The Dickinson press., 1898-08-13

troopers pressed on as il engaged in prao-
tice maneuvera Although many Of
them had never been under fire, there
was not the least faltering or confusion.
On the left Of the rough riders Troops
d and f did the heaviest work. e and
B being farther back and in the rear Of
l. Captain Capron was shot early in
the fight, and the firing had not gone
on long before Hamilton Fish fell NOR
tally wounded. HI had been in the
front rank pressing or and firing as
fast rs he could load. Every one who
witnessed his behavior under a CALLING
fire speaks of it with enthusiasm. Fish
died the death of a brave soldier.
1t can be said Of the rough riders that
almost to a man they faced with the
GOODNESS Of veterans the ordeal Of fire,
which was the more trying because the
foe, attacking from cover, could not be
seen. Five times during the engagement
the order was given to stop firing, and
it was obeyed instantly. There could be
no better evidence that the men kept
their heads, and army officers speak of
the circumstance as an unusual me-.
One man, however, seems to have lost
his head. He rode back to Siboney
when the fighting was fiercest with a
story that the rough riders were being
cut to pieces and were falling back.
Nothing could have been further from
the truth. Ten men killed and perhaps
three times that number wounded was
not q heavy loss in a command of 500
men, and. far from being driven back.
the rough riders finished their part in
the battle with a charge up the hill on
the left with a rush that filed the Span.
iards with panic.
Troops D, F and E were concerned in
this final movement, and Lieutenant
Colonel Roosevelt led them in person,
Major Brodie having been wounded and
taken to the rear. On the top of the
slope was q blockhouse, from which the
Spaniards were firing with apparently
little risk. to themselves. The boys
yelled like Comanches as they pressed
up the hill on the run, and Colonel
Roosevelt, forgetting in his ardor that
he was in command, snatched up a
Krag-Jorgensen and pumped shot after
shot into the blockhouse.
The Spanish fire was steady enough,
but i'll its sweep the charge of the three
troops was cyclonic. and the Spaniards
burst from the blockhouse and took to
their heels in the brush. Seventeen bod
les were counted in and around the
house. Meanwhile the other troops, the
Tenth cavalry and the First, the last of
which was not heavily engaged, finished
the rout Of the Spaniards on the right
and in front. The battle seems to have
been deliberately planned, for they took
their wounded away in wagons, and
there was a long line of them. The
Spanish loss in killed was then known
to be at least SO. Some fruit pickers
who came out from Santiago the fol-
lowing day reported that the Spaniards
returned with the story that they had
been fighting the whole American
army, and they complained that the
more they fred on the Americans the
faster they came on.
The Spaniards were plainly heart.
broken and dismayed by the result of
the battle. So sure were they of VIC
ooAJ oAoo sASJ OAOu6ue oOAO VI OAOA
women with them to witness the defeat
Of the Americans. The fact is, the I'M
faltering advance Of our men after vol
Rleys had been poured into them from
the front and TANKS was an unpleasant
surprise for the Spaniards, who had al
ways seen the Cubans retreat after one
raking volley. By spanish4rules Of war
the Americans were whipped early in
the fight, and SO badly whipped that
their invincible volleying and rushing
were like the resurrection of a dead
man.
About 1900 Americans were engag-
ed. The Spanish force was not less than
{, 500 and some estimates have made it
4, 1000. It's position should have been inn
pregnable even if it had been outnnm..
bered. If Quasimas had been fought be-
tween Spaniards and Cubans, it would
have figured in the history Of the civil
war as a great battle, the greatest bat
tie, in fact, of three years of fighting.
New York Sun.