NOGI'S SIEGE TACTICS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12856, 3 May 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

NOGI'S SIEGE TACTICS.

In the Century Magazine for March. Mr. Richard Barry, who was the only American J correspondent with the Japanese forces be- j fore Port Arthur from the beginning of the j investment,- gives a lucid account of the de- j vices which Japanese resourcefulness . brought into play for the accomplishment j of their seemingly impossible task. j The lesson taught by Julius Caesar to the . legions in Gaul nineteen hundred years ago Nogi and his heroes relearned before PortArthur in 190-1. The advance in that cycle of time has been not in digging, but in ways j of digging. The Japanese had to cross a j valley a mile wide and six miles long, domi- j nated at all points by every degree of hostile j fire. This did not appal them. They accept- j ed the problem, grappled with it, and mas- , tered it. They honeycombed the valley, in the dassic manner, with eighteen miles of trendies and tunnels. .The chief element in the problem was to hide, these from an enemy with ! lookouts above the plain. "Till Rirnam j would come to Dunsinane," the prophecy | that sounded Mucbeth's doom, had already been heeded by the Russians before Kuroki'si northern operations. Here the witch, whis- , perm" in Stnessel's ear, might have warned him of his end when '" maize-stalk fields shall climb the dragon's front;" for it was under the protection of maize-stalks, twist- | ing through a shell-swept plain, that the j sappers crept on their slow but inevitable advance. The Japanese attache in South Africa had seen the Boer commandos, under fire, suddenly vanish in waving stalks of corns, protected, screen-like, across a telltale front. It was a savage trick, learned by the Boers j from the Kaffirs; and though schooibred British minds sneered at a ruse apparently | so childish, yet many times their game was I lost through such manoeuvres. '1 in; Boers used their maize in wholesale fashion, covering their front with deep layers of whole sheaves. The Japanese improved on this. Students of nature, disciples of nature, they gave no gross imitations, lr late autumn, over a field battle-tossed for three months, trampled by two armies, and sickled by the husbandman Death, they advanced, resurrecting the cornfields as they went, till the Russian eye beyond could not guess the point where maize standing by chance left off, and maize erected by besiegers began. Each angle of advance was concealed by these brown, withered sheaves. But maize was only the screen, and could not hide the thousands of tons of earth which had to be taken from the plain. To throw the earth beside the trenches, thus bringing into Russian sight a furrow like that of a gigantic plough, would have revealed the Japanese position as clearly as a blue pencil could have diagramed it on white paper. To hide the earth of this digging was the appalling task. It was done gloriously. The advance sappers threw their first trickle of mole-like progress backward between their j legs from the furious indent of their tiny spades. Helpers behind immediately deepened and widened the rivulet of shelter thus began. The infantrymen, closing in at daybreak throughout the hot sun, perfected , it, but the reserves accomplished the new thing. As fast as the earth was displaced they carried it with gabions and bamboo stretchers back through the zigzag lines behind the mountain-range which concealed their own heavy guns. Here, parallel with the Russian defence, mile after mile of freshsmelling mounds slipped up through the can- ' tious, industrious months following that i frightful August. Passing across the valley ' through these tunnels, deep enough to sheli ter regiments, three months after the Acel- ! dama of midsummer, one could, in safety, | be frowned on by hostile batteries, distant • three hundred yards, oi look into the plain I grid-ironed with cunning trenches, and, like | the foe above, see no evidence of life. The I maize-stalks hid the trench turnings, and ' though the plain was alive with its thou- : ■sands of armed men, even the practised eye I that had just been among them could not 'j tell where they lay. It was a new experiI ence for the Russians to fight.a, foe who j cculd wriggle through the earth as easily as i he could cross it, and, underneath, escape j the death thai he met on top

