By Jefferson Jones,
Staff Correspondent of The Minneapolis Journal and Japan Advertiser.
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, Jan. 24, 1915.]
Tokio, Dec. 15.--Far out in the Yellow Sea busy gunners on a Japanese
battleship aimed a 12-inch gun at one of the German forts in
Tsing-tao. Opening the breech, they removed the smoking cartridge
case, put in another loaded one, and waited to learn whether the
projectile had scattered death among the enemy or exploded harmlessly
in soft earth. They were five or six miles from their target.
The gunners gazed toward the battleship's wireless masts. Presently
came a sputter and crackle of electric sparks. An officer appeared in
the turret and said, perhaps, "Very good. Put some more in the same
place," or, "That one was fifty feet to the right or sixty feet too
high." He had received a wireless message from the shore telling
exactly where the shell had struck, probably for the first time since
naval warfare began.
At the rear of the Japanese lines, where a naval lookout had been
erected, I saw several marines focusing horned telescopes on the
besieged forts. As soon as a shell landed one of the men would
telephone the exact location to the naval wireless station at Sesheco,
which relayed the message to the warships.
The fourth day of the siege was the most severe of the whole siege of
Tsing-tao. Gen. Johoji on the extreme left, with Gen. Barnardiston of
the British expeditionary force, was pressing the intrenched Germans
near Moltke Fort. Early in the morning Gen. Johoji had sent a
detachment against the triangular pumping station fort, as it was
deemed wise not to turn the siege guns on the place, because the fort
might be destroyed and the supply of water be cut off in the city
when the troops entered. The detachment approached the fort without
any resistance from the Germans, and, surrounding it, discovered that
there was a small garrison, which had barred itself inside. The
Japanese commanded the men to surrender, threatening to dynamite the
place. The steel door was opened and twenty-three Germans walked out.
The capture of this fort was the key for the final attack of the
Japanese, as it left the central fort and redoubts exposed to fire.
Late in the afternoon the fire became extremely heavy. The Germans
seemed to be making sharp resistance to the Japanese, lest they
advance within the quarter-mile zone of the redoubt walls. The
Japanese infantry, however, were sapping away, and as dusk settled
over the field we saw the bright flash of bursting shrapnel from the
German forts. It was the first shrapnel sent out by the Germans during
the siege.
Ten, twelve, fifteen, and sometimes even twenty shrapnel shells could
be counted bursting at one time, all in a straight line, over the
Japanese front line, and then the big German searchlights would flash
about the field. They would fall on fifteen or twenty Japanese sappers
on the top of their trenches placing sandbags, and then the flash
would disappear.
Thursday, Nov. 5, seemed only a repetition of what we had seen the day
before. All night long the firing kept up, and it was evident that the
German garrison at Tsing-tao was making stubborn and gallant
resistance.
That night the Japanese forces advanced 200 yards under a heavy
shrapnel fire from the Germans. A snowstorm, followed by rain, had
filled the trenches with water a foot deep, and it was in these that
the Japanese and British forces found themselves during the closing
days of the siege.
Friday, Nov. 6, was a bitter morning. A forty-mile gale was blowing
off the Yellow Sea, and with the thermometer at 2 below zero it was
not any too comfortable, even for those of us who were fortunate
enough to get near a charcoal burner.
Toward midnight Gen. Yamada, whose men were intrenched in front of
Forts 2 and 3, sent out a detachment to learn the condition of the
German garrison opposing him. The men approached the redoubt walls of
the forts, climbed ten feet to the bottom, and found themselves face
to face with wire entanglements twenty yards wide and running the
length of the wall. No Germans were seen. Reinforcements were called
for while the scouts were cutting the entanglements. At 1 A.M., Nov.
7, Gen. Yamada with more than 300 men was behind the redoubt walls of
Fort 3.
In the meantime, heavily protected on all sides by planks and
sandbags, a detachment of 200 Germans with machine guns was watching
the approach of Gen. Barnardiston's men, who had been stationed to the
right of Gen. Yamada. The Germans were unaware that the Japanese had
gained the wall, when suddenly a sentry heard Japanese voices. The
signal was given and the Germans rushed from their sandbag houses into
the shadow of the wall, hoping to reach their comrades, stationed 500
yards back along the casement walls. Some, perhaps, reached their
destination, but the majority of the men were shot down by the
Japanese infantry.
The capture of Forts 2 and 3 by Gen. Yamada was quickly reported to
Gen. Horiuchi, and within an hour his men had captured Forts 4 and 5
with very little resistance. Gen. Johoji, on the extreme left, with
Gen. Barnardiston of the British force, also advanced with the news of
the capture of the positions, but the Germans put up a stubborn
resistance, and it was not until 6:30 A.M. that the attackers gained
the coast fort and Fort 1.
With the capture of the redoubt fortifications there still remained
the mountainous forts, Iltis, Bismarck, and Moltke, a quarter of a
mile back toward Tsing-tao. With detachments of engineers and
infantrymen, Gens. Horiuchi and Yamada ordered the general attack. The
men rushed from their trenches for the base of the forts. It was to
be a hand-to-hand bayonet attack.
But two guns on the Iltis fort had already been silenced, the four big
28-centimeter mortars on the same fort were useless for use at the
base of Iltis, while the other guns had been so placed and sandbagged
at the rear of the fort that they could not be quickly brought forward
and utilized for work along the steep slopes leading to the forts.
Rifles and machine guns were resorted to.
The Japanese, as they charged up the slope, were mowed down by the
machine guns, but on they came from all sides--17,000 men against
3,800. The German garrison could not hold out, and the white flag was
hoisted from Fort C, close to Gov. Gen. Meyer Waldeck's residence. The
surrender came at 7:05 A.M.