Nogi Noshinori's Third Army began to launch a general attack on Lushun on August 7, and the first to attack was naturally the outer positions of the Lushun Fortress, that is, the front of Dagu Mountain, Xiao Gu Mountain, and the 203 Heights, and the front positions of the Northern Navy Division.

On 7 August alone, the Japanese army mobilized three wings, two of which launched a charge-like attack on Dagushan and Xiaogushan, and they could not even climb the barbed wire of the Russian army at the end of the day. The next day, Nogi Noshinori continued to order the attack with a black face, originally Nogi Noshinori was going to directly use the previous division to charge, but due to the terrain and the narrow attack channel, it was difficult to put down an entire division and attack at the same time, so it was still the same as yesterday, and the tactics of rotating attacks were adopted.

To put it bluntly, it's a refueling tactic, and when the wing that went up before is almost beaten, send a second wing to take over the attack!

In this small place, Nogi Noshinori has invested a division to participate in the battle, the defending Russian army was three battalions at first, but later two battalions were reinforced, in the face of the fierce attack of the Japanese army, the Russian army did not want to reinforce more troops, but the big lonely mountain, the small lonely mountain place is so big, and the defensive strength is too much to stop.

After only two days of fighting, both sides were already suffering heavy casualties, the Russian army was killed and wounded by heavy Japanese artillery fire, and the Japanese attacked a large number of infantry were knocked down by machine gun fire.

In the Forward Command of the Third Army, Nogi Noshinori, commander of the Third Army, Chikosuke Iji, chief of staff of the Third Army, Matsumura Takemoto, commander of the First Division, and Hisashi Oshima, commander of the Ninth Division, and many other high-ranking generals of the Third Army sat together, all of them sitting upright, while the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Third Army, Jiro Niwa Nakasa, stood expressionlessly and read the battle report in his hand:

"Since yesterday, our army has successively invested the second wing, the third wing, the seventh wing, the thirty-fifth wing, the nineteenth wing, and the thirty-sixth wing to participate in the attack on the outer positions of Lushun, of which the attack on the forward positions of the 203rd highland and the forward positions of the northern naval division battalion is relatively smooth, but our army's attack on Dagushan and Xiaogushan has been resisted by the Russian army. A total of 1,600 men were killed and 3,800 wounded.

The list of officers killed in the 7th Wing is as follows: Infantry Captain Sakuma Kingo, Infantry Major Captain Yoshida Yujiro, Infantry Captain Toyoshijiro Nishida, Infantry Lieutenant Tomoo Nomura, Infantry Lieutenant Sadao Ota......

The list of officers killed in the 35th Wing is as follows, Masao Nakamura of the infantry, Masao Nakamura of the infantry, and ...... of the infantry"

It's just a long, long list, Rao is Ting Erlang Zhongzuo used a expressionless and extremely calm voice at first, but later there was already a slight tremor between the words!

The other high-ranking generals of the Third Army were also cautious, although everyone present had expected that the attack on Lushun would suffer great casualties before the battle, but they did not expect that they had not yet hit the Lushun Fortress, and they had already suffered such heavy casualties after just hitting a few forward positions in the fortress, and in just two days, the Seventh Wing and the Thirty-fifth Wing had been completely disabled, and almost half of the officers below the wing commander were killed, and even the captain and squadron leader of the unit had even confused many people.

The Seventh Wing, which suffered the heaviest casualties, had a large force of nearly 3,000 men before the war, and now there are only more than 600 people!

"Your Excellency, retreat!" Chief of Staff Chikosuke Iji looked at Nogi Noshinori!

But the commander of the first division on the side, Matsumura Matsumoto, said with a hideous face: "Retreat? I heard you right, is it time to give up the achievements of the brave battles of the soldiers? ”

Ichi Chikosuke said: "Now that many heavy artillery pieces of our army have not been transported, and artillery shells are even more scarce, haven't you seen the attack in the past two days?" How can you rush without shells, without bullets? ”

Seeing the people below arguing, Nogi Noshinori above did not speak, his thoughts had returned to the few words that Dashan Yan had said to him when he came to inspect Lushun last month, he said that the First Battle of Lushun was not only about the glory of the army, but also about the victory or defeat of the imperial navy.

