China and the West

Baring, Maurice. With the Russians in Manchuria [ID D32572]. (4)
The battle of Liaoyang
On the 23rd of August I rode into Liaoyang to post a letter. I was accompanied by an officer and six Cossacks as a protection against the Hun-hu-tses who had been giving trouble lately. Indeed, officers had been warned to go by train from An-san-san to Liaoyang, and not to ride without an escort I could not help reflecting that the Hun-hu-tses could aim at one as well from a distance whether the Cossacks were present or not The presence of an escort did, however, have a deterring effect on the Hun-hu-tses, although Brooke was attacked one day quite close to Mukden, and two of the officers in the battery to which I was attached were shot at within a mile of their quarters (this was later).
For my own part I never saw a Hun-hu-tse, except a retired one who lived at Mukden. This man, who used to live at peace with his neighbours at a temple at Mukden after a life of rapine and murder, invited me to go and stay with the Hun-hu-tse general, who was celebrated for his bright clothes, his daring, his elusiveness, and his exquisite cruelty. He assured me that I should suffer no harm, and would be treated with the respect due to the English and the insane. Tempting as the offer was, I felt compelled to answer that war correspondents were not supposed to incur unnecessary risks. It sometimes happens that Chinese of high rank join the Hun-hu-tses, men with advanced views, who are dissatisfied with the existing order of things. The Chinese use the word Hun-hu-tse for any sort of robber or rowdy man. It is equivalent to the word hooligan.
On the day after my arrival at Liaoyang (August 25th), heavy fighting was reported to be going on in the east In spite of the temptation to go eastwards, I resolved to go back to the battery in the south, as it seemed to me inevitable that a big fight in the south must take place soon. On the next day(August 26th) firing was heard to the south in the morning, and I started alone for An-san-san. When I reached An-san-san at 4.30 in the afternoon, there was a great stillness everywhere. I passed a regiment of Siberian Cossacks encamped on the right of the railway line, and a battery of Eastern Siberia ready for action on the hills on the left of the line.
Firing was going on, at this time, beyond the hills ; the 3rd Transbaikal battery fired ; and the 2nd was ready for action, but it was not audible at the station. I was afraid my battery would have moved ; besides which the road to Davantientung was exceedingly complicated, and I had got no Cossacks to guide me.
However, a most civil officer on the Staff of the First Corps drew me a map of the way, and I started due west along the big range of hills. Here I also passed a battery placed along the road ready for action. I passed two of the villages marked on the map successfully, and then I followed the field telegraph, and soon lost the road marked All went well until I reached a certain spot which I remembered having passed the first time I went to Davantientung. I saw a slight kopje in the distance in front of me, about five miles to the south, and recognised it with joy. Instead, however, of making straight for this hill, some instinct made me go back and proceed due west, in the hopes of finding the main road. I was afterwards told that the Japanese had occupied the hill I nearly made for, and fired thence on the next day. Whether this is so or not, I have no means of ascertaining ; but they cannot have been far off. I knew whereabouts my village lay, and I hoped by going a long way round to reach the main road which I had missed. I came on a village, and asked the way. The Chinese were standing outside their houses in the twilight, and when I asked them the way, they pointed and grinned ironically. I thought they were misleading me, and that I was making straight for a nest of Hun-hu-tses. I offered a small boy a coin if he would guide me. He pointed me out the road, and led me part of the way, and then disappeared, and I found myself in a sea of kowliang. I felt uneasy, but resolved to go straight on till I came to a village of some kind. I knew I was going in the right direction, and after a time I came on a village, and met a Cossack. I asked if the battery was near, and he pointed to the very first house. By accident I had stumbled on the very house in which the battery was located. It had been out ready for action all day, and had moved its quarters.
