From September 19th to the 25th occurred what is known as the second assault, although it might more properly be described as a reconnaissance in force. As an assault it failed. Then on the last day in October the war-demon awoke again to his full ferocity. Where the twenty-five thousand had been lost in August, a division could now be poured right up to the parapets of the Russian forts without losing a man. Coast-defense guns had been brought from Japan to battle against the Russia coast-defense guns, which had been turned landward. The Japanese had hauled their guns by hand, eight hundred men to a gun, through mud, up the mountains, in the dark, under fire, and had placed them in silence on solid concrete foundations. But after they had crossed the valley the Japanese still had a frightful obstacle to face. There was but one way to get to the forts--up the slopes. Every inch of these was commanded by guns trained carefully through three months of actual use against a real foe and through four previous years against an imaginary one. The Russians lay confident and calm above their terrible fortress. They did not have to bluster with bombardments. They knew their strength. They merely waited until the Japanese advance reached a certain spot on the slopes. It was not a question of aiming the guns, as it is where troops are constantly fighting over fresh ground. All that was necessary was to pull the triggers. There was about the proceeding little of the sport of war. The order to advance was as certainly fatal as the hangman’s signal in an execution-chamber, and when the Japanese did advance the few who survived the murderous fire found behind those superb entrenchments men just as brave, just as cunning, just as strong as they themselves. If it is ever asked which is the braver, Japanese or Russian, no answer can be given. No one nation distinguished itself at Port Arthur. The glory belongs to both.
It was in the third grand assault, when the final operations commenced, that General Ichinobe, the commanding officer who had ordered the sacrifice of Takagagi and his immortal Ninth Regiment and who had summarily sent the sulking regiment to the rear, became the Japanese Marshal Ney. Two battalions under his command succeeded in entering the P redoubt, an outwork of the great Cock’s Comb fortification. Ichinobe left his battalions after midnight, secure in the conviction that his work had been successful. Toward three o’clock in the morning he was roused by an orderly, who reported that the men had been driven from the P redoubt. Ichinobe was then half a mile as the crow flies, nearly one and a half miles as the trenches lay across the valley, from the slope of the redoubt. Leaping from his couch, he called about him his staff-officers, issued hurried orders to the reserves, and, at the head of his immediate followers, ran through the zigzag trenches. Reaching the foremost line, now under the fire of Russian machine-guns, he found his men not demolished, but surprised, outnumbered, and being driven sullenly back. Drawing his saber, Ichinobe thrust the ranks aside, passed through, and charged up the slope, leading his heroes for the second time into the contested fort. With his own hand he killed three Russians. When dawn came his brigade occupied the P redoubt. His immediate commander, General Oshima, had an account of the exploit telegraphed to the Emperor at Tokyo. That afternoon an Imperial order reached the army, christening the fort “Ichinobe.”