China and the West

Baring, Maurice. With the Russians in Manchuria [ID D32572]. (5)
The retreat from Liaoyang
The evening and night of the 31st Brooke - and I spent at Colonel Potapoff's house, one of the little government brick houses near the station. Some people arrived later, bringing the latest news from the field of battle, which was that the Japanese had been driven back towards the West.
The next morning when we awoke we heard no noise, no firing — Colonel Potapoff went out to see what was happening. He returned with the news that a retreat had been ordered. I went to the telegraph office to send off a despatch to the Morning Post It was entirely dismanded, and they were about to move into a railway carriage ; the telegram was accepted and paid for — it was a long and expensive one — but it never reached London. An hour later that office was shelled. Firing began and we were told that the new town would soon be shelled. Brooke, Colonel Potapoff and I had our horses saddled and put all our belongings on a large Chinese cart, and we set out with two Chinese boys. It vras a fine hot day. We rode out of the town and reached a Red Cross hospital, which was just outside the town ; there Colonel Potapoff had some business and I waited for him — Brooke, who was riding with the cart behind us, was to meet us at the bridge on the river. I waited some time at the Red Cross, and we had a little food there with one of the doctors. Then we started again. We arrived at the river. There were no signs of Brooke nor of our Chinese cart. We waited there two and a half hours and then we crossed the river. Hundreds of carts, transports and trains were crossing the bridge. We afterwards learned that Brooke had gone back into the town.
I wanted to find the battery and met one of the Cossacks who belonged to it; but all he told me was that it was somewhere to the left We proceeded on our march ; a little later in the afternoon we met two French correspondents: M. Roucouli of the Temps, and M. Nodeau of the Journal they had lost all their luggage during the bombardment of the new town, which had begun soon after our departure.
We arrived at a siding where a train stopped ; it was full of stores ; not Government stores, but the remains of the Greek stores at Liaoyang, and the provisions of the "international hotel" and other European shops. To my great joy the soldiers looted it, hurling bottles of beer and packets of cigarettes and tobacco from the train to their comrades below. I drank one of the bottles of beer and we took away others and resumed our march to Yantai.
We passed the night with the officers of a regiment of Siberian Cossacks which was bivouacking in a field not far from the railway line. The firing was still going on. At night we saw a great blaze — as if the whole town were on fire — it turned out to be only one building. Nobody knew what was happening. The people who were with me took a pessimistic view of things. We thought things were much worse than they were; that the forts would fall in the night and that Kouropatkin would be cut off. It was owing to the complete ignorance of the state of affairs which we all shared that caused me to miss the fight at Yantai.
We thought there was going to be a retreat beyond Mukden to Tie-ling. The next morning I saddled my pony and determined to ride to Yantai. Nobody knew what had happened at Liaoyang. Troops and transports were retreating, but firing was audible to the west and to the east of us.
Finally I left my pony with Colonel Potapoff who had got an horseless Cossack with him, and resolved to go to Mukden by train. I walked down to the siding. On the right of the railway line one of the large Red Cross tents was pitched, and the wounded were being bandaged. Three infantry soldiers arrived exhausted with fatigue and sat down near me. I asked one of them how he had left things. He told me he had been fighting for the last three days without stopping, and had nothing but a few dried biscuits to eat. He told his story with enthusiasm. I asked him whether he had been in a bayonet encounter. He answered : ''Yes, again and again, hand to hand."
"Do the Japanese fight well ?" I asked.
"I should think so," he answered, " they are molodtzi" (fine fellows), and he described to me, as others had done, how they came again and again to the charge.
At that moment an officer came back and abused this poor fellow for sitting down to rest. "You are one of those cowards, I suppose," he said, " who are going back to Kharbin in order to tell them there that we have run away."
"No, your honour," the man answered, and I felt sick at heart.
Then Kouropatkin's train arrived empty. I obtained leave to go in it and arrived at Yantai station. By Yantai station a part of the ist Russian Corps was stationed, all spic and span in their new green uniforms and freshly-painted green carts.
There I saw the French correspondents and Colonel Goedke; but nobody who seemed to know or who could tell me what was happening. I had burnt my boats by leaving my pony behind, and was obliged to return to Mukden. That afternoon occurred the fight at Yantai.
I arrived the same evening at Mukden, and sent to an hotel which had been inaugurated by a Chinaman called the Manchuria Hotel. There I found Mr Hands the Daily Mail correspondent, and M. de Jessen the Danish correspondent of the Berlinske Tiedende. It was a big, spacious building with two courtyards. It started by being an hotel, and ended by being the private residence of the war correspondents.
I arrived at Mukden on September the 2nd. One by one all the other war correspondents arrived — Colonel Goedke, M. de Lasalle, the correspondent of the Agence Havas, etc., etc. Brooke arrived on the 6th. The authorities at Mukden expected an inunediate retreat on Tieling. The Russo-Chinese bank moved to Tieling ; the telegraph office was in the train, ready to start at any moment ; and everybody expected to be awakened one fine morning by the bursting of Japanese shells.
We had made arrangements to retreat to Tieling, and we thought that it was merely a question of hours. However, the days passed, and nothing occurred, and in spite of rumours emanating from the Chinese, that the Japanese were five miles off, nothing happened. After a week of doing nothing I began to find the inaction tedious. My battery had disappeared. Some people told me it had gone to Kharbin to rest; others, that it was at Tieling. As a matter of fact it had gone to Kuan-cheng-tze, which is not far from Kharbin, by way of resting ; but the rest had consisted in marching straight to Kuan-cheng-tze, and thence back again to Mukden.
