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PORT ARTHUR A MONSTER HEROISM
PORT ARTHUR A MONSTER HEROISM
BY RICHARD BARRY Illustrations from Photographs taken on the field by the Author NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 1905 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 1905 Copyright, 1905, by Moffat, Yard & Company Published April, 1905 TO FREMONT OLDER Grateful acknowledgment of permission to reprint some of the articles and photographs which enter, with additional new material, into the redaction of this volume is made to the Century Magazine, Everybody’s Magazine, Collier’s Weekly, the Saturday
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PREFACE THE SIEGE AT A GLANCE
PREFACE THE SIEGE AT A GLANCE
The sea attack on Port Arthur began on February 9th, 1904, at noon. The land isolation occurred on May 26th, when the Second Army, under General Oku, took Nanshan Hill. Four grand series of Russian defenses from Nanshan down the peninsula were then taken by the Japanese. The capture of Taikushan on August 9th, of Shokushan two days later, and of Takasakiyama the following day, drove the Russians into their permanent works. The real siege of Port Arthur began, thus, on August 12th, and continued
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INTRODUCTORY THE INVESTMENT, SIEGE, AND CAPTURE OF PORT ARTHUR
INTRODUCTORY THE INVESTMENT, SIEGE, AND CAPTURE OF PORT ARTHUR
In all the long history of military exploits, there is not one that can compare, in point of difficulties surmounted, with the reduction of Port Arthur. That this fortress should have been taken by assault entitles the Japanese operations to rank with the finest work done by any army in any age; that it should have been taken in five months from the day on which the investment was completed (the day on which the Russians were driven into their permanent works) is an exploit which has never been
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Chapter One THE CITY OF SILENCE
Chapter One THE CITY OF SILENCE
Dalny, August 3d: Guns have blown their thunder to us distantly all the afternoon. The sounds boom a low thud with monotonous distinctness. Lounging on the taffrail of a small cargo steamer in Dalny Bay they strike those of us who are innocent of war, who have never felt the thrill, the halt and the plunge of battle as tame; almost without interest. In a California cottage, a summer’s night, a mile from the seashore I have listened before now to the surf climb up and lay down upon the beach with
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Chapter Two THE INVISIBLE ARMY
Chapter Two THE INVISIBLE ARMY
Ho-o-zan, (the Phœnix Mountain) three miles from and looking into Port Arthur, Sept. 14th: Here we are with the Third Imperial Army waiting for Russia’s downfall in the Far East. With her fleet gone, Russia’s sea power has vanished. With Kuropatkin smashed it will be another year before she can have a great army in the field. So now there remains only impregnable Port Arthur to say that Russia but eight months ago held all Manchuria. Ten of us are privileged to follow the fortunes of the army of
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Chapter Three TWO PICTURES OF WAR—A GLANCE BACK
Chapter Three TWO PICTURES OF WAR—A GLANCE BACK
Tokyo is beautiful—brunette and beautiful. This first day of June she has risen past the cherry blossom, past the wistaria, through the freshness of spring to the full radiance of summer. Pink, like the fleece of clouds in the sky, and heliotrope, like the first flush of sunrise, are past. Now green, rich and deep from a soil of winnowed sustenance, mantles her in Oriental splendor—a splendor simple and elegant with the wealth of the east, shadowy and sunny with the blow of Japan. It folds her a
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Chapter Four THE JAPANESE KITCHENER
Chapter Four THE JAPANESE KITCHENER
Headquarters, Third Imperial Army, Before Port Arthur, Oct. 12th: “Goddama’s here!” “Who?” “General Goddam—what’s his name?” “Kodama?” “That’s it. Who is he? They couldn’t do more for the Emperor—special train, guard mounted, and all that. He came while I was in the staff tent—a mite of a fellow in a huge coat.” Thus Villiers two weeks ago announced the advent to the army of the Chief of the General Staff. Who is he? The soldiers know, for they have a verse in their interminable war song: “On wi
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Chapter Five CAMP
Chapter Five CAMP
