e. In this
connection, I call especial attention to the report of Captain Brown,
made by my orders when I was Brigade-Commander, and herewith appended.
I also call attention to the report of my own Quartermaster. Usually
we received full rations of bacon and hardtack. The hardtack, however,
was often mouldy, so that parts of cases, and even whole cases, could
not be used. The bacon was usually good. But bacon and hardtack make
poor food for men toiling and fighting in trenches under the midsummer
sun of the tropics. The ration of coffee was often short, and that of
sugar generally so; we rarely got any vegetables. Under these
circumstances the men lost strength steadily, and as the fever
speedily attacked them, they suffered from being reduced to a bacon
and hardtack diet. So much did the shortage of proper food tell upon
their health that again and again officers were compelled to draw upon
their private purses, or upon the Red Cross Society, to make good the
deficiency of the Government supply. Again and again we sent down
improvised pack-trains composed of officers' horses, of captured
Spanish cavalry ponies, or of mules which had been shot or abandoned
but were cured by our men. These expeditions--sometimes under the
Chaplain, sometimes under the Quartermaster, sometimes under myself,
and occasionally under a trooper--would go to the sea-coast or to the
Red Cross head-quarters, or, after the surrender, into the city of
Santiago, to get food both for the well and the sick. The Red Cross
Society rendered invaluable aid. For example, on one of these
expeditions I personally brought up 600 pounds of beans; on another
occasion I personally brought up 500 pounds of rice, 800 pounds of
cornmeal, 200 pounds of sugar, 100 pounds of tea, 100 pounds of
oatmeal, 5 barrels of potatoes, and two of onions, with cases of
canned soup and condensed milk for the sick in hospitals. Every scrap
of the food thus brought up was eaten with avidity by the soldiers,
and put new heart and strength into them. It was only our constant
care of the men in this way that enabled us to keep them in any trim
at all. As for the sick in the hospital, unless we were able from
outside sources to get them such simple delicacies as rice and
condensed milk, they usually had the alternative of eating salt pork
and hardtack or going without. After each fight we got a good deal of
food from the Spanish camps in the way of beans, peas, and rice,
together with g