Part 12

I was promoted to first lieutenant in the early part of August, but the news reached me just on this occasion. Colonel Aoki called me before him and told me most gravely: “I congratulate you on your promotion. You have carried the regimental colors from the very beginning. You are now released from that duty, but strive harder still, for to-morrow is assigned for our general assault. I have eaten and slept with you for a long time and am grieved to part with you, but I say good-by to you now because I am anxious for your success.”

Yes, I had eaten and slept with the dear regimental commander from our first arrival and had fought at his side. In the bivouac, exposed to rain and dew, the colonel had shared his mat with me so that I might sleep the better. Even his scanty food he divided with me, smiling as cheerily as if he were eating with his family at home. I had always feared that the colonel, who was used to sleeping on a comfortable couch at home, might contract an illness from this bed and pillow of grass. With three thousand lives in his hand, the life of the regimental commander is very precious, and the morale of the whole regiment depends largely upon his health. I had tried my best to serve him attentively and make him as comfortable as the uncomfortable circumstances of the battle-field would allow. Some time ago, while we were at Changchia-tun, I prepared hot water in a water jar and offered him the first hot bath he had had since leaving Japan. He was pleased with it from the bottom of his heart, and I shall never forget his glad countenance of that moment. Now I had to part with the colonel who was as dear to me as my own father, and my grief was without limit. Of course I still belonged to one of his companies and I was still his subordinate. It was not a real separation, but I felt as if I were going far away from him. When I heard these farewell words of his, I felt my throat choked with tears and could not raise my head for a while. It was also a great sorrow for me to part with the regimental colors that I had taken care of through thick and thin. When I looked at the faded, torn standard now hanging to the left of the colonel, I could not help feeling that among the three thousand men whose hearts all stir at the sight of that flag, I had a right to a special emotion in the presence of the regimental insignia.

After a moment of thoughtful silence, I sorrowing over my separation from the flag and the colonel, and the colonel apparently regretting his parting with me, I said earnestly: “Colonel, I will show you what a splendid fight I can make—” I could not say anything more and, turning on my heel quietly, walked off a few steps and then ran to my servant and said: “I am now ordered to go to my company. You, in consequence, must leave me, but I shall never forget your kindness. Remember me as your true elder brother to eternity. I cannot say anything more. Fight like a brave soldier.”

Bunkichi Takao, my servant soldier, wept bitterly and said he could never leave me. That, however, could not be. I soothed and comforted him, saying that he must obey his superiors’ commands faithfully and not be behind anybody else in doing and suffering, and that the box we had made together before the battle of Taku-shan was certainly to be used this time. I, too, was very reluctant to lose him, and my heart was full of emotion.

“Lieutenant, do you really think of me as your younger brother?” Takao said, in tears; and I too shed hot tears.

“We part now, but may meet again. If we die, let us die together a glorious death and talk over the past together in another world.” So saying, I started to go after he had brushed the dust off my uniform and retied the strings of my leggings.

“Well, then, lieutenant—” he began to say, but, too sad to look at me any longer, he covered his face and turned away.

“Takao, don’t forget what I have told you from time to time,” I said, and walked to the position where the Third Battalion was stationed.

Separated from the regimental flag, from the colonel, and from my own servant, I directed my solitary steps through the wild country. As I looked at the hills and valleys, now turned into the graves of my dear comrades, and watched the clouds gather and disperse in the sky, I could not help thinking of the inconstancy of earthly things. Suddenly it occurred to me that I must see Surgeon Yasui once more, and say good-by to Captain Matsuoka, my senior officer from my native province. At once I turned back and walked some distance to a ravine at the northern foot of Taku-shan. Captain Matsuoka was sitting alone in his tent and was glad to see me.

“I have not seen you for some time,” he said. “Are you quite well?”

“Thank you, I am, and I have been promoted to be first lieutenant. I am now ordered to join the Third Battalion. Please continue your favor toward me.”

The captain said, abruptly, “Then this is our last chance of meeting in this world!”

I told him that I, too, expected to die, and expressed my desire that we might die together on the top of Kikuan. When I rose to go, the captain tapped me on the shoulder and asked, “What have you there at your belt?” Whereupon I smiled faintly and said, “It is my coffin.” “Well, indeed! You are well prepared!” That was our farewell, and I left the ravine. Soon this separation in life was to be followed by the separation of death.

