July 3 opened clear and bright, the commencement of a hard and busy day, to be long remembered. Our shippers had been landing supplies all night and keeping such guard over them on the sandy beach as was possible.
The daily record of our movements kept always up and open, like the log of the ship, must now fall to the hands of our faithful stenographer, Miss Lucy Graves, and taking up her duties bravely that day, she commences with this paragraph:
“Miss Barton, with Dr. and Mrs. Gardner, Dr. Hubbell and Mr. McDowell, leave for the front to-day, taking two six-mule wagon loads of hospital supplies.” To the young writer it was a simple note in the records of the day, having no special significance. As my eye glanced over it it seemed very strange—passing strange, that after all this more than a quarter of a century I should be again taking supplies to the front of an army in the United States of America; that after all these years of Red Cross instruction and endeavor, it was still necessary to promiscuously seize an army wagon to get food to wounded men.
I hope in some way it may be made apparent to any one who follows these notes how difficult a thing it was to get this food from our ship to the shore. In a surf which after ten o’clock in the morning allowed no small boat to touch even the bit of a pier that was run out without breaking either the one or the other, and nothing in the form of a lighter save two dilapidated flat boat scows which had been broken and cast away by the engineer corps, picked up by ourselves, mended by the Cubans, and gotten in condition to float alongside our ship and receive perhaps three or four tons of material. This must then be rowed or floated out to the shore, run on to the sands as far as possible, the men jumping into the water from knee to waist deep, pulling the scow up from the surf, and getting the material on land. This was what was meant by loading the “seized wagons from the front” and getting food to the wounded. After ten o’clock in the day even this was impossible, and we must wait until the calm of the next morning, three or four o’clock, to commence work again and go through the same struggle in order to get something to load the wagons for that day.
Our supplies had been gotten out, all that could be sent that day for the heavy surf, and among the last, rocking and tossing in our little boat, went ourselves, landing on the pier, which by that time was breaking in two, escaping a surf which every other moment threatened to envelop one from feet to head, we reached the land. Our wagons were there already loaded with our best hospital material,—meal, flour, condensed milk, malted milk, tea, coffee, sugar, dried fruits, canned fruits, canned meats, and such other things as we had been able to get out in the haste of packing—entirely filling the two wagons.
An ambulance had been spoken of, but could not be had. We walked out a little way to wait for it. Dr. Hubbell left our party and went again in search of an ambulance, notwithstanding the assurance that an army wagon would answer our purpose quite as well. These were going line by line up to the front, mainly with ammunition. We waited a little by the roadside; the doctor did not return; our own wagons had gone on, and stopping another loaded with bales of hay, we begged a ride of the driver, and all took our seats among the hay and made our way once more to the front.
The road was simply terrific—clayey, muddy, wet and cut to the hub. A ride of about four hours brought us to the First Division Hospital of the Fifth Army Corps, General Shafter’s headquarters. This was properly the second day after the fight. Two fearful nights had passed.
The sight that greeted us on going into the so-called hospital grounds was something indescribable. The land was perfectly level—no drainage whatever, covered with long, tangled grass, skirted by trees, brush and shrubbery—a few little dog tents, not much larger than would have been made of an ordinary tablecloth thrown over a short rail, and under these lay huddled together the men fresh from the field or from the operating tables, with no covering over them save such as had clung to them through their troubles, and in the majority of cases no blanket under them. Those who had come from the tables, having been compelled to leave all the clothing they had, as having been too wet, muddy and bloody to be retained by them, were entirely nude, lying on the stubble grass, the sun fitfully dealing with them, sometimes clouding over, and again streaming out in a blaze above them. As we passed, we drew our hats over our eyes, turning our faces away as much as possible for the delicacy of the poor fellows who lay there with no shelter either from the elements or the eyes of the passers-by.
Getting past them as quickly as possible, and seeing a smoke ahead of us, and relying upon the old adage that where there is smoke there must be fire, we went to it. A half-dozen bricks had been laid about a yard apart, a couple of pieces of wagon-tire laid across these, so low and so near the ground that no fire of any strength or benefit could be made, the bits of wet wood put under crosswise, with the smoke streaming a foot out on each side, and two kettles of coffee or soup and a small frying-pan with some meat in it, appeared to be the cook-house for these men. They told us there were about eight hundred men under the tents and lying in the grass, and more constantly coming in.
I looked at the men who had constructed and who had charge of that “fireplace,” and saw how young and inexperienced the faces were, and how little they could know of the making up of a camp, and how unsatisfactory it must all be to themselves, and was filled with a sense of pity for them as well as the poor sufferers they were trying to serve. I looked around for the faces of some old veterans of the wars before, who could bring a little knowledge gained from practice. There were none there, but here was our own McDowell, with a record of four years and twenty-six battles in the old Civil War, and after a few moments’ consultation as to the best method to be pursued, we, too, gathered stones and bricks and constructed a longer, higher fireplace, got more wagon-tires, found the water, and soon our great agate kettles of seven and ten gallons were filled. But the wood! It was green, not resinous as the wood of some islands. In Corsica, for instance, one may take the green, wet wood and make a blazing fire. The wood of Cuba is beautiful in quality, but hard and slow to burn.