M'Cullagh, the correspondent of the New York Herald suggested that I should go with him to General Mishenko's corps, to which he was attached. Each correspondent was attached to a separate corps, and in order to change your corps you had first to apply to the General Staff. It was possible, however, to pay a short visit to a corps without being officially appointed to it, if you did not wish to remain there permanently.
On September the loth I started south for Sa-ho- pu with M'Cullagh and a company of the Chitinsky regiment of Cossacks. We bivouacked in a wood on the way, and arrived at Sa-ho-pu the next morning. We found General Mishenko living in the small fangtse with his stalBf : the same old story — horses in the yard, dirt in the house, heat and monotony. General Mishenko himself made a great impression on me. He seemed to be far more decisive and businesslike than most of the generals one met. As a man he was simple, and extremely straightforward and amiable. His courage was proverbial.
On September 4th, M'Cullagh and I took up our abode as the guests of the Verchnioodinski regiment, and the same day the whole corps moved about two versts further south to a field, where we bivouacked in the open.
On September 1 3th, M'Cullagh woke me up early in the morning, and asked me if I would like to go on a reconnaissance. We started half-an-hour later with about forty Cossacks and two officers, and rode to a village on the banks of the Sha-ho. There the Chinese were asked the usual question : —
"Iben io-meyo?" '' Japanese are, not are?" to which they generally answer No.
On this occasion they said diere were some Japanese in a temple about a mile to the east. Our detachment divided itself into two sections, and I went with one of the officers and his men. We rode into a field of kowliang about 800 yards from 'the temple which had been indicated to us. There the men were placed in the kowliang, and told to fire on the temple. They fired a volley, and the Japanese answered with a volley a few minutes later. The bullets whistled over our heads The Japanese were clearly visible on the temple hill with a glass, and without a glass for the non-short-sighted.
We remained there the rest of the day, not having obtained much more information than we had received from the Chinese in the morning — namely, that on the temple hill there were a certain amount of Japanese.
In the evening we rode back to a village and slept, with horses saddled and everything ready for an alarm, there being nobody between us and the Japanese. The next morning we returned to the regiment. M'Cullagh and I rode back to Mukden that same day. It was necessary for me to obtain an official permission if I wished to remain in that corps.
I did not ask for the exchange, as I intended some day or other to find my Transbaikal battery. I stayed three days at Mukden, and on the 20th I started with Colonel Potapoff to pay a visit to General Kossagofsk/s corps, which was on our extreme right flank near Sin-min-tin, forty versts from Mukden. We arrived at the first "etape" in the evening. ''Etapes" are a sort of official post, in charge of an officer, consisting of one or two houses, placed at intervals on the main roads, so that travelling officers can pass the night in them.
The first etape was a place remarkable for the scrupulous cleanliness with which it was kept. This was so rare in Manchuria that it felt almost uncanny. Not only was it clean, but orderly and scrupulously organised to the smallest detail. One did not dare throw one's cigarette ashes on the floor. The towels had small labels over them, such as : "This is for the hands'' ; ''This is for the face." The commander of this etape was evidently a meticulous man.
We started at noon the next day for the next etape and arrived there about five o'clock in the afternoon. Here we found quite a different order of things; an equally spacious and roomy house, but an atmosphere of extreme geniality and a most jovial host We had dinner, enlivened by champagne bought from a German man of business who had come back from Newchang.
On the following evening, just as dinner had started on the terrace outside, and the soldiers were celebrating someone's birthday in the yard by singing a folk-song that has about seventy-five verses, just as champagne bottles were being opened, a whistle was heard, and the sergeant arrived and said, "Allow me to report that there is an alarm.''
The songs stopped abruptly; the soldiers were formed up and marched off through the gate but it was only a false alarm after all, and in twenty minutes' time they returned, still singing the continuation of the same song. The next day I saw General Kossagofsky, and he arranged that I should go to advanced posts, whither I started the next day with an escort of frontier guards.
I stayed a week in a village about twenty versts south with Colond Kononovitch, who was in command of the cavalry division there. Those were delicious days. The weather was perfect; a mild autumn haze pervaded the landscape, which in these parts was rich and woody ; the kowliang had been reaped, and there was a subtle thrill in the air, a peculiar haze in the broad noondays there which made one think of autumn days in England ; the leaves were not brown, and there were no signs of decay ; but autumn made itself felt in the chilly dawns and the shortening evenings. I lived in the colonel's house; with him was an adjutant, who went out shooting every day with his retriever, just as if he had been in Russia. In the evening the officers used to play vindt.
Every morning detachments used to be sent out to reconnoitre, as this was the chief district of the Hun-hu-tses. The troops quartered here consisted of Cossacks of the Amur and frontier guards.
Outside our house there was a large square field enclosed by a wall. Beyond it was a wooded hill. Here the men were encamped, and lit their camp-fires in the evening and sang songs. One song they used to sing very often contains the following cheerful sentiment : —
"I don't drink honey,
I don't drink beer,
I drink sweet vodka made of cherries ;
I don't drink out of a thimble-glass,
I don't drink out of beaker,
I drink out of half a pail."
