Engines of War

by Christian Wolmar

  This tactic of containment and harassment worked, albeit slowly. The Boers eventually surrendered in May 1902, ground down by the gradual progress of the British through their territory, and with little room to manoeuvre as the soldiers in the ever lengthening strings of blockhouses provided increasingly detailed intelligence on the whereabouts of the enemy. The Boers were harried and, unable to fight, forced into finally accepting peace terms which the British had offered several times previously. After lengthy negotiations, the Boer republics were incorporated into the British Empire a few years later, but the cost of dragooning the Boers into Britain’s fold had been high. Far from being the short conflict which the politicians expected, it turned out to be the bloodiest and most costly of Britain’s wars between 1815 and 1914.

  In railway terms the Boer War was a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming world war, even though the nature of the conflict was quite different, but in the intervening period another war was fought alongside a single long stretch of track in which the railway played an even more central part. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5 was, however, a very different type of war, involving massive battles on a scale that resulted from the ability of the railways to deliver huge numbers of troops and supplies rapidly to the theatre of war. As all the fighting took place in Manchuria and Korea, it was the first major war to be conducted entirely on the territory of nations not involved directly in the conflict, a feature that, of course, was only made possible by the efficiency of the lines of communication created by the railways.

  Of all the wars discussed in this book, the Russo-Japanese is the only one in which not only did the railways play a central role in the way that it was conducted, but the construction of a line actually triggered the war itself: ‘Russia’s eastward expansion had brought with it a great railway which the equally expansive Japan had seen as a threat to its own territorial ambitions. The result was the Russo-Japanese War which would not have been fought on the scale it was, had the railway not been built, and indeed could not have been fought at all in the railway’s absence.’30

  The Trans-Siberian, at more than 5,700 miles by far the world’s longest railway, was in effect two railways and had, right from the outset, been a military project undertaken in the final decade of the nineteenth century by the impoverished Russian state at vast expense, with the aim of uniting the two ends of the biggest nation in the world and imposing the rule of St Petersburg on its furthermost province. Siberia had always been a distant land, reachable only by the most arduous journey, taking two to three years on horseback from western Russia, whereas the railway made it possible to reach Vladivostok on the Pacific coast in under a month. The railway, built in the most difficult conditions through remote lands with terrible winters, was a remarkable achievement on behalf of a nation still struggling to leave behind its feudal past. The initial route of the railway, completed in 1903, used the newly constructed and shorter Chinese Eastern Railway which went through Manchuria to reach the Pacific coast, rather than the more northerly direct line crossing entirely Russian territory, which was not completed until 1916. The Russians had taken advantage of the weakness of the Chinese, who had been beaten in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, to acquiesce to their demand to build the railway on Chinese soil. The Trans-Siberian had been started, from both ends, in 1891 and had mostly been completed, with a gap at Lake Baikal, the largest in Asia, by the turn of the century. The decision to go through Manchuria was partly practical, as the territory was easier than further north, but there was imperial intent, too. The Chinese Eastern Railway was in its own right a massive project, undertaken in just six years and requiring the construction of nearly 1,000 steel bridges alone. When completed in 1903, it employed 20,000 people, mainly Russian, and while notionally a private company, it received massive subsidies from the state. The headquarters was at Harbin in northern Manchuria, a town created by the Russians which became a centre of both commerce and learning, with a major polytechnic to train students in the skills of building and maintaining railways.

  Russian imperial ambitions appeared to be confirmed by the construction of a branch line, the South Manchurian Railway, which went from Harbin through the Liandong peninsula to Port Arthur (Lüshun) and another port, Dalny (Dal’ny or Dalian), in which the Russians were investing huge sums to create a major harbour. Russia had long searched for a warm-water port that would allow round-the-year access to shipping, unlike Vladivostok, further north, which is closed by winter ice, and these two ports on the Liandong peninsula were seen as ideal for Russian trade with the United States. Following the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, Russia had signed a lease with China to obtain unrestricted access to the peninsula, but the investment in these ports was seen as a hostile act by the Japanese, who, coming out of their long period of isolation, had their own ambitions to establish themselves on the Asian mainland. They viewed the South Manchurian Railway as a ‘dagger pointing at the heart of Japan’,31 giving Russia access to both Manchuria and Korea, but, in reality, it was unclear whether Russia’s aims were purely commercial or whether there was military intent, as Russian imperial policy at the time was muddled and incoherent. The Russians were diplomatic ingénus, led by an arrogant backward-looking tsar who may well have been unaware of how the construction of this network of railways would appear to the outside world. The fact that 25,000 men were needed to guard the two railways did not support the notion that their purpose was solely peaceful and the construction of the branch line through the Liandong peninsula sufficiently convinced the Japanese of Russia’s imperial ambitions for them to launch an attack on Port Arthur in early February 1904.

  The precise timing was also railway-related. The single-track Trans-Siberian was still not fully functional as, hampered by poor construction standards and prone to derailments and other delays, it could provide at most three trains per day. The Japanese felt that this would hinder Russian efforts to despatch enough forces to defend Manchuria but realized that any delay might allow the Russians to improve the railway.

