File:A staff officer's scrap!book during the Russo-Japanese war (1906) (14594802048).jpg

Identifier: staffofficersscr02hami (find matches)
Title: A staff officer's scrap!book during the Russo-Japanese war
Year: 1906 (1900s)
Authors: Hamilton, Ian, Sir, 1853-1947
Subjects: Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905
Publisher: London : Edward Arnold

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, at last we began to move, and then, by degrees,the menagerie became less violent. I have been noting down these silly trifles to putoff, as far as possible, the moment when I must turnto the ghastly charnel-house whither my steps havenow led me. So far I have avoided such thingsbecause I hate them, and also because I feel thatmany writers have combined to give the world a falseconception of war by piling up its horrors beyond allreasonable measure. But, sitting here, I should go tothe other extreme and become a cowardly suppressorof the truth did I try and escape altogether from someanalysis of the mountain of death upon which I findmyself. (See Sketches XXXVI. and XXXVII.) At a glance it springs to the eyes that this is noordinary hill. It has been fairly battered out of itsnatural shape by inhuman agencies, and on its blastedand shot-seared surface there is not so much as onedried blade of grass ; nothing to break the harshnessof the devils ploughing to which it has been subjected
Text Appearing After Image:
The Devils Ploughing 309 but here and there the faded colour of a womansgown or petticoat which has been used to make sand-bags, or the leprous yellow splotches left by thebursting of the high explosive shells. The manner of the devils ploughing is thus:first the hill has been sliced into numberless deepgashes, and then these trenches and their dividingwalls have been smashed and pounded and crushedinto a shapeless jumble of stones; rock splintersand fragments of shells cemented liberally withhuman flesh and blood. A mans head sticking upout of the earth, or a leg or an arm or a piece ofa mans body lying across my path are sights whichcustom has enabled me to face without blanching.But here the corpses do not so much appear to beescaping from the ground as to be the ground itself.Everywhere there are bodies, or portions of bodies,flattened out and stamped into the surface of theearth as if they formed part of it, and several times inthe ascent I was on the point of placing my foot upo

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