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WAYS AND MEANS 163
The shrapnel fire, which at the outset of the rush
had been terrific, never slackened for a moment
either when the attackers reached the upper
trenches or when they gained the plateau itself
ay, not even when the men were fighting hand
to hand, attackers and defenders mixed up in the
wildest melde. The Japanese shrapnel burst
right over the heads of their own men, sweeping
the whole plateau where supports were coming up
or where the Russians retired, and it looked to us
as if some of them burst right in amongst the
clusters of men fighting hand to hand. A
Russian officer who took part in this fight told
me that this really was the case, and that several
Japanese were killed by their own fire. And
now we understood what the object of the big
white flag was ;
it was carried as a signal to the
batteries where to direct their fire, so as to have
the powerful assistance of the artillery to the
very end.
The Japanese batteries were wonderfully well
served during these attacks. The precision of
their fire and the excellence of their material,
especially the accuracy and uniformity of their
time fuses, was unsurpassable. And the Japanese
were not stingy with their ammunition ;
they
must have hurled thousands upon thousands of
shells and shrapnel at the positions during these
days ;
but I think it is doubtful if they derived
the benefit they had expected from the heavy
artillery fire. At Lungyen redoubt it certainly
was of great service to them in opening a breach
in the ramparts and partly filling the moat, and
during the assault on i8o Metre Hill the shrapnel
fire was of the greatest assistance ;
but it must
be remembered that at the latter position the
fighting took place in and about trenches of a
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