Today, I would like to tell you about a war that took place in our country, which was extremely tragic, but was fought in our country by other countries - the Russo-Japanese War.
On December 5, 1904, the Japanese army captured The 203 Heights, which was the commanding height of the Western Front in the Battle of Lushun in the Russo-Japanese War, and was an important position for the Japanese and Russians to compete. Today, if you go to Lushun for tourism, you can go there to take a look, which has become a tourist area. But on this day in 1904, Heights 203 was the most brutal killing field in the world.
From a military point of view, this war can be said to be the world's first large-scale use of machine guns. Before the Russo-Japanese War, only the American Civil War used machine guns, although thermal weapons were popularized at that time, but because the art and science of war had not kept up at that time, everyone still relied on the previous tactics to fight, so it caused great casualties, and the American Civil War killed a total of about 700,000 people.
The Russo-Japanese War was a fierce war carried out under the condition of popularizing machine guns and barbed wire, of course, this war was unjust, no matter what the two countries fought, but the problem is that this war was fought on Chinese territory, a large number of Chinese civilians died, and the whole northeast suffered.
When you look at what year 1904 was, it was the tenth anniversary of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, and Japan prepared a world-class navy with the reparations given by the Qing Dynasty, and the Japanese Navy won almost all victories in the Russo-Japanese Naval Battle and the Russian Pacific Fleet in the two Yellow Sea Naval Battles.
In contrast, the Japanese Army was not so relaxed, and this 203 scramble took place after the Battle of the Yellow Sea, when the Japanese Navy had already defeated the Russian Pacific Fleet, and the Russian Fleet had to shrink in the port of Lushun and wait for the Baltic Fleet to come to support. What would have happened if the Russian Baltic Fleet had arrived and the Japanese had not yet captured Lushun? It was the confluence of the two fleets that caused Japan to lose its sea supremacy, and then caused hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops in the northeast to lose their retreating bases.
So the Japanese were also fighting at that time, this side of the Japanese must desperately attack Lushun, and the highest commanding height of Lushun is this 203 highland, the name of the 203 highland is because it is 203 meters above sea level, this highland is overlooking the port of Lushun the most important fortress, if you take it, then Lushun will also be captured.
Russia had already forcibly leased Lushun from China in 1898, and spent six years building a large number of fortresses, pillboxes, etc. in Lushun, and at that time, the Japanese army, including the armies of the world, had no good way to deal with these things, and could only rely on soldiers to forcibly charge.
At that time, the commander of the Japanese army was Nogi Kiten, who was known as the god of war, and he did not have any way, that is, to rely on the tactics of the sea of people, rely on the charge, and later it was not called the tactics of the sea of men, that is, the tactics of meat bombs. The survivors of the Russian army once wrote in their diaries: Watching the Japanese army rush over like a meat bomb, the front wave was killed, followed by another wave of charging with corpses, constantly being strafed by machine guns, and being blown away by artillery. More than 30,000 Japanese troops were killed in the first week of the attack, while the Russians suffered only 3,000 casualties.
At that time, the situation of the Japanese army was unbearable, and the corpses could not be dragged back. The morale of the Japanese army was about to collapse, and Nogi Hiden also received more than 2,400 letters from the people at home, asking him to commit suicide by caesarean section to apologize, but this Nogi Hidnori never gave up, and continued to transfer artillery and troops from the country, and finally in addition to the old, weak, sick and disabled, and the eggs of new recruits in Japan, they were all transferred, just for this 203 highland.
In the end, Nogi Hidnen was really out of the way, and when the death squad set off, Nogi Hidn said, "I personally lead the last stormtrooper, and I must beat down 203." In addition to continuing the meat bomb tactic, it was supplemented by three major measures: one was to transfer 280 mm heavy artillery to bombard the Russian fortifications; the second was to dig tunnels to approach the Russian front, and then charge to reduce casualties; and the third was to use a large number of new weapons grenades to kill and injure opponents when rushing to Russian positions.
Finally, on December 5, 1904, the Japanese captured Hill 203. When the Russians finally captured the largest bunker in The 203 Heights, only one Russian was still alive. Both the Japanese and Russian armies suffered heavy casualties in this battle, with a total of 60,000 Japanese casualties. After the fall of The 203 Heights, the situation of the Russian army took a sharp turn for the worse, and the Russian Pacific Fleet could no longer do the internal and external cooperation, and was later annihilated by the combined fleet commanded by the Japanese naval commander Togo Heihachirō.
After Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War, Northeast China and Korea were all occupied by it, and the Russian army was bombed back to its hometown.