opened fire. Within a few seconds it was turned into a veritable pandemonium, a seething mass of humanity, where men were wildly fighting to get away, trampling on the wounded, climbing over piles of corpses which blocked the entrance, and trying to escape down the coverless hillside. But the Maxims did their work as only Maxims can, and within a few moments practically the whole force was wiped out; a few men were shot dead as they ran down the hillside, but nearly all the others were killed in the narrow trench. It took the Japanese days to extricate and carry away the fearfully intermingled corpses."[1]
There are so many instances of the successful use of machine guns in the defence of Port Arthur that it will be impossible to quote more than a few of the most striking to illustrate the principle on which they should be employed.
At the third general attack on November 26th, at 2 p.m., a large force of Japanese assaulted Sung-shu fort, and having crossed the moat through a bomb-proof passage, they gained the parapet of the rampart and swarmed over it. "Into this seething mass of humanity the machine guns of the forts and batteries on An-tzu Shan poured such a tremendous fire that the attackers were mowed down, crushed, dispersed, and sent head over heels to the moat again in less than half a minute, before a single man had reached the interior of the fort. The same fate befell a fresh attempt undertaken at five o'clock."[B]
- ↑ The Great Siege, by W. Norregaard.
