Chapter XXII

ATTACK ON MOU-TIEN-LING.

At dawn, on the 18th of July, we were roused by the sound of rifles and the hurrying feet of armed men. A dense mist lay over the valley of Lien-chen-kwan, and out of the darkness beyond came the solemn booming of volleys. The little stone house on the other side of the river slept soundly. Nothing of importance could be happening as long as the General was within those silent walls. We went back to our tents, but not to slumber. Minutes passed and still the volleys echoed among the cloud-capped hills. The little house woke with a start. Officers dropped in by twos and threes; orderlies came and went, and the hitching posts at the door held a mob of screaming horses. Something more than an affair of outposts?

We dressed and made ready to ride to the front. But the Japanese were as careful of us as if they were our mothers. They had set their faces firmly against risk on our part. “You must wait,” said our mentor, and he meant it this time. So we waited, booted and spurred--waited and watched troops hastening forward, wiping the sweat from their brows as they ran: waited and watched ammunition wagons rumble by: waited and heard the volleys drowned in the roar of artillery, sharp and solemn as thunder peals among the mountains. To our impatience was the same answer: “You must wait.”

The crowd before the little house grew. Foreign _attachés_, eager for their first battle, came riding up. For them was the same order: “Wait.” Importunity avails not with a Staff officer whom you must approach through an interpreter. Near and more near boomed the cannons. They knocked at our very door. But the Staff officer was unmoved. “You must wait.” Chinese women and girls seized their bundles and fled into the mountain whence they had come after the retreat of the Russians--they did not like the soldiers of the Czar. In the little house over the river orderlies packed up and prepared for a flitting. Was it so serious as that? A telegraph section crossed the stream and ran a wire up the hill where three men stood like statues in the mist. We breakfasted and waited and watched more soldiers mopping their foreheads as they doubled past and more ammunition wagons rolling to the front. At last came release, and at a canter we started for the scene of action, Mou-tien-ling once more.

For days there had been unwonted activity in the enemy’s camp West of the Pass. Reinforcements arrived and preparations were made to renew, on a grand scale, the attack of the 4th of July. Meanwhile, the Japanese had strengthened their advance post and awaited the assault. A strict vigil was kept, and for two nights men slept fully armed. Shortly after midnight on the 16th the officer commanding the brigade on the North of the Pass was informed that a body of the enemy was moving on his front. The attack was about to be delivered. He sent warning to the head quarters of the brigade West of Mou-tien-ling, and measures were taken to repel the enemy. At half-past two o’clock on the morning of the 17th a squadron of cavalry and a large force of infantry appeared in the valley that debouches on the road to Liao-yang, and reaches by a gradual ascent the road over the Pass. Three thousand five hundred yards from Mou-tien-ling--on the road to Liao-yang--stands a white tower, conspicuous on the lower spur of a hill. West of the To-wan--the name given to this locality--the road approaches the Pass between hills, and enters a narrow valley in which are two tiny hamlets--Kinki-hotsu at the Western end, and Lika-hotsu in the middle. The sides of the valley run North and South and are steep. Leaving the valley the road ascends past an isolated conical hill to a sharp low ridge, which closes the Eastern end of the defile. Upon this road, commanding the valley and its approach from the West is a trench--the farthest point reached by the Russians on the 4th of July. At the back of the trench is some scrub, and to the left of it, facing West, is a small plantation, and behind that again a shrine, from which the road dips into a gorge, and then ascends to a broad ridge. From the centre of this ridge, which is like a bow bent between broad backed hills, rises a temple, large and solidly built--the head quarters of the post. East of the temple the ridge tumbles into a V-shaped valley, the Western slope of which rises abruptly to the summit of Mou-tien-ling--the Japanese line of defence.

