Ch 32 - The Russo-Japanese War

A High Price for Glory

After being defeated in a number of bloody land battles, the Russian army continued its withdrawal further northeast towards Mukden and a strong Japanese siege led to the complete surrender of Port Arthur.

Admiral Togo faced the challenge of his distinguished career in August 1904. He had to defeat the Russian Navy by either sinking Admiral Vitgeft's ships or driving them back into Port Arthur. Under no circumstances could they ever be allowed to reach Vladivostok. If Togo were defeated at sea, all the Japanese successes on land would amount to nothing. The humiliating experience of Japan's defeat by Korea's Admiral Yi Sun-sin in the sixteenth century would not only be repeated, but repeated on a much greater and terribly aggravated scale.

Despite the dedication of his sailors, Admiral Togo's poor tactical execution against the Russian Navy during the first three months of the war failed to achieve the desired effect. Ineffective fleet gunnery and inadequate destroyer tactics failed to meet the new and unknown challenges of modern naval warfare. Most of the fleet's senior officers and petty officers fought in the Sino-Japanese War a decade earlier, but they were not yet completely familiar with their state-of-the-art technology. In a real sense, Vice Admiral Togo and his staff officers learned how to fight the world's first modern naval engagement through "on the job training." Worse, the Imperial Navy suffered serious casualties, which was the last thing it could afford.

To his credit, Admiral Togo learned from his earlier mistakes and took steps to correct them. To relieve pressure on his fleet, Togo sent a request to Admiral Ito Sukeyuki, Chief of Naval Staff in Tokyo, to reinforce General Nogi Maresuke's 3rd Army for its campaign to isolate, attack and take the well-protected fortress of Port Arthur. Acting in close coordination the government, the Army General Staff and the Naval Staff in Tokyo immediately issued orders to supply the necessary support.

Unable to lure the Russians onto the open sea for a fight, the Japanese tried unsuccessfully to isolate the 1st Pacific Squadron in Port Arthur by sinking ships in the harbor entrance. Admiral Togo's Combined Fleet suffered critical losses in the process, but his operations caused a serious emotional drain among Russian sailors. The landing of General Nogi's 3rd Army at Dairen on June 6 and the increasing pressure from General Oku's 2nd Army to isolate Port Arthur had a powerful psychological impact on Russian leaders, who feared the complete closure of the port by land and sea.

The total population of Port Arthur in June 1904, including non-combatants, was about 87,000. Russian Major General Baron Anatoli Stoessel commanded a force of nearly 50,000 men and over 500 guns, some of which had been removed from ships in the fleet. Building materials, including concrete, were in short supply and many of the port's defensive strongholds and fortresses were unfinished. Even barbed wire was a scarce commodity.

The outer defensive perimeter at Port Arthur ran across a line of fortified hills to the north and east of town. About one mile behind this line sat the original Chinese wall which encircled the old town of Port Arthur. The Russians extended this line further to the west and south with concrete forts and interconnected trenches to enclose the approaches to the harbor and the newer town of Port Arthur. About 4,000 meters behind the Chinese wall stood the last line of entrenchments surrounding the old town. Mounting a defense at this position would amount to a "last ditch" effort, since by then the port itself would have become untenable. As the Japanese tightened the noose around Port Arthur, General Stoessel issued orders that there would be no retreat. It apparently never occurred to him that there was nowhere to retreat to.

General Nogi Maresuke ordered his 3rd Army into action against the fortified Russian outer perimeter on June 26, 1904. For the first time in history, an attacking army stormed a fortress defended with repeating rifles, machine guns and quick-firing artillery using simple infantry assault tactics. The results were predictable. General Nogi's decision to storm the fortifications all at once proved deadly. The continuous Russian cross fire caused a terrifying loss of life among Japanese troops. The inflexible general and his staff officers, with their long samurai tradition, had abundant confidence in the fighting spirit of the Japanese soldier and repeated these brutal tactics, making his infantrymen easy targets for the Russians.

General Nogi remained confident that he could capture Port Arthur without much trouble. At 4:30 a.m. on the morning of August 7, he began a major bombardment of Port Arthur's outer defenses on the hilltop positions at Ta-ku-Shan and Hsiao-ku-Shan that lasted until 7.30 p.m.. He followed up he artillery barrage with a night infantry attack which managed to reach the forward slopes of the defending hilltops before slowing in a heavy rain. The combined artillery and infantry attack was repeated the following day and managed to drive the many of the Russians from their defensive positions. The outer defense position at Ta-ku-Shan finally fell by 8:00 p.m. on August 8 and Hsiao-ku-Shan fell to the Japanese the following morning. From the captured hilltops overlooking the harbor, Japanese heavy artillery began bombarding port facilities, personnel and ships with regularity.

