the provision of technical troops in port arthur, their employment, and their reward for the work done are points which deserve some mention. their provision is a matter which it is in some ways difficult to separate from the ludicrous idea of the way to defend a fortress which held with those in authority.
it was, one would have thought, patent that to defend port arthur it was necessary to defend the peninsula from sea to sea and from kinchou to liao-tieh-shan, or an area of some eighteen miles in breadth by forty in length. as it was unlikely that an attacking enemy would advance on the fortress held by a civilized power such as russia with the same impetuosity as was shown by the japanese in 1894 against an effete nation, it was equally obvious that as many delaying positions as possible, from the most excellent one of kinchou right away back to the actual enceinte of the place, should be held. such is the nature of the country that there is a whole series of positions. even if general principles were not to be regarded, it might be thought that the man?uvres of the years preceding the war would have shown in actual practice how valuable these positions were to any force defending port arthur. the enemy were evidently of opinion that we would take every advantage of what nature had given us,[pg 293] and would supplement these natural advantages with all the resources of art. it follows, therefore, that in the preparation of these successive positions, quite apart from the defence of the fortress proper, there was an immense amount of work to be done which would necessitate the skill of technical troops.
within and round the place itself also, even supposing that all the permanent defences had been ready at the commencement of war, [which they were not by any means], there would be during a siege great scope for the employment of technical troops. it is largely for siege-work that such troops are included in the organization of an army. on the whole, therefore, both the more distant defences of the district and the closer defence of port arthur appear to have called for the provision of a very large number of sappers. the district was large, from a point of view of the amount of defensive work that was necessary, and the fortress was large. let us see what the higher authorities in st. petersburg and the local authorities in arthur apparently thought sufficient.
of sapper officers not with units there were altogether fifteen in the engineer department of the whole district. of these, the following were not available for general sapper duty: six officers employed in the naval construction yard, and six others specially employed, thus leaving three officers available for sapper duties over the whole area. of troops for the work over this huge area there was one sapper company—the gallant kwantun sapper company, consisting of 9 officers and 450 non-commissioned officers and men. even from this number 2 officers were detached and sent up north to manchuria, and 50 men detached for special duties; that leaves 7 officers and 400 men at the commencement of hostilities! had the subject ever been considered in st. petersburg? this number was all that were available for the defensive works on miles of[pg 294] field and semi-permanent positions, on many permanent forts and intermediate works, and for the construction and repair of all defence buildings.
it must be remembered that under the engineer officers trained technical foremen are required, and that these have to be paid according to their skill. st?ssel regarded the more expensive article as unnecessary, and thought it sufficient to employ the ordinary sappers from the company as foremen. the proper employment of these technical troops seems also scarcely to have been grasped. as a rule, for defence works the sappers, both officers and men, do little unskilled manual labour themselves; they organize, supervise, and direct the unskilled labour of the troops or of hired civilians. the extent to which the capabilities and powers of sappers was understood by some of the staff in arthur is illustrated by the following incident:
when the enemy were on the eve of their assaults on kinchou the officer commanding the sapper company got a telegram on may 24 from arthur:
'to colonel jerebtsoff.
'general st?ssel directs me to request you immediately to arrange for the blowing up of the southern wall of the town of kinchou. it should be carried out at once.
'kondratenko.'
the next morning jerebtsoff went with his subaltern to inspect this wall. kinchou was situated in front of the left flank of the position of that name. like the majority of chinese towns, it was surrounded with a loopholed stone wall, like a tower of medi?val times. upon inspection this wall proved to be a solid erection of stone laid in mortar, 19 feet high, 21 feet thick at the bottom, and 19 feet thick at the top. this was what st?ssel wanted[pg 295] blown up 'immediately.' to demolish it meant blowing up some 1,435,000 cubic feet of stone masonry!
when colonel jerebtsoff went into arthur to report the impossibility of demolishing this wall at once, he was told:
'we will give you as many men from the 5th east siberian rifle regiment as you like.'
'but, sir,' said the colonel, 'i shall want more than two men to lay the charge in every chamber. for 1,200 yards of wall i should want not less than 500 chambers—that is, about 1,000 men—and anyhow, even if you give me the men, it is impossible to do the work at once.'
the answer was amusing.