I found, on arriving, that Colonel Philemonoff, the commander of the battery, had returned from the hospital. I knew of him by reputation, since he was reputed to be the best artillery officer in the whole of the Siberian army. He was ill, and suffering greatly from an internal disorder; but nothing ever overcame his indomitable pluck. We had supper, and went to bed. At two o'clock in the morning we were roused with the information that we were to start at once, as the Japanese were advancing on to our village. We got up ; the officers and men collecting in a field in the darkness. It was raining. We marched to the largest village in that district. Towards the middle of the day the rain stopped, and we had just finished our mid-day meal when we were told to get ready for action. The battery was taken outside the village, and the guns placed in a kind of kitchen-garden pointing south-west, towards Davantientung, the village we had just left Colonel Gourko, who was commanding the cavalry division, consisting chiefly of dragoons, rode up, and made a short speech to the men. The weapons and the uniforms were modem, but the sentiment and the shouted answer of the Cossacks — crying out the regulation formula hailing their Colonel — were old. The mounted Cossacks, indeed, might belong to any epoch, and could have fought at Agincourt or Ravenna. Then the battery began to fire, and went on firing for about three hours, from about two till five in the afternoon. The Japanese made no response at first ; they fired a little later on, but no shells reached us. It turned out afterwards that we had both been shelling the village of Davantientung in vain. I was sorry for the village where I had spent so much time, and for the lachrymose host
whose house I had occupied. We were told to move into a village about a verst distant. There we occupied a small Chinese temple, and I was just dropping off to sleep on a mat when I heard a stir outside. The Japanese were less than a mile from us, and had entered one end of the village we had just left, while the dragoons had gone out at the other. Our force was very small — a detachment of dragoons, and the battery. The rest of the division had left earlier in the morning. We heard shots, and the battery was told to get away with all, possible speed. There was no panic, and, in spite of the shocking condition of the roads, we got away quickly and effectually, having narrowly escaped being cut off. We marched until twelve o'clock at night, then rested, and at dawn started for Liaoyang by a circuitous route to the west. We arrived at Liaoyang about three o'clock in the afternoon, and established ourselves in a small village on the railway line about four versts from the town, that is to say on the right flank of the army. The next day(August 29) was one of complete calm ; we sat in a
Chinese cottage, and ate pancakes. I rode into the station in the afternoon, and was told that a battle was expected on the following day, and that it would perhaps begin that very night It was a divine evening. A little to the south of us was the big hill of Sow-shan-tze ; in front of us to the east a circle of hills ; to the north the town of Liaoyang. A captive balloon soared slowly up in the twilight ; a few shots were fired by the batteries on the eastern hills. We were the farthest troops south-West. By nightfall we had not received orders where we were to go. We lay down to sleep, and in the battery itself nobody was convinced that the Japanese would attack on the following day. We had scarcely lain down, however, before orders arrived for us to move to a village eastwards. The horses were saddled, and we marched to a village up on the hills east of Sow-shan-tze, about four or five versts distant. There we again established ourselves in a Chinese house, where I lay down and fell into a heavy sleep. I was awakened by the noise of musketry not far off. There were faint pink streaks in the eastern sky. The village was on an elevation, but higher hills were around us. Musketry and artillery fire was audible. The battle had begun. We moved out of the village to a hill about a hundred yards to the north-west of it ; here there was an open space consisting of slopes and knolls, but not high enough to command a view of the surrounding country. Two regiments of infantry were standing at ease on the hills, and as General Stackelberg and his staff rode through the village at the foot, the men shouted the salutation to him. I believe most of the men thought he was the Commander-in-Chief. On some rocks on the knolls groups of officers were standing surveying the position through their glasses. The whole scene looked like the picture of a battle by Detaille, or some military painter. The threatening grey sky, splashed with watery fire, the infantry going into action, and the men cheering the general as he rode along in his spotless white uniform. And to complete the picture, a shell burst in a compound in front of us, where some dragoons had halted. We had been ordered to leave the little village just at the moment when tea had been made, and there seemed to be no further prospect of food.
We presently moved off to the west, and the battery was placed at the extreme edge of the plain of millet west of the hill of Sow-shan-tze.
The battery opened fire immediately, the commander giving his orders high up on Sow-shan-tze Hill to the right, and transmitting them by men placed at intervals down the slope. The whole battle occupied an area of nearly forty versts in circumference. If one climbed the hill, which I did, one saw beneath one a plain of millet and little else. It was an invisible battle, and perhaps the loudest there has ever been. I climbed up the hill after I had stayed with the battery below for some time, and watched the effects of our fire.
We were firing on a battery to the south-west at a distance of five versts, a range of about 5000 yards. I could see the flash of the Japanese guns through my field-glass when they fired. Every now and then you could distinguish, in a village or a portion of the plain where there was no millet, little figures like Noah's Ark men, which one knew to be troops. It was impossible to say, however, whether they were Russian or Japanese. Indeed, at one moment we fired on a village, convinced that the troops which had been visible there for a moment were Japanese. Soon after we received a message to tell us not to fire on it as our men were there.