By early August, General Oku's 2nd Army controlled the Liaodong Peninsula and had completely isolated Port Arthur. The reports describing the loss of the outer defensive perimeter caused grave concern in St. Petersburg. Worried for the fleet tied up in Port Arthur, the Russian Navy General Staff sent immediate orders to Rear Admiral Vitgeft on August 8 directing him to break out of Port Arthur with every battleship as soon as possible and make every effort to reach Vladivostok. With the added threat from Viceroy Admiral Evgenii Alekseev that he was about to be replaced, Admiral Vitgeft had little choice but to comply.

The Russians fleet hurriedly prepared to get underway as Japanese siege guns continued to bombard the harbor facilities and dockyards. By 9:00 a.m. on the morning of August 10, less than forty-eight hours after being ordered to move, six battleships, three light cruisers and eight destroyers, the last of Russia's naval force in the Yellow Sea, cleared the harbor. The cruiser Bayan, heavily damaged by a Japanese mine remained in port. Japanese destroyers patrolling the area spotted the Russians steaming out of Port Arthur around 11:30 a.m.. As soon as Admiral Togo got word the Russian fleet was in open water, he eagerly ordered his 1st and 3rd fleets into action, believing this was his best, if not last chance to finally destroy the 1st Pacific Squadron.

To destroy the Russian fleet, Vice Admiral Togo had to cut off any chance for them to return to Port Arthur. They were out of the harbor and he wanted them to stay out. Throughout the day, he maneuvered to block Vitgeft's course to the southeast while focusing on cutting off his retreat to Port Arthur, each time bringing the two fleets closer together. By not concentrating on a single objective however, Togo maneuvered his fleet poorly.

Admiral Vitgeft had no intention of returning to the harbor and concentrated all his efforts on escaping. At about 1:30 p.m., the Japanese fired the first shots from range of about 11,000 yards. Each side managed to inflict minor damage on the other, but no ships were sunk or disabled. Admiral Togo ordered his fleet to cease fire and started maneuvering to close the distance. Two hours later, at a range of about 7,000 yards, a second engagement started that lasted almost three hours.

Throughout the afternoon, Admiral Vitgeft kept trying to flank the Japanese fleet and break out to the southeast. On his third attempt, Vitgeft successfully skirted Admiral Togo's east flank around mid-day and, in a race between engineers, the two fleets steamed at full-speed on slightly divergent courses. Togo used his slight speed advantage to move out of range and get ahead of the Russians again. After three hours of arduous racing, and with only two hours' daylight remaining, Togo closed to firing range at about 4:15 p.m. and recommenced firing all along the line. Each side furiously shelled the other for nearly an hour without decisive effect.

Just when it appeared the Russians might escape in the approaching darkness, at about six o'clock in the evening the hand of fate delivered the Russians a fatal blow. Two 800-pound shells exploded almost simultaneously near the bridge and armored conning tower of the Tsarevitch, Admiral Vitgeft's flagship. The first shell exploded in the bridge killing Admiral Vitgeft and most of his staff and wounding the remainder. The second shell detonated in the armored conning tower, killing or stunning senseless everyone inside, including the navigation officer, the helmsman and the engine-room telegraph operators. In a blinding flash, every officer and man involved in the handling and direction the entire 1st Pacific Squadron lay dead where he fell. Steaming at full speed, the Tsarevitch swerved hard to port out of control until it was charging directly toward the ships steaming at the trail of the Russian battle line.

The total breakdown of the Russian command structure, combined with the flagship's unexplained maneuver, spread confusion among the Russian ships. Admiral Togo took quick advantage of the moment. He closed the range with the scattering Russians and concentrated a pulverizing fire on the nearest ships. A badly executed torpedo assault by Japanese destroyers and torpedo boats against the surviving Russian warships proved ineffective.

Aboard the battleship Peresviet, Rear Admiral Pavel Ukhtomskii, Vitgeft's second-in-command, signaled the fleet to "Follow Me" and eventually turned the confused Russians northward in a general movement back towards Port Arthur. In the rapidly failing light and a rising fog, the two fleets lost sight of each other within half an hour. Only five battleships, one cruiser and three minelayers managed to return to Port Arthur.

