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52 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
not trained for such practice, most of the guns
were placed for indirect fire.
All the guns which the Japanese at this period
had brought against Port Arthur were mounted
on wheels, and none of them was of larger calibre
than 4*7 in., so the gun emplacements could be
made of the ordinary type, as the above sketch
shows. They consisted of a strongly built breast-
work of sandbags with embrasures for the guns
and with strong traverses between each. Bomb-
proof shelters for the gunners were constructed
behind or at the sides of the battery, where they
could stay when there was no fighting going on,
and there were bomb-proofs in the traverses too
for the ammunition and for the squads during
practice.
The bringing up of the heavy guns along the
muddy roads, nearly impassable after the heavy
rains, often by long detours and by night in order
to keep them out of the enemy’s view, was the
next thing, and it was now common all over the
country behind the Japanese lines, to see the big
guns being hauled along by a lusty crew of a
hundred soldiers or sailors, singing and laughing
and shouting as they went along. Over a bit of
good road, they would get the big, unwieldy
things on the run, but in most places the progress
was very slow, taking them many hours, some-
times, to pull the gun forwards a couple of hundred
yards.
Besides the work for the artillery there were a
hundred other things to be done,—camps, and
distribution of the soldiers, the commissariat
service, telephones and telegraphs, hospitals, the
ammunition, the signal service, the construction
of covers or trenches along the roads between the
different positions, and so forth. Finally, there
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