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266 THE SIEGE OF PORT ARTHUR
time, trying to regain breath before they started
on their last climb to the trenches. A dynamite
grenade had been hurled in amongst them and
killed all, and now they lay here so mixed up
that it was difficult to make out what part belonged
to one man and what to another. The force of
the explosion had torn every scrap of clothing off
their bodies, but had not, as might have been
expected, scorched them to any considerable
degree ;
only their shoes or boots and their socks
remained on their feet, and in one or two cases I
saw the leather belt still strapped round the waist
of a man, while all his garments had been blown
away.
Not one of these corpses but had at least one
vital part of the body torn off ;
most had an arm
or a leg wrenched away ;
some had the chest or
stomach ripped open, some the head severed at
the neck ;
one head had rolled only a few paces
off and was staring with a hideous grin. And all
these corpses or parts of corpses had been blown
together in a heap four or five feet high in the
most hopeless confusion. Out of this pyramid
arms and legs protruded and from the top an arm
and a hand with fingers outstretched pointed
heavenwards as if in a mute appeal.
More to the south, close under the wire entangle-
ments the bodies lay not in tens or in dozens,
but in hundreds, generally in small clusters of
some fifteen or twenty men ;
the effect of each
separate hand grenade or shell which had been
flung in amongst the attacking party, sweeping
them together in small heaps, looking like a
human ragout of mutilated bodies and odd limbs
in a sauce of blood and brains and intestines.
The faces of the corpses, where not mutilated
beyond recognition, nearly all wore an expression
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