The reason why Oyama Iwa said these things is that at the end of July, when Oyama Iwa was holding a summit meeting between the navy and the army with Togo Heihachiro, the headquarters of the Combined Naval Fleet, the navy repeatedly said to the army: "We are also very uneasy about making excessive demands on the army, but attacking Arthur is an urgent need, and the navy has only one demand: that is, the army only needs to drive the Russian navy out of Port Arthur, and as long as it can drive the Russian navy out of Port Arthur, then the navy will definitely be able to destroy them!" After the annihilation, we need to return to Sasebo to rest and prepare for the Russian Second Pacific Fleet. ”

Why did the Japanese Navy say that it had made excessive demands on the Army? Because the Japanese navy did not consider directly conquering the fortress of Arthur before the war, the plan of the Japanese navy was to carry out a blockade operation on Arthur in an attempt to completely close off Arthur, and later after the failure of this tactic, it was ready to use a strong attack to destroy the Russian fleet in the port, but it was fiercely bombarded by Arthur shore artillery.

In the end, it was forced to block outside the port of Arthur and implement a naval blockade of Arthur, but the Japanese Navy could not stay outside Arthur for a long time.

At the same time, Russia was already preparing to build the Second Pacific Fleet and was preparing to transfer the original Baltic Fleet to the Far East.

Although the Japanese navy of this era has self-confidence, to be honest, neither the world nor they themselves think that the Russian navy is already vulnerable, otherwise Akiyama Shinyuki would not have come up with the so-called blockage tactics, seven-stage strikes and the like, and it would be a matter of direct fleet decisive battle!

Therefore, the Japanese navy, which was very troubled, was forced to put down its face, and then asked the army to help conquer the fortress of Arthur.

From this point of view, it can be considered that the Japanese army never considered forcibly conquering the fortress of Arthur before the war, and the Japanese army was only preparing to block the connection between Arthur and Mukden from the land, so that Lushun, who was under siege, could surrender on its own initiative.

In the face of the Navy's request and the strong pressure from the domestic base camp, Dashan Yan said at that time: The Navy's predicament is understood by our Army, and as an Army, we will do our best to support the Navy. But Oyama also said: he has not heard that the Russian Pacific Second Fleet has left the port!

The implication is that there is still more time, so there is no need to rush!

However, the Japanese navy was still not satisfied, and they could not know when the Russian Second Pacific Fleet would come to the Far East, so they naturally hoped that the sooner the better, and that after the early battle of Lushun, they would be able to prepare for the Russian Second Pacific Fleet one day earlier.

In the face of pressure from the Japanese Navy, Gentaro Kodama of the General Staff of the Manchurian Army had no choice but to make a promise: The Third Army, which had been prepared to attack Lushun, had landed on the Liaodong Peninsula and would conquer Lushun in one fell swoop in late August.

That is to say, in this summit meeting between the navy and the army, the Japanese army gave the Japanese navy a guarantee, that is, to launch a general offensive in late August, and now attack the forward positions of the Lushun fortress such as Dagushan and Xiaogushan in order to make general preparations for the end of August.

However, even Nogi Noshinori, who had already planned to pay huge casualties in the Lushun Fortress, did not expect that he would be greatly hindered in the forward positions such as the small Big Lonely Mountain and the Little Lonely Mountain.

However, if the casualties are large, can't they be fought?

Nogi Noshinori spoke: "There is no need to mention the retreat, even if our army is short of shells and bullets, we still need to carry forward the spirit of bushido, in order to take the forward positions such as Dagushan as soon as possible!" ”

At the beginning of the landing, the Japanese army attacked Jinzhou, Dalian and other places, although the whole process seemed relatively easy, but the actual casualties were not small, and the casualties were four or five thousand in order to conquer Jinzhou alone, not to mention Liaoyang, and the casualties of hundreds of thousands of people were not small, and there was a case in front of a division that suffered more than half of the casualties in one day.

Therefore, although the casualties of only three or four thousand people are not small, they will definitely not be able to dispel Nogi Noshinori's determination to conquer Lushun!

In history, when the Japanese army attacked the peripheral positions such as Dagushan and Xiaogushan in late July, although the casualties were not small, it took four days before and after to take it, but this time they not only suffered much greater casualties than in history, but more importantly, after six or seven days, the Japanese army still failed to take the two small positions of Dagushan and Xiaogushan, and even the forward positions of the 203 heights were recaptured by the Russian counteroffensive after being conquered for a time.

After seven or eight days of fighting, the actual progress of the Japanese army was to conquer the forward positions of some of the northern naval divisions!

When the war first broke out, Zhao Dongyun reminded the Russian army of various means, such as the importance of machine guns, and the importance of the 203 heights, and even in order to let the Russian army better build a trench defense system, Zhao Dongyun also taught the Russians how to dig trenches and arrange heavy machine guns......