The fighting of all our soldiers, both at Caney and at San Juan, was daring and gallant in the extreme; but I cannot refrain from calling particular attention to the splendid behavior of the colored troops. It is the testimony of all who saw them under fire that they fought with the utmost courage, coolness, and determination, and Colonel Roosevelt said to a squad of them in the trenches, in my presence, that he never expected to have, and could not ask to have, better men beside him in a hard fight. If soldiers come up to Colonel Roosevelt's standard of courage, their friends have no reason to feel ashamed of them. His commendation is equivalent to a medal of honor for conspicuous gallantry, because, in the slang of the camp, he himself is "a fighter from 'way back." I can testify, furthermore, from my own personal observation in the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps Saturday and Saturday night, that the colored regulars who were brought in there displayed extraordinary fortitude and self-control. There were a great many of them, but I cannot remember to have heard a groan or a complaint from a single man. I asked one of them whether any of his comrades showed signs of fear when they went into action. "No," he replied, with a grin, "not egzactly; two or three of 'em looked kindo' squandered just at first, but they mighty soon braced up."
Among the volunteer regiments that were hotly engaged and lost heavily in Friday's battle were the Seventy-first New York and the Second Massachusetts. Both were armed with Springfield rifles, and this put them at a great disadvantage as compared with the regulars, all of whom used Krag-Jorgensen rifles or carbines with smokeless powder. In a wooded and chaparral-covered country like that around Santiago, where it was so easy to find concealment and so difficult to see troops at a distance, the use of smokeless powder was of the utmost possible importance. A body of men might be perfectly hidden in woods or chaparral within five hundred yards of the enemy's intrenchments, and if they used smokeless powder they might fire from there for half an hour without being seen or getting a return shot; but if they were armed with Springfields, the smoke from their very first volley revealed to the enemy their exact position, and the chaparral that concealed them was torn to pieces by a hail-storm of projectiles from Mausers and machine-guns. It was cruel and unreasonable to ask men to go into action, in such a field, with rifles that could be used only with common powder. Our men might as well have been required to hoist above the bushes and chaparral a big flag emblazoned with the words, "Here we are!" Dr. Hitchcock, surgeon of the Second Massachusetts, told me that again and again, when they were lying concealed in dense scrub beside a regiment of regulars, the latter would fire for twenty minutes without attracting a single return shot from the enemy's line; but the moment the men of the Second Massachusetts began to use their Springfields, and the smoke rose above the bushes, the Spaniards would concentrate their fire upon the spot, and kill or wound a dozen men in as many minutes. It is to be hoped that our government will not send any more troops abroad with these antiquated guns. They were good enough in their day, but they are peculiarly unsuited to the conditions of warfare in a tropical field.
Wounded men from the front continued to come into the hospital camp on Saturday until long after midnight, and the exhausted surgeons worked at the operating-tables by candlelight until 3 A. M. I noticed, carrying stretchers and looking after the wounded, two or three volunteer assistants from civil life, among them Mr. Brewer of Pittsburg, who died of yellow fever a few days later at Siboney.
