Hill to recover
the guns left on Angle Hill, but we could not bring them in, so they
were blown up. The Japanese were now entrenched along the foot-hills
of Angle Hill, and on the ridge joining Angle Hill with 203 Metre
Hill, and had mounted some thirty guns near two villages.[22] A force
of infantry and cavalry also was concentrated north of Pigeon Bay.
I rode round with the Commandant on the 25th on his tour round the
north-east. The military road was a track of death and destruction.
Everywhere were half-dried puddles of blood, broken rifles, haversacks,
boots, carts, blood-stained clothes, wheels, horses, broken down
gun-carriages, and unrecognizable corpses, and it was ploughed up with
shells. The rest-house on Little Eagle's Nest, where not long ago
we had spent many careless hours, was burnt to a heap of ruins. At
Eagle's Nest the greater part of the bomb-proofs and parapets had been
destroyed, and the infantry were sitting about, some above ground and
some below; the reserve was behind the steep slope, in various shelters
made of corrugated iron or anything which they could get hold of. This
improvised cover might protect from the sun, but certainly from nothing
else. The officers and men were reduced to shadows, unwashed, and
wearing torn uniforms. They asked the Commandant for planks--any sort
of timber--to help them with the aid of earth to get some protection.
Smirnoff smiled as he heard them; but it was a cynical smile, for, two
days previously, he had given the strictest orders that they should be
supplied with the very planks for which they were now asking. His order
had not been obeyed, and for this the engineers were entirely to blame.
'All right, you shall have the planks to-day. Hammer, make a note of
it,' answered Smirnoff.
On the 26th and 27th the enemy continued to mount guns and push forward
their works, but there was no general action. Smirnoff and Kondratenko
were much exercised about our lack of heavy guns, and, through the
agency of Prince Mackalinsky (naval officer attached to the Fortress
Staff), arranged for the fleet to supply some. This officer was of the
utmost use to us as an intermediary between the Fortress Staff and the
Navy; for the Navy as a rule wanted many reasons before they would
assist us.
On the night of the 26th we discovered that the enemy had abandoned
Nos. 1 and 2 Redoubts, which were full of corpses; but on the night of
the 27th these were again occupied by them. At 2 a.m. in the morning of
the 28th there was an alarm of a general attack, but it turned out to
be an attack on 203 Metre Hill, Long Hill, and Fort No. 4 only.
The 28th passed fairly quietly, with unimportant gun-fire, as did the
29th. On the night of the 29th our communications behind the main line
were heavily shelled. During the preceding three days the gendarmes
buried 700 Japanese dead in front of our north-east positions. This
was done under fire. In the evening of the 29th the enemy entrenched
near Water Supply Redoubt, and we temporarily recaptured part of No. 2
Redoubt by a sortie.
That evening, Prince Mickeladsey informed me that he was sending a post
to St. Petersburg, and that I could send a telegram. He added: 'But
don't talk of it, for if it is known, ---- will at once hear of it.'
I wrote out two identical telegrams--one to a relative in St.
Petersburg, and one to a friend:
'Arthur is enabled to hold out only by the efforts of Smirnoff and
his excellent assistant Kondratenko.... When I can give you details
your hair will stand on end. Tell the Tsar this, for it is absolutely
necessary that ---- should be removed.'
The Prince sent off these telegrams in a special letter with the
official stamp, and in a separate packet, addressed to our consul
in Chifu. The latter duly received them, but in spite of Prince
Mickeladsey's request to despatch my wires to their destination,
he never sent them, and gave as his excuse that they would have
discredited a great name. He did this notwithstanding the fact that
they were enclosed in a letter from the Chief of the Gendarmes in
Port Arthur. Nor did he even consider it his duty to report the
circumstances to his superiors, although he might have known that there
is never smoke without fire. At the end of the siege, when I reached
Chifu on the _Rastoropny_, on board of which I had been sent from Port
Arthur, with the knowledge and by the direction of the Commandant and
all the Admirals 'as an officer of the Fortress' (Stössel wished, as
he expressed it, to 'abolish' me), the consul received a telegram from
Port Arthur to the effect that I was a Japanese spy. He accordingly
went to all the officers in authority and did everything he could to
procure my arrest, and I was only saved by the intervention of the
Chinese Governor, who declared that he would send an armed guard to
protect me.
