The San Francisco call., 1898-09-24

1 troops had begun to move out short- ly after daylight, the First Colorado leading, with the band playing national airs. The band of the First California goes to the front, also, but it goes as a nghtlng band, fully armed, which is an- other kind of tale of war. The Cali forn1ans cheered the Coloradoans as they passed through our cal-.p, though the hearts of the boys were heavy within them. Then the call to arms sounded. Father McKinnon, brave man and good blessed the colors in touching words and granted general absolution to those who had thought less of their own souls than of the slaughter of their fellows. Thus, fol- lowed by prayer, strong in the con- sciousness of righteous cause, the First California marched away to bat tie. They would be in the reserve; but their good colonel, beloved of all his men, had promised they would be first into Manila, and they trusted him. The troops, even those of General Mo- Arthur on the extreme right, were all in place by o'clock. It was 9:35 a. m. when finch shell, screaming from the side Of the Olympia and falling short of Fort San Antonio Abad, at Malate, gave the signal for the opening of the battle. The California boys, behind the line of mango trees and bamboo ringing the beach, could hear the shots. They could not see the results and their blood tingled with the ex- c1tement of 1t and the uncertainty. The Olympia fired again and again and the battle was open all along the line. The Utah gunners, noble fellows, sent shot after shot screaming into the fort and the Malate pulverin Cor powder magazine), and how fatally we'll they shot we saw when we had gained the fort. The Colorado men on the firing line worked like beavers, too, and far on the right the Eighteenth and the Third Artillery were sustaining heavy fire from the Spaniards strongly en- trenched, while the Astor Battery boys, | although two of them were killed while l serving a piece, they would not desert finding their guns working badly and that the Spanish hornet in the Paco blockhouse had thousand stings, storned and carried the place with their revolvers, setting it on fire. The days when that rapido could sweep the Calle Real to the American camp were no more.
 The fleet, while the boys on shore worked so heroically, was not idle. The Petrel and the Raleigh took up the chorus from the Olympia, but their shells fell, for the most part, short of the Malate fort. It seemed to me, watching from the beach, as 10 the men on The Call-Herald launch out in the fleet, that the bombardment was to be all bluff-that the tale of the loss of Manila to Spain was a story already told.
 Then the little Callao, steaming ahead and close in, changed the scene. With her rapid fire guns she poured into the Spanish fort such streams of murderous shot as made the place ab- solutely untenable. The little launch Barcelo, tender to the Olympia, manned by four sailors and carrying one ma- chine gun, dashed ahead of the Callao, and, like an impudent wasp, went with in pistol shot of the shore to deliver her fire.
 All this time, though the Spanish riflemen fought fiercely and even sent a few shots in the direction of the Cal lao and the Barcelo, doing no harm, there was no heavy gun within the Spanish lines that fired a shot. The great battery on the Luneta, about which we have heard so much, the heavy guns of the walled citadel, even the guns mounted at San Antonio Abad, were grimly silent.
 All this time, out in the bay, the showers were going and coming on the southwest monsoon, now making the ships invisible, now l>tting us see from the beach the whole superb panorama. In one short half hour after the bom- bardment had begun, if that can be called a bombardment which was only shelling of the Malate trenches and in which not a great shell had been fired into the populous city, General Greene saw that the time had come to advance. He gave the nod, and the Colorado boys and the regulars leaped over the trenches, meeting a scattering fire from Spanish sharpshooters hidden in rifle pits 300 yards in frcnt. They swept over these and on into Fort San Antonio Abad without loss of life, and Lieutenant Colonel Mccoy pulled down the Spanish flag and hoisted the stars and stripes. The works which had an- noyed our lines so long had been won, and now 1t was the day of the Califor- nianS.
 The Colorado troops had advanced into Malate, headed by their band play ing "Therell Be Hot Time in the Old Town tonight" The Signal Corps, un- der Major Thompson. had followed the Colorado men. but the Californians, led by Colonel Smith, swept over him down the beach. across slough, where the water came up to our waists and where my boots were filled with sand, into the fort, where the Colorado men and detachment of the regulars rested for a moment. That moment was enough to give the Californians the lead. They passed San Antonio Abad and entered the cable station, house beside the Calle Real with an arch running clear through it. In the fort behind them a Colorado man had been killed as our boys passed. Major Slime of the Second Battalion, stepping out in the road, became target at once for Spaniards who had barricaded the Calle Real. He stepped back for a moment. Cool and collected, Colonel Smith. going over a fence in the rear of the house, gained the street Come on boys,' he said Major Slime had won the road also and they sent Com Y Tg IL. <-&x-< <>@& the men would be out of the line of fire in attachments It was the only way in which the street could have been won was with the boys and I saw 1t done From the houses all about us came the sharp sput! sput! of the Mauser.
 General Merritt. conducting the bat tie from the Zaf1ro with the color corn-