do very little damage to the great stone fort and earthworks north of the village.  The shots were too few and the metal used too light to be effectual.  Three hours of the morning had worn away and the advance of our men had been slowly made and at great cost; all the approaches were commanded by Spanish entrenchments and the fighting was very unequal.  A soldier of the Twenty-fifth says that when he came in sight of the battle at El Caney, “the Americans were gaining no ground, and the flashes of the Spanish mausers told us that the forces engaged were unequally matched, the difference of position favoring the Spaniards.”  This view was had about noon, or soon after.  At that time “a succession of aides and staff officers came galloping from headquarters with messages which plainly showed that confusion, if not disaster, had befallen the two divisions which, by the heavy firing, we had learned to our great surprise, had become warmly engaged in the centre.  The orders to General Lawton from headquarters were at first peremptory in character—­he was to pull out of his fight and to move his division to the support of the centre” (Bonsal).  This call for Lawton arose from the fact that about noon General Shafter received several dispatches from Sumner, of the Cavalry Division, requiring assistance.  General Sumner felt the need of the assistance of every available man in the centre of the line where he was carrying on his fight with the Spaniards on Blue House Hill.  This situation so impressed the General, Shafter, that he finally wrote to Lawton, “You must proceed with the remainder of your force and join on immediately upon Sumner’s right.  If you do not the battle is lost.”  Shafter’s idea then was to fall back to his original plan of just leaving enough troops at El Caney to prevent the garrison from going to the assistance of any other part of the line.  Shafter himself says:  “As the fight progressed I was impressed with the fact that we were meeting with a very stubborn resistance at El Caney and I began to fear that I had made a mistake in making two fights in one day, and sent Major Noble with orders to Lawton to hasten with his troops along the Caney road, placing himself on the right of Wheeler” (Sumner).  Lawton now made a general advance, and it is important to see just what troops did advance.  The Seventh Infantry did not move, for Lieutenant-Colonel Carpenter says that after withdrawing “to the partial cover furnished by the road, the regiment occupied this position from 8 o’clock a.m. until about 4.30 p.m.”  The Seventeenth did not move, for Captain O’Brien, commanding, says the regiment took a position joining “its left with the right of the Seventh Infantry” and that the regiment “remained in this position until the battle was over.”  The Twelfth Infantry remained in its shelter within 350 yards of the stone fort until about 4 p.m.  Then we have Chaffee’s brigade on the north of the fort remaining stationary and by their own reports doing but little firing.  The Seventeenth fired “for about fifty minutes” about noon, with remarkable precision, but “it seemingly had no effect upon reducing the Spanish fire delivered in our (their) front.”  The Seventh did not fire to any extent.  The Twelfth Infantry lay in its refuge “free from the enemy’s fire” and may have kept up an irregular fire.