The badly damaged Tsarevitch, the cruiser Novik, and three destroyers limped to the German port at Kiaochow. Except for the Novik, the Russian ships were interned for the duration of the war by orders from Berlin. One of the Russian destroyers one of the light cruisers were interned at Shanghai. The Japanese ran another destroyer aground near Weihaiwei. The Russian protected cruiser Diana ended up interned by the French in the port of Saigon. For all intents and purposes, the 1st Pacific Squadron ceased to exist as a fighting force.

After taking on coal and supplies, the Russian cruiser Novik slipped out of Kiaochow in a gallant attempt to reach Vladivostok. It almost succeeded. After steaming into the Pacific east of Japan, the cruiser turned north toward Sakhalin Island to take on coal. Unfortunately, a Japanese lookout station spotted the Novik steaming through the Kunashiri Channel northwest of Hokkaido. A pair of Japanese destroyers caught up with the lone ship as it took on coal at Sakhalin Island. After a brief, gallant struggle, the Novik's crew scuttled the ship and sent the adventurous Russian cruiser to the bottom, just hours from the safe harbor of Vladivostok.

The fleet admirals at Vladivostok believed that they would receive ample warning when the 1st Pacific Squadron was ready to move out of Port Arthur. The Vladivostok Squadron was leisurely taking on coal when the surprising news arrived at naval headquarters on the afternoon of August 11 that Rear Admiral Vitgeft had steamed out of Port Arthur. Because of the delay in getting the squadron to sea, there was little hope they could reach Admiral Vitgeft's squadron in time to cover their passage through Tsushima Strait. The Russian admirals calculated that if Vitgeft succeeded in crossing the Yellow Sea, his fleet would already be approaching the East Sea.

The three armored cruisers Rossiya, Gromoboi and Rurik steamed out of Vladivostok on August 12, totally unaware of events in the Yellow Sea. Rear Admiral Essen's cruisers headed south in line abreast formation with the expectation of sighting Admiral Vitgeft's fleet on the horizon at any time. The Vladivostok Squadron continued steaming south throughout the next day still clinging to the hope that they would rendezvous with the 1st Pacific Squadron near the Tsushima Strait. Admiral Essen notified his captains they would be approaching the strait at dawn, but would not enter. Instead, they would patrol a line running east from Pusan, Korea.

As soon as Vice Admiral Kamimura Hikonojo received notification that the 1st Pacific Squadron had left Port Arthur, he ordered his 2nd Fleet to move to a position about 30 nautical miles northeast of Ulsan, Korea, near enough to the Tsushima Strait that he could intercept either Russian fleet. During the night of August 13, the two opposing forces passed close to each other in the dark steaming on opposite courses, totally unaware of the other's presence.

The Russian cruisers reached the waters off Pusan unobserved in the early morning hours of August 14. With Vice Admiral Kamimura's squadron cruising north of the area, the Tsushima Strait was wide open. At around 5:00 a.m., Admiral Essen turned his cruisers west towards the Korean coast to begin patrolling the northern approaches to the strait and await the arrival of the 1st Pacific Squadron. Had the Russians decided to steam through the strait, they could have easily run through the Western Channel with nothing but torpedo-boats in their way. The decision not to cross the Tsushima Strait proved fatal.

Vice Admiral Kamimura had been steaming south from his night patrol area on a course that took his squadron directly into Admiral Essen's cruisers. Just after Essen began his turn towards the Korean coast, he spotted Kamimura's four armored cruisers closing in from the north. The hunt was over. Kamimura had ideal weather, a four to three advantage in ships and a long summer's day ahead of him. He had the Russian's about as far from Vladivostok as they could get and still be in the East Sea and was positioned between them and their distant home base.

The two naval groups gradually closed on each along converging tracks. At 5:20 a.m. the two admirals fired opening salvos at each other from a range of about 8,500 yards. Two of Kamimura's cruisers focused on the Rurik, the last and weakest ship in the Russian column. The concentrated gun fire quickly killed most of her officers and it seemed the ship would go down within minutes. In a display of classic heroism that won the admiration of the Japanese, the Rurik's gallant survivors continued firing their few remaining guns until the very last. As the wounded cruiser dropped further behind, the Rossiya and Gromoboi turned south away from the Japanese and reversed course to enable Rurik to regain her station as they passed. Kamimura held to his easterly course as the Russian cruisers turned. Minutes later he turned his squadron north and actually opened the range to the Russian ships.

