A Japanese trench guard at mess

A Japanese trench guard at mess

192

After the Japanese had learned that Port Arthur could not be taken by a furious assault that lasted seven days and cost them 25,000 precious lives, they settled down to do in six months or a year, what they had come to do. They began a vast system of sapping, digging trenches, parallel to the Russian lines or fortifications, and one always a little closer to the enemy than the one before and connected by a zigzag trenches, so well planned and executed, that even the turning angles could not be discovered by the Russians. Living in these trenches, just wide enough for four men to walk abreast, was a terrible task. The men were not allowed to leave the trenches for any purpose. Here they had to watch and wait, eat, sleep and drink. The filth was sickening, the cold intense, and a bursting Russian shell might at any moment maim or kill them, while it was certain death to show a head above the protecting wall of the trench, only fifty or a hundred yards from the muzzle of a Russian sharpshooter's gun.

1 stereograph. 2 photomechanical prints on stereo card : halftone, stereograph, color ; 9 x 18 cm

1905 Ingersoll, T.W.

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