I then went over to the headquarters of the First Battalion, which were hidden behind the rocks near Chuchia-tun, and found Surgeon Yasui. Soon after my arrival there, a few of the enemy’s shot fell with a tremendous noise in front of the tent. Four or five more followed, but we were so accustomed to such things that we paid little attention to it. This position, I was told, was frequently a target for the enemy’s fire. I was grieved to hear that the commander of the First Battalion had been slightly wounded in the battle of Taku-shan. When I told Surgeon Yasui of my promotion, he took me aside to where the powder-boxes were piled and said that he had been longing to see me; that, though we were in the same place, we had had no chance of a friendly chat, and that every day and night he had been waiting impatiently to hear from me. I was deeply moved and said to him that it was strange that both of us had been spared so far, but that this time I was fully prepared for death, and that I had come on purpose to see him once more and take a last farewell. I also reminded him of our promise in that ruined house at Hwangni-chuan, and said that if both should die that would be all, but if he should survive me he was to cut off a part of my bloodstained uniform and keep it as a memento. We grasped each other’s hands firmly, saying that this was our eternal farewell in this world, and, praying for each other’s success, we parted in tears. Reluctantly I left his tent, crossed the river Taiko, climbed the mountain slope facing the enemy’s fortress, and went to the headquarters of the brigade to pay my respects to the brigadier-general. Just at the time when I arrived at headquarters the adjutant was relieved from duty on account of illness, so, as a temporary arrangement, I was put in his place as aide-de-camp. Later I was put in charge of the Twelfth Company.

On the night previous to the beginning of the general attack of the 19th, I received two letters brought to me by the cook. Of course no mail was expected to reach us in such a place and under such circumstances, but these two letters had been miscarried and mislaid for some time before finally reaching me. They were both from my elder brother, one inclosing a fountain pen and the other a photograph of my two little nieces, one four and the other three years of age. They seemed to say “Dear Uncle” to me from the picture. Such sweet little faces! If, however, the little babies in the photograph had had eyes that could see, they would perhaps have cried at my changed, emaciated features. Night and day I had been seeing nothing but unkempt soldiers or shattered flesh and broken bones. Even the flowers that had smiled from the grassy fields were now trodden down and crushed. In such a battle-field, and on the night before a great fight, I was honored with the visit of these dear nieces. How it softened my wild heart! What joy they brought to me! I could not help kissing their dear eyes and mouths and murmuring to myself: “You brave little ones, that have left your dear mother’s lap to cross the broad sea and wild waves to visit me in this place of powder-smoke and shot-rain! Your uncle will take you with him to-morrow and let you see how he chastises the enemy of dear Japan.”

The cloud of smoke had passed away for this night and bright stars were twinkling in the sky. I slept in the camp with my two little nieces by my side. Nelson’s last words came forcibly to my mind, and I also repeated over and over again the couplet that I had written and given my father when leaving Japan, in which I had spoken of “the glory of death in battle, loyalty for seven lives.” To leave my skull bleaching in the wilderness and become a patriotic spirit returning to life seven times—was this to take place on the morrow or on the day after? My time was almost full!

There was a lance-corporal by the name of Yamamoto, who about this time sent clippings of his nails and hair to his mother and brother, together with a farewell letter and poem; and this letter proved to be his last. It ran thus:—

“Twice already I have joined a forlorn hope, and still I am keeping my head on my shoulders. I am filled with grief when I think of my dead comrades. Out of over two hundred men who advanced before the others of our company, there are only twenty left who are able-bodied. Fortunately or unfortunately I am among this small number. But the life of man is only fifty years. Unless I give up that life betimes, I may have no proper opportunity again. Sooner or later I must die, as all must die. So I prefer being broken to pieces as a jewel to remaining whole as a tile. Shot or bayonet or whatever may come, I can die but once. My comrade is shot at my right hand, my officer’s thigh and arm are blown up into the air at my left—and I in the middle am not hurt at all, and I pinch myself, doubting whether it is not a dream. I feel the pinching, so I must be alive still. My time for dying has not come yet. I must brace myself up to avenge my comrades. You proud, impudent Ruskies! I will chastise you severely.—Thus my heart is ever impatient though I am lacking in brilliant parts. Born a farmer’s son, I shall yet be sung as a flower of the cherry tree, if I fight bravely and die in the battle-field, instead of dying naturally but ignobly in a thatched hut on a straw mat.

