Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XV. October
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OCTOBER 179
“ assiduous obstructions ” mean, out of the dry,
spare words rise pictures and scenes—of small
Russian surprise parties stealing up by night, a
rifle with bayonet fixed in the one hand, and a
couple of hand grenades tucked away under the
other arm, carefully, silently picking their way as
it had been planned by daylight, down to where
the regular thud of pick-axes in the hard ground
is heard. The Japanese sentries catch a glimpse
of fleeting shadows, and then a shot rings out.
The men throw away their tools and grasp their
rifles, a machine gun joins in, and in a few
seconds a full orchestra is going. Then comes a
tremendous crash ;
a big flame leaps up through
the night ;
another detonation follows, and yet
another, then perfect silence and the darkness
doubly dark. In the sap lie half a dozen corpses,
fearfully torn and mangled, and a mixture of
blood and bits of flesh that a minute before was a
young, strong, living man, and which now has to
be shovelled into a bag to be carried away.
On other occasions larger forces were sent out,
and the object was more than to kill a few of the
enemy’s soldiers and destroy a small part of the
work nearest to the sap-head. These were proper
sorties of some fifty or a hundred men, and
their task was to drive the men working in
the approaches back behind the walls of the
nearest parallel. That accomplished, some of
the Russians engaged the troops here, while the
rest blew up and demolished the saps, the work,
perhaps, of days of hard toiling. On these occa-
sions the most reckless bravery was shown by
the Russians, and the Japanese met them in the
same spirit. From the way even the unemotional,
taciturn Japanese officers and men speak of these
encounters in the dark one feels that to find any-
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