The age-herald., 1898-09-07
BULLETS AND REPARTEE.
The Soldiers Cracked Jokes at Each Others
 Expense in the Midst of Battle.

From the New York Sun.
 The men who have returned from the
 front in Cuba have some good stories to
 tell, but none surpass that given to cor
 respondent by Sergeant Ousler of the regu-
 lar army, who distinguished himself by
 carrying Hamilton Fish to the rear after
 the first brush between the Spaniards and
 the Rough Riders"
 That story about Assistant Surgeon
 Church, the young Washington medico of
 the Rough Riders who dressed a fallen
 mans wounds away out ahead of the line
 amid a hail of Mauser bullets has been
 published, I see," said Ousler, 'but the
 coolness of that young fellow wasn't even
 half described. While he was making an
 examination of his wounded comrade, pay
 ing no attention to the whistle of the bull
 lets, young private of the Rough Riders
 who had been a college mate Of Church at
 Princeton, yelled over to him from dis
 tance of about twenty feet-he was il
 with half a dozen fellows doing sharp
 shooters work from behind cluster of
 bushes-to ask how badly the patient was
 hurt. The young surgeon looked over his
 shoulder in the direction whence the pri-
 vates voice proceeded, and he saw his
 former chum grinning in the bushes. "'Why, you whelp! said Church, with a
 comical grin on his face, how dare you be
 around here and not be killed
 "Then he went on fixing the wounded
 man, and he remained right there with
 him until the arrival of the litter that he had sent to the rear for
 There were some very brave men on the
 other side who stood right out in the
 open and blazed away at men in our line that they picked out deliberately. These Hervy Spaniards got plenty of credit from
 our men for their gameness, too. One of
 them-a young. small looking fellow
 stood on a little level plateau, within dead
 easy range, letting us have it as fast as
 he could load for fully five minutes before
 he went down. If he wasn't simply crazy
 with the excitement of the game, then ne
 surely was about as game a kid as they
 make 'em. He was noticed by about a
 dozen men near me, and one of them
 said
 "'That little monkeys too good, and I
 guess I'll just let him have one or two.'
 "'Ah, let him alone said another fel-
 low; there are so few like him in that
 bunch on the other side that he ought to have a show
 "The nervy little Spaniard's work be- came altogether too accurate and vicious, however, and he got volley from about dozen of our men, and he went down in heap and rolled down the hill from his little rock table like a log.
 "l had often read about men in action lodging bullets out of nervousness, but I never took any stock in those stories un- till this fight. Then I found out that it was true. Men do dodge bullets nlf dnix, | 1ol and nearly all the other fellows did it. They didn't dodge all the time, but only when the Spaniards were engaging in vol ley firing When the sound of the yolley reached them, although the voIley's bull lets had long passed them, they involun- tarily gave little ducks of the head like a man does in a boxing match. They didn't know they were doing it. I called the att tention of one of my bunkies, who fought alongside of me, to his imbecile game of ducking his head, and he turned to me and said:
 "'Why, you jay I've been watx,ing you do the same thing for the last fifteen min utes, and he was right.
 "A lot of the fellows were gagging and whistling and humming during the whole thing-not loud, but just loud enough to hear themselves. When the firing was the hardest along the left of the line, half dozen of the fellows struck up the coon song, Get Your Moneys Worth and kept it going until another bunch in the same outfit drowned 'em out with another coon song, I Don't Like No Cheap Man "There were very few of the fellows who were killed who didn't have some kind or other of a girl trinket on them when they were laid out in the rear. The officers went around and gathered these things together, making notes of them on pads they had carried around with them. A good many of these lockets and minia- lures and little strands of sweethearts' hair were sent to the people back here of the boys killed, on the dispatch boat Dol phin, that brought me over from Cuba "It was funny to hear the talk of some of the rough riders at mess that night. What I want, and want right now, said one of them to his companions, is twenty-seven Scotch high balls and a caviare sandwich
 "iStop your kicking one of them re- marked you're in tuck that you didn't get one Spanish low ball. ."