. A staff officer's scrap-book during the Russo-Japanese war. lst their rightheld on obstinately to cover the line of retreat. TheJapanese opened rapid fire from their guns, and maga-zine fire from their rifles, directly they perceived theretrograde movement, and at their men hadgained possession of the old temple and of a portion ofthe ridge running south from it. At 10 the wholeof the enemys line had relaxed its grasp on the Japa-nese position, excepting only the two companies on theextreme Eussian right, which had fallen back indeedas far as the woods surrounding the new temp
. A staff officer's scrap-book during the Russo-Japanese war. lst their rightheld on obstinately to cover the line of retreat. TheJapanese opened rapid fire from their guns, and maga-zine fire from their rifles, directly they perceived theretrograde movement, and at their men hadgained possession of the old temple and of a portion ofthe ridge running south from it. At 10 the wholeof the enemys line had relaxed its grasp on the Japa-nese position, excepting only the two companies on theextreme Eussian right, which had fallen back indeedas far as the woods surrounding the new temple, butheld on there for a time most obstinately. At these two companies were forced, by the envelop-ing attack of greatly superior numbers, to retire toridge E, where they found some support, and wherethe Japanese, pursuing without much dash, fired atthem from D, and also from the road coming downthe pass, whenever this was sufficiently sunken toafford some cover. I arrived just as the action hadreached this stage. The only heavy fire in progress. o s 1=1 g xu Battle op the Heaven-Reaching Pass 271 was that which was being exchanged between D andE,and, as an old musketry man, I could not havedesired a better object-lesson. The Russians had aconsiderable advantage in command even where theyhad taken up their alignment some distance down thewooded northern spur of E. This advantage was,however, much more than counterbalanced : (1) By the misguided, spurious gallantry whichimpelled the Russian officers to stand up, not onlyexposing themselves unnecessarily, but also dis-closing the exact positions of their sections, andthus drawing fire upon their men. (2) By the surprising fact that the Russian fireconsisted entirely of section volleys of sixty orseventy rifles, a procedure recalling British methods(very quickly dropped) at the beginning of theAfghan War in 1879. (3) By the parade-like regularity of the Russianalignment, whereby the men, in shoulder to shoul-der format
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Keywords: ., bookauthorhamiltoniansir1853194, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900