On August 30 a shell from one of the batteries blew up a Japanese
magazine on the eastern front. General Biely at once gave orders for
the battery to pour in a still hotter fire on to the magazine. As far
as we could see the shells fell splendidly, preventing the enemy from
saving the material, for groups of men could be seen running about
in every direction, but at a considerable distance. To the left of
Orphan Hill a big-gun battery was brought up by them, but it was very
effectively fired on by one of our coast batteries. On the same day
General Stössel published the following District Order:
'I have to-day had the honour to receive a telegram from the Tsar to
the following effect: "To-day being the christening day of the Heir
to the Throne, I appoint you and Colonel Semenoff, commanding the
26th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, to be my Aides-de-camp."'[23]
The following is what the late Colonel Raschevsky thought of this:
'We are all delighted with the latter appointment which is most just
(the appointment of Semenoff as A.D.C.), but that Stössel should have
received this honour is a proof of how often those in authority are
rewarded for the deeds of others.'
By twelve noon all the official world in Arthur was on their way to
congratulate the newly appointed A.D.C. I did not wish to go, but was
persuaded that it was necessary.
'Go? You must go; if you don't you will make him an enemy for ever.
He will put you face downwards and deprive you of the possibility of
seeing and collecting the valuable historical material which you are
getting,' said the experienced and canny ones. I bowed to the wisdom
of this, and went and did as I was advised. In the evening I called
on the Commandant. For some time he had been very ill with dysentery,
and for the last two days had been told by the doctor that he was on
no account to ride. He certainly seemed to be very much thinner than
before.
The following Order was issued by General Stössel on the 31st:
'On the night of the 29th and 30th a sortie and an attack on No. 2
Redoubt was again made by the scouts and sailors. The former dashed
into the trenches, but the sailors did not do all that was expected
of them, and so the attack was unsuccessful and the loss of life
wasted. No more such attacks are to be made without my personal
sanction on each occasion. Similar sorties would be better carried
out under the command of a man like the Chief of the Fortress Staff,
who is thoroughly acquainted with the locality.'
With the final capture of Nos. 1 and 2 Redoubts by the Japanese--their
greatest success during the month--they gained an enormous advantage.
They at once constructed trenches back from both of them, which was,
of course, an easier operation than throwing them forward under the
gun-fire of our batteries. The Commandant considered it absolutely
essential to organize sorties against them, but General Stössel, by
every means in his power, opposed this.
The series of assaults culminating on the 23rd of this month were so
bloody and had such a great influence on the course of the defence,
that they are worthy of further description. It had been evident on
the 21st, 22nd and 23rd that the Japanese were preparing to deliver
the final blow by a general attack. Our difficulty, in the absence
of balloons, was to ascertain where that blow would fall along the
extensive front. Chinese reports were quite untrustworthy, and we could
not see enough from any of the positions to judge where the enemy was
concentrating. The standing kiaoling, the ravines and roughness of
the ground greatly assisted the concealment of their movements.
On the evening of the 23rd the Commandant, after long and careful
inspection of the enemy's positions, ordered the last battalion of
the 14th Regiment to Eagle's Nest. This left a main reserve, only two
companies strong, under Quail Hill, to cover the valley of the Lun-ho.
Two companies! all the rest had been sucked up into the firing-line. He
then sent orders to Admiral Wiren to be ready to land a detachment of
800 men from the ships at anchor to form a reserve. It was now 7 p.m.,
and the darker it got the more silent became the line of front, and the
more tense our expectancy.
