Chapter XXX

KUROKI CROSSES THE TAI-TSU.

The part assigned to General Kuroki in the attack on Liao-yang was worthy of his brilliant record. For five months his army had marched and fought in the mountains, driving back the enemy to his base and suffering not a single reverse. Our position was often hazardous, and since the attack on Mou-tien-ling in July we had confronted a superior force. We had to feed one hundred thousand men--including non-combatants and coolies--and were dependent on a line of communications always difficult, always vulnerable, and, in the rainy season, always precarious. Yet only for a few days at Lien-chen-kwan, when the rivers were in flood, were the soldiers reduced to short rations, and never once were our communications seriously threatened. At no time were we in a position to avoid an engagement had the Russians cared to attack. Retreat in such a country would have meant disaster. General Kuroki staked all on the chance of victory.

I have described in some detail the movements of the First Army from August 25th, when the energies of the Japanese were bent on bringing into united action the armies of the West, the South, and the East, and on completing their strategy by leaving General Kuropatkin no choice but to accept a decisive battle that under conditions that would involve the capture of a large part of his defeated army. Driven back along the railway, the Russian leader showed a disposition to stand at Anshantien where he had a strong and well fortified position. But his ability to hold that position rested on his power to check, if not to repel, the advance of General Kuroki on his left flank. Once the Japanese penetrated the line of defence on the Tang-ho, they could menace the rear of the enemy’s position and Anshantien must be evacuated. To protect himself against this danger, General Kuropatkin detached a considerable force to oppose General Kuroki, and was evidently satisfied that he could hold the line of the river Tang while his main body engaged and defeated the inferior force marching on Anshantien. We have seen how this plan was brought to naught by the rapidity and success of General Kuroki’s operations after leaving Tien-tshu-tien on August 25th, and how three days later the Russians, outflanked on their left near Am-ping, became uneasy about their base and withdrew to their last defensive line in front of Liao-yang.

On August 29th--the enemy having withdrawn from Anshantien on the previous day--General Kuroki prepared to cross the Tai-tsu. His orders were to threaten the enemy’s flank and to strike at the railway. Such a manœuvre, if successful, must have turned defeat into disaster, and the mere threat of it was likely to disconcert the enemy and arrest any offensive measures he might be contemplating. But in order to gain the point aimed at it was necessary to deceive the Russians and to act with the utmost rapidity: while to ensure the destruction of their direct line of retreat a strong force was imperatively demanded. Every one of these conditions was absent. The enemy knew the hour and the place of our passage over the Tai-tsu: our attack was delayed for two days, and General Kuroki’s force was not more than one and a half divisions. The Guards were in difficulties and the Unizawa brigade was watching the flank near Ponchiho, which was threatened by a considerable force of the enemy. There remained only the Twelfth Division and a brigade of the Second Division. The river is broad and deep, and on the North bank are mountain ranges and isolated hills, beyond which lie the plain and the railway to Mukden. Having driven back a small party of observation, the Twelfth Division forded the stream near Kuanton at eleven o’clock on the night of the 30th and proceeded to occupy the hills East of that place. Half the Second division crossed over at the same ford and took up a position to cover their comrades in case of attack. Next day the artillery passed over by a pontoon bridge masked by a rocky escarpment out of range of the enemy’s guns. The crossing was made without difficulty or opposition. General Kuroki was fighting with his back to the river and in front of him was an overwhelming force of the enemy.

This was the position when I crossed the Tai-tsu and came to the General and his Staff on a bold eminence crowned by the walls of a city from which had long vanished every trace of human habitation. We were at Kakuanton, about fifteen miles east of Liao-yang. In front of us, across a broad plain dotted with groves and hamlets and brown with the giant stalks of ripe millet and Indian corn, rose a long low hill with a conical peak in the centre. This was Manjuyama--the scene of a bloody struggle. On the left, divided from Manjuyama by a narrow valley, ran a lofty range of mountains, and far away to the right another range with five peaks, at the Northern extremity of which was the Russian coal mine connected with the city by a railway. These positions were in the hands of the enemy, who had strengthened them with trenches, and had joined Manjuyama with the mountains on our left by a deep trench so that men might move from one position to another unseen. In the plain beyond the Northern spur of Manjuyama were posted two Russian field batteries, and, concealed in a ravine in front of the mountain on our left, was another battery. The range on our right was also trenched, but was not so strongly held as on our front and left, where the enemy’s force was four and a half divisions.

