“Gentlemen, the show has started,” said the British Captain, as he removed his cap and started adjusting his “opera glass.”  No sooner had he said this than the reports of guns came from all directions with a continuous rumble as if a giant bowling alley were in use.  Everywhere the valley at the rear of Tsing-tau was alive with golden flashes from discharging guns, and at the same time great clouds of bluish-white smoke would suddenly spring up around the German batteries where some Japanese shell had burst.  Over near the greater harbor of Tsing-tau we could see flames licking up the Standard Oil Company’s large tanks.  We afterward learned that these had been set on fire by the Germans and not by a bursting shell.

And then the warships in the Yellow Sea opened fire on Iltis Fort, and for three hours we continually played our glasses on the field—­on Tsing-tau and on the warships.  With glasses on the central redoubt of the Germans we watched the effects of the Japanese fire until the boom of guns from the German Fort A, on a little peninsula jutting out from Kiao-Chau Bay, toward the east, attracted our attention there.  We could see the big siege gun on this fort rise up over the bunker, aim at a warship, fire, and then quickly go down again.  And then we would turn our eyes toward the warships in time to see a fountain of water 200 yards from a vessel, where the shell had struck.  We scanned the city of Tsing-tau.  The 150-ton crane in the greater harbor, which we had seen earlier in the day, and which was said to be the largest crane in the world, had disappeared and only its base remained standing.  A Japanese shell had carried away the crane.

But this first day’s firing of the Japanese investing troops was mainly to test the range of the different batteries.  The attempt also was made to silence the line of forts extending in the east from Iltis Hill, near the wireless and signal stations at the rear of Tsing-tau, to the coast fort near the burning oil tank on the west.  In this they were partly successful, two guns at Iltis Fort being silenced by the guns at sea.

On Nov. 1, the second day of the bombardment, we again stationed ourselves on the peak of Prinz Heinrich Berg.  From the earliest hours of morning the Japanese and British forces had kept up a continuous fire on the German redoubts in front of the Iltis, Moltke, and Bismarck forts, and when we arrived at our seats it seemed as though the shells were dropping around the German trenches every minute.  Particularly on the redoubt of Taitung-Chen was the Japanese fire heavy, and by early afternoon, through field glasses, this German redoubt appeared to have had an attack of smallpox, so pitted was it from the holes made by bursting Japanese shells.  By nightfall many parts of the German redoubts had been destroyed, together with some machine guns.  The result was the advancing of the Japanese lines several hundred yards from the bottom of the hills where they had rested earlier in the day.