As I used to lean over the wall watching them cook their supper, they used to come and ask me questions, and often they offered me porridge made of buck-wheat, which was very good.
The kind of questions they asked were how far off England was ; whether there were wolves in England; how bread was made there; how much wild ducks and horses cost in England ; what the country looked like ; whether we burnt coal or wood ; whether there was military service ? Once, when I had answered a whole string of similar questions to the best of my ability, the Cossack who was questioning me said, ''In fact the English are white people, just like we are."
This same man explained to me the difference between the Siberian troops and the troops which were arriving from European Russia. "The Siberian troops," he said, "you see, are used to an accursed country like this, but when the Europeans arrive and see all these strange things it makes them timid " (robkii). I asked this man what he thought of the Japanese. He said they were a ladni narod, a people whom you could mix with easily, easy to get on with, and very brave; but he said in old times when people went to war the strongest side won, " but now it all depends on machines and ingeniousness. It's a great pity."
Great flights of wild duck used to fly over our village in the evening, and there was a great quantity of wild duck on a reedy lake hard by. Every now and then we used to be startled by Hun-hu-tse atrocities. One poor man who was caught by them was frizzled to death by lighted spirits of wine in a small saucer. The Japanese were expected to attack on this flank, as they subsequently did in the battle of Mukden ; but it never came to anything. After a time I began to think nothing would happen in this part of the world, and I resolved to go back to Mukden and try and find the battery and my friends once more. So one morning I started home again with an escort across the happy autumn fields down the Sin-min-tin road, which was crowded with innumerable Chinese carts, Pekin carts, pack mules, and foot passengers. I arrived' at Mukden on October the 3rd, and at the railway station I met the veterinary surgeon of the 2nd Transbaikal Battery, who told me they had just arrived from Kuan-chen-tze, and were now encamped near the station.
At Mukden there was a great deal of movement and bustle. It was expected that General Kouropatkin would take the offensive. I resolved to rejoin the battery immediately.

The battle of Sha-ho [Shaho]
I found the battery bivouacking between the station and the Chinese cemetery among the graves. There I found all my old friends; they had been right up to Kuan-chen-tze and some of them to Kharbin, and had returned provided with warm clothing. We dined in a small fangtse which was occupied by the colonel, who was still an invalid and lying in bed. After dinner we retired to pass the night under the trees, and very cold it was sleeping in flapping tents in the windy night and the misty dawn among the graves of forgotten dynasties.
On the 4th we moved into a temple and enjoyed two days of idyllic calm. The temple was inhabited by a Buddhist priest, and there was a little, tiny Chinese child about three years old, who used to run about the courtyard, and with whom I made friends. This child was afraid of nothing, not of boys, or horses, or men. But when he saw the Cossack on sentry-go with a drawn sword, he used to insist on being carried past him, saying, "Ping !" (which in Chinese means soldier) with an intonation which proved he shared the mistrust and contempt of his countrymen for the profession of the fighting man. A fighting man in a Chinaman's estimation ranks beneath the hun-hu-tse or the hooligan; for whereas they fear the hun-hu-tse, their aversion for the soldier is mingled with contempt. I enjoyed those two days of peace, there was something infinitely quiet and beautiful in that temple, with its enclosure of trees and grass bathed in the October sunshine. This delicious calm did not last very long. The battery belonged to the cavalry division of the 1st Siberian Corps, but this had already gone to the front, and our fate was still undetermined. For the time being we were in the reserve. We were expecting to receive orders to start at any moment There had been no time to repair the guns, since the battery had only barely had time to march to Kuan-chen-tze and back again.
Kislitzki sat up all night of the 5th repairing the guns himself in the workshop of the artillery.
October 6th. — We received orders to start for the front and join the ist European Corps, which formed part of the reserves. We started after luncheon on the 6th, and arrived in the evening at the village of San-lintze twelve versts south-east of Mukden. We passed the night in a fangtse, and out of doors it froze hard. The Chinese heated the k'angs, and the result was towards two in the morning I felt that my head was frozen and my side roasted.
October 7th. — We moved early in the morning to another village three versts further on. There we were attached to the 7th regiment of Siberian Cossacks, commanded by Prince Troubetzkoi. A new officer joined us, a boy straight from college, Takmakov by name. Firing was heard that afternoon to the east, probably from where Rennenkampf was fighting. I went for a walk with Kislitzki, and he unfolded to me his views and ambitions. He was a student of Herbert Spencer and John Stewart Mill, and a lover of England, and owing to his love of tidiness and cleanliness used sometimes to be called an Anglo-maniac. That evening I shared a fangtse with him, as he always lived apart from the men ; he could not stand pigging it with other people. He spent most of the night making some (to me) mysterious implements of wood, something to do with rectifying the angle of sight of the guns, and singing long passages of Lermontov's poem, The Demon as he worked.
October 8. — A day of idleness, rain and inaction.
October 9. — Early in the morning we moved to the village of Sachetun, where we took possession of two small dilapidated houses. Towards evening we also heard the rattle of musketry. In front of us were the 4th, 17th and loth corps ; on the left flank the ist, 2nd, and 3rd (commanded by General Stackelberg) ; and on the right the 5th. We were still in the peaceful reserve with the ist European Corps, but the peace was not to last long. We were entertained that night at dinner by the 3rd Transbaikal battery, who were stationed in the same village. We heard the noise of firing all through the night We sat down thirteen to dinner. A bad sign.
