a single yard of ground for a mile to the rear which was
not inside the zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to return the fire
but to lie still and wait for further orders. Some of them could see the
rifle-pits of the enemy quite clearly and the men in them, but many saw
nothing but the bushes under which they lay, and the high grass which
seemed to burn when they pressed against it. It was during this period
of waiting that the greater number of our men were killed. For one hour
they lay on their rifles staring at the waving green stuff around them,
while the bullets drove past incessantly, with savage insistence, cutting
the grass again and again in hundreds of fresh places. Men in line
sprang from the ground and sank back again with a groan, or rolled to one
side clinging silently to an arm or shoulder. Behind the lines hospital
stewards passed continually, drawing the wounded back to the streams,
where they laid them in long rows, their feet touching the water's edge
and their bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up and down the lines, and
through the fords of the streams, mounted aides drove their horses at a
gallop, as conspicuous a target as the steeple on a church, and one after
another paid the price of his position and fell from his horse wounded or
dead. Captain Mills fell as he was giving an order, shot through the
forehead behind both eyes; Captain O'Neill, of the Rough Riders, as he
said, "There is no Spanish bullet made that can kill me." Steel, Swift,
Henry, each of them was shot out of his saddle.

Hidden in the trees above the streams, and above the trail,
sharp-shooters and guerillas added a fresh terror to the wounded. There
was no hiding from them. Their bullets came from every side. Their
invisible smoke helped to keep their hiding-places secret, and in the
incessant shriek of shrapnel and the spit of the Mausers, it was
difficult to locate the reports of their rifles. They spared neither the
wounded nor recognized the Red Cross; they killed the surgeons and the
stewards carrying the litters, and killed the wounded men on the litters.
A guerilla in a tree above us shot one of the Rough Riders in the breast
while I was helping him carry Captain Morton Henry to the
dressing-station, the ball passing down through him, and a second shot,
from the same tree, barely missed Henry as he lay on the ground where we
had dropped him. He was already twice wounded and so covered with blood
that no