A detachment of the Tersko-Kubansky regiment reported that it had destroyed five hundred metres of the railway at another point, and at four o'clock next morning an explosion from the direction of Tah-shihchiao led us to conclude that a bridge on the Tahshih-chiao-Yinkow line had been blown up. But this could not have been the case; for just before our attack on Yinkow two trains came through, probably from the south.
At old Newchwang we had another tussle with the Japanese. Fifty of them occupied a house there, and as we could not afford to waste time taking it, we contented ourselves with making prisoners of two or three wounded officers — who, by the way, spoke Russian tolerably well — and then we pushed further south.
At old Newchwang there was the usual litter of
Japanese telegraph and telephone poles and wires, and more than the usual capture of transports. In fact, too much time was spent, I think, in burning these transports, which included clothing, kerosene, provisions and ammunition. Hundreds of cattle and sheep were also taken and driven before us. Every Cossack had a small bag of flour at his saddle-bow, and the Japanese must have found the tracking of him closely to resemble a paper chase, for his route was marked by empty boxes of " Peacock " and other brands of cigarettes which the Japanese soldier loves, and which the Cossack had now got hold of.
On the night of the i ith there were no less than two huge conflagrations reddening the horizon. They were Japanese transports on lire. We spent that night in the village of Hundyatun, twenty miles from Yinkow, and in the morning we set out with the determination of reaching our destination before sunset. We passed on our way still another flaming transport. On this last day the extraordinarily mild weather that had favoured us thus far, still continued, but unfortunately the warm sunshine thawed the surface of the cultivated earth, so that whenever there was a breeze blowing from any point of the compass we rode amid dense clouds of dust. Of the Cossacks a few yards in front of me I could only see a faint grey outline, like figures of men on an over-exposed photographic plate, and I could hardly recognise the officers who rode beside me, so powdered were their beards and faces with the grey dust.
The country became richer as we approached nearer to Yinkow, the villages far more prosperous, and the land even better cultivated. I was under the impression that we were still at a considerable distance from our destination when, at about 4 p.m., boom! went a gun on the right, and a little cloud of shrapnel burst over a village, which was situated, as I afterwards discovered, a short distance in front of the Niuchatun Railway station. Boom! boom! boom! went other guns, and then came the rattle of a heavy musketry fire, and we knew that the fight had begun.
Early on the morning of this day a Chinaman whom we met at Hundyatun had told us that there were only three hundred Japanese soldiers at the Yinkow railway station, and that there were no soldiers at all in the town. Our officers had been of the opinion that a party of Cossacks would be sent to smash up the Japanese administration buildings while the rest of us were burning the stores at the station, but, just before the fight began, General Mishchenko communicated to his officers his plan of action, which was as follows:
The Japanese, who were found to be strongly intrenched in front of the station, would be shelled and then attacked by a mixed force composed of detachments from the Tersko-Kubansky and other regiments, amounting in all to about one thousand men. If this attack were successful the Japanese stores would be set on fire, and then the Russians would fall back as fast as they could. Fearing that indiscriminate looting and subsequent complications with foreign Powers would take place if the Cossacks entered the town, the general forbade them to enter in any case.
Just as we approached Yinkow a train filled with soldiers rushed in from Ta-shih-chiao. It was made up of sixteen trucks, and, calculating that each truck could accommodate forty men, it must have brought
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