The holes where the ball
entered and went out again were clearly cut. Another man's skin was
slightly burned by three bullets in three distinct lines, as though
it had been touched for an instant by the lighted end of a cigar.
Greenway was shot through this shirt across the breast, and Roosevelt
was so close to one bullet, when it struck a tree, that it filled his
eyes and ears with tiny splinters. Major Brodie and Lieutenant
Thomas were both wounded within a few feet of Colonel Wood, and his
color-sergeant, Wright, who followed close at his heels, was clipped
three times in the head and neck, and four bullets passed through the
folds of the flag he carried. One trooper, Rowland, of Deming, was
shot through the lower ribs; he was ordered by Roosevelt to fall back
to the dressing station, but there Church told him there was nothing
he could do for him then, and directed him to sit down until he could
be taken to the hospital at Siboney. Rowland sat still for a short
time, and then remarked restlessly, "I don't seem to be doing much
good here," and picking up his carbine, returned to the firing-line.
There Roosevelt found him.
"I thought I ordered you to the rear," he demanded.
"Yes, sir, you did," Rowland said, "but there didn't seem to be much
doing back there."
After the fight he was sent to Siboney with the rest of the wounded,
but two days later he appeared in camp. He had marched from Siboney,
a distance of six miles, and uphill all the way, carrying his
carbine, canteen, and cartridge-belt.
"I thought you were in hospital," Wood said. "I was," Rowland
answered sheepishly, "but I didn't seem to be doing any good there."
They gave him up as hopeless, and he continued his duties and went
into the fight of the San Juan hills with the hole still through his
ribs. Another cowboy named Heffner, when shot through the body,
asked to be propped up against a tree with his canteen and cartridge-
belt beside him, and the last his troop saw of him he was seated
alone grimly firing over their heads in the direction of the enemy.
Early in the fight I came upon Church attending to a young cowboy,
who was shot through the chest. The entrance to his wound was so
small that Church could not insert enough of the gauze packing to
stop the flow of blood.
"I'm afraid I'll have to make this hole larger, he said to the boy,
"or you'll bleed to death."
"All right," the trooper answered, "I guess you know your business."
The boy stretched out on his back and lay perfectly quiet while
Church, with a pair of curved scissors, cut away the edges of the
wound.
