The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1898-08-17

fight. If there was anything more terrible in
our civil war, l am glad was not there to see
it.
"At midnight Saturday the number of
wounded men that had been brought into the
hospital camp was about eight hundred. All
that could walk after their wounds had been
dressed, and all that could stand transporter
ton to the seacoast in an army wagon, were
sent to Sibony to be put on board the hospital
steamers and transports. There remained in
the camp several hundred who were so severely
injured that they could not possibly be moved,
and these were carried to the eastern part OF
the field and laid ON the ground in the high
wet grass. can not imagine anything more
cruelty barbarous than to bring q severely
wounded man back four or five miles to the
hospital in a crowded, jolting army wagon, let
him lie from two to four hours with hardly
any protection from the blazing sunshine in
the daytime or the drenching dew at night,
rack him with agony on the operating table,
and then carry him away, weak and helpless,
put him the water-soaked ground, without
shelter, blanket, pillow, food or drink, and
leave him there to suffer alone all night. And
yet saw this done with scores, if not hundreds
of men as brave and heroic as any that ever
stood in a battle-line. 1t might not have been
soft ought not to have been so-but 80 it was;
and in this hospital there were no means what
| ever OF preventing it."
AS to the responsibility for the in
sufficiency of the hospital preparations,
and the failure in general of the medi-
cal and commissary department of the
army to meet the plain requirements of
a state of war in tropical region, in
midsummer, the Springfield Republican
says:
The surgeon.general is making great error
in endeavoring to load the responsibility of the
| medical department and those of the commits
sary department at once upon the general on
| the field at Santiago. 1t surely has not beer
the custom for. the line to report to the staff
and yet DR.. Sternberg appears to think that
was Gen. Skaters duty. The fact that the
commander of the Senaca at Hampton Roads
said that he wasn't taking orders from the
medical department; the fact that the Break
water, loaded with subsistence for the soldiers
came back from Cuba without unloading and
that all its cargo Of food was spoiled by fumi
gation,--these and many more such facts indi
cate that recriminations between army depart
ments are worse than useless, and that there
is a central point of evil at Washington, in tn,
war Office there, which no amount of careless
ness or heartlessness or nsolence or any othel
fault of characterization can conceal or palliate
All these things-the feeding, clothing ant
medical care of the soldiers,-to reduce then
to their original position, was simply matters
! of business, and they were not attended to
They were branches of one part of the admin
istration of government, and needed head tt
| guide and coordinate their operations. Tha
head they did not have and have not got
Mr.. Mckinley knows what has happened anc
is happening through the inefficiency of tn
| war department why does he retain there tn
person who is responsible for that inefficiency
There are yet good men in the land"