The Japanese took some punishing hits in the exchange of gunfire, but nothing comparable to what they inflicted on Admiral Essen's cruisers. The heavily damaged Rurik took a shell hit in her steering-engine-room that caused her to circle out of control. Just hours later, she went to the bottom. At about 8:30 a.m., after Admiral Essen realized that the Rurik had been lost and that he could not reach the survivors, he ordered the Rossiya and Gromoboi to turn north and head for Vladivostok. They barely made it.

The two admirals continued to fire at each other for nearly three hours as the two squadrons steamed north. Both sides scored numerous hits, many of which detonated against heavy exterior armor, but the Japanese gunners had the greatest success. Thick black smoke and flames obscured much of the terrible damage inflicted on the Russian cruisers, which occasionally landed a damaging blow. The heavy shelling wreaked havoc on the Russian ship's and the decks of the Rossiya and Gromoboi were covered with dead and wounded.

The physical and mental exhaustion of the morning's battle took its toll on both squadrons as the interval between salvos increased. Steaming at the rear of the Japanese line, Rear Admiral Misu's flagship, the cruiser Iwate, took serious damage early on in the battle. The chase north strained the engines aboard the French-built cruiser Adzuma, which began to fall back. At 11:15 a.m., with plenty of daylight ahead and hundreds of miles between Admiral Essen and Vladivostok, Vice Admiral Kamimura suddenly broke off the engagement and turned south. The battle was over.

With control of the seas, Japan resolved to redouble its efforts against Port Arthur, hoping to capture the ships trapped inside in time enough to refit them for service under the Japanese flag. Rather than face a potentially long siege against a heavily defended land position, General Nogi tried to negotiate a Russian surrender. He sent a message to the Russian defenders on August 16 under a flag of truce offering free exit to all neutrals and non-combatants and suggesting that continued fighting would be fruitless. Major General Stoessel rejected the offer.

Starting on August 19, the Japanese launched massive attacks against Port Arthur's defenses, particularly the position at Hill 174 (174 meters high) held by two East Siberian Rifle regiments and two companies of sailors from the Russian fleet. Frederick Villiers, an English observer with the Japanese 3rd Army, witnessed the vicious fighting at Hill 174.

... Three of the nine searchlights that the Russians appear to possess are playing incessantly on this section of the battlefield, and star bombs or rockets are bursting continually, their incandescent petals spreading fanlike and falling slowly to the ground. So brilliant are the lights that the moon, now nearing the horizon, is but a faint slip of silver in the sky. The colour of this night warfare is what Whistler would have revelled in. The deep purple of the mountains against the nocturnal blue, the pale lemon of the moon, the whitish rays of the searchlights, the warm incandescent glow of the star bombs, the reddish spurt from the cannon's mouths, and the yellow flash from the exploding shell, all tempered to a mellowness by a thin haze of smoke, ever clinging to the hill-top and valley, make the scene the most weird and unique I have ever looked on during all the many wars I have witnessed.

The Russians stood firm and held on to Hill 174 with grim determination. Without reinforcements and more than half the defenders dead or dying, the Japanese showing no sign of letting up their assault. The Japanese finally overran Hill 174 and pushed the remaining defenders back in confusion, but paid a steep price for this small piece of terrain;  nearly 1,800 killed and wounded. The Russians lost over 1,000 men. The 3rd Army's attacks along other sections of the Russian line were just as costly. The unburied corpses of Japanese soldiers lay strewn across acres of bloody ground in front of the Russian defenses. In exchange, the Japanese held only three key positions to show for the effort:  Hill 174 and West and East Pan-lung. The Russians still firmly held every other key position. Faced with a new reality, General Nogi finally decided to settle for a formal siege.

General Nogi called off further attempts to take Port Arthur on August 24, by which time he had sacrificed nearly 16,000 men, almost one third of his army. The astonishing losses raised grave concerns in Tokyo. The Japanese leadership was counting on the 3rd Army to reinforce its other three armies in Manchuria. Now there were concerns that General Nogi might lose his entire army. What ultimately saved the 3rd Army was Nogi's almost last minute change in tactics from mounting unsupported infantry assaults to combining infantry attacks with artillery barrages.