“Banzai, banzai, banzai to H. M. the Commander-in-chief!

“TAKETOSHI YAMAMOTO,

“Late Lance-Corporal of the Infantry of the Army.”

You notice that he used the word “late” before his title, showing beyond any doubt his resolve to enter the death-ground with a smile. Such a resolve was held by all at that time, and Yamamoto only gave a clear though unsophisticated expression to the general sentiment.

THE BEGINNING OF THE GENERAL ASSAULT

WHEN a correspondent of the “Novoe Vremya” inspected the defenses of Port Arthur, his remark is reported to have been: “It is like an eagle’s nest that even a sky-scraping ladder cannot reach.” Yes, it was even so. As far as the eye could reach, every hill and every mountain was covered with forts and ramparts; the landward side was encircled with iron walls of tenfold strength, and its defenders were brave soldiers trained by the veteran General Dragomiloff,—courageous men, the strongest and quickest,—the flower of the Russian Army. We were now in front of this “impregnable” fortress to prove that it was “pregnable” after all. The 19th of August was the first day of the general attack, the starting-point of the historic incident of the fall of Port Arthur. The struggle that was to be characterized in the world’s history of warfare as the most difficult and most horrible of all struggles began on this day and lasted for more than four months. During this period our desperate attack was responded to by as desperate a defense, and our army paid an immense price for its victory, turning the mountains and valleys of Port Arthur into scorched earth honeycombed by shells, butchering men and capturing the fortress at last with bullets of human flesh shot out by the Yamato-Damashii itself. The gazing world was astonished by the wonderful efficiency of such a mode of warfare!

We, at the foot of Taku-shan, were hurrying on the various preparations for attack. We were making a special investigation of the ways and means of encountering the wire-entanglements, upon which the enemy depended as the most efficient of their secondary defensive works, and by the stakes and wires of which so many of our men had been killed in previous battles. All the hills in our sight, large or small, high or low, were wrapped about with these horrible things, that looked at a distance like dark dots on the ground.

We had to break these entanglements, step on them, and proceed. The cutting properly belonged to the engineers, but their number was limited while that of the wire-entanglements was almost limitless. So the infantry had to learn to cut them for themselves. An imitation entanglement was made on the bank of the river Taiko and we were taught by the engineers how to break it down. First of all, a group of shears-men would march up and cut the iron wires, then the saw-men would follow and knock down the stakes or else saw them through. When a part of the entanglement was thus opened, a detachment of men would rush through the opening.

This kind of work was of urgent necessity for us and we practiced it with zeal and diligence. But in actual fighting the work cannot be done so easily. The forlorn-hope engineers, who march up to destroy the entanglements, are always annihilated without exception, because they have to work before the very muzzles of the machine-guns. Moreover, it was discovered that these wires were charged with electricity. There were, however, two opinions about the electric current: one was that the electricity was strong enough to kill whoever touched the wires, and the other that it was only intended to inform the enemy’s watchtowers, by a weak current of electricity, of the approach of the destroyers. Whichever it might be, we could not cut the wires with ordinary scissors so long as they were charged with electricity, so we contrived to bind bamboo sticks to the handles of the shears to make them non-conducting. In spite of all these precautions, we found in actual fight that the wires were charged with a very strong current; some of our men were killed instantly by the shock, others had their limbs split like brushes of bamboo. We also practiced methods of crossing the enemy’s trenches with ladders, but again in actual fight we found that their trenches were too wide or too deep for these ladders to be of much use.

The fortress was protected by earth-mines, which were buried everywhere. They had to be destroyed by our engineers, by cutting off the fuse. Until the very day of our attack we could see through field-glasses groups of Russians at work here and there, burying these explosives in the ground with picks. We marked those places on our maps. We found out and remembered everything that we could; for instance, that each of the stakes of the entanglements was beaten down with twelve blows of a hammer, or how many earth-mines were being buried in any particular valley. Our reconnoitring parties found that every ravine up which our infantry was likely to march was set with mines, and that the methods of disposing them were very clever. To cite one example, where the ravine was narrowest there was buried a mine that would explode when stepped on. When the first man was killed in this way, the rest would of course divide themselves on either side of the ravine, where a series of mines would burst and kill all of the attacking party. It was extremely hard to go through these places in safety. On the top of all this, all the guns and rifles of all the forts and skirmish-trenches were so directed as to be able to aim at every ravine and every rock, so that none of us could escape the concentrated cross-fire from three directions. Their defense left almost nothing to be desired.

