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138 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
which sometimes were stretched between light,
strong bamboo poles, sometimes laid in cables on
the ground, one would find that, at the front,
most of them converged upon the divisional head-
quarters, connecting them with all their regiments,
battalions and batteries, even with their advanced
posts, and, later, with the sap-heads. At the rear
the wires that from all directions led into General
Nogi’s headquarters were, as might be expected,
very numerous. But the point to which by far
the greatest number of wires converged was the
high hill, not far from our camp, where General
Tejima, commander of the siege artillery, had
pitched his tent. To this position no less than
130 miles of telephone wires were leading, and
from his post here the General could personally
supervise and direct the whole bombardment.
Although, under ordinary circumstances, he left
his battery commanders a fairly free hand, only
limiting their number of shots for each day and
generally assigning to them which of the enemy’s
positions to take under fire, he could at any time,
especially during the bigger attacks, personally
interfere and take over the leading of the whole
service of the big guns and mortars in the siege
park.
General Tejima had nothing to do with the field
batteries, which all were under the command of
the chief of the independent artillery brigade.
These batteries played a much less prominent
than the big guns ;
though during attacks they
did good service with their shrapnel fire. The
machine guns, numbering seventy-two, twenty-
four per division, were under the direct orders of
the divisional commanders.
Practically the whole Japanese signal service
was carried out by telephone, and though I was
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