Worn out by sleeplessness, fatigue, and the emotional strain of two nights and a day of field-hospital experience, I stretched my hammock between two trees, about three o'clock in the morning, crawled into it, and slept, for two or three hours, the dead, dreamless sleep of complete exhaustion. Dr. Egan, I think, did not lie down at all. After all the other surgeons had gone to their tents, he wandered about the camp, looking after the wounded who lay shivering here and there on the bare, wet ground, and giving them, with medicines, stomach-tube, and catheter, such relief as he could. Soon after sunrise I awoke, and after a hasty breakfast began carrying around food and water. I shall not attempt to describe fully the terrible and heartrending experience of that morning; but two or three of the scenes that I was compelled to witness seem, even now, to be etched on my memory in lines of blood. About nine o'clock, for example, I went into a small wall-tent which sheltered a dozen or more dangerously wounded Spaniards and Cuban insurgents. Everything that I saw there was shocking. On the right-hand side of the tent, face downward and partly buried in the water-soaked, oozy ground, lay a half-naked Cuban boy, nineteen or twenty years of age, who had died in the night. He had been wounded in the head and at some time during the long hours of darkness between sunset and dawn the bandage had partly slipped off, and hemorrhage had begun. The blood had run down on his neck and shoulders, coagulating and stiffening as it flowed, until it had formed a large, red, spongy mass around his neck and on his naked back between the shoulder-blades. This, with the coal-black hair, the chalky face partly buried in mud, and the distorted, agonized attitude of the half-nude body, made one of the most ghastly pictures I had ever seen. There was already a stench of decomposition in the hot air of the tent, and the coagulated blood on the half-naked corpse, as well as the bloody bandage around its head, was swarming with noisy flies. Just beyond this terrible object, and looking directly at it, was another young Cuban who had been shot through the body, and who was half crouching, half kneeling, on the ground, with his hands pressed to his loins. He was deadly pale, had evidently been in torment all night, and was crying, over and over again, in a low, agonized tone, "Oh, my mother, my mother, my mother!" as he looked with distracted eyes at the bloody, half-naked body of his dead comrade and saw in it his own impending fate. The stench, the buzzing flies, the half-dried blood, the groans, and the cries of "O, mi madre!" "O Jesu!" from the half-naked wretches lying in two rows on the bare, muddy ground, came as near making an inferno as anything one is ever likely to see.
In another tent, a short distance away, I found a smooth-faced American soldier about thirty years of age, who had been shot in the head, and also wounded by a fragment of a shell in the body. He was naked to the waist, and his whole right side, from-the armpit to the hip, had turned a purplish-blue color from the bruising blow of the shell. Blood had run down from under the bandage around his head, and had then dried, completely covering his swollen face and closed eyelids with a dull-red mask. On this had settled a swarm of flies, which he was too weak to brush away, or in too much pain to notice. I thought, at first, that he was dead; but when I spoke to him and offered him water, he opened his bloodshot, fly-encircled eyes, looked at me for a moment in a dull, agonized way, and then closed them and faintly shook his head. Whether he lived or died, I do not know. When I next visited the tent he was gone.
As soon as possible after my arrival at the hospital I had obtained an order from Lieutenant-Colonel Pope, chief surgeon of the Fifth Army-Corps, for wagons, and on Saturday afternoon I telephoned Miss Barton from General Shafter's headquarters to send us blankets, clothing, malted milk, beef extract, tents, tent-flies, and such other things as were most urgently needed. Sunday afternoon, less than twenty-four hours after my message reached her, she rode into the hospital camp in an army wagon, with Mrs. Gardner, Dr. Gardner, Dr. Hubbell, and Mr. McDowell. They brought with them a wagon-load of supplies, including everything necessary for a small Red Cross emergency station, and in less than two hours they were refreshing all the wounded men in the camp with corn-meal gruel, hot malted milk, beef extract, coffee, and a beverage known as "Red Cross cider," made by stewing dried apples or prunes in a large quantity of water, and then pouring off the water, adding to it the juice of half a dozen lemons or limes, and setting it into the brook in closed vessels to cool. After that time no sick or wounded man in the camp, I think, ever suffered for want of suitable food and drink.
On Monday Miss Barton and Dr. Hubbell went back to the steamer at Siboney for additional supplies, and in twenty-four hours more we had blankets, pillows, and hospital delicacies enough to meet all demands. We should have had them there before the battle began, if we could have obtained transportation for them from the sea-coast. As fast as possible the wounded were taken in army wagons from the field-hospital to Siboney, where they were put on board the transports, and at eight o'clock on Tuesday evening Major Johnson was able to report to Major Wood that every wounded man left in the hospital was in a tent, with a rubber poncho or tarpaulin under him and a blanket over him.
In spite of unfavorable conditions, the percentage of recoveries among the wounded treated in this hospital was much greater than in any other war in which the United States has ever been engaged. This was due partly to improved antiseptic methods of treatment, and partly to the nature of the wound made by the Mauser bullet. In most cases this wound was a small, clean perforation, with very little shattering or mangling, and required only antiseptic bandaging and care. All abdominal operations that were attempted in the field resulted in death, and none were performed after the first day, as the great heat and dampness, together with the difficulty of giving the patients proper nursing and care, made recovery next to impossible.
CHAPTER XIII
SIBONEY DURING THE ARMISTICE