Northeast of Port Arthur, the Japanese and Russian armies met at Liaoyang, Manchuria, in their first head-on ground engagement. Field Marshall Marquis Oyama Iwao commanded an army comprised of about 134,000 men, virtually all available Japanese forces except for General Nogi's 3rd Army at Port Arthur. General Aleksei Kuropatkin's Manchurian Army brought another 225,000 troops onto the battlefield. Stretched out along a sixty mile battle front south of Liaoyang, each side expected to deliver a fatal blow to the other.

For ten days, beginning on August 26, 1904, nearly 359,000 men fought back and forth across the landscape with neither side gaining or losing much ground. By August 30, the Japanese 2nd and 4th Armies were near exhaustion. Over a four day period, between August 31 and September 3, the Japanese 1st Army pushed the Russians across the Tai-tzu River northeast of Liaoyang and held off a series of confused Russian counterattacks.

Although Kuropatkin's army outnumbered the Japanese, it fought with far less spirit and skill and could not gain the upper hand. Though unbeaten, General Kuropatkin ordered a retreat from Liaoyang in the early morning hours of September 3, pulling his troops back to the Sha Ho River, south of Mukden. The sudden withdrawal gave the Japanese the advantage on the battlefield, but outright victory was far from certain. Japanese logistics had been stretched to the limit and Field Marshall Iwao had insufficient reserves to pursue and destroy his enemy. The Battle of Liaoyang cost the Japanese 23,600 killed and wounded. Russian losses were estimated at 17,900 killed and wounded.

General Nogi's siege operations at Port Arthur took the form of trenching and tunnelling operations aimed at digging under the walls of Russian fortifications and planting explosives to blow them apart. His confidence increased with the arrival of some 16,000 fresh troops from Japan and news that he would soon receive a shipment of powerful Krupp 11-inch (120mm) howitzers. While the Japanese diligently shoveled their way under the Russians, the shortage of food supplies in Port Arthur was taking a terrible toll on the Russians in the form of serious outbreaks of scurvy and dysentery. Major General Anatoli Stoessel, staring defeat in the face, seemed unaffected by all this and absorbed himself with trivia and social niceties. His many letters to the tsar complaining about the state of the Russian navy made him the subject of ridicule among Russian sailors.

The Japanese pressed ahead with their siege works and, beginning on September 19, captured two major fortresses. When Lieutenant General Kodama Gentaro, chief of general staff of the Manchurian Army under Field Marshal Iwao, paid a visit to the 3rd Army to learn of the progress being made, he politely informed General Nogi that the defensive position at Hill 203 (203 meters high) was the key to the entire Russian defense. It commanded an excellent view of the entire harbor area and if the Japanese took that hill, they could rain accurate artillery fire on ships anchored in the harbor. The Russians were not going to give up Hill 203 without a bloody fight. Well entrenched atop Hill 203, Russian gunners cut down column after column of advancing Japanese troops, leaving the bloody slopes covered with the dead and wounded. While the Russians reinforced the hilltop position, General Nogi settled in for a prolonged artillery bombardment of the town itself and part of the harbor.

After Admiral Vitgeft's death, it soon became clear that no other commander of comparable rank would be able to reach Port Arthur to take command of the remnants of the 1st Pacific Squadron. Captain First Class Robert Nikolayevich Wiren, commander of the armored cruiser Bayan, which was left in port, was promoted to Rear Admiral and appointed squadron commander. With Port Arthur under a close blockade and being shelled by the Japanese army from shore, Admiral Wiren decided that defending the port took priority over everything else.

Admiral Wiren ordered his ships stripped of all available guns and had them dug in along the city's perimeter defense lines. The ships crews were ordered ashore to fight as infantry. As the fleet was slowly being destroyed at anchor, Admiral Essen, captain of the battleship Sevastopol, refused to let his ship suffer the same fate and steamed out to the dubious safety of the outer roadstead. A few destroyers managed to slip past the blockade and escaped into internment in China. Once it became clear that Port Arthur was about to fall, Rear Admiral Wiren ordered Essen to scuttle the Sevastopol, thus destroying the last major vessel of the fleet.

