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CAMPS AND CAMP LIFE 131
but it was worst in the Panlung forts, after all
the heavy fighting and continuous sniping here.
The stench was almost intolerable, and one could
actually see the fluid of the decomposed corpses
filtering into the trenches.
Add to this the constant dangers around them.
The nearest Russian forts and the Chinese wall
were a few hundred yards away, and their outposts
were entrenched less than a hundred yards from
the captured forts. The sniping went on day and
night all the time, and shrapnel and shell were
occasionally fired into the trenches, so the soldiers
on duty were never at peace, and had to be always
on the qui vive during the week they stayed there,
before being relieved. If they forgot themselves
for a moment and showed their heads, they were
invariably fired at and often shot dead, as the
Russians placed some of their best marksmen up
here. Then there were the frequent sorties and
counter-attacks of the Russians which I have
already mentioned. Night after night it was the
same story. We could hear the rattling of mus-
ketry commence and rapidly grow stronger and
stronger ;
machine-guns would chime in, and the
din would swell to a roar, as the big guns awoke,
one after the other, and bellowed forth. The first
nights we used to turn out to see what was going
on. But we soon gave that up. The fracas was
generally over in less than half an hour, shorter
time than it took us to make up our minds and
get dressed and climb the steep path to our
observation post. During the first couple of
weeks after the capture of the forts the Japanese
casualties here averaged a hundred a day per fort
later they dropped to about twenty or twenty-five,
and even less.
The bulk of the army had pitched their camps
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