“Where did they get you, neighbor?” I asked him.

“Oh, durn their skins,” he said in the cheerfulest way, turning to me with a smile, “they got me twice—­a splinter of a shell in the foot and a bullet through the calf of the same leg when I was being carried back from the firing line.”

“A sharpshooter?”

“The son of a mongrel was up in a tree.”

“And you’re walking back to Siboney.  Wasn’t there room for you to ride?” I expected an angry outburst of indignation in reply to this question.  But I was mistaken.  In a plain, matter-of-fact way he said: 

“Guess not.  They wanted all the riding room for worse cases ’n mine.  Thank God, my two wounds are both in the same leg, so I can walk quite good and spry.  They told me I’d be better off down at the landing yonder, so I got these crutches and made a break.”

“And how are you getting along?” I asked.

“Good and well,” he said, as cheerfully as might be, “just good and easy.”  And with his one sound leg and hist two sticks he went cheerfully paddling along.

It was just the same with other walking wounded men.  They were all beautifully cheerful.  And not merely cheerful.  They were all absolutely unconscious that they were undergoing any unnecessary hardships or sufferings.  They knew now that war was no picnic, and they were not complaining at the absence of picnic fare.  Some of them had lain out all the night, with the dew falling on them where the bullets had dropped them, before their turn came with the overworked field surgeons.

Captain Paddock tells of the fighting before Santiago.

On the Battlefield, One Mile East of Santiago, Sunday, July 3.

My Dear “Jim”:  I have passed safely through the most horrible three days imaginable.  We marched nearly all night Thursday (June 30), to a point about one and a half miles east from here, and then waited for morning.  About 5 o’clock we started again, and at 6 A. M. our extreme right opened, the fight.  The center (our front) and the left moved into position, and at 8 o’clock the Spanish artillery opened on us from the position we now hold.  We deployed as skirmishers and advanced through woods and brush, a perfect thicket; our artillery was hard at work behind us, but we with our small arms could not do much, as the Spanish were perfectly intrenched for a mile or more along our front.

We kept pushing along, although their fire, both shrapnel and small arms, was murdering us; but on we came, through the tropical underbrush, and wading a stream up to our chests, firing when we could see the enemy.

We reached the first line along a hillcrest and drove them out; then the next line, and they then started back to the city.  The fighting was fast and fearful and never slackened until dark.  The second day (Saturday) was a continuous fight again till dark; but our loss was small, as we simply held our position, having driven them all in; at night, however, they made a furious attack and attempted to retake the place.  We were not surprised, and drove them back, with small loss on our side.