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SECOND GENERAL ATTACK 201
another attempt. Night was their only hope—
vain one.
A Russian searchlight was turned on them and
on the slopes leading up to them all through the
long night, and the Japanese had the August
lessons still too fresh in mind to attempt another
night attack where the enemy’s searchlight could
find them. The next morning the wretched little
crowd was still there, and two flags were still
fluttering, and all day we could see them waving
their mute appeal.
But no help arrived. The men were doomed.
Some of them were mercifully killed by Russians’
bullets, some died from their wounds, but the
majority succumbed to hunger and cold. On the
morning of the second day the flags were down,
but the number of the men did not seem to have
decreased. How long some of them lived after
that I cannot tell, but as far as I was able to
learn they all met the same fate, a slow, terrible
death, after sufferings easier to imagine than to
describe.
Thus ended the ill-advised second general
attack. The real fighting had only lasted for a
couple of hours, and when we compared it with
the first general attack, we could not but be
struck by the difference between the conduct of
the men then and now. The assaults were
certainly not carried out with anything like the
dash and almost superhuman gallantry which had
so distinguished the August attacks. The men
had been there so long, gazing at the formidable
positions in front of them ;
they had had such
heavy losses in working their way up towards
them, they had suffered so many small reverses,
that not only they, but also their superior officers,
were beginning to lose faith and to lose nerve.
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