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168 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
night after night, killed like rats in a hole and
degraded by coolie work instead of their heart’s
desire —good honest fighting? Most of the
officers felt the same, and the result was that the
assaults were made prematurely, and that their
losses became much larger than they need have
been. Though a serious matter, the result of
facing these minor defence works in this manner
did not prove so fatal as it became later on,
against stronger positions, where this little “ open-
space ” concession to the national spirit not only
lost them many thousands of men, but also com-
pletely frustrated their attempts to capture the
forts.
The September attacks were also remarkable
because it was here that, for the first time, dyna-
mite hand grenades were used on an extensive
scale by both sides, and it has been interesting to
note how this weapon, as the siege progressed,
gained steadily increasing importance until it
became the main weapon of both armies in all
fighting at close quarters.
The Russian hand grenades consisted of old,
round cannon balls, or old mountain-gun shells,
often also, later, of the brass cylinders of quick-
firing-gun cartridges, filled with dynamite and
provided with an ordinary Bickford fuse with a
burning time of fifteen seconds. The Japanese
had the dynamite encased in ordinary tin canisters
holding about a pound ;
they were much less
destructive than the Russian bombs. During the
attacks on the fortifications in Shuishi village the
Japanese carried these bombs with them, with
the intention of using them to destroy the
caponiers and other inner defence works in the
forts. They were on the following day met by
the Russians with the same missiles, and the
terrible effect of these hand grenades against
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