The Trail, Virgin As Yet From The Foot Of An American
Soldier, Was As Wide As Its Narrowest Part, Which Was Some Ten Feet
Across.
At places it was as wide as Broadway, but only for such
short distances that it was necessary for the men to advance in
column, in double file.
A maze of underbrush and trees on either
side was all but impenetrable, and when the officers and men had once
assembled into the basin, they could only guess as to what lay before
them, or on either flank. At the end of a mile the country became
more open, and General Sumner saw the Spaniards intrenched a half-
mile away on the sloping hills. A stream, called the San Juan River,
ran across the trail at this point, and another stream crossed it
again two hundred yards farther on. The troops were halted at this
first stream, some crossing it, and others deploying in single file
to the right. Some were on the banks of the stream, others at the
edge of the woods in the bushes. Others lay in the high grass which
was so high that it stopped the wind, and so hot that it almost
choked and suffocated those who lay in it.
The enemy saw the advance and began firing with pitiless accuracy
into the jammed and crowded trail and along the whole border of the
woods. There was not a single yard of ground for a mile to the rear
which was not inside the zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to
return the fire but to lie still and wait for further orders. Some
of them could see the rifle-pits of the enemy quite clearly and the
men in them, but many saw nothing but the bushes under which they
lay, and the high grass which seemed to burn when they pressed
against it. It was during this period of waiting that the greater
number of our men were killed. For one hour they lay on their rifles
staring at the waving green stuff around them, while the bullets
drove past incessantly, with savage insistence, cutting the grass
again and again in hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang from
the ground and sank back again with a groan, or rolled to one side
clinging silently to an arm or shoulder. Behind the lines hospital
stewards passed continually, drawing the wounded back to the streams,
where they laid them in long rows, their feet touching the water's
edge and their bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up and down the
lines, and through the fords of the streams, mounted aides drove
their horses at a gallop, as conspicuous a target as the steeple on a
church, and one after another paid the price of his position and fell
from his horse wounded or dead. Captain Mills fell as he was giving
an order, shot through the forehead behind both eyes; Captain
O'Neill, of the Rough Riders, as he said, "There is no Spanish bullet
made that can kill me." Steel, Swift, Henry, each of them was shot
out of his saddle.
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