The capture of Manjuyama must be the first step in our advance and the attempt was made at once. Three batteries of field guns opened a cannonade from our front and soon came under the enemy’s fire from the plain beyond. The range of the Russian guns was fairly accurate, and to an observer at a distance must have appeared to do great damage. But from our position we could see that the direction was invariably wrong, and never changed even by accident. Hundreds upon hundreds of shrapnel burst to the right of the Japanese batteries and made the air hum with the hail of their bullets, yet at the end of the day only one man was killed and seven were wounded. Our guns gave no heed to the enemy’s artillery, but turned their energies to Kuropatkin’s Eye, where the Russians showed themselves boldly on the sky-line. Again and again the slope was swept with shrapnel and common shell that drove the men from the trenches and sent them hot-footed to the shelter of the crest. Reinforcements came from the mountain on our left, moving unseen along the trench to Manjuyama and appearing on the slope and summit in long dark lines. They had to pass through an inferno. Every foot of the hill was flecked with tiny white clouds of shrapnel, and threw up showers of black earth from common shell charged with a terrible explosive. It seemed madness to face such a fire, yet the Russians came and went and moved along the summit and disappeared behind the conical peak as though proof against shot and shell. Meanwhile, our infantry were making ready for a desperate enterprise. We saw them moving forward in front of the guns--line after line, in close formation.

Now they blackened some green field and looked a target that none could miss. But the country was broken and the corn was uncut, and though the enemy’s guns searched for them again and again they passed unscathed. Now the giant millet hid them, and they vanished as if the earth had opened under their feet. Again they came into view above the green bean stalks, they halted as if uncertain of their direction--for you can soon be lost in the corn--came back and plunged once more into the millet. Their objective was the North slope of Manjuyama, to the right of a village almost in the shadow of Kuropatkin’s Eye.

So the hours dragged on, our guns covering the advance until rifle shots were heard, and the movements of the enemy, like ants disturbed, showed that our infantry was engaged at close quarters, and the fight for Manjuyama had begun in earnest. Wildly and with frantic haste the Russian guns in the ravine searched the fields in front of us, and a battery on our right joining the fray, tore up the crest of Manjuyama with deadly explosions.

The sun sank blood-red below the horizon, and the Western sky was flooded with a crimson glow. The guns were silent, and we heard only the rifles like the crackling of thorns in the fire. Suddenly, and with one accord, every battery opened, and out of the darkness leapt tongues of flame. Hill and plain shook with thunder, and the air was filled with the roar and shriek and snarl of shells. It was a splendid, yet a dread spectacle. All night Russian and Japanese fought for possession of that hill, charging and counter-charging until the ground was sodden with blood and the trenches were filled with dead.

At two o’clock next morning the enemy fell back under cover of their artillery and Manjuyama was ours. Meanwhile, reinforcements were hurrying out of Liao-yang, and a strong column marched against the division on our right. With sixty guns the Russians defended the five-peaked range near the coal mine, and our position looked critical. But help was coming--another brigade was marching to the rescue--and the fight went on with renewed confidence. The Unizawa brigade had been ordered to seize Ponchiho and to join the main body without delay. It was imperative that we should secure this range of hills, and on September 2nd General Kuroki endeavoured to take it with one-and-a-half battalions. From three positions the enemy shelled our advance, and in front were three Russian battalions. Under a devastating fire from flank and front the Japanese infantry fought heroically, but without avail, and were finally compelled to withdraw. Then, indeed, we began to feel the need for an army, and in the words of a brave General, the meal of rice “tasted bitter in the mouth.” We still held Manjuyama--won at terrible sacrifice--though stormed at by shot and shell from every side. Night and day the Japanese infantry endured this ordeal on a few handsful of uncooked rice, and at night were called upon to repel two terrific assaults.

Fully appreciating the danger that threatened his retiring flank, General Kuropatkin had given orders that Manjuyama must be retaken at all costs. Covered by darkness, six regiments hurled themselves upon the position held by four Japanese regiments. It was a combat of heroes. Charge and counter-charge were delivered with fury on summit and slope and among the corn below. So close were the combatants that they intermingled and the utmost confusion prevailed. Leading a regiment from the brigade that had crossed the river by a forced march, the General found it impossible to distinguish friend from foe until the bugle had sounded “Cease fire,” and the flash of the enemy’s rifles in the darkness revealed the point of greatest danger. Placing himself at the head of two companies, the brigadier charged across this zone of fire, and the fight went on through the night with unabated fury. While the fate of Manjuyama still trembled in the balance, an assault was made against the mountain on our left, and one battalion succeeded in gaining a foothold. But their ammunition gave out, and only a few stragglers returned to tell the story of how they captured the enemy’s guns, and had to flee just when victory was within their grasp.