During the defense of Port Arthur, the general for the first time in the Russian army used fire from closed positions
Vasily Fedorovich Bely, a famous Russian military leader, was born on January 19 (31), 1854 in Yekaterinodar, in the family of a Cossack descended from the Zaporozhye clan of the Shcherbinovsky kuren.
He served in a Cossack artillery battery, took part in the last Russian-Turkish war, during which he distinguished himself in the battle near the village of Begli-Akhmet, the battle on the Aladzhin heights, in the assault on Kars and the siege of Erzerum.
In 1891 he completed his studies at the Moscow Officers' Artillery School. He served in Kars, Warsaw and Sevastopol. All this time, Vasily Fedorovich has been improving his knowledge in the field of artillery, at the St. Petersburg gun factory he is studying new electrical engineering, participates in testing pivot devices and vertical-base rangefinders, investigates the device for controlling the group fire of coastal batteries of the de Charière system.
In 1900, with the rank of colonel, he was sent to the Far East, where he took command of the Kwantung fortress artillery.
During the Russo-Japanese War, Vasily Fedorovich became one of the heroes of Port Arthur. Commanding the fortress artillery, Bely withstood the entire siege of Port Arthur. He was ready to arm the entire mountain range with cannons up to the "Bay of Ten Ships" and to beat the Japanese at sea and on land.
However, this proposal did not meet with support from senior officials. Bely developed the rules for signaling and patrol service, here he first used shooting from closed positions. The general was especially concerned with ordinary soldiers, he monitored the living conditions of the battery teams, the soldiers felt the general's love and responded in kind. During the defense, the commander was always on the front line along with the defenders of the fortress.
At the military council on December 14, 1904, Vasily Fedorovich courageously spoke out for the continuation of the defense, stating that there would be enough shells to repulse two assaults, this statement, with documents in hand, he then had to prove in court. In February 1905, the general experienced another terrible event, his eldest son Ivan, who, like his father, served as an artilleryman, died in the Battle of Mukden.
Unlike General Stoessel, who surrendered Port Arthur, who calmly went home with a huge baggage of personal property, Major General Bely did not use the right to return to Russia and voluntarily went into captivity, hoping to be useful to his colleagues there. He stayed with his soldiers, who paid a high price for the Far Eastern borders of Russia.
He spent 11 months in captivity, and upon his return he was the chairman of the commission for the reception of our prisoners returning to their homeland. The lands then lost to Russia will return to it only four decades later, after the surrender of Japan in 1945.
Disease, loss due to illness of the leg at the beginning of 1911 forced Vasily Bely, a holder of many orders and general from artillery, to leave the service and Vladivostok. He died two years later in Tsarskoe Selo.
