The advance at the beginning of October, 1904, was made when the army was much below strength, some regiments having only half, and even less, of their proper complement. And this shortage of men was increased on the eve of a battle by the large numbers left with the transport, at the staff quarters and as officers’ servants—men who were in reality combatants. Curiously enough, many commanding officers showed no particular anxiety to take their units into action as strong as possible. But what was most serious was the speed with which some units melted away as soon as they came under fire; directly casualties happened this dissolution commenced. Men were told off, with the knowledge of their commanding officers, to assist company and divisional stretcher-bearers in carrying the wounded out of action. If the number of wounded were large, an enormous number of unwounded men went to the rear. The cowardly and the skulkers did their best to get detailed for this duty, or went off with wounded men without orders, or left the ranks without any excuse. I have seen stretchers with wounded men accompanied by as many as ten unwounded soldiers. In some regiments the numbers thus voluntarily retiring from the field amounted to hundreds; in one regiment[88] more than 1,000 men left the ranks in the first fight in which it took part. These were generally reservists, and chiefly those of the 2nd Category. The men with the colours, as a rule, did most of the fighting, and fought magnificently; sometimes even when companies were reduced to a handful of men they continued fighting. Of course, there were some gallant men amongst reservists, but, as a rule, any brave deeds that were performed were done by the men with the colours and 1st Category reservists. Even for the drafts, the men sent to the front were not selected with adequate care, and many were quite unfit for active service. In 1905, of some 76,000 who arrived for the 1st Army, 4,100 were sick or otherwise unfit. The following statement by the Adjutant-General of that Army is interesting:
“The drafts sent to the Army before the battle of Mukden were composed of 2nd Category reservists who left the colours about 1887. They were quite ignorant of the present rifle, and their training was in other ways far below the level of the men forming the permanent cadres of their units. Many of them were physically quite unfitted to endure the hardships of a campaign or of any military service, being chronic sufferers from diseases such as rheumatism. But those who arrived after the battle of Mukden were splendid. Reservists were sometimes drafted to an Arm of the service in which they had not served before passing to the reserve; for instance, men were put into the artillery who had done all their colour service in cavalry or infantry, while to engineer units were sent men who had served in the infantry. This, of course, caused considerable complication as regards training, and could not but militate against our field operations, especially in the case of the technical troops.”