Chapter XXXII

BATTLE OF THE SHA-HO.

THE RUSSIAN ATTACK.

On October 8th General Kuropatkin issued an address to the army in Mukden giving reason for the retreat from Liao-yang, and announcing that the time had come to roll back the advancing tide of Japanese and restore the fortunes of Russia. Hitherto the enemy had been able to keep the initiative by reason of their numbers. But the Czar had at last given him a force great enough to abandon the defensive and to ensure victory. Papers found on the body of a Staff Officer were more precise. The orders from St. Petersburg were to take the offensive as soon as possible, to march to the relief of Port Arthur, and on no account to retire from Mukden. The army that was to attempt this herculean labour consisted of sixteen divisions of infantry, and one division of cavalry, the strength of which may be put at two hundred thousand rifles and four thousand sabres.

One month had passed since General Kuropatkin retreated from Liao-yang and, fearing pursuit, withdrew his defeated and demoralised troops to the North. Finding that the Japanese were not pressing close upon his heels, the Russian leader took measures for defence. Tieh-ling, forty-five miles North of Mukden, was chosen as a base, and the hills on both sides of the road were fortified. Wushun, thirty miles East, on the upper reaches of the river Hun, was garrisoned by a large force to guard against a flanking movement and connected with Tieh-ling by a new road. The mountain pass that had served as the means of communication with Wushun was strengthened with earthworks. Near Tahaitun, seven miles South of Tieh-ling, the range of hills that cross the road from East to West were entrenched; the right bank of the river at Ilu, twenty-two miles South, was fortified; defences were made in front of Mukden, and trenches were dug on the North bank of the river Hun. At the end of September General Kuropatkin had completed his preparations, and in the first days of October the army began to move South. Small parties of Cossacks and infantry appeared on our front, which extended from Pintaitsu, North of Ponchiho, to the railway at Yentai--a distance of about thirty miles from East to West. Their mission was to ascertain our strength and disposition. On October the 4th Japanese patrols on the Mukden and Wushun roads were attacked, and two days later the brigade on our right wing was ordered to fall back on the river Tai-tsu at Ponchiho. The enemy on that day established themselves along a line stretching from Pintaitsu through Sankwaisu to the North of Yentai.

The advance of the Russian army had begun in earnest, and we were to witness a struggle that has few parallels in the annals of war. For one long week half a million of men held one another in close and deadly grip, and night and day before our eyes were performed deeds of heroism that have never been surpassed. Attack and counter-attack followed with bewildering rapidity; position after position was stormed and stormed again; now a brigade and now a company pressed forward with the bayonet, and on the hill tops, clear against the sky, men faced each other within a dozen paces or rushed together in one bloody scrimmage. The Russians fought with the courage and fatalism of their race. Never have they displayed such reckless bravery and resolution. But they have lost their aptitude for war. Within twenty-four hours they had ceased to be the assailants and were fighting for their lives against the irresistible tide that swept toward Mukden and covered mountain and plain for thirty miles with dead and dying.

The plan of attack was simple and resembled that of the Japanese on the Yalu. General Mistchenko was to turn our right flank in the mountains near Ponchiho, and crossing the Tai-tsu to threaten us in the rear at Liao-yang. A strong force was to engage our centre East of the coal mine at Yentai, while our left flank on the railway was to be held and prevented from giving help. Against our right wing, from Ponchiho to the coal mine, were hurled nine divisions of infantry with one division of cavalry and a detachment of mounted infantry under General Renenkampf; four divisions confronted our centre and left flank and three divisions were in reserve. The assault was made with energy and determination on our extreme right, and until the morning of the 14th the force defending that flank was in serious danger, General Mistchenko having succeeded in isolating it from the main body and crossed the Tai-tsu with a brigade of infantry and a regiment of cavalry. The failure of General Kuropatkin’s plan may be ascribed to the obstinate courage of the brigade on our extreme right, who fought for days against overwhelming numbers, and to the fact that, as on the Tang-ho before Liao-yang, General Kuroki drove a wedge into the heart of the enemy’s front.

At noon on October the 9th I left Tong-kin-ryo, the Tomb of the Eastern Capital, a village four miles East of Liao-yang where ancestors of the Emperor of China sleep in the shadow of pine trees and marble tablets recording their virtues. The tide of war had swept over the hamlet, leaving it silent and deserted. From the Temple of Buddha, which had been my solitary abode since the Japanese entered Liao-yang, I heard the sound of rifles in the hills two miles away and learned that mounted bandits or Hunghutse had encountered the Chinese troops and were being driven into the mountains whence they had emerged on the departure of the Japanese.

At Taiho, a squalid collection of houses South of the coal mine, where I arrived in the afternoon, were evidences of the battle. That morning the brigade on our right had been attacked from three sides by a great force, and a brigade of the enemy’s infantry with a division of cavalry and two guns, had crossed the Tai-tsu and was threatening Ponchiho from the South. Our right wing was practically surrounded, and a division was ordered East to reinforce the garrison. At the same time the enemy appeared on our front. They occupied Shaliuho, a hamlet North-east of the coal mine, and Pachiatsu, further to the East, and strengthened their force at Ponchiho.