'there's no time to talk, colonel; you must please go and carry out general st?ssel's order.'
jerebtsoff left by rail that night, but the train was unable to proceed beyond inchenzy, as the line was fired at by the enemy's gunboats. he therefore had to ride from there to nangalin, whence he again proceeded on by train. but he never even reached the position at kinchou, for it was already in the enemy's hands.
without understanding the r?le of sappers, st?ssel during the whole siege threw the sapper company about like a ball from hand to hand. it was within this period put under the orders of four separate officers, without rhyme or reason. this anomaly of passing a most valuable technical unit from one officer to another was not only not called for, but did absolute harm, as it enabled people who were totally ignorant of its duties, qualifications and capabilities to issue to it utterly irregular and impossible orders.
that the organization of the sappers in the fortress in the event of war was not sufficiently thought out and foreseen is shown by the fact that this company, though 'a fortress company,' was allotted to work not only in the fortress, but in the whole district (which was the reason it[pg 296] was not called the 'port arthur' company). it was therefore given a civilian complement, which put it on a different footing to other fortress companies—i.e., it consisted of a field sapper company supplemented by a telegraph detachment of half the strength of a field telegraph company. in consequence, when hostilities commenced, there were neither fortress nor telegraph sappers in the fortress itself.
the sapper company also affords an example of st?ssel's system of bestowing rewards. these men had done many gallant deeds, and by may had won thirty crosses of st. george. when st?ssel learnt this, he said to the commanding officer:
'you have got too many crosses in your company: i shall not give you any more.'
despite many gallant actions done by the sappers at later periods of the siege, and the recommendations made to him, st?ssel kept his word: not a single cross was given to the sappers. with regard to the question of rewards in general, space does not permit of a description of the general system of their disposal by st?ssel, but to give some slight insight of his methods, the following extract of a letter written to his relations by an officer when a prisoner of war in japan is quoted. after describing his feelings and the hardships he and his companions had undergone, he continues:
'and to all this is added the knowledge of the insults heaped upon us by the bitter injustice shown to many in the bestowal of rewards. many unworthy officers who have done nothing to deserve good of their country have been plastered with orders by general st?ssel, who wished to help them on. in the majority of cases these were either officers of high rank who were intimate with him, were with him in the china campaign, or were liked for "family reasons." others were recommended by[pg 297] their immediate commanders more than once, but the reward lists were either lost in the office of the officer commanding the district or were purposely overlooked by general st?ssel. in the fortress at the end, counting those who had been recently promoted, there were fourteen general officers. of these, those who had already got the cross of st. george of the fourth class received that of the third class, and those who had not got the fourth class were given it. there was only one general officer who remained without this order for bravery, and he, need i say, was general smirnoff, the commandant!
'the private soldiers were also shamefully treated. many of those who did countless gallant deeds and were recommended for rewards went to japan as prisoners of war, having received nothing. apparently these recommendations received no notice in st?ssel's office. the case of colonel jerebtsoff, who commanded the only sapper company in the fortress, is also noteworthy. at the beginning of the war he met with much opposition from the other engineers in his endeavours to get materials, etc., for his company. during the siege he lost 12 officers and 350 men out of his company, of which 5 officers were killed and 2 died, and 100 men were killed. work was carried on constantly, day and night, from april 14, and from july 1 to the surrender of the fortress under constant fire. from september 28, during one and a half months, he supervised the sapping and mining works on his portion under incessant fire, and on november 26 went out and worked for four and a half hours under a heavy fire, losing an officer and six men. in short, he did an immense amount of work and showed the greatest gallantry. he was recommended by general kondratenko in august, after the fighting at green hills, for the order of st. stanislav, second class, and by colonel grigorenko, after the assault of november 26, for the cross of st. george, fourth class,[pg 298] but he received nothing save a medal of the order of st. anne, third class, which he had won in peace-time! and why? simply because he was a quiet, modest officer, asked for nothing for himself, and thought only of how best to do his duty and look after those under him. and he was one of many!'