October 10 — A day of inaction at Sachetun. Artillery fire was audible all day long and in the Night.
October 11. — We left Sachetun towards the afternoon, and proceeded to a village about a verst further south. Here I met Geoiges de la Salle, the correspondent of the Agence Havas, who had apparently been wandering between the two lines. We rested in the village about half an hour, and then received orders to proceed further south, and to put ourselves at the immediate disposition of General Kouropatkin.
We arrived at a village with an unpronounceable name, not far from General Kouropatkin's head-quarters. We arrived at the village at sunset. The limited number of Chinese fang-tses were all occupied, so we bivouacked in a field. There were only two tents among us, and most of us slept out on the ground. To the south of us was the first range of hills which continue straight on to Yantai, and among which a desperate battle was going on.
We heard firing all night.
October 12. — Artillery fire began at half-past six o'clock, and from a kopje in front of our position, I got a splendid view of the fighting. To the east were successive ranges of brown, undulating hills, and to the west a plain black with little dots of infantry (the ist European Corps). In this plain a Russian battery was engaged in an uninterrupted duel with a Japanese battery, and was receiving a hail of shells. They were under fire the whole day long ; the Japanese had got the range, but I ascertained afterwards that their losses were insignificant
although the fire had been so heavy. Their carts were smashed and some horses killed. In the extreme distance, to the south-west of the kopje on which I stood, were the hills of Yantai. On a higher hill, in front of that on which I was standing, the infantry was taking up its position, and the Japanese shrapnel was falling on it The infantry retired and moved to the south-west, and it looked at first as if there was going to be a general retreat, but that was not the case.
The firing of the batteries continued uninterruptedly until ten minutes to seven o'clock in the evening. In the night it rained heavily, the noise of thunder mingling with that of the musketry. News of terrific fighting kept on arriving— a battery lost and a regiment cut up— and the wounded began to stream past our camp. There was another night of rifle fire.
October 13. — Again, punctually at half-past six in the morning, the artillery began once more. Early in the morning I went up on the kopje about a verst to the south of us. I watched the batteries firing and the Japanese shells falling constantly nearer to us. The infantry was entrenched in the hills, and to the west the Russian battery was firing in the position it had been the day before. On turning round I saw through my field-glass that our camp was astir. I ran back to it, and was met by a Cossack, my soldier servant, who was a Buriat, and worshipped only at the shrine of the Lama of Thibet. He was leading my pony, and as I mounted the animal, Japanese shells began to explode on the kopje where I had been standing. All the transports of the 1st Corps, which was camped next to us, began to move — it was about half-past eight in the morning — and we were expecting to start also, when we suddenly received orders to remain where we were. The Japanese shelling ceased for the time being. We remained practically alone in the field by the village. A little before one o'clock a regiment of the ist Corps, which was in front of us, received orders to retreat.
At one o'clock in the afternoon it was said that the enemy was beginning to turn our right flank. We received orders to fire on the Japanese battery on the south-west, and to cover the retreat of the Russian field battery, which was between it and us.
At twenty minutes to three the battery went into action. The guns were masked behind the houses of the village, and Colonel Philemonoff, in order to get a good view, climbed up an exceedingly high tree which grew by the side of the houses. Knowing that he might at any moment be seized by a paroxysm of pain, my blood ran cold to see him do this. Not being able, however, to see sufficiently well from the tree he climbed down and moved up on to the slope of the hill. He began to give out the range, but after two shots had been fired he fell almost unconscious to the ground, and Kislitzki took over the command.
The Japanese answered with shells of shimose. My attention was particularly attracted by the explosion of a shell on the slope. It seemed to me to have torn up a mass of kowliang or a portion of a tree, and to have scattered it into fragments. But when, at three o'clock, we left the position in order to fire further west, we saw that it was not kowliang or a piece of a tree that had been blown up, but a man. We took up our position on another and higher hill, and fired west at the furthest possible range on the Japanese infantry, which we could see moving in that direction against the horizon. The battery fired till sunset, the shrapnel falling in the exact position desired, and when we had finished the Inspector of Artillery of the ist Corps, who had been looking on, complimented the Commander, declaring that he had never seen more exact firing. He added that a Cossack battery was worth ten of his European batteries. He also made a speech to the men serving the guns, congratulating them on their good work, which began, ''little children, little Cossacks." It was a simple and straightforward speech, and struck exactly the right note. At dusk we marched into a village ; everywhere on these hills the infantry was stationed in trenches ready for the night attack. Some of the men had been killed by shells, and by a trench I saw two human hands.
October 14. — We were aroused at four o'clock in the morning by the noise of firing. I had got so used to hearing that peculiar ticking rattle that I awoke the moment I heard it, as if it had been an alarum set to call me. We moved out into the road and waited for the dawn. It was quite dark. The firing seemed to be close by. The Cossacks made a fire and cooked bits of meat on a stick. My Buriat soldier-servant was a great adept at that art, as in his country all meals are served in that fashion. At dawn Prince Troubetzkoi arrived with the news that the 17th and loth Corps had repulsed the assault of the enemy, and that we were to join him later on in an attack. The commander went in search of a suitable position and I accompanied him. From a high hill we could see through a glass the Japanese infantry climbing up the kopje immediately south of our former camp. The Japanese climbed the kopje, lay down, and fired on the Russian infantry to the east of them, the Russians being screened from our sight by another hill. Our battery was placed at the foot of the hill, and opened fire on the enemy's battery five versts to the south-west The enemy replied from the east and the west with shrapnel and shell, and the situation seemed ugly. The battery was quickly extricated, however, and moved (the operation was excessively difficult as the field where the battery had received orders to be placed consisted of clotted earth) under heavy fire to a position on a hill further north. We fired thence on the enemy's battery which was five versts distant to the south-west.