Orders had been given that picquets and posts were not to resist the enemy if he appeared in force. They were to fall back upon the defensive line on the summit. The Russians advanced “like dark waves of the sea,” and picquet and post withdrew from the hamlet in the valley and from the trench and the temple, firing a few random shots as they retired. Not being accustomed to so gentle a reception the enemy became suspicious and advanced very cautiously toward the temple. Here they seemed inclined to halt, and a few Japanese skirmishers were sent forward to discover their position. When day broke the Russians were in possession of the Western slopes, ridges and valleys of Mou-tien-ling; their right wing rested on a broad hill eight hundred yards from the Japanese trenches below the summit of the Pass: on their right rear was a plantation filled with riflemen; their left flank occupied a trench on a hill fronting the summit, while their centre held the ridge about the temple. In the V-shaped valley were more troops who had marched by the road South of the Pass and in front of the white tower--three thousand five hundred yards away on the Liao-yang road--was posted a field battery of eight guns. Seven Russian regiments or nearly thirty thousand fighting men were engaged, for the attack was not confined to Mou-tien-ling but covered a front of fifteen miles. Three Japanese regiments and one field battery held the Pass. Their left wing was secure, close to it lay a division, but the right was weak and might have suffered but for the magnificent courage of a single company at an isolated post six or seven miles to the North.

The dispositions were made under cover of night, and at dawn the two forces confronted each other across a steep and narrow valley. Though the mist still shrouded the mountain the fight began. At twenty minutes before five o’clock a steady fusilade was opened from both sides. The road from the temple to the crest has a gradual ascent, and on one side the ground rises to a height of two or three feet. Under this cover a few daring Russians pressed forward but they could not hope to reach the summit. The bend in the path was quickly strewn with dead. And now was approaching the moment for energetic action. The Russian guns must remain silent; they could do nothing without endangering their comrades in front. The Japanese were anxious not to unmask their artillery too early in the encounter, for they had on the crest only one battery of field guns. Soon after six o’clock this caution was laid aside, and the Japanese guns began to speak. The air was now clear, and below the guns, at a range of fifteen hundred yards, lay a splendid target--the enemy massed in the V-shaped valley. A hail of shrapnel tore gaps in the close ranks and strewed the valley with dead and dying. To this destructive bombardment was added the distant fire of a battalion of rifles on the extreme right.

Notwithstanding these losses in the valley the Russians were secure on the ridge about the temple, and there appeared no reason why they should not remain there until turned out by the bayonet. Their right was pushed well forward in trench and wood, from which the Japanese advance could be enfiladed and taken in the rear; their left was strongly posted in a trench commanding the steep decline down which the Japanese must come from the right, and their centre had the shelter of the solidly built temple, with a compound surrounded by a high stone wall. Any attempt on the part of the Japanese to rush the position must have been attended with great loss, and might easily have proved disastrous. That General Nishi fully realised the danger was shown by the rapidity with which the reinforcements were hurried forward.

At nine o’clock the enemy began to retire. The cause of this unexpected determination to abandon an obvious advantage was obscure. It might have been due to the action of a reconnoitring party from the division on our left. At any rate the story was that on the morning of the 17th a patrol from our left encountered a body of Russians, and was driven back. Returning with one battalion and a battery they renewed the combat and put the Russians to flight. Not content with this success, the commander of the force resolved to push forward in the direction of Mou-tien-ling, whence he heard heavy firing. Having faith in the old maxim of “marching to the cannon,” he abandoned the road, led his battalion over the mountains and suddenly appeared in the rear of the Russians, about three miles beyond To-wan.

General Keller, who was in command, may have imagined that this was a counter attack on his right flank, and that his line of retreat was seriously menaced. Whatever the cause the result was before us when we arrived at Mou-tien-ling.

