BAYONETS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12928, 26 July 1905, Page 1 (Supplement)

BAYONETS.

It is a phrase merely to those of us who do not know war at first hand: " Then the men threw themselves on the bayonets of the enemy." It sounds desperate and dramatic, but this account in Blackwood's Magazine by a naval sub-lieutenant at Port Arthur shows that it really means: — For thirty long minutes a hand-to-hand struggle had continued'. Men threw grenades in each other's faces. Half-demented Samurai flung themselves upon the bayonets of the dozen Musoovites that held the traverse in the trench. Who shall say that the day of the bayonet is past? Although there was not a breech that had -not its cartridge ill the chamber, jet men roused to the limit of their animal fury overlooked the mechanical appliances that made war easy. They thirsted to come to grips, and to grips they came. But it had to end. The old colonel had fought his way through his own men to the very point of the struggle. He stood on the parapet, and his rich voice for a second curbed the fury of the wild creatures straggling beside him. "Throw yourselves on their bayonets, honourable comrades!" he shouted. " Those who come 'behind will do the rest." His men heard him; his officers heard him. Eight stalwarts dropped their rifles, held their hands above their heads and flung themselves against the traverse. Before the Russian defenders could extricate the bayonets from their bodies the whole pack of the war-dogs surged over them. The trench was won.