tried to surprise the railway bridge over the Sha-ho on a very clear night, when one could see as far as 500 yards. Four Japanese machine guns opened fire on a company of the 10th Light Infantry, which was almost wiped out."[1]
At the battle of Hei-kow-tai, the Russians at Shen-tan-pu made no less than five determined attacks against the Japanese entrenchments, in which was a machine gun, but were repulsed each time. The machine gun is said to have done great execution, and one thousand dead Russians were reported to have been found before it.[2]
The 8th Division of the Japanese Army are reported to have made several fine attacks upon Hei-kow-tai, but were each time repulsed mainly by the fire of the Russian machine guns.[C] The same report says, "Throughout the campaign in Manchuria the Japanese have suffered severely in attacking those points of the Russian front which have been armed with machine guns," and proceeds to quote an episode in the operations of the 5th Division at the battle of Mukden, to show to what lengths the Japanese went in order to silence these weapons. It appears that the Japanese were so galled by the fire of four machine guns that the attack was materially affected. They decided to bring up two mountain guns to within 500 yards of these machine guns, to try to destroy them. The