It was a bad day for artillery, because the sky was so grey that it was difficult to distinguish the shells as they burst. On the side of the hill was Colonel Philemonoff and with him were Lieutenant Kislitzki, and the doctor. The colonel was too ill to do much himself and during the greater part of the day it was Kislitzki who gave out the range. Kislitzki was not second in command. He was a young man twenty-five years old; but his knowledge of gunnery and his talent — amounting to genius — in discovering the enemy's batteries and estimating ranges were so exceptional, that when the Colonel was too ill to work he put everything into this young fellow's hands.
From Renan's translation of Ecclesiastes it appears that the phrase "the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," means that when runners are needed for a race, the swiftest are not always asked to compete, nor are the strongest men given an opportunity when there is an occasion for a fight Here was a case to the contrary.
The colonel lay wrapped up in a Caucasian cloak on the side of the hill, and every now and then, as he gave out, checked, or slightly modified Kislitzki's orders.
The three men who struck me most of those I met in Manchuria were EgorofT, whom I have already mentioned, Colonel Philemonoff, and Kislitzki.
I cannot conceive it possible to be pluckier than the colonel was, both in his utter disregard of danger, and in the manner he endured terrible sufifering without giving in.
Kislitzki was certainly the most brilliant officer I saw; the most cultivated and thoughtful; he knew his business, and loved it. It was an art to him, and he must have had the supreme satisfaction of the artist when he exercises his powers, and knows that his work is good. He was also absolutely fearless, and without the suspicion of thought for himself, or his career, or what would be advantageous to him. He was responsible for the battery's splendidly accurate firing in nearly every engagement ; but he has not got the credit, nor does he need it; his wages were fully paid to him while he was at work. Moreover, any reputation that accrues to Colonel Philemonoff is deserved, because he created the battery, and the officers were his pupils, and his personal influence pervaded it He was always there, and ready, if things went badly, to surmount any amount of physical suffering to deal with the crisis. He also loved his profession, and was the top of it, and it was bitterly ironical that now, when he had such a great opportunity for exercising his skill that he was too ill to avail himself of it.
One day when he was lying on a hill in command of the battery in action and had sunk back exhausted on to the grass, he said to me, "I love my business ; and now that we get a chance of doing I can't — all the same they know I'm here and if any difficulty — any crisis arose, they know that no physical pain would prevent me from doing all I could."
Kislitzki, however, equalled him, the Cossacks used to say he was an "eagle."
As the time went on, the Japanese attack moved slowly like a wave, from the south to the south- west, until in the evening about seven o'clock, they were firing west of the railway line, and the Russian infantry was lying along the line. The battery ceased fire, and then three of the guns were taken on to the top of the small hill which lay at the foot, and west of the big hill of Sow-shan-tze, and fired due west. A Japanese battery was supporting the attack of its infantry. After a time it was silenced. It was a picturesque sight to see the guns firing towards the red setting sun, over the green kowliang in which the Japanese infantry was advancing, and breaking like a wave on a rock.
Towards sunset it had begun to rain. All day the Japanese had been firing on us, but their shells fell to the right of us in the millet; every now and then a shell burst over our heads behind us, but on the evening of the first day we had had no losses of any kind. At five o'clock I was sitting on the edge of the road with a young officer, Sub-Lieutenant Hliebnikoff, a born Transbaikalian, of the battery, who had been shouting orders all day in command of a section. He was hoarse from shouting, and deaf from the noise. I was also deaf from the noise. We neither of us could hear what each other said, and shared a frugal meal out of a small tin of potted meat. A soldier near us had his pipe shot out of his mouth by a bullet. I shouted to him that we were in rather a dangerous place ; he shouted back that he was much too hungry to care. At nightfall firing ceased. The result of the fight at the end of the day seemed to be distinctly favourable to the Russians. By sunset the Japanese attack had been driven back. From the spectator's point of view everything was spoilt by the dense, tall kowliang, or giant millet ; from a hill you could see the infantry disappear into the kowliang ; you could hear the firing, and the battle seemed to be going on underground. One seemed to be in a gigantic ant-heap where invisible ants were struggling and moving. In the evening the result became apparent in the stream of wounded and mangled men who were carried from the field to the ambulances. At sunset, if one could have had a bird's-eye view of the whole field, it would have given one the idea of a hidden and bleeding heart, from which, like the spokes of a wheel, red arteries composed of the streams of wounded on every road, radiated in every direction.
