If A Man Had Raised His Arm Above His Head His Hand Would
Have Been Torn Off.
It had come up so suddenly that it was like two
dogs, each springing at the throat of the other, and in a greater
degree it had something of the sound of two wild animals struggling
for life.
Volley answered volley as though with personal hate - one
crashing in upon the roll of the other, or beating it out of
recognition with the bursting roar of heavy cannon. At the same
instant all of the Turkish batteries opened with great, ponderous,
booming explosions, and the little mountain guns barked and snarled
and shrieked back at them, and the rifle volleys crackled and shot
out blistering flames, while the air was filled with invisible
express trains that shook and jarred it and crashed into one another,
bursting and shrieking and groaning. It seemed as though you were
lying in a burning forest, with giant tree trunks that had withstood
the storms of centuries crashing and falling around your ears, and
sending up great showers of sparks and flame. This lasted for five
minutes or less, and then the death-grip seemed to relax, the volleys
came brokenly, like a man panting for breath, the bullets ceased to
sound with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled aimlessly by, and
from hill-top to hill-top the officers' whistles sounded as though a
sportsman were calling off his dogs. The Turks withdrew into the
coming night, and the Greeks lay back, panting and sweating, and
stared open-eyed at one another, like men who had looked for a moment
into hell, and had come back to the world again.
The next day was like the first, except that by five o'clock in the
afternoon the Turks appeared on our left flank, crawling across the
hills like an invasion of great ants, and the Greek army that at
Velestinos had made the two best and most dignified stands of the war
withdrew upon Halmyros, and the Turks poured into the village and
burned it, leaving nothing standing save two tall Turkish minarets
that many years before, when Thessaly belonged to the Sultan, the
Turks themselves had placed there.
I - THE ROUGH RIDERS AT GUASIMAS
On the day the American troops landed on the coast of Cuba, the
Cubans informed General Wheeler that the enemy were intrenched at
Guasimas, blocking the way to Santiago. Guasimas is not a village,
nor even a collection of houses; it is the meeting place of two
trails which join at the apex of a V, three miles from the seaport
town of Siboney, and continue merged in a single trail to Santiago.
General Wheeler, guided by the Cubans, reconnoitred this trail on the
23rd of June, and with the position of the enemy fully explained to
him, returned to Siboney and informed General Young and Colonel Wood
that on the following morning he would attack the Spanish position at
Guasimas. It has been stated that at Guasimas, the Rough Riders were
trapped in an ambush, but, as the plan was discussed while I was
present, I know that so far from any ones running into an ambush,
every one of the officers concerned had a full knowledge of where he
would find the enemy, and what he was to do when he found him.
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