Next day the struggle on our extreme right grew more severe and the position of the brigade became very serious. The division sent to its aid had not reached its destination when the Russians made a determined assault from all sides. Prince Kun-in led his cavalry brigade East and crossed the Tai-tsu in pursuit of the enemy, who had gained the South bank of the river, but before effective help could be given Ponchiho might fall and the Japanese army be compelled to retire to a defensive position before Liao-yang.

[Illustration: A Buddhist Shrine.]

[Illustration: Figure of Buddha.]

Our situation on the 10th looked extremely critical and called for decisive measures. Field Marshal Oyama showed himself equal to the gravity of the occasion. He determined to rob the enemy of the initiative by delivering an attack upon their centre. Once more the brunt of the battle had to be borne by General Kuroki’s army. From the uniforms of dead and wounded soldiers, from papers found upon officers, and from statements made by prisoners, we learned that in the Russian fighting line were thirteen divisions:--1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th and 9th Sharpshooters; 1st, 2nd and 3rd Siberian; 22nd, 35th and 71st Line; one division of cavalry and a detachment of mounted infantry. In reserve were three divisions:--The 9th and 31st of the Tenth Army Corps, and the 54th of the Fifth Army Corps. Nine divisions of infantry and one cavalry division confronted General Kuroki from the coal mine to Ponchiho.

The scene of these operations lies to the South of the Sha or Sandy River and East of the railway. Though within twenty-two miles from Mukden, the country may be described as mountainous. Ranges of hills run in broken lines from West to East with a tendency to the South as they approach the rising sun. The hills are bare of vegetation and have many spurs shaped like the spine of some monstrous saurian--a semblance that doubtless gave birth to the Chinese superstition that certain hills are the backs of dragons and may not be disturbed with impunity. The ranges are divided by cultivated valleys dotted with villages and farmsteads, and seamed in many places with ravines and nullahs that give excellent cover. From the plain West and for five miles East of the railway, rise isolated and rocky hills that command a wide field of fire and make good infantry positions, while toward Ponchiho the ranges draw closer together and are loftier and more precipitous.

On the morning of the 10th, the two armies lay among the hills South of the Sha-ho, our left wing resting on the railway and our right in the mountains near Ponchiho. Both armies were entrenched and on our front were few signs of activity. Our batteries were masked at the foot of the hills near the coal mine and in the Eastern heights across the plain, while our infantry was concealed in trenches on the level ground and on the slopes. Early in the day the enemy’s guns displayed great energy, their fire being directed against the ridges and villages that might shelter riflemen. The key to the Russian position was a hill about six thousand yards from the coal mine--a broad shouldered height crowned by a rocky escarpment that looked like a fort.

Bastion Hill, as we named it, is flanked on the East by a range traversed by spurs on which the Japanese artillery and infantry had established themselves. Fronting it on the South rose a mount connected with the Eastern range by a saddle. Behind this lower eminence is a ravine and a dense grove. The Western slope of Bastion Hill descends into a plain through which flows a shallow stream almost washing the walls of a village hidden among trees to the North-west. The approach from the South is over the flat commanded from a deep gully running like a trench under the hill. On the North stretches another plain with a range of mountains beyond, where the enemy’s guns were posted.

The scene might have tempted an artist and would have taxed his palette. Before us lay the valley shaded with russet and amber. The sun caught the sheaves of harvested millet and transmuted them into gold, and from beds of dappled brown rose groves of willow and fir whose green branches threw dark shadows over the homesteads. And beyond towered mountain and hill which Autumn had tinted with purple and amber. It was a scene of pastoral beauty into which the spirit of war had entered unbidden. The husbandmen were leaving their houses among the trees and hastening through the stubble, but not to garner their sheaves which stood ripe in the sunshine. They were fleeing with wife and child like Lot from the city of Gomorrah, “and the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace” as gun answered gun.

After noon there appeared on the plain to the West of the Bastion Hill a large force of the enemy. Their serried lines made a dark mass against the russet fields on the right of our batteries, from which leapt yellow tongues of flame that seemed to lick the lowest slope. In front of this mass, near a cluster of trees, rode two squadrons of cavalry, who appeared to have made up their minds to show us that Cossacks have some use in war. Knee to knee they came onward and we held our breath. At the trees they drew rein, broke line, reformed and rode back. Presently they returned and treated us to the same performance. It was a pretty spectacle, but the meaning of it was beyond our comprehension. The dark lines of infantry behind also began to move. For a moment we imagined that they were about to advance across the valley, but they wheeled to the right, and, marching and counter-marching, went back to their original position near the guns. On our left, within range of our artillery, several companies were digging trenches on the side of a low hill. They were at no pains to conceal themselves or their work, and our guns left them unmolested.

Whatever the night might bring forth, it was soon clear that the Russians had no intention of renewing the attack on our centre, and we concluded that their immediate purpose was to demonstrate to a watchful foe that they were present in force. Soldiers who go into battle with brass bands are capable of extraordinary things.