That first evening there was already a terrible procession wending its way to Liaoyang; some men on foot, others carried on stretchers. I met one man walking quietly. He had a red bandage round the lower part of his face, his tongue and his lips had been shot away. The indifference with which the men bore their wounds was quite extraordinary. On the left of the road which goes along the railway line to Liaoyang, a section of the Red Cross was stationed. The wounded were brought there after they had received preliminary attention from a flying column of the Red Cross, which nearly all day was stationed at the base of the Sow-shan-tze Hill. This flying column rendered splendid service. The doctors and their assistants followed the troops on horseback, and were the first to attend to the wounded. Nightfall found us sitting on a small kopje at the base of the Sow-shan-tze Hill; it had rained heavily; there was no prospect of shelter for the night.
Colonel Philemonoff was sitting wrapped up in his Caucasian cloak. A Cossack had been sent out to the village of Moe-tung, which was about three hundred yards to the west of the Sow-shan-tze Hill, to And a Chinese house for us, and to make tea. He did not return, and Kislitzki and I set out to find him. We came to a house and found a number of soldiers warming themselves round a fire in a room to the left. The Cossack met us with the news that there was no room to be found, since the rooms on the left were occupied by Japanese prisoners, and those on the right by the Russian dead. There was, indeed, in the yard, a kind of shed, full of dirt and refuse, to which he pointed. Kislitzki was a man who was quite extraordinarily fastidious with regard to cleanliness and food; he would rather starve than eat food which displeased him, and stand up in the rain than sleep in a hovel. This the Cossack knew. Kislitzki went away in disgust I remained warming myself by the fire on the threshold of the house. Soon five or six officers of an infantry regiment arrived hungry and drenched.
The Cossack met them, and said the whole house had been engaged by the commander and officers of the 2nd Transbaikal Battery, who would presently arrive, and the officers left in disgust and despair. Then I went back to the battery on the kopje, and it was settled that we should remain where we were. After a while the doctor and Hliebnikoff asked me to take them to the house to see what could be done. Kislitzki had disappeared. We returned to the house, and on the left of the yard lights were burning in a room which we had not been shown before, and there were the Cossack and his friends enjoying a plentiful supper of cheese, sausages, hot tea, and a bottle of vodka, I admired the marvellous cunning of the Cossack, who had caused everybody to leave the house, and reserved it for himself and his friends. The doctor, Hliebnikoff, and I occupied the Cossack's room, and ate a part of his opulent supper, and then we lay down to sleep. At one o'clock we were awakened by bullets which were uncomfortably near. The Japanese had attacked the village. I saddled my pony, and made for the battery, but I lost my way and fell into a pond, and was soon wandering at random in the kowliang. That was the most uncomfortable moment I experienced during the battle. I made for the east, and struck one of the main roads leading to Liaoyang. There I met a wounded soldier, groaning in the kowliang, unable to walk. He implored me to save him from the Hun-hu-tses, I lifted him on to my pony, and started to try and find the Red Cross. He was wounded in the chest. We went very slowly over the muddy road It had stopped raining, and the moon had risen. The wounded soldier said the fighting had been desperate ; he had been in a hand-to-hand fight The Japanese fought splendidly, he said, but were too small to manage bayonets, and did not understand them. After a while he said, "Tell me, little father, what made the Japanese get so angry with us."
We found the Red Cross, which was located in a temple, and there the man's wound was rebandaged. I slept in the yard of this temple on some stones, near a fire. The firing had ceased, so I gathered the attack had been checked. With the very first stroke of dawn, the booming of a gun was heard to the east, a deep, steady boom, which seemed like that of a siege gun. By the time the sun rose heavy firing was audible to the west I resolved to go back to the battery, but it was necessary first to feed my pony. Dimitri, the Caucasian, had left my service the day I rode into Liaoyang, finding the life too uncomfortable. I went into a kowliang, where Cossacks were getting fodder for their horses, and borrowing a sword from a Cossack, tried to mow the stiff kowliang with indifferent success. At last I was reduced to pulling it up by the roots.
On returning to the battery, I found them in the same position they had occupied the day before, but the guns had been shifted so as to point west.