Before Port Arthur, Headquarters Third Imperial Army, Oct. 9th: We have left the mountain—the Phœnix—where by day we saw artillery duels and by night flashes of lightning illumining the big guns, while the plains stood out under the searchlights. There we could step from our lunch table and, down the cliff, look into the upturned ecstasy of a victorious army, or feel the dull weight of its despair surge in and close upon us. Now we are with the army, part of it. From the Manchurian hut, where we
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Chapter Six 203-METER HILL
Chapter Six 203-METER HILL
What Blaine’s unfortunate “three R’s” were to his Presidential campaign “203-Meter Hill” was to the siege of Port Arthur. Risen to the dignity of key to the situation, it had, in an ordnance sense, little to do with the case. It was but one of seven advance posts for final assault. A pimple of progress to the engineer, it was not permanently fortified, did not belong to the primary scheme of defense, and was dominated by three of the finest forts—Etzeshan, Anzushan, and Liaotishan: mountains of
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Chapter Seven A SON OF THE SOIL
Chapter Seven A SON OF THE SOIL
Headquarters Third Imperial Army, Before Port Arthur, Oct. 9th: Often we dine with the Army’s leaders. To-day all the temporary occupants of the headquarters village, which include the human impedimenta of an army, such as the expert on international law, the official photographer and the correspondents, were called to the General’s house. My invitation read: “Sir: I am desired by General Baron Nogi to write to you, and tell you, with his compliments, that he will be happy if you will favor him
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Chapter Eight THE BLOODY ANGLE
Chapter Eight THE BLOODY ANGLE
General Nogi’s Headquarters Before Port Arthur, Oct. 22d: To-day we went to the Eternal Dragon, and looked in on the bloody angle. D’Adda was with me—the Marquis Lorenzo D’Adda of Rome, naval expert, military engineer, designer of the Niishin and Kasuga , which, even now, on clear days, our spyglasses can discern held in leash, ten miles off, by Togo. Yesterday, from the Phœnix, D’Adda looked on the fortress—its two mountain ranges, its stone wall, its chain of twenty forts, its concrete glaces,
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Chapter Nine A BATTLE IN A STORM
Chapter Nine A BATTLE IN A STORM
Ho-o-zan (the Phœnix Mountain), Manchuria, August 28th:—Ninety-six hours of almost incessant fighting—from sun to moon, from moon to searchlight and from searchlight to dawn—is more than human endurance, backed though it be by Japanese pluck, can stand, and there was nothing to do last night but rest. Only an occasional sentry pop or the roll off to the right of a wheezy cannon whose shot traveled on wheels in need of grease, told us that the sublime panorama of mountains and valleys lying befor
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Chapter Ten THE CREMATION OF A GENERAL
Chapter Ten THE CREMATION OF A GENERAL
Before Port Arthur, Sept. 27th.—Major-General Yamamoto was shot and instantly killed two days ago. The brigade he commanded—one leading the right wing of the Army—had captured the outworks of “203.” This mountain had been long in dispute and was dominated by certain Russian forts, which made it, while Japanese territory, yet untenable by our forces. Yamamoto’s brigade, however, clung under the reverse ridges and occupied trenches at the top, keeping the foothold secure until artillery could be a
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Chapter Eleven THE GENERAL’S PET
Chapter Eleven THE GENERAL’S PET
He was small, like all his race, and he looked as harmless as a musician. In fact, his eyes had the dreaminess of a musician’s, and the clasp of his hand was like that of a woman. He touched me on the arm one day as I came out of the staff tent at General Nogi’s headquarters, and asked me in fairly good English if I knew San Francisco. Together, with a crooked stick, we traced out a map of the city on the sand at our feet. He knew it as well as I and he pointed to his former home, near the corne
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Chapter Twelve COURTING DEATH UNDER THE FORTS
Chapter Twelve COURTING DEATH UNDER THE FORTS
Willow tree village, Headquarters Third Imperial Army, Manchuria, four miles from Port Arthur, Oct. 5th: It was in August that the Japanese took the Eternal Dragon, advanced their outposts beyond its walls, threw up trenches, and settled down this inch nearer the coveted goal. In this fearful fight a certain part of the field was taken and retaken seven times, and finally, for strategic reasons, though the fort which was the bone of contention rested with the victors, a piece of dead ground beyo