In the north, a steady stream of Russian reinforcements arrived in Manchuria, including two complete army corps. General Kuropatkin helped get these troops into Manchuria by falsely claiming the Battle of Liaoyang was actually a Russian victory. Along with the new troops however, came orders for Kuropatkin to go on the offense and relieve Port Arthur before it surrendered, leaving General Nogi's 3rd Army free to link up with Field Marshall Iwao's command near Liaoyang.

The unfavorable situation in Manchuria prompted Tsar Nicholas II to increase Russian efforts not just to save Port Arthur, but to save face for the Russian Empire. He directed General Aleksei Kuropatkin to reverse the tide of war in Manchuria. Beginning on October 5, Kuropatkin sent 210,000 Russian troops against Field Marshall Iwao's 150,000 Japanese troops along a forty mile front at the Sha Ho River, south of Mukden. For twelve days the two massive armies and 1,500 heavy artillery pieces fought a vicious duel with neither side willing to give an inch. Confusing orders, bad communications and command inertia resulted in a major Russian withdrawal in the face of a fierce, unexpected Japanese counterattack. The Battle of the Sha Ho River proved to be even more deadly than the fighting at Liaoyang. Russian loses totaled 44,351 killed, wounded, captured or missing in action. The Japanese fared only somewhat better, losing 20,345 killed, wounded, captured or missing.

Though neither side could claim a clear victory, the outcome frustrated General Kuropatkin's goal of pushing the Japanese back and relieving pressure on Port Arthur. Kuropatkin finally called off the fighting on October 17 and withdrew toward Mukden. Field Marshall Iwao, whose army was now too exhausted to fight any longer, chose not to pursue the Russians. The battle ended, more or less, in a draw. With winter rapidly approaching, the Russian and Japanese field armies settled into winter quarters. As he did after the Battle of Liaoyang, Kuropatkin once again claimed a Russian victory and it seems the tsar believed him. It really didn't matter what either of them believed at the time, since the fall of Port Arthur was all but assured. Unhindered from the rear, Japan stepped up the pressure on the Russians at Port Arthur.

Russia's lack of success in the war and continuing friction with General Kuropatkin led to Viceroy Admiral Evgenii Ivanovich Alekseev's recall to St. Petersburg on October 25, 1904, and Kuropatkin's appointment as supreme commander in the Far East. Alekseev, who retained his title as "Viceroy of the Far East," spent several months living virtually unnoticed in the Europa Hotel. No one asked his opinions on the war, he was not briefed on developments in the Far East, nor was he invited to participate in any military or naval councils. Alekseev eventually had to corner traveling correspondents to get information about what was happening in his viceroyalty.

Near the end of September, General Nogi's 3rd Army took delivery of 18 new Krupp 11-inch howitzers, which had to be manhandled into position from the railhead along an eight-mile narrow gauge track by teams of 800 soldiers. Once in place, these massive guns, in combination with another 450 artillery pieces, were connected to headquarters by miles of telephone lines to help coordinate artillery fire. The devastating Krupp howitzer could hurl a massive 500 pound shell over 9,000 meters with a sound once described as being like "a roaring train." Surrounded by low hills, the harbor at Port Arthur was protected from sight of the Japanese and without forward observers, the rain of 11-inch howitzer shells was but a random assault against invisible, frequently moving targets.

Japan's military leaders calculated that the new Russian Baltic Fleet could arrive in the Yellow Sea as early as January 1905. Admiral Togo thus ordered the watch outside Port Arthur to be relaxed by the end of November to withdraw the bulk of his command to Japan. He wanted to give the dockyards and arsenals a full two months of round the clock effort to recondition his ships. Leaving only a small force to cover the last of the siege at Port Arthur, Vice Admiral Togo Heihachiro retired his fleet to Japan for a much needed rest. Any hope of capturing the Russian ships inside Port Arthur was now gone and orders were given to the 3rd Army to make every effort to destroy them at anchor.

In October, General Nogi ordered another massive assault against Hill 203, which was now defended by five companies of Russian infantry with machine gun detachments, a company of engineers, a few sailors and an artillery battery. The hilltop was well protected by a massive fortress surrounded by thick wire entanglements and connected to two nearby hills by well dug trench lines and gun emplacements. The Japanese lost nearly 5,000 men killed or wounded in yet another failed attempt to take the hill.

It is almost axiomatic in wartime that most generals lose the support of the men under them when poor leadership and bad decisions result in serious tactical failures and incredibly high casualties. Ironically, General Nogi's troops never lost their trust in his leadership, or their loyalty to the Imperial Army and Japan. There was something undefinable about his leadership that appealed strongly to his men and caused them to continually fight to the death against impossible odds.