At dawn on the 19th of August, the whole line of our artillery opened fire simultaneously, with East Kikuan as our chief objective, but bombarding other forts at the same time. This was the first step in our general assault. Soon, our assaulting columns pushed on their way under cover of the artillery fire, approaching the enemy inch by inch, ready to rush upon them with one accord as soon as our fire began to take effect upon the Russians. Therefore our batteries devoted their whole energy to breaking the forts, shattering the bomb-proofs, and opening breaches in the skirmish-trenches through which our storming parties could enter.

No sooner had our firing begun than the enemy responded from all their batteries and tried hard to silence our artillery and impede the progress of our infantry. What a terrible scene presented itself when huge shells were exchanged between the heavy guns of both sides! Explosive shells as big as _saké_-casks[54] and spherical shells caused great vibrations in the air, and their groaning reverberation set at naught the fury of pealing thunders. The bursting of shells scattered lightning everywhere, and the smoke covered the scene with thick steamy clouds, in which it seemed impossible for any living thing to breathe. We nicknamed the enemy’s shells “train shells,” because they came moaning and shrieking just like a train leaving the station with sharp whistling. When we heard such a sound near us the whole earth shook, and in the tremendous roaring men, horses, rocks, and sand were all hurled up together. Everything that came into collision with these terrible trains was reduced to small fragments; these fragments would fall to the ground and then go up again, as if they had wings to fly with. One lieutenant’s neck was torn by a fragment of shell, and his head hung by the skin only. Both arms of a private were cut off clean from the shoulders by the same process.

This day was to come to an end with bombardment only. It had been our plan to employ the first day or two in bombarding the enemy and then to go on with an infantry attack. That evening I went on business to the headquarters of our division, that is, the place where our artillery was posted. It was a dark night, and through the sky whitish-blue bars of fire were flying to and fro between the contending parties; it looked to me like the highway leading to hell. The Russian search-lights were being thrown over the position of our artillery from Kikuan-shan and Hokuginzan. These terrible lights would turn every now and then toward our infantry, who were approaching the enemy step by step. We, too, used the search-lights captured from the enemy and tried to counteract the power of theirs and also to expose the Russian battery to view, but they were far inferior to those still in the enemy’s possession. Star-shells were shot off from time to time by the enemy, which illuminated the sky far better than the annual display of fireworks at Ryogoku.[55] They were like great electric lamps hanging in the air, making the whole place as light as day, so that even the movement of an ant could easily be detected. They were powerful in thwarting the progress of our assaulting column, because every movement of the detachment was exposed by this light and could be accurately seen by the enemy, and the usual machine-guns were sure to pour a rain of horrible shot upon the invaders. Therefore, as soon as we saw the star-rocket burst in the sky, we used to caution each other, saying, “Don’t move! don’t move!”

When I reached headquarters, the division-commander and his staff were standing at our artillery position and watching this scene of night fighting without the cover of darkness. As soon as a search-light was seen in a Russian fort, our chief-of-staff would order, “Hit that! Smash that fellow!” He said, folding his arms in utter unconcern: “I feel like a young bride! Exposed to such a full glare of light, I am awfully shy and bashful!”

Our detachment marched as far as Yangchia-kou during this night. Soon after we reached there, a shell came near us with a tremendous noise. We said to each other: “Some must have been killed. Who are they? Who?” When the smoke cleared, we found four or five men lying dead or wounded, two of them recruits who had arrived only a few days before from home. One of the two was killed in a horrible manner; the half of his body below the waist was entirely gone. The legs of the other were shattered and the blood was gushing out like water. His captain went to him and encouraged him, saying: “Don’t be afraid! Be brave!”

“Captain, I am very sorry to be thus disabled without having fought at all. I will come back healed as quickly as possible. Please let me be in your company again.”

“Even without having fought, your wounds are honorable. Get well quickly and come back!”