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Chapter Thirteen FROM KITTEN TO TIGER
Chapter Thirteen FROM KITTEN TO TIGER
Headquarters, Third Imperial Army, Before Port Arthur, Sept. 30th:—We went yesterday to the foremost firing line, where all the venom of war is concentrated in a score of yards among a dozen men. There we saw how the besiegers of Port Arthur are besieging it, how they live, what manner of men they are, and some of the facts of modern warfare which those who want to know about the humanity of science had better not read. Before we went an officer led us to a bombproof on the Japanese side of the
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Chapter Fourteen SCIENTIFIC FANATICS
Chapter Fourteen SCIENTIFIC FANATICS
Noon found me well up toward the firing line, assured by the staff that it would be the day of days. To get there I passed a mile and more of batteries—the Osacca guns vomiting balls of fire, puff-balls of smoke and fat, heavy balls of steel; the howitzers—coyotes of artillery—spitting from peaks, snapping, louder than the monsters growl below; the naval six-inch turret firers, rakishly sunk in valleys, their greyhound noses dappled with mud, baying out reverberations at which even the sulking s
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Chapter Fifteen JAPAN’S GRAND OLD MAN—AN INTERLUDE
Chapter Fifteen JAPAN’S GRAND OLD MAN—AN INTERLUDE
The Itos are the Smiths of Japan. There is one President of the Privy Council, one the chief naval authority and head of the naval board. There are two generals named Ito and statistics alone know how many private soldiers are thus made still more common. The Asahi to-day told of an Ito hanged for a triple murder. In the adjoining column account was made of another Ito decorated by the Portuguese government. The reason, not stated, was that the king of that decrepit monarchy, wishing to assimila
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Chapter Sixteen THE COST OF TAKING PORT ARTHUR
Chapter Sixteen THE COST OF TAKING PORT ARTHUR
Port Arthur stood formidable and haughty on the night of February 8th, when Togo first saluted it with his turret six-inchers. That salute of the shell was lengthy and costly. For ten months it kept up from nearly seven hundred guns, approximately two hundred and forty in the navy and three hundred and fifty in the army. Each gun fired its weight in metal twenty times over. About two thousand tons of bursting shell went into that proud and mighty citadel, cordoned with its cunningly hung and ing
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Chapter Seventeen A CONTEMPORARY EPIC
Chapter Seventeen A CONTEMPORARY EPIC
That Port Arthur would fall on the 21st of August was believed by every man in the Japanese army; the island nation was sure of it; the world thought it certain. And the Japanese did try. They lacked neither the bravery, nor the numbers, nor the skill. They failed because Nature stood in their way. Nature built the mountains, and without the mountains the Russians could not have defended Port Arthur as they did. The forts were so arranged that each was commanded by two or three others, and some
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Chapter Eighteen THE NEW SIEGE WARFARE
Chapter Eighteen THE NEW SIEGE WARFARE
One morning in August General Nogi stood before his battalion commanders at Port Arthur with a pick in his hand. Its nose and heel had been worn away until the shank of rusted iron resembled an earth-dappled cucumber. Fondling it, the General said: “Take a lesson from this Russian pick. Your men must dig. They are too eager to ask, ‘Why intrench to-night when we are going forward in the morning?’” Nogi here went to the heart of his problem. It had cost him 25,000 men to learn that the military e
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Epilogue THE DOWNFALL
Epilogue THE DOWNFALL
D ’Adda—the Marquis D’Adda of Rome—had studied history well, and he declared that the end would come at “ze psychologique mo-ment—in ze wind, ze rain, when ze high spirit go low.” D’Adda was wrong. Port Arthur did not fall—it capitulated. It was not stormed and won. It was worn out. The military critics of the world were right. Port Arthur is impregnable, and well may some other power some day learn this, when it is defended by Japanese soldiery, properly provisioned, properly officered, and pro
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