  The attack on Port Arthur was inconclusive but the Japanese managed to blockade the harbour for several months. Meanwhile, a Japanese force landed in Korea and headed north towards Manchuria, while, in response, the Russian tactics were to try to delay any major offensive by the Japanese sufficiently to allow themselves time to bring in reinforcements by rail. It was now that the consequences of the primitive construction techniques employed on the Trans-Siberian made themselves felt. The line had been built with too few passing loops and the poor track conditions limited speeds on long stretches to just 15 mph, greatly restricting the capacity and prolonging the journey for the troops. There was a particular bottleneck on a section through Manchuria where a tunnel had not been completed, entailing trains having to make a lengthy haul up a mountain range and having to be broken up to facilitate the climb. During 1904, improvements to the railway were prioritized: extra loops were hastily built, the vital tunnel was completed, the worst sections of track were improved, and trains were regulated so that they went at the same speed, thereby increasing throughput.32

  The worst constraint, however, was Lake Baikal, where the line had not yet been built. Although construction of the Circum-Baikal railway around the southern edge of the lake had started in late 1899, it was not scheduled to be completed until 1906. In the meantime, passengers and freight had to be carried across the lake – a long thin strip of water 400 miles long and 35 miles wide at the crossing point – by ship and, in winter, transported on the ice, creating an inevitable logjam. The Japanese had taken this into account when deciding when to launch the war as they expected the Russians would not be able to complete that section in time to use it during the conflict. As the Japanese predicted, at Baikal station on the west side of the lake there was, according to a contemporary observer, a build-up of ‘mountains of cases, pyramids of bales, containing articles and provisions of which the troops already in Manchuria are in sore need. Russian officialdom is not seen at its best in such ci
rcumstances, and the absence of all grip in the situation becomes daily more deplorable.’33

  In order to convey goods and men to the railway on the other side of the lake, three separate tracks were laid across the ice: a sledge route marked by poles, mostly for officers; a foot track, over which whole battalions marched; and eventually a temporary rail line, once the ice had become sufficiently thick to support the weight of the wagons and the men and horses hauling them across the ice. In order to speed up the flow of goods, an attempt was made to use a locomotive on this track but even though the line had been laid on extra-wide sleepers to spread the load, the ice could not support the weight and the engine sank, taking several men with it. Consequently, the tracks across the lake proved insufficient to transport all the build-up of supplies and equipment across it and the backlog at Baikal was not cleared until the summer. Without locomotives to haul them, all the soldiers had to cross the ice on foot and suffered greatly as their uniforms were not weatherproof and recruits were not even issued greatcoats to protect them against the Russian winter. Their only solace was the series of wood and felt rest houses sited every four miles, where they were given soup, tea and stale bread and where, if they were lucky, they could get treated for their frostbite.

  The logistics were made worse by a huge stream of refugees fleeing in the other direction who also suffered indescribable deprivations. A journalist reporting on the conditions wrote that the trains contained ‘no lavatories, no food to be got along the line, hardly any water, no milk and [there were] six hundred children of all ages huddled together for warmth… it was one of the pitiful sights of warfare, and a mere forerunner to the woes behind.’34 This episode showed up all the failings of the Trans-Siberian during its early years, highlighting the contrast between the brilliance of the technological achievement in constructing the railway and the terrible conditions endured by those who travelled on the line.

  Midway through the war a ferry, transported in pieces on the railway, was reconstructed at Lake Baikal under the instructions of three British engineers from Newcastle and was able to transport matériel and men over the lake during part of the winter as the stern was fitted with icebreaking equipment. However, the ship soon became redundant as the Japanese calculation in respect of the construction of the Circum-Baikal railway proved wrong. Once war broke out, the Russians set about completing the line round the lake with alacrity, boosting the workforce by half to 13,500. It was a heroic effort. Both the geology and the weather were hostile in the extreme and the high cliffs and mountains overlooking much of the lake necessitated the construction of countless tunnels and bridges. The route was so circuitous that the line eventually proved to be 163 miles long to progress eastwards a mere forty miles and it is today a great tourist attraction. The first engineering works train travelled on the line in October 1904, and while it took another year for the railway to be brought into full operation, it ensured that supplies and men could be transported towards Manchuria far more quickly than the Japanese had anticipated.

  Eventually, from a maximum of only three trains in each direction per day, by the end of the war the Trans-Siberian could cater for up to sixteen pairs, still fewer than one per hour. Moreover, there was the added problem of finding sufficient locomotives and rolling stock to operate this level of service. A train would routinely consist of twenty-eight troop-carrying freight cars, each with room for forty men (or eight horses, or, for the Cossacks unwilling to be parted from their steeds, a combination of both!). Little comfort was provided for the Russian soldiers: the cars were lined with felt and fitted with a stove, used both for heating and for making tea, essential when temperatures outside could reach -45°C at times. There were small windows allowing the men a glimpse of the endless steppes and forests, and while some cars had sleeping shelves, in others the only bed was the floor. There were a further six cars for ammunition and kit, and a comfortable upholstered passenger car for the officers, who, on some trains, also had use of a lavishly decorated Orthodox church car. In all, each train provided transport for 1,100 men and their officers.35 The long periods endured by the men in these conditions without supervision from the officers, who were comfortably ensconced in their separate coaches, were of concern to the military authorities, who were worried that the regular soldiers would pay heed to the talk of disaffected reservists, thereby stimulating revolutionary ideas.

