The battle of Mukden, as the whole struggle has been officially called, had its climax on the west. The strategy of Marshal Oyama, as has been explained, culminated in the attack by the army of Port Arthur veterans, commanded by General Nogi. This attack was but part of the assault on the Russian right. The actual Japanese left army was commanded by General Oku, and during the long winter season had occupied a position extending westward from the Sha-ho River to the Hun, upon which at the front the Russian right rested, though when the battle had gotten under way this line was extended fifteen miles farther west to the banks of the Liao River. General Oku's lines and also the Russian lines, which he opposed, occupied a series of unmapped villages, most of them only occupied during the spring, summer and fall, when the fertile river valleys are in cultivation, the products of the region being similar to those of the Northern Central United States, east and west from Chicago as a centre. The village huts are built of rough hewn stone, the walls being of primitive build and oftentimes twelve inches thick. Stone walls around fields are of common occurrence, so that while the country generally was level, it had in these houses and walls many features offering protection to soldiery. To-day not a wall or fence in the whole region but shows the signs of the struggle that waged around them. Immediately after the battle heaps of dead marked every one of these shelters, showing where hand to hand struggles had taken place, as the Japanese, foot by foot, from house to house, from wall to wall, from village to village, had advanced across the plain.