[Illustration: THE ASSAULT REPULSED.]
Nogi himself, on the highest point of Wolf's Hills, was gazing fixedly
towards Port Arthur hidden in darkness; for having concentrated more
than two Divisions, with a strength of over 35,000 men, on the portion
from Redoubt No. 2 to B Battery (three and a half miles), and having
determined with one blow to seize Chi-kuan-shan Fort, B Battery, and
Eagle's Nest, he was anxiously trying to pierce the bloody veil of the
future. Smirnoff seemed to divine the thought of his chief enemy as
if by inspiration, and despatched his force opposite where Nogi was
concentrating. There was this difference, however--that while Nogi was
playing with tens of thousands of men--Smirnoff had to count every
section.
At 11 p.m. Nogi gave the sign, and a living avalanche of men rolled
irresistibly up towards us, and from valley, ditch and ravine the
Japanese appeared. Rifles cracked, machine guns spluttered, guns boomed
and boomed again, and the air was turned into an inferno of shrieking
missiles. The rays of the searchlights flashed up and down, rockets
shot up into the sky like enormous fiery snakes, and burst in hundreds
of large brilliant balls, eclipsing the light of the eternal stars and
blinding the heroic little infantry-men who were attacking us. They ran
forward, fell, jumped up again and pressed on, in groups together.
In the shimmering rays of the searchlights, the flashes of bursting
shells seemed almost blood-red. The noise became a horrible blur of
sound--shouts, moans, cheers--clash of arms and detonations. But at
last it ended; the clamour gradually died away; the attack had been
repulsed. In front of us not a living soul remained--only dead--piles
of dead and wounded men. Never shall I forget that night.
At 2 a.m. a second wave started and surged forward, despite the
shower of lead and steel poured into it. With incredible efforts it
got possession of the Chinese Wall opposite Zaredoubt Battery, and a
hand-to-hand fight ensued. The searchlight was turned on to the spot,
and lit up a revolting picture; our last two companies of the reserve
were sent forward at the double from Quail Hill, and every Japanese by
the wall was bayonetted; then the rays glided further afield searching
for the enemy, but only lit up a ground strewn with bodies.
At 3 a.m. a third attack commenced, and it seemed as if the
passionless, cold-hearted Nogi had sentenced the last of his troops to
death. The signal was given, and a fresh wave of living flesh and blood
rolled forward. This time it was the attack--the spring--of a maddened,
wounded, blood-drunk herd of tigers--not men. Our truly awful fire was
of no avail; the mass roared forward with the strength of a tidal wave.
On it came, though lit up by rockets and searchlights, on, on it rolled
irresistibly; on, right through the breached Chinese Wall, and up on to
Zaredoubt and Wolf's Battery, half of which it seized. But the timely
arrival of two companies again saved everything, for after a bloody
hand-to-hand fight the Japanese were thrown back; they gave way, and
fell back on those in rear. It was a critical moment, but our light
showed up their thick reserves taking cover in the ravine between
Chinese Wall and Zaredoubt Hill, and they were almost destroyed.
[Illustration: BURIAL-PARTIES AT WORK.]
A reddish vapour slowly rose up over this valley of death, and screened
the bursting shells and the rays of light. It grew light; the attacks
had been repulsed, and not a rood of ground had the enemy got, but
the scene on all sides was awful. The rising sun showed up sheaves of
corpses on the ground that was still ours. Death had indeed triumphed,
and had claimed 22,000 lives.
From this time forward the enemy remained content with the slower
advance of regular siege operations.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 21: See p. 165.]
[Footnote 22: Khantsistun and Siagoklantiatun.]
[Footnote 23: Actually, General Stössel was appointed
'General-Adjutant' to the Tsar, while Colonel Semenoff was appointed
'Flügel-Adjutant'. Both these honorary ranks were originally
borrowed from the Prussians, and can best be rendered in English by
'aide-de-camp', though they differ in degree.--A.B.L.]