Colonel Philemonoff, Kislitzki and I lay on the turf on the top of the hill. Kislitzki was giving the range, behind us on the slope of the hills were the guns. As we sat down a shell burst about two yards from the colonel ; he grunted and moved about a yard to the left The enemy were firing shrapnel and shimos.
Our firing seemed to be extraordinarily accurate. One of the shells must have alighted on a Japanese ammunition cart, for during a second I saw a pillar of flame which I at first took to be a burning house, but it suddenly disappeared.
The battery went into action at 8 a.m. After we had been firing about an hour, the Japanese infantry came round through the valley and occupied a kopje north-west of us, and opened fire first on our infantry which was beneath and before us, and then on the battery. The sergeant came and reported that men were being wounded and horses had been killed.
Takmakov, the boy Cossack, who had just arrived from college was shot through the chest, happily the wound was a slight one. A Cossack was shot through the head and went mad; another was seriously wounded. The Japanese infantry was stationed at a distance of 600 sajen from us, that is about 1200 yards. Then Hlebnikoff, one of the youngest of the officers belonging to the battery, (and perhaps the most conscientious), who was commanding a section, reversed three of the guns and fired on the infantry, giving the range himself.
This continued until noon. The Japanese were clearly visible, through a glass one could have recognised a friend. Their bullets whistled over our heads. At noon the infantry retired leaving us unprotected, and we were forced to retreat at full speed under heavy shrapnel and cross infantry fire. I was left without a pony and had to run, till a Cossack brought me a riderless horse, which I mounted with great difficulty as it had an extremely high saddle, and all the Cossack's belongings on its back. We retired to Sachetun, crossing the river Sha-ho, arrived there at 1 p.m. We had scarcely halted ten minutes when we were ordered to move forward as an attack was to be made. Everybody was expecting a general retreat to Mukden. The stores at Sachetun were burning in great columns of flame. We thought we were being ordered merely to cover a retreat ; but this was not so, as on the right flank the Russians had repulsed the Japanese attack, as we had been told in the morning. We went into action recrossing the river Sha-ho under heavy fire. It had begun to pour with rain. As we crossed the river one of our horses had the front of its face literally torn off by shrapnel. We took up a position on the further side of the river about thirty yards from the banks and fired due south.
The first few shots of the enemy were fired with great precision on to the battery. They then altered the range and their shells fell on the farther bank of the river. After we had fired for about twenty minutes, the enemy's fire ceased all along the line. Only two mountain batteries, and the Russians' east to the Japanese west continued firing. It was at this moment that the Japanese advance ceased all along the line, and we now know that the reason why it ceased was because they had run short of ammunition. Had they continued their advance at this moment we should probably have been forced to retreat to Mukden, and possibly to abandon Mukden also.
Kislitzki and I walked towards the south to see what was going on, and climbed up on the roof of an isolated cottage : we were almost killed for our pains by a stray shell which whizzed over our heads and exploded on the ground behind us. Then we returned and set out for a village to the south-west by a circuitous route across the river. Nobody knew the way. Nobody seemed to have heard of the village. We marched and marched until it grew dark. Some Cossacks and Chinese were sent to find out where the village was. We halted for an hour by a wet ploughed field. At last they returned and led us to our destination. We expected to find our transport there. I was nursing the hope that I should find dry clothing and hot food, as we were drenched to the skin and half dead with fatigue and hunger. When we arrived at the village I was alone with an officer; we dismounted at a bivouac and he went on ahead expecting me to follow him. I thought he was to come back and fetch me. I waited an hour ; nobody came so I set out to find our quarters. The village was straggling and mazy. I went into house after house and only found strange faces. I returned to the bivouac and got one of our Cossacks to guide me : we spent another half hour in fruitless search. At last we found the house. I entered the fangtse and found all the officers ; but no transport, no food, and no dry clothing.
The officer who had guided me said : "Why did you desert me ?"
I threw my riding whip on the floor in a fit of exasperation and said : ''It was you who left me."
Then they all laughed and one of them said, "We must shake hands with you, because this is the first time you have shown signs of discontent, before we thought you were superhumanly contented, but now we know you are human."
October 15th. — We spent in quiet and inaction.
I spent the night in the colonel's quarters and we discussed Russian literature, especially Dostoievski's novels, for which we both had a passion. He asked me which of the Russian novelists I preferred. I said Dostoievski and Gogol. "I think the same," he said, ''but I am surprised at your thinking that ; is it possible that a foreigner can appreciate the humour of Gogol ?" I said that Englishmen would probably find it hard to believe that foreigners could appreciate the humour of Dickens. He said he had a passion for Dickens. The case then was analogous. We discussed Dostoievski's masterpiece, "The Brothers Karamazov"; the colonel greatly preferred the elder brother Dimitri, of the three brothers.
