General Oku's attack was ferocious. To him had been assigned the task of turning the Russian right back upon Mukden at the centre to make it impossible for this force to assume an offensive initiative and swing northward to cut off Nogi when the culminating attack had been delivered. Sandiapu, that had been the scene of the desperate failure of Gripenberg, was the pivot for the Japanese attack. General Oku avoided the Russian right centre just left of the railroad, because these positions were in part commanded by Putiloff Hill, and the taking of the Russian fortifications here would only mean a falling back under the protection of Russia's impregnable centre. With Sandiapu as a pivot, however, Oku drove the attack in a northeasterly direction, rather than northward, parallel to the Russian lines. His assaults began simultaneously with Kuroki's attack at Tsinkhetchen, and in one tremendous dash the Russian line was broken, crumbled in the plain five miles north of Sandiapu, and the struggle had begun which after ten days' fighting had doubled the Russian flank back until its line, beginning at a point five miles west of the railroad, was bent back at right angles to the line it had occupied at the opening of the battle. This achievement had been accomplished in the face of a determined resistance. Throughout the struggle the artillery was rendered useless for hours at a time, while the infantry engaged in hand-to-hand struggles. The story of the attack on a single of the score or more of villages is typical of all of them. [Sidenote: Village by Village Taken] There was a brief lull just at dawn. Then for an hour field guns roared all along the line searching for the infantry lines and batteries of the enemy. House and walls were the targets. Shells in deadly showers ground walls to dust, ploughed the fields, shaved the crowns from broken ground that might hide creeping lines of troops. An hour of systematic, sweeping bombardment, then the army was ready for the business of the hour. From cover on every side little squads of Japanese troops dashed into the open. Ten yards they sped then threw themselves prone on the ground wherever any approach to protection could be found.