ere was
tent-shelter for only about one hundred wounded men; there were no cots,
hammocks, mattresses, rubber blankets, or pillows for sick or injured
soldiers; the supply of woolen army blankets was very short and was soon
exhausted; and there was no clothing at all except two or three dozen
shirts. In the form of hospital food for sick or wounded men there was
nothing except a few jars of beef extract, malted milk, etc., bought in
the United States by Major Wood, taken to the field in his own private
baggage, and held in reserve for desperate cases.

Such was the equipment of the only field-hospital in Cuba when the
attack on Santiago began. That it was wretchedly incomplete and
inadequate I hardly need say, but the responsibility for the
incompleteness and inadequacy cannot be laid upon the field force. They
took to the hospital camp from the steamers everything that they could
possibly get transportation for. There was only one line of very bad
road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front, and along that line had to
be carried, with an utterly insufficient train of mules and wagons, all
the food and ammunition needed by an advancing army of more than sixteen
thousand men. In loading the mules and wagons preference was given to
stores and supplies that could be used in killing Spanish soldiers
rather than to stores and supplies that would be needed in caring for
our own, and the result was the dreadful and heartrending state of
affairs in that hospital at the end of the second day's fight. If there
was anything more terrible in our Civil War, I am glad that I was not
there to see it.

The battle before Santiago began very early on Friday morning, July 1,
and the wounded, most of whom had received first aid at
bandaging-stations just back of the firing line, reached the hospital in
small numbers as early as nine o'clock. As the hot tropical day
advanced, the numbers constantly and rapidly increased until, at
nightfall, long rows of wounded were lying on the grass in front of the
operating-tents, without awnings or shelter, awaiting examination and
treatment. The small force of field-surgeons worked heroically and with
a devotion that I have never seen surpassed; but they were completely
overwhelmed by the great bloody wave of human agony that rolled back in
ever-increasing volume from the battle-line. They stood at the
operating-tables, wholly without sleep, and almost without rest or food,
for twenty-one consecutive