Roth shies had sailors on land. ._. s The Jsjjfe; ncs'e ciiiphiced'the navy '6m, guns in tlm,bottom of a. valley. The army field-guns were perched along the peaks in front, from which thev could bark down like noisy hoim- (log-] Rut the savage bite came from the big guns, a quarter of a mile .behind, the location of which was mistaken by the Hassians as identical with that, of the blustering I field-pieces on the ridge. The sailors did not, trust alone to the improbability of their hiding-place. They cut. out. earth the sizs of a ship's bull, mended the broken crust with timber baulks, and thrust the noses of the six-inchcrs out of two square opening.-! that might have been turret- Thus. entirely protected, though within easy range of the' enemy, they escaped serious injury. This was the most effective Japanese batte, rv ; it has become famous for tenacity. For the first time coast-defence guns bat- ! tied with each other. The Russians turned I most of theirs landward. The Japanese I learned that field artillery was useless ! against either the fleet or the-permanent i forts. Such knowledge prompted the assignI ment of a naval brigade to the initial bombardment, which," with the first grand assault, failed. Then they immediately turned to home for heavier ordinance. Mortars for coast-defence along the Straits of Shimo- ! noseki and on the Bay of Ye/.o were all butj completed in the military shops at Osaka. ; Twenty-six of them were immediately sent | by transport to Dalny, and thence by rail i over the tip of the mended Trans-Siberian 1 to the last station outside the zone of the j Russian tire. j The shipment of these great guns, the ; mortar-barrel of one weighing eight tons, j up to that, point, where cranes, steamships, ; and locomotives of the finest type, were available, was a gigantic widertaking. ArI rived at. the shattered station in the night — for day work was impossible — the task was only begun. From there the guns were hauled by hand, for horses or Manchu oxen could not be used where silence and concerted intelligence were essential. Eight hundred men were detailed to each gun, which | was mounted on skids, such as lumbermen j use in the north woods. Four abreast, with I hemp thongs across their shoulders, and all | attached to a long cable as thick as a man's | leg, the men laboured on through the mud, | after dark,' villi the Russian shells Hinging J out searching challenge over their heads, occasionally a, quart of .shrapnel bullets spurting promiscuously into their ranks. Of the positions to which the guns were thus taken the nearest were a thousand yards, and the farthest three and a-half miles away. Once they were there, no emplacement;, or shale or earth, such as sufficed for field artillery and for naval guns, would do. So under each gun was laid eight feet of concrete, firm and deep ; and when it had hardened the gun was emplaced. All this was done under lire, in the night, the men being spat upon frequently by the glare of the searchlight, pelted sometimes by wind and rain, and, toward the end of autumn, seared by the winds howling in from two seas. It was prodigious toil, obscure heroism unbelievable. But it was successful, for it was this coast defence artillery that sank the Russian fleet. None other could have done it. The monster labour of placing these guns on the bleak Manchurian hills, from which they have contested with the finest defences in the world, is one of the thrilling engineering feats of modern times. In August, for seven days and seven nights without cessation, a great battle was fought—the first grand assault, which failed j and failed and failed until Nogi learned his lesson. Manoeuvres as intricate and almost as ex- ! tensive as those in the north at Liao-yang ! were conducted alternately under sun, moon, and searchlight. The crux of this action I rested on one of Stoessel's searchlight tricks, I played on the night of the seventh blow of | Nogi's hammer, desperately driving a wedge J into the fortress. AH the afternoon the I Japanese artillery had been fiercely bomj Warding the ridges of the Cockscomb, the Eternal Dragon, and the Two Dragons. One : by one the Russian batteries ceased firing. ! It seemed that they were silenced. Night j fell, with prospects fair for assault. A risj ing storm increased the Japanese hope, for ; in wind and rain the searchlights would be nullified. Then, as night and rain came j down together, the searchlights struggling j with both, the Japanese shrapnel opened up I against the lights. They had tried before, I unsuccessfully, to reach the dynamos hidden I in'the hills. This time the attempt appari ently succeeded. The man behind the light j waited until a Japanese shell burst in the 1 line of vision between him and his foes, and

then turned off the switch, giving the Japa"mjst;. the impression that the- light had been Shattered. In this manner, one after another, three of the searchlights playing over the centre of the field were "shattered." With lights and guns apparently out of the contest, and favoured ivy the storm and the night. 'Japanese expectation rose higher. ! . Alter midnight me most desperate of the ! eleven''assaults conducted through the seven ! days was made against the Cockscomb and | the 'Eternal Dragon. Half-way up the slope of the, Cockscomb the three "shattered" I lights, converging at one point, threw the j advance out in silhouette against the reel ! earth and the white shale. At the same I 'moment; the "shattered" batteries opened ! up. every gun alive. Simultaneously a regi- ! ment of Siberian sharpshooters so/tied j from the Two Dragons, caught the thinks ! in their onslaught, and all but annihilated , the two regiments in front. Reinforced, | bringing to the task that dour pluck that ; has given the Anglo-Saxon hold on his big I corner of the earth, a quality the possession j of. which by the .Japanese was once quesj tinned, the reserves hammered the Siberians I into their trenches; and though the assault I against the Coxscomb failed, shortly after ! dawn tin- Eternal Dragon fell. This was the. 'tip of the wedge, driven at fearful cost into I the Russian right centre, and was the objeci five needed by the engineers to outline across ! the valley the vast mining operations of I those three months. , f ■