Firing begun.

We left camp on the 1st about daybreak, but we did not know we were going into battle.  We got into the jungle, after marching for a while, and then heard firing, apparently all around us.  Then our men began to fall, and we realized we were in it.  We kept struggling through the dense underbrush, first to the right, then to the left, and then to the front, as fast as we could find openings.  Everything was confusion.  Orders could not be given or obeyed.  Companies, battalions, regiments and brigades were all jumbled up.

We did not fire, for we could not see ten feet in any direction on account of the dense thickets in the jungle.  Finally I found myself with my company and part of the regiment in a trail or road by a broad, open field, across which, about 700 yards on a steep bluff, were the Spaniards, strongly entrenched.

We opened fire and kept it up for a while, but the road rapidly filled up with our soldiers, and it became too crowded to do anything.  There was a six-strand barbed-wire fence along the hedge between the road and the open.  All at once we began to try to tear it down and get at the enemy.  Captain Leven C. Alien, Captain W. C. McFarland, Captain Charles Noble, Captain George Palmer and Captain William Lassiter were close together with their companies (all of the Sixteenth infantry).  I was in the front, just behind my captain.  Officers and men dashed savagely at the fence, tore it down and leaped into the open field, the captains calling to their companies to “come on!” “Now we have a chance at them!  Come on!”

A hail of bullets.

The companies, or so much of them as heard the call, sprang into the field, the men following the five brave captains, and away we went in a terrible and most desperate charge.  The bullets hailed upon us, but when the old Sixteenth gets its “mad up” there is no use trying to stop it.  We had about two hundred men with us, five captains in the front line.  But soon others began to follow us, and the field was full of soldiers, all moving to the front, firing as they went.  We saw the enemy jump and run just before we reached the foot of the steep slope leading up to the crest.  Then one of our batteries began firing over our heads, and when we got near the top the shells began striking the ground between us and the crest, but we did not stop.  On we went, climbing on our hands and knees, when suddenly there arose a great shout down on the plain behind us, “Come back!  Come back!” The trumpets sounded “recall,” and our men, who had followed their captains so bravely, hesitated, stopped and began drifting back down the slope.

In vain our brave leaders swore at the loud-mouthed skulkers below.  They had suddenly become fearful for our safety—­they wrere afraid we would be hit by our own shells.  We settled reluctantly back near the foot of the slope.

Allen leads his men on.