Sarah Paine

They get away with it.

They win the battle, but the Russians have an organized retreat northward.

And at the Battle of Shaka, which happens next in October,

the Japanese supply system almost collapses, but they get away with it.

And so bad things are going on at land.

Japan doesn't have an infinite supply of soldiers.

So you can also look, they don't have an infinite supply of artillery, howitzers and things.

Here are their gun emplacements.

Notice the green ones are army guns emplacements around Port Arthur.

That makes sense.

What's all the purple?

They have so few guns, they're pulling them off ships.

in order to reduce Port Arthur, and all these things they really need up in Manchuria.

They need Nogi, General Nogi, who's running all of this, his army up in Manchuria.

And there you can see the circle is where 203-meter hill is, that they need to take that as well.

All right, so General Nogi, who is commanding the Third Army, which is in charge of the siege, he is really desperate to reduce the fortress as soon as possible.

And he runs four different really costly infantry assaults on a fortress where you're killing lots of Japanese young men.

And he tells them...

The first two occur right prior to major battles, Liaoyang and Shaha respectively, because he wants to win those battles, win Port Arthur, so then he can take his guns and troops to fight at Liaoyang and Shaha.

Well, it's not to be because he loses both of them.