On the small kopje the firing was at a closer range, and the Japanese had partially regained in the night the ground they had lost the evening before. Moreover, they had discovered the whereabouts of the battery, they had got the range, and were firing on us heavily. One man was wounded soon after I arrived. He was bringing a pail of tea on horse-back, and he went on carrying the tea after he had been shot The men served the guns admirably.
I watched them for some time, and then I crossed the road, climbed the small kopje, and found the colonel and Kislitzki. The Japanese were firing from a battery about three versts off. This was my first experience of prolonged shrapnel and shell fire ; the shell burst on the road, and on our kopje, behind, in front, and all round us. The shrapnel exploded too high. The shells made a noise just like rockets, and those that exploded near us smelt horribly nasty. I ascertained that HliebnikofT, the young sub-lieutenant, had been wounded in the night, and sent to the hospital. The time seemed to pass very quickly, as if someone was turning the wheel of things at a prodigious, unaccustomed speed.
When our own guns fired a salvo, and the enemy's guns burst at the same time, I felt sometimes as if the world was falling to pieces, and one's head seemed like to split Most of the men had cotton-wool in their ears. This went on till about one o'clock, when a pause occurred. I left the kopje, and sought a safer place near the horses ; then I went to see what was happening in other parts of the field.
Eastward, the firing was loud and incessant A long stream of wounded was flowing to the Red cross, and from thence to Liaoyang. The ground was strewn in some places with bandages soaked in blood. Some men were walking with the blood soaking through their bandages ; others were carried on stretchers.
Near the station of the Red Cross ambulances were starting for the town. The noise seemed louder than ever. I was quite deaf in one ear. I remained for the rest of the day near the Red Cross. After a while I thought I would go back to the battery, and I inquired of an officer whether it was still in the same place. He told me that it had moved, and been taken west This I afterwards found out was not so. It remained in its old position until nine o'clock in the evening, having fired more or less during the whole day.
Fighting was going on all round, though nothing was visible. Every now and then I saw troops disappear into the kowliang. The attack on the right flank on the railway line had shifted further north. It lasted until nine o'clock in the evening. The Japanese not only did not succeed in breaking through the lines to the west, but they were driven back two miles. To the east they took a trench which was never retaken. Then, owing to Kuroki's turning movement in the east, orders were issued to retire at ten o'clock that evening. On the following morning the loth and 13th Corps had crossed the river to join the 1 7th and the 5th Corps. Liaoyang, with its triple line of defences, was left to defend itself, while the rest of the army crossed the river. It was a terrible battle, and in itself neither a victory nor a defeat for either side. The losses on both sides were enormous, the bravery displayed on both sides prodigious. Some of the Russian infantry had fought for forty-eight hours without ceasing, and without bread. And though the battle of Liaoyang was over, the fighting had
not ceased. All through the night of the 31st the Japanese attacked the forts ; a Cossack officer, who was in one of these forts, told me that the sight was beyond words terrible ; that line after line of Japanese came smiling up to the trenches to be mown down with bullets, until the trenches were full of bodies, and then more came on over the bodies of the dead An officer who was in the fort he described went mad from the sheer horror of the thing. Some of the gunners went mad also.
I rode back to the town towards evening ; on the way I met Brooke, who had been with General Stackelberg. We turned back to watch some regiments going into action towards the east, and then we rode back to Liaoyang with the streams of ambulances and stretchers, and wounded men walking on foot. The terrible noise was still continuing. I thought of all the heroes of the past, from the Trojan war onward, and the words which those who have not fought their country's battles, but made their country's songs, have said about these men and their deeds, and I asked myself — is that all true ; is it true that these things become like the shining pattern on a glorious banner, the captain jewels of a great crown, which is the richest heirloom of nations, or is all this an illusion, is war an abominable return to barbarism, the emancipation of the beast in man, the riot of all that is bad, brutal, and hideous ; the suspension and destruction of civilisation by its very means and engines, and that those songs and those words which stir our blood are merely the dreams of those who have been resolutely secluded from the horrible reality ? And then I thought of the sublime courage of Colonel Philemonoff, and of the thousands of unknown men who had fought that day in the kowliang without the remotest notion of the why and wherefore, and I thought that war is perhaps to man what motherhood is to woman, a burden, a source of untold suffering, and yet a glory.