Afterward, The
Men Of His Regiment Who Followed This Flag, Adopted A Polka-Dot
Handkerchief As The Badge Of The Rough Riders.
These two officers
were notably conspicuous in the charge, but no one can claim that any
two men, or any one man, was more brave or more daring, or showed
greater courage in that slow, stubborn advance, than did any of the
others.
Some one asked one of the officers if he had any difficulty
in making his men follow him. "No," he answered, "I had some
difficulty in keeping up with them." As one of the brigade generals
said: "San Juan was won by the regimental officers and men. We had
as little to do as the referee at a prize-fight who calls 'time.' We
called 'time' and they did the fighting."
I have seen many illustrations and pictures of this charge on the San
Juan hills, but none of them seem to show it just as I remember it.
In the picture-papers the men are running uphill swiftly and
gallantly, in regular formation, rank after rank, with flags flying,
their eyes aflame, and their hair streaming, their bayonets fixed, in
long, brilliant lines, an invincible, overpowering weight of numbers.
Instead of which I think the thing which impressed one the most, when
our men started from cover, was that they were so few. It seemed as
if some one had made an awful and terrible mistake. One's instinct
was to call to them to come back. You felt that some one had
blundered and that these few men were blindly following out some
madman's mad order. It was not heroic then, it seemed merely
absurdly pathetic. The pity of it, the folly of such a sacrifice was
what held you.
They had no glittering bayonets, they were not massed in regular
array. There were a few men in advance, bunched together, and
creeping up a steep, sunny hill, the tops of which roared and flashed
with flame. The men held their guns pressed across their chests and
stepped heavily as they climbed. Behind these first few, spreading
out like a fan, were single lines of men, slipping and scrambling in
the smooth grass, moving forward with difficulty, as though they were
wading waist high through water, moving slowly, carefully, with
strenuous effort. It was much more wonderful than any swinging
charge could have been. They walked to greet death at every step,
many of them, as they advanced, sinking suddenly or pitching forward
and disappearing in the high grass, but the others waded on,
stubbornly, forming a thin blue line that kept creeping higher and
higher up the hill. It was as inevitable as the rising tide. It was
a miracle of self-sacrifice, a triumph of bull-dog courage, which one
watched breathless with wonder. The fire of the Spanish riflemen,
who still stuck bravely to their posts, doubled and trebled in
fierceness, the crests of the hills crackled and burst in amazed
roars, and rippled with waves of tiny flame.
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