October 16th. — We received orders at dawn to be in readiness; a rumour arrived that the Japanese were in a village three versts off and we were prepared to retreat to Mukden. Half an hour later we were ordered to join the 1st Siberian Corps, our proper corps, which had been sent south to attack.
We marched to a village called Nan-chin-tza, about three versts distant from the hill which the Russians call Poutilofi's Hill and the English Lonely Tree Hill. It had been taken in the night by the Japanese. We could see through a glass men walking on it now and then, but nobody knew whether they were Japanese or Russians. Two Cossacks were sent to ascertain the facts. Wounded men were returning one by one, and in bigger batches from every part of the field. It was a ghastly sight, and even worse than at Liaoyang. It was a brilliant sunshiny day and the wounded seemed to rise in a swarm from the earth. Their bandages were fresh and the blood was soaking through their shirts. The Cossacks returned saying the hill was occupied by the Japanese. We were told to join the ist Corps. Here I met Commandant Chemineau, one of the French military attaches and Captain Schoenmeyer the Chilian attach. We marched back a verst and found the corps bivouacking in the plains ; all along the road we met crowds of wounded and mutilated men, carried on stretchers, and walking, their wounds quite fresh and streaming with blood. We halted ten minutes and then we were ordered to go into action. We marched a verst south again, the guns were placed behind a village about three versts to the north of the hill to which General Poutiloff gave his name.
On the way we met General Poutiloff himself and the infantry going into action. The guns were placed in the plain behind a village. Colonel Philemonoff and I climbed up on the thatched roof of a small house, whence he gave his orders. He gave the range himself throughout the whole day. In front of us was a road ; the house upon which we were seated was placed at the extreme right comer of the village ; to the right of us was a field planted with some kind of green vegetable which looked like lettuce. Infantry kept marching along the wood on its way to action ; a company halted by the field and began eating the lettuce. Our colonel shouted to them, "You had better make haste finishing the green stuff there, children, as I am going to open fire in a moment". They hurriedly made off as if it was upon them that fire was to be opened, save one, who, greedier than the rest, lingered a little behind the others, throwing furtive glances the while at the colonel, lest he should suddenly be fired upon. Soon after they had gone the battery opened fire; two other batteries were also shelling the hill, one from the east and one from the west Orders were received to shell the hill until six o'clock and then to cease fire, as it was to be stormed. The enemy answered uninterruptedly with shrapnel, but not one of the Japanese shells touched us, they all fell beyond us. After we had been firing some little while three belated men belonging to a line regiment walked down the road ; our guns fired a salvo, upon which these men, startled out of their lives, crouched down in apprehension. The colonel, seeing this, shouted to them from the roof, "Crouch lower, or else you will be shot" They flung themselves on the road and grovelled in the dust, casting an imploring glance at the colonel. " Lower," he cried to them, "lower, can't you get under the earth?" They wriggled ineffectually, and lay sprawling about like big brown fish out of water. Then the colonel said : "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves ; don't you know that my shells are falling three versts from here, be off with you !" As the sun set we ceased fire and waited. Soon a tremendous rattle of infantry told us the attack had begun. An officer subsequently described this fire as a "comb of fire" that seemed to tear the regiment to pieces. We waited in the dark, red, solemn twilight, and about an hour later a ringing cheer told us that the kopje had been taken. Someone who was with us remarked that it was just like manoeuvres. But all was not over, as the Japanese attacked the kopje twice after it had been taken ; it was partly taken but at what a cost we began presently to see.
It grew dark, and we sought and found a Chinese house wherein to pass the night. Men began to arrive from the hill, and from their accounts it was difficult to tell whether the hill had been taken or not. With the officers was Glinka, the doctor of the battery. We had just laid ourselves down to rest when a wounded man arrived asking to be bandaged, then another and another. Many of the soldiers had received their preliminary attendance on the hill itself at the hands of the army surgeons and assistants, but the detachment of the Red Cross by which the wounded could be rebandaged was twelve versts distant Soon our house was full of wounded, and more were arriving. They lay on the floor, on the k'angs, and in every available place. Light was the difficulty. We had only one candle and a small Chinese oil lamp, and the procession of human agony kept on increasing. The men had been badly wounded by bullet and bayonet, torn, mangled and soaked in blood. Some of them had broken limbs as well as wounds. Some had walked or crawled three miles from the hill, while others, unable to move, were carried on greatcoats slung on rifles. When one house was full we went to the next, and so on, till all the abodes up the street of the village were filled. Two of the officers bandaged the slightly wounded, while the doctor, with untiring energy and deftness, dealt with the severely injured. The appalling part of this business was that one had to turn out of the house by force men who were only slightly wounded, or simply utterly exhausted and faint, so as to reserve all available space for the severely wounded. And even if you have not been severely wounded, yet after fighting for hours it is not an agreeable prospect to have to walk fifteen miles before there is any chance of getting food. Some of them merely implored to be allowed to rest a moment and to drink a cup of tea, and yet we were obliged ruth- lessly to turn them from the door in view of the ever-increasing mass of agonising and mangled men who were arriving and crying out in their pain.
