I was unconscious for two hours. My neck is still very sore. When I regained consciousness I was placed in the wagon, but the bumping over ruts and rocks fairly drove me mad, and I said I could not stand it. I was told that I could walk, which I did. The wagon went on. I reached the hospital at 7 o'clock the next morning after a night of agony. At this hospital I was told that I was injured internally and that they could do nothing for me, that I would have to go to the United States for an operation, and here I am.
I hope to be in Springfield soon, but I am as weak as a child and cannot walk fifty yards. On top of my accidents I had a case of bilious fever and was shoved into the yellow fever hospital for several days. Bilious fever is a nasty thing, although not dangerous. There are thousands of cases of it in our Cuban army. It arises, I believe, from sleeping on the rain-soaked ground and in wet clothing night after night. There was not a day while I was in Cuba, with the exception of time spent in the hospital, that I was not soaked through from rain. Mosquitoes at night and flies during day make life unbearable here. They are a thousand times worse than any I ever saw. I am bitten from head to foot. They bite clear through the clothing.
When Captain Capron was killed at the battle of La Quasima Lieutenant Thomas became the commander of the troop. He was on the point of leading the fierce charge against the Spaniards when shot down by a Mauser bullet passing through his right leg below the knee. He gives the following interesting account of his personal experience and observations:
Our trip from the point of landing to Siboney, a distance of about eleven miles, took about three hours, and was over a trail that was very muddy in parts and crossed a number of streams. Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt on this trip had his mount, but as we were not mounted he walked over the trail with us, leading his horse along. That was a simple act, but it indicated a feeling of comradeship he had for the members of the regiment and it touched a tender place in the men's hearts.
NO GLIMPSE OF SPANIARDS.
Lawton's command had gone over this trail before us and the Spaniards had retreated so that we did not get a glimpse of the Spaniards on that march. A few men who had been ill on shipboard with measles, and had recovered only a short time before, were still weak and had to drop out of the line, but they reached Siboney a little while after the main body of our regiment got there. We got to Siboney on the evening of June 23, and with our shelter tents were very comfortable until the next morning, although it rained.
We were up at 4 o'clock, had breakfast at 6, and then, on the morning of June 24th started from Siboney across a high hill leading to La Quasina, where the regiment had its first fight. The battle lasted two hours and forty minutes, though to those who took part in it it appeared a very much shorter time. As we were advancing we were constantly expecting a fire from the Spaniards. We were not ambushed at all.
After we had gone about two miles on that trail we came across the body of a Cuban, and after that we kept an especially sharp lookout. Troop L formed the advance guard, and we had skirmishers out ahead of us and to both the right and left. The skirmishers ahead of us were about 250 yards from the main body of our men, and it was one of these advanced skirmishers who discovered the Spaniards. Thomas E. Isbell, a Cherokee from Vinita, I. T., was the one to make the discovery of the Spanish force. He fired the first shot in that battle and dropped a Spaniard. Isbell was wounded seven times and then managed to walk back to the field hospital, two and a half or three miles away, to get his wounds dressed.
HARD FIGHTING AHEAD.
As soon as we learned that the Spanish were in advance of us we deployed the men six feet apart, advancing into the firing line. The Spaniards had some machine guns ahead of us, and our men received the full force of this fire. There was also firing from the right and the left. We were at this time upon the knoll of a hill, the Spaniards being about us at lower elevations. Before Isbell discovered the Spaniards a blockhouse had been seen, and we knew what was ahead of us.