1. This is a stirring selection to read aloud. What makes it so? Read the lines that you like best.
2. What has the first stanza on page 324 to do with the poem?
3. Explain: Suliote; Moslem; Platæa; lines 25-27, page 324.
SAN JUAN HILL
By General John J. Pershing
Santiago, Cuba, was the center of some of the heaviest fighting of the Spanish-American War. The Spanish fleet had taken refuge from the American fleet in Santiago Harbor. The Spanish army had been concentrated there to protect their fleet. The American army, under the general command of Major General Shafter, invested the city. The following extract describes picturesquely the fighting three days before the Spanish fleet put to sea.
On June 30th the general order came to move forward
and every man felt that the final test of skill at arms
would soon come. The cavalry division of six regiments,
camped in its tracks at midnight on El Pozo Hill, awoke
next morning to find itself in support of Grimes' Battery,5
which was to open fire here on the left.
The morning of July 1st was ideally beautiful, the sky
was cloudless and the air soft and balmy, peace seemed to
reign supreme, great palms towered here and there above
the low jungle. It was a picture of a peaceful valley. 10
There was a feeling that we had secretly invaded the Holy
Land. The hush seemed to pervade all nature as though
she held her bated breath in anticipation of the carnage.