  Because of the onerous conditions, after every three days of travel the soldiers were allowed a rest day, and therefore the journey from Moscow would take at best thirty days, and at worst as many as fifty. Such lengthy journey times resulted in heavy demands on the amount of rolling stock: 400 locomotives (two per train) and 8,000 wagons were needed just to maintain a regular service of four trains per day, while for the desired target of fourteen per day, a staggering 1,400 locomotives and 28,000 cars were required. These, too, are probably underestimates, given the difficulties of repairing stricken engines anywhere in the wilds of Siberia, the lack of workshop facilities and spare parts and the widespread use of railway cars in sidings as temporary barracks and storage. Haupt’s rules on the effective use of railways during wars were clearly still being ignored.

  The Russians scoured Europe for extra stock, and despatched many locomotives from their other lines to the east, but still struggled to keep up with the demands of the longest railway route in the world. Therefore, even when the line had been improved, it could still not operate at full capacity because of the rolling stock shortage. Nor was the ability of the line to deliver vital supplies and troops helped by chronic mismanagement, with the usual conflicts between railway managers and the military, exacerbated by the tendency of senior officers to use the line for their own purposes regardless of the disruption that caused to the Army’s main supply system. A British attaché noted that when the heads of the navy and the Army met, the journey of several hundred miles between the two headquarters at Mukden and Liaoyang was undertaken on a special train for the admiral. According to the diplomat: ‘This necessitated the line being kept clear for indefinite periods of time and dislocated all the other traffic arrangements, as the then chief of the railways declared.’36 This habit of senior officers using the railways as their personal transportation system would, as we shall see, be repeated in future conflicts.

  Once the war settled down into stable fronts in its later stages, the 11,000 Russian railway troops, with the help of numerous Chinese labourers, built a remarkable 350-mile network of narrow-gauge field railways with horses and mules hauling the trains. These hastily built lines were used both for carrying munitions and soldiers to the front from the railhead and to remove the sick and wounded to safety. In the period before the battle of Mukden, when the front became static and the troops entrenched, rather presaging the situation in the First World War, these light railways became a vital part of the line of communication. One section near Mukden was thirty miles long and its horse-drawn wagons were able to cover that distance in just five hours, far faster than the alternative road. For the wounded, too, these railways were a great boon since they were a far more comfortable way to travel for men in pain than in the back of a cart pulled slowly along bumpy roads.

  While the Russians had improved their transport situation by completing the Circum-Baikal railway a year ahead of schedule, and setting up these field railways, the Japanese had also been working on their logistics by building a new railway and that was to give them a decisive advantage. Initially, they landed troops in Korea, which they controlled, and marched them north to Manchuria. There had been, though, plans for a network of railways which would connect Korea with Manchuria, and the Japanese set about accelerating their construction, with a quite stupendous effort that would give them a decisive edge in the war. In particular, by the end of December 1904, the Japanese had completed the line from the southern Korean city of Fusan to Seoul a year earlier than scheduled. It was no simple task. A contemporary report in The Times says it was ‘a feat of engineering which reminds
one of the railways of Switzerland. Two ridges have to be crossed, and in each case the line makes a wide curve gradually ascending the steep slopes and half-way up it enters a tunnel which pierces the mountain at a height of 2,000 feet.’37 By linking this railway with another hastily completed line, between Seoul and Wi-Ju, it now became possible to travel by rail from Fusan (Busan) into Russia, a counterbalance to the construction of the Trans-Siberian, and a warning to the Russians that they were not the only imperial power which could also use the railways to impose itself on distant lands.

  Crucially, the new railway could be used to transport troops up to Manchuria, rather than having to march along a primitive mountain road prone to closure. Moreover, after the Japanese finally took Port Arthur in January 1905, they could use the Russian-built South Manchurian Railway as a second supply route. However, the Russians had not left any locomotives behind, and the Japanese had to resort to using men to haul wagons along the line. They developed a system of combining sets of wagons (carrying only a quarter of their normal 20-ton cargo) using sixteen Chinese labourers, eight pushing and eight pulling on ropes. According to the historian John Westwood, ‘a forty car train seems to have been the record, but after some disastrous if spectacular runaways down gradients, amid a scurry of entangled coolies, a ten car limit was imposed’.38 Eventually, the line was converted to the Japanese 3ft 6in gauge from the normal Russian 5ft and operated with locomotives imported from Japan, relieving the poor coolies of their terrible task. The Japanese, like the Russians, also made heavy use of horse-drawn narrow-gauge railways to take supplies right up to the front.