The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1899-08-11

June 9th, 1891
My DARLING MoTHER:-W When |
sized up the length of my last letter
and saw how much paper it required
for an extended account of short trip
| lost heart entirely for the finish of
such history.
| believe / left off where we were
laying on the ground looking ahead of
us at some bamboos sixty or seventy
yards away. There were little spatters
of rifle fire here and there along the
line, and suddenly two or three little
puffs of smoke came from the bamboos
and the rattle Of Mauscrs fired in a
volley. The natives did the best shoot
ing | have yet seen, and we seemed to
lay under kissing sheet of bullets.
They hit the ground in front of us, be-
side us and back Of us, and, for my
part, | felt as though the man who
'cursed a prayer or two" would have
had a fine opportunity to exercise his
talent. Firing as we were at 4 right
oblique we were pretty well crowded,
and the fellow to my right who, as he
afterwards told me, felt that he was
''locatcd', crawled away 4 foot or fifteen
inches and began firing away over the
body of Il corporal. He hadn't more
than moved when bullet hit the
ground where he had been, another
struck the ground just under the cor
poral's arm and Hoped it up a foot.
At this the private yelled, "wet your
bullets boys and give them hell" pulled
out cartridge and started to put the
bullet in it when one from the insur-
gents came skipping along and threw
about peck of dirt down his throat.
He was cffectually gagged for while,
but the way he swore when he got his
wind was awful.
In this country of bamboo hedges
the echoes of Il shot are unnumbered.
When firing at one the echo returns
and apparently a heavy fire will be
coming directly fro" the front After
while the bullets began to come slower
and the buglc sounded "cease firing"
The echoes died away and all was quiet
except some firing on our flank, but,
comparatively, the bullets were few to
what they had been. We were ordered
to fall back and protect the flank of the
line
There are certain stcreotyoed orders
in tactics for such movements, but this
is how such things go on the battle
field. looked up the liuc and saw
kipp, our first lieutenant, coming
down. He is as brave as any man
need he. but he was the only man
standing up just there, and the bullets
were coming his way and hitting the
gtound pretty hard He looked scared
and his knees came up like those of a
stringhalted horse. lie said 'you fel-
lows get to hell out of here and into
the timber. The damned niggers are
trying to come in on our flank and jack
pot us" The way the company obeyed
that order spoke volumes for their edu
cation, and in little while we were all
in line protecting the flank, and only
two men wounded. The plowcd ground
had been our salvation. The bullets
went in and never came out on the
ricochct. SO that was the last of the
fighting for us. That night we went
suppcrlcss, and in the morning we
turned out without breakfast. Cola?
| should say so; we had been wet with
pcrspiraton and had no blankets. My
teeth chattcrcd like castanets all night.
We filled up in the morning on cocoa
nut m Tx, and '!hiked'' to Santa Cruz
and took it.