The retirement began on the left, the men falling back steadily to the shelter of the plantation. Hard upon their heels came the Japanese, firing into the scrub and young timber, out of which flew thick and fast the bullets of the hidden foe. Twice the pursuers tried to penetrate the wood, and twice they fell back. It was impossible to take aim, for though the trees and undergrowth were not strong enough to afford cover they were dense enough for concealment. When at last the Japanese succeeded in entering, the greater part of the enemy had descended into the valley and were taking up a position on the right to cover the retirement of the centre. A few, however, remained, and these the Japanese officer invited by a gesture to lay down their arms and surrender. Five immediately dropped on their knees and fired, without effect. So the combat in the wood was renewed, and as we passed through we saw many a grim evidence of the struggle. The centre retired slowly and in good order, covered by a flanking fire from the hills on the left. A small rear guard remained at the temple, around which lay several dead and wounded. Left and centre were now in retreat, taking up positions from which they checked any disposition on the part of the Japanese to come to close quarters.

In the plantation near the shrine, and on the conical hill, the Russians remained for some time, but they made no attempt to recover the lost ground. Meanwhile, the Russian right had withdrawn from the slopes to the crests of the hills north of the temple, whence they opened a cross fire upon the pursuit before they streamed away into the valley and the Liao-yang road. A fine target they afforded on the green hill side, but the Japanese guns were silent. Hour after hour went by as we followed the firing line and watched the slow and deliberate retirement of the enemy. A strong force had secured the hills close to the entrance of the valley on the North, and here they remained firing volley after volley whenever a forward movement was threatened by the Japanese. One battalion that ventured too far into the valley tempted the Russian gunners to open fire, and a dozen soldiers were quickly stretched on the grass by one shell. Another battalion pressed along the South slope toward the mouth of the valley, but could not descend without exposing itself to a ruthless fusilade.

Thus the position remained until late in the afternoon. From the trench in front of the shrine, and from the conical hill we saw the enemy in retreat toward To-wan. A long line of ambulance wagons stretched beyond the white tower; behind them marched infantry and cavalry in close order; and in the rear waited a strong force of infantry and cavalry with half a battery. They were guarding the exit from the valley along which strolled an occasional soldier with a gait as leisurely and a manner as indifferent as though these were manœuvres instead of war. At any sign of advance by the Japanese, the infantry at the entrance to the valley formed up to oppose them, and the guns were unlimbered and trained. This sufficed; the Japanese were not strong enough to force an attack home. Here was the moment when one realised the importance of horse artillery. A single battery well handled would have turned this deliberate retirement into a stampede. The pursuit was not pressed, and the army of General Keller drew off with a final cannonade directed against our right.

Away on our right flank was enacted a dramatic episode that might have been a tragedy. In order to avoid the Pass the Russians had made a road which sweeps round the North spur of the mountain, following the plain from a point near Lien-chen-kwan to the road leading to Am-ping. By this way came a force of the enemy. At a point six miles north of Mou-tien-ling they met a Japanese outpost of one company. Though greatly outnumbered, the outpost realising the importance of its position, withstood the onslaught. Hemmed in by six companies they fought as Japanese soldiers always fight--with the coolness and skill of veterans, and the courage of fanatics. Closer and closer drew the enemy until the struggle was almost hand to hand. Numbers could not avail against courage so desperate. The Russians retreated, leaving their dead and wounded, and our right flank was safe. But the cost was great to this gallant company. All the officers were killed or wounded, and of the rank and file twenty were killed and forty-five wounded.

There was a moment when the position on our left flank in the Pass looked not less critical, for the enemy came within eight hundred yards and had good cover. But reinforcements arrived and that interval was soon a glacis of bullets across which no troops, however desperate, could have passed.

It is not easy to understand this repeated effort to capture a position which was abandoned without firing a shot. The explanation has been offered that Mou-tien-ling was evacuated without the knowledge of General Kuropatkin and on the rumour that two divisions were threatening to outflank the position. A more probable explanation is that General Kuropatkin, finding it necessary to withdraw his force from the Liao-tung Peninsula, and to fall back on Liao-yang, determined to recover the Pass, in the hope of delaying the advance of General Kuroki, who was seeking to effect a junction with General Oku in front of Liao-yang.