The Russian soldier, as a rule, bears his wounds with astounding fortitude, but the wounded of whom I am speaking were so terribly mangled that many of them were screaming in their agony. Two officers were brought in. "Don't bother about us, doctor," they said; "we shall be all right." We laid these two officers down on the k'ang. They seemed fairly comfortable ; one of them said he felt cold ; and the other that the calf of his leg tingled, "Would I mind rubbing it ?" I lifted it as gently as I could, but it hurt him terribly, and then rubbed
his leg, which he said gave him relief "What are you ?" he said, "an interpreter, or what.**" (I had scarcely got on any clothes, what they were, were Chinese and covered with dirt) I said I was a correspondent. He was about to give me something, whether it was a tip or a small present as a remembrance, I shall never know, for the other officer stopped him and said, "No, no, you're mistaken". He then thanked me very much. Half an hour later he died. One seemed to be plunged into the lowest circle of the inferno of human pain. I met a man in the street who had crawled on all fours the whole way from the hill. The stretchers were all occupied The manner in which the doctor dealt with the men was magnificent He dominated the situation, encouraged every one, had the right answer, suppressed the unruly and cheered up those who needed cheering up.
The house was so crowded and the accommodation so scanty that it took a very short time to fill a house, and we were constantly moving from one house to another. The floor was, in every case, so densely packed with writhing bodies that one stumbled over them in the darkness. Some of the men were being sick from pain ; others had faces which had no human semblance at all. Horrible as the sight was the piteousness of it was greater still. Mentem mortalia tangunt. The men were touching in their thankfulness for any little attention, and noble in the manner which they bore their sufferings.
We had tea and cigarettes for the wounded.
I was holding up one man who had been terribly mangled in the legs by a bayonet. The doctor was bandaging him. He screamed with pain. The doctor said the screaming upset him. I asked the man to try not to scream and lit a cigarette and put it in his mouth. He immediately stopped smoked and remained quite quiet — until his socks were taken off. The men do not generally have socks, their feet are swathed in a white kind of bandage. This man had socks, and when they were taken off he cried, saying he would never see them again. I promised to keep them for him and he said, ''Thank you, my protector." A little later he died.
When we gave them tea and cigarettes they all made the sign of the Cross and thanked Heaven before thanking us.
One seemed to have before one the symbol of the whole suffering of the human race; men like bewildered children stricken by some unknown force, for some hidden inexplicable reason, crying out and sobbing in their anguish, yet accepting and not railing against their destiny, and grateful for the slightest alleviation and help to them in their distress.
We stayed till all the houses were occupied. At two o'clock in the morning a detachment of the Red Cross arrived, but its hands were full to overflowing. Then we went to snatch a little sleep. We had in the meantime received news that the hill had been taken and that at dawn the next day we were to proceed thither. With regard to the exact time and manner in which Lonely Tree Hill was taken, the accounts are conflicting.
Some people state that it was taken on the evening of the 16th between seven and nine o'clock ; others that it was not finally taken until dawn of the 17th.
General Sacharoffs official report reads as follows : — "On the night of the 2nd-3rd (15th-16th) October the Japanese attacked in the centre the position occupied by two regiments on the so-called 'Lonely Tree Hill,' north-west of the village of Nan-chin-tza, and forced these regiments to cross the River Sha-ho. Strengthened by reserves, our forces, after preliminary artillery shelling, attacked and stormed the hill after stubborn resistance and drove the enemy back beyond the hill." He adds in a later telegram : — "The night of the 3rd-4th (16th- 1 7th) passed off quietly in the storming of the hill of yesterday's date, the enemy occupied a strong position which had been hurriedly and insufficiently fortified by them after an exceedingly successful artillery preparation, our troops took the whole position of the enemy and drove them back to a distance of two versts. Fighting continued until the morning of yesterday's date."
The night of the 3rd (16th), I spent, as I have said already, in the village of Nan-chin-tza, whither the wounded returned from the hill, saying it had been taken. One of the officers of the battery rode to the hill, and it was suggested by the officer in command there that the battery should at once move to the hill; this was not done as a night attack was expected. During that night neither I nor my companions heard a shot fired ; but since it is stated in the official report that fighting continued until morning, I presume that this fighting took place two versts beyond the hill, five versts from us, in which case we would not have heard it.
We heard the infantry firing when the attack was made most distinctly, and it ceased about 9 p.m., or possibly before. In any case, the next morning, October 17, shortly after sunrise, we were on the top of the western corner of the hill itself and the battery was placed in position in the plain at the foot of the hill. If the hill had only just been taken at dawn, we must have heard the firing as we rode from the village to it. Therefore I am personally convinced that this part of the hill, at any rate, was taken the night before ; and that the fighting in the night must have taken place beyond it ; the record in the "archives" of the battery recorded the matter as I have related it.
Since writing this I have been informed from headquarters at Mukden that the version given above is correct But I have also heard that there is still a great discussion as to when and by whom the hill was taken ; the Petrovski regiment claim to have taken it early in the morning of the 17th October; whereas the infantry which was with Poutiloff declare that they took it on the evening of the 16th. The fact is that the term Poutiloff Hill is vague ; the hill was a great long place and adjoining it was another big hill, the Novgorod Hill ; fighting may have gone on there, or beyond Poutiloffs Hill, all night I only know three facts.
1. The hill was attacked between 7 and 9 p.m. The firing was as audible as anything could be ; we heard cheering and we heard the fire cease.
2. We heard no firing during the night.
3. Early the next morning I was myself standing on the western extremity of the hill talking to
General Poutiloff.
