Look at the Su wang-fu and the plucky little Japanese colonel!  You will, perhaps, remember that I said that the great flanking wall of the Su wang-fu was far too big a task for the Japanese command, and that sooner or later they would have to give way.  It has been proved days ago that what I said was correct, for slowly but surely the fire of two Chinese guns has demolished successively the outer wall, the enclosed courtyards behind it, and then a line of houses linked together by field-works hastily constructed from the rubble lying around.  It was my duty to be one of a post six men hastily sent here and entrenched on the fringe of our defence in one of these Chinese houses.  It was a curious experience.  It lasted for hours.

Inside the partly demolished wall of one house we were forced to squat on a staging, peeping at the enemy, who was not more than twenty yards off, lying perdu just behind a confused mass of low-lying barricades.  These riflemen, flung far forward of the main Chinese positions in this quarter, lay very silent, hardly moving hour after hour.  A couple of hundred yards or so behind them, the main body of the enemy, secure behind massive earthen and brick works, poured in an unending fire on our devoted heads with a vigour which never seemed to flag.  Our loopholes, which we had carefully blocked up with loose bricks so that the merest cracks remained, spat dust at us as the enemy’s bullets persistently pecked at the outside, but could gain no entrance.  Sometimes a single missile would slue its way in through everything and end with a sob against the inside wall.  Once one came crash through and struck the Japanese who was next to me full in the face.  It knocked out two teeth, cut his mouth and his cheek so that they bled red blood hour after hour, making him hideous to look on; but the Japanese, calmly untying the clout which encased his head, bound it instead across the wound, merely cursing the enemy and not stirring an inch.  The rest of us had not time to note much even of that which was taking place right alongside of us; for we had orders to be ready at any moment for a forward rush.  If it had come we should have been caught in a trap and lost.  That I knew and understood.

We had stood this storm for a couple of hours, and were beginning to revenge ourselves on the advanced line of skirmishers by winging them whenever an incautious movement disclosed an arm or a leg, although we had the strictest orders not to fire except to check a rush, when a new danger presented itself, and was added to our already uncomfortable position.  An antiquated gun that had been sending screeching shells over our heads, had evidently been given orders to drive us from where we lay, for the shells which had been flying high moved lower and lower, and buzzed more and more fiercely, until at last one struck the roof.  The aim, however, was still too high, for the debris of tiles, timber and mortar clattered down the other side of the house and did us no harm.