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SECOND GENERAL ATTACK 195
In less than half an hour they resumed the
offensive.
At Sungshuh fort the attacking party reached
the moat, but here they were stopped. They had
carried with them scaling-ladders ;
but the Japan-
ese had under-estimated the dimensions of the
moat, and the ladders proved too short and there-
fore useless. This peculiar mistake was in reality
a piece of very good luck for them. It seems in-
credible that the Japanese Headquarter Staff,
which had planned the attack, should for a
moment have thought it possible to get across
the moat of a permanent fort by the help of
ladders. To fancy that anybody should go to the
expense of blasting a moat thirty to forty feet
deep, and forty to fifty feet wide, and several
hundred yards long, out of the solid rock and then
leave it without defences, allowing an enemy to
simply put up ladders and climb across, is such a
preposterous idea that it is difficult to credit the
otherwise efficient staff of General Nogi with it.
But the fact remains, though I confess I am com-
pletely at a loss to explain it. As will later be
seen, it took the Japanese a month to get into the
moat only, and over seven weeks to get across it.
The second rush was repulsed ;
like the first,
with considerable losses. The survivors had to
scurry back to their last parallel as best they
could, and no more attempts were made against
this fort, not even when, at about 3.40 p.m., a
Japanese shell struck an ammunition magazine,
causing a big explosion and starting a fire in the
fort which burnt lustily for nearly two hours.
At Erhlung fort the saps had been carried right
up to the moat. The dimensions of this proved
also to be too large for the ladders, so no attempt
was made to take the place by assault. Instead,
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