October 17. — At dawn we started for Poutiloffs Hill, trotting all the way. The road was covered with bandages; the dead were lying about here and there; but when we arrived at the hill itself the spectacle was appalling. I was the only foreigner who was allowed to visit the hill that day. As the colonel rode up the hill We passed a Japanese body which lay waxen and stiff on the side of the road and suddenly began to move. The hill itself was littered with corpses. Six hundred Japanese dead were buried that day, and I do not know how many Russians. The corpses lay there in the cold dawn with their white faces and staring eyes, like hateful wax-work figures. Even death seemed to be robbed of its majesty, and to be bedraggled and made hideous by the horrible fingers of war. But not entirely. Kislitzki, who was with me, pointed to a dead Japanese officer who was lying on his back, and told me to go and look at his expression. I did so; he was lying with his brown eyes wide open and smiling, showing his white teeth. But there was nothing grim or ghastly in that smile. It was miraculously beautiful; it was not that smile of inscrutable content which we see portrayed on certain wonderful statues of sleeping warriors, such as that of Gaston de Foix at Milan, or Guidarello Guidarelli at Ravenna, but a smile of radiant joy and surprise as if he had suddenly met with a friend for whom he had longed for above all things, at a moment when of all others he had needed him, but for whose arrival he had not even dared to hope. Not far off a Russian boy was lying, fair, and curly headed, with soft grey eyes, a young giant, with his head resting on one arm as if he had sunk like a tired child overcome with insuperable weariness, and had opened his eyes to pray to be left at peace just a little longer.
The trenches and the ground were littered with all the belongings of the Japanese ; rifles, ammunition, bayonets, leather cases, field-glasses, scarlet socks, dark blue great coats, yellow caps, maps, paint brushes, tablets of Indian ink, soap, tooth-brushes, envelopes full of little black pills, innumerable notebooks, and picture post-cards received and ready for sending. Some of the Japanese dead wore crosses. One had a piece of green ribbon sewn on a little bag hanging round his neck. One had been shot through a written post-card which he wore next to his heart So many men were buried that day, that the men were positively faint and nauseated by the work of burying the dead.
General Poutiloff was on the top of the western corner of the hill. There I remained with Colonel Philemonoff. The battery fired all day long; the Japanese fired on us, but their shells fell beyond the hill into the plain. One of our Cossacks was seriously wounded while he was eating his luncheon under the shelter of the hill in a trench, and this made me think of Napoleon's remark to a young soldier he saw ducking to avoid a shell.
"If that shell were meant to find you it would do so were you buried twenty leagues under the earth."

Poutiloffs Hill [Auszüge].
…A week passed in this way, without anything of any particular interest happening, and I therefore resolved to return to Mukden.
I arrived at Mukden on the 31st of October, and the battery returned on the 4th of November to repair its guns. We established ourselves in our former quarters, the temple outside the city walls, whence we had started for the last battle. In the meantime the autumn had come and gone.
It was winter. There had been practically no autumn. A long summer and an Indian summer of warm hazy days, like the end of August and the beginning of September in England, without any rich, solemn effects of red foliage and falling leaves, touched with "universal tinge of sober gold." One day the trees were still green, and the next the verdure had vanished. The sunshine had been hot, and then suddenly the puddles in the yard froze; the sky became grey, the snow fell, and the wind cut like a knife.
To my mind Manchuria is infinitely more beautiful in its leafless state than in summer.
When the kowliang is cut the hidden undulations and delicate lines are revealed. It is a country of exquisite outlines. When one sees the rare trees, with their frail fretwork of branches standing out in dark and intricate patterns against the rosy haze of the wintry sunset, suffused and softened with innumerable particles of brown dust, one realises whence Chinese art drew its inspiration ; one understands how the "cunning worker in Pekin" pricked on to porcelain the colours and designs which make Oriental china beautiful and precious.
After a few days the snow disappeared, and, although the nights remained bitterly cold, the days were bright and beautiful, crisp and dazzlingly clear, just as they are in Cairo during the winter.
I remained at Mukden until December the 1st, when I started for London.

General impressions [Auszüge]
The manner in which Manchuria was occupied, the way in which the negotiations were carried on, the outbreak and conduct of the war — all these things show that there was no guiding idea, no fixed policy, no organisation, no harmony between the officials in the Far East and the officials in St Petersburg, and above all things no foresight The idea of far-seeing, far-reaching Russian policy should by the mere fact of this war be exploded for ever. Russian policy has up to now been the fortunate or unfortunate result of a mere chaos of conflicting elements in which no gliding mind has ever been able to preponderate or to permeate.
But enough of politics, which are not the subject of this book. I wish to end by a brighter side of things. As the officer said to me, the Government may be damnable but the people are good. And that is a thing which Englishmen know little or nothing about. Some people read French translations of Russian novelists, but it never occurs to them that these novels are the reflection and shadow of a mightier thing, which is the Russian people. Nations like the Chinese and the Russians should not be judged by their governments, but by the noblest fruits of their men of genius, or by any Russian or Chinese peasant…
All Englishmen whom I have seen, who have lived long in Russia, and know the language and the people, have said to me the same thing, namely, that the Russians are fine fellows, and that the English ought to get to know them because they would like them, and that what people say about Russians in England is nonsense and cant Dr Westwater, the missionary doctor at Liaoyang, who had worked with the Russians, and, from his long residence in China, had had every opportunity of seeing both sides of the medal, said exacdy the same thing to me.