Under the threat of replacing him, Lieutenant General Kodama exerted strong pressure on General Nogi to take drastic action. Nogi saw no other option except to launch yet another all out assault against the shell ravaged and blood soaked hills. The Japanese attacked Hill 203 again on November 26 and artillery pounded the hills almost without interruption until 5 p.m. on November 27, at which time the guns fell silent. Thousands of Japanese troops poured out of their trenches in a blinding snowstorm and up the slopes of Hill 203 in a night attack that enabled them to reach the barbed wire near the top of the slopes. There they struggled to hold their ground throughout the following day. A cease fire was called on November 27 to allow both sides to collect the dead and wounded.

The Japanese " ... fought like fiends, fought till they lost consciousness, one of their battalions being literally swept away from the face of the earth." In close quarters combat, the Russians used hand grenades and machine guns to literally mow down battalions of advancing troops in a horrifying carnage. By December 4, the freezing days and nights of winter fighting had become so terrifying and the losses so appalling that one observer reported, " ... it was a struggle of human flesh against iron and steel, against blazing petroleum, lyddite, pyroxyline, and mélinite, and the stench of rotting corpses." Still, the Russians held Hill 203.

Around ten-thirty on the morning of December 5, following yet another heavy artillery bombardment, the Japanese finally managed to take Hill 203 from the handful of dazed and bloody defenders who remained alive. That evening, the Japanese flag stood above the rubble, gently flapping in the dust-laden air. The loss of this steep saddle-backed prominence was the final nail in the coffin for the Russian 1st Pacific Squadron.

Sir Ellis Ashmead Bartlett, an eyewitness to the assaults against Hill 203 described the haunting images of battle this way;

There have probably never been so many dead crowded into so small a space since the French stormed the great redoubt at Borodino. ...The Japanese are horrible to look at when dead, for their complexion turns quite green, which gives them an unnatural appearance. ...There were practically no bodies intact; the hillside was carpeted with odd limbs, skulls, pieces of flesh, and the shapeless trunks of what had been once human beings, intermingled with pieces of shells, broken rifles, twisted bayonets, grenades, and masses of rock loosed from the surface by the explosions.

Over 21,000 Japanese died or were wounded taking Hill 203, an indication that they literally fought to the death. The Russians suffered just over 6,000 killed and wounded. General Nogi justified the loses by the fact that he now held a commanding view of the entire harbor and could shell the Russian fleet with greater accuracy. He positioned his big Krupp howitzers atop Hill 203 and commenced to pulverize the warships in the harbor into scrap iron.

Beginning on the morning of December 6, 1904, Japanese forward observers began directing a deadly accurate rain of explosives against Russian ships. Within days, the Russian battleships Retvizan, Pobieda and Peresviet and the light cruiser Pallada were sent to the bottom of the harbor. The siege of Port Arthur continued unabated throughout the month of December and the strain within the Russian command took its toll.

Major General Anatoli Stoessel convened a war council at which he was advised that the port could not hold out beyond January 1905. Stoessel, who valued his own opinion more than others, decided they would hold out to the very end. Weeks later, on December 29, a second council convened to persuade the general that surrender was the only viable option. The Japanese had already breeched the inner defenses and were readying a full-scale attack against the Russian's last line of defense. Not even Stoessel could avoid the inevitable. He sent General Nogi a message asking for terms of surrender.

On the evening of January 1, 1905, nearly a year after the outbreak of the war, the 154 day siege of Port Arthur ended when the Russians signed terms of surrender in the Japanese camp. The Russian flag was hauled down at dawn the following morning after flying over Port Arthur for eight years. The Japanese took control of the garrison at Port Arthur and allowed the civilian population to leave. Nearly 878 officers, 23,500 soldiers and 9,000 sailors, together with 14,000 sick and wounded surrendered to the Japanese. Russian officers were given the option of either leaving with their troops or surrendering their weapons and taking permanent leave from the war effort.

Casualty estimates for the Battle of Port Arthur put Japanese losses at 110,000 plus one third of its fleet. The Russian army lost 9,500 of its original force of 42,000 men and its navy lost 7,700 of the nearly 11,000 naval personnel in the area. The world watched with the greatest interest as Japan again took possession of the great naval base and realized an immense increase in its prestige.