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PREPARATIONS 49
August 15th, after three days of heavy fighting
in pouring rain, and the Russian advanced posts
on Takushan and Hsiaokushan were driven
back behind their main lines of defence on
August 9th, after a very stubborn resistance
which kept the Japanese at bay for three days.
As these events happened before I was allowed to
the front, and as, properly speaking, they do not
form part of the real siege of Port Arthur, I shall
confine myself to stating that the troops which
took part in the operations on the western flank
were the whole ist Army Division, reinforced by
three field batteries from the independent artillery
brigade, and, in the Takushan fights, the whole
nth Division, reinforced by three batteries of 4*7
siege guns and four batteries of 3*5 mortars.
There was hard fighting in both places, the
Japanese losses amounting to about 3,000 men.
While these preliminary operations were going
on. General Nogi employed the time in making
preparations for the general attack. Having
decided his principal tactical object and his main
line of advance, the next question to consider was
the placing of his guns.
The lessons of the Boer War, and to some
extent of the Russo-Turkish War, pointed it
seemed to an evolution in modern warfare, which
made the role of the artillery in the battle grow
less and less important, and shifted nearly the
whole burden of the fighting on to the shoulders of
the infantry. The present campaign has changed
all this. It is the Japanese artillery which has won
them their victories, or rather the perfect colla-
boration of the artillery with its sister arms. With-
out the ability and excellent tactics of the one, all
the bravery and gallantry of the other would have
been of little avail. I have no exact information
E
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