Portartur. 1940. Boris Trofimov
everyone was cheerful. Heavy shells fell on the enemy. This was shot from the gunboat “Beaver” and with two destroyers. Our nearby batteries, forgetting caution, joined the battle even more fiercely. The Japanese columns could not stand it and quickly rolled back to the villages of Madjaten and Yandyaten. A servant of the Japanese batteries, located along the line of the old Chinese fortifications on the eastern shore of the Hunueza Bay, threw down the cannons and took refuge in the nearest ravines.
“Damned, damned,” shouted the gunners and the gunners. – Spies did not help either.Erofeev, in the intervals between the shots, said:
– Japanese cowards, not like our gunners. See what is being done in our positions. From dawn to this day, shells fall there, and the cannons all respond and respond.
– Rapid fire! – commanded the officer. – Three seconds – a shot!
The slopes of Samson began to be bordered with white clouds of our shrapnel. They were torn where the fiery enemy tongues glittered from gunfire and where companies and battalions moved from.
3
The officers of the first battery corrected their shooting from the height of number 37. The Japanese paid little attention to the Russian field guns placed on the Tafashi heights. They were fully engaged in the defeat of Nanshan and attacks on him.
An employee of the newspaper Noviy Kray Nozhin approached a group of officers.
“The picture of the battle is amazingly beautiful,” said Lieutenant of the second battery, Mikhailov, who had arrived at a height for communication and clarification of the situation.
“I have to admit, I didn’t expect such agility from the Japanese,” said Lieutenant Colonel Sablukov. – See which columns, and in plain sight. Today there is no void on the battlefield. The gunboats stand in the bays, and on their decks even the naked eye can see people. Sorry, killed Vereshchagin. He would have immortalized this fight and, perhaps, the last beautiful fight.
– Why?
– Our artillery is more and more improved and soon there will be no such day attacks. Even now, if we had more riflemen, had we set up Kana in time, it would have been possible to destroy the entire Japanese army advancing on Kinzhou.
Reason, Nozhin thought. “Everyone is covered in painful loquacity.”
Meanwhile, our field batteries with accurate shots drove away the enemy’s left-flank columns from the lower trenches.
– Hot go to Kinzhou. We miscalculate – sighed the lieutenant. – More than two hundred enemy riflemen, and large caliber, against Chinese junk, installed on our batteries. General Fock went to Kinzhou. There is trouble. They say that Colonel Tretyakov dismisses the artillerymen to Arthur during the battle, and the general catches them and returns them.
– incomprehensible, Lieutenant. Not a single long-range cannon. We could have an armored train…
“Could, it would be necessary,” Nochin chuckled to himself. “What did you think before?” The youth are dandy, and the high command is in the hands of pig-like Stesley. They see spies in Russians, and the terms are hundreds of people hostile to Russians.”
Nozin winced at unpleasant thoughts. He terribly disliked Stoessel. The general of the last days pursued him intensely.
By eleven o’clock in the afternoon all the attacks of the Japanese were repulsed. Enemy artillery fell silent. The chains of attackers lay down a thousand steps away from our trenches, supporting gunfire.
Arriving at the station Tafashin, General Fock took over the leadership of the battle. Field batteries fired poorly. Only from Izvestkovaya Mountain, our batteries still strenuously fired left-flank Japanese guns, abandoned by servants. “Beaver” and destroyer went to the Far. From the side of the Ker Bay, fresh enemy columns appeared.
The orderly arrived from Colonel Tretyakov:
– In the Kinzhou position, all the batteries were hit, the servants were killed. Colonel Tretyakov is afraid for the right flank and is waiting for reinforcement…
– I know! The general exclaimed, frowning. – How do the Japanese behave? What is there for advanced trenches?
“Hundreds of guns, Your Excellency.” At altitude number 75 is the highest Japanese command, openly watching and sending in all directions its orderlies.
– Nonsense! Can not be.
– Yes, Your Excellency.
“Well, we’ll show them to the bitch children,” the General shook his hand. He was strangled with malice. – Oh, scoundrels! Oh, scoundrels!
One thought terribly oppressed Fock: he, the Russian general, the division commander, the cavalier of St. George, by his absence at the beginning of the battle had actually entrusted the command to the little-known general Nadein, who had confused the direction for the reserve units. The two battalions of the thirteenth regiment were not sent to their position, but to the village of Tunselafan.
“Everything, everything messed up. I forgot everything in the hottest minutes of the battle. Rustling Baba!”
Fock spat in the hearts. He could not calm down. He was introduced to the height number 75, which is so close to the main fire, and on it the Japanese generals. They are there, despite the imminent danger, and he, Fock, was twenty miles away… This will be shouted over the course of long centuries.
“Nonsense! Who knew that the offensive would begin precisely at night, Fock comforted himself. ‘But they, of course, knew… However, suppose that I was on one of the batteries and would have killed me there.’ They would laugh again. ‘Why did the old fool get, envied Skobelev’s laurels?!’ You have to look around. I will go to the arrows and Colonel Tretyakov. The Japanese are unlikely to launch an open attack by nightfall.”
Inspection of the area adjacent to the railway track, confirmed the plight of our troops, deprived of support artillery.
The cannonade fell silent, and Fock headed for Kinzhou. A few dozen fathoms from the station Tafashin, he met with three artillery officers.
– Where are you going, what’s new? – asked Fock.
“To Port Arthur, Your Excellency.” Now on Kinzhou we have nothing to do, the guns have been hit.
– The colonel is very kind. But at such a critical moment each officer should be closer to the fire ring, where soldiers suffer and where brave officers die… It’s far from evening, and there may be an acute need for you. Come back.
The officers moved aside.
– What are we going to do there? – asked one of them.
– Talk with him. And where did he go? – officers turned to the adjutant.
– On Kinzhou.
The arrivals sadly hung their heads.
The attention of the general drew rowan Yanov.
– Again from Colonel Tretyakov? Who are you?
– Yanov, engineering foreman, Your Excellency.
– God knows what! – shouted Fock. “They are linking military affairs with civilian officials… If you see the commandant of the position, then tell him that he is not the commandant, but a woman!” Sits in the trenches and requires reinforcement. I will not give him a single person.
Fock