The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1902-07-11
BEN HARBoUR's WOUND.
Former Utah Man Displays Unique
Watch Charm
clos Angeles Herald

Sergeant B. A. Harbour, late of Salt
Lake City and now of Los Angeles,
wears on his watch chain a misshapen
bullet that has a history. 1 asked him
to tell me about it and he said:
THAT was the largest of forty-five
pieces of lead and brass taken from
my right hip after a gentleman of
color fired at me in a scrap at block
house No. ii. a few miles south of
Manila. in 1899. 1 had enlisted for the
Spanish-Americdn war, joining the
Fourteenth regulars at Fort Douglas,
Salt Lake City, as a private, in 1898.
One of the eastern periodicals-Col-
lier's Weekly. / believe-gave me
credit for the distinction of being the
only private soldier enlisted from
state legislature for the entire war.
Whether this is true don't know, but
at the time of my enlistment 1 was
one of the six senators from Salt Lake
county in the Utah legislature
How did it feel to be shot?'
well. il had none of that singing
sensation one reads about 1t felt just
as if someone had hit me with crow
bar-a terrific blow. The bullet ex-
plosive bullet. or it burst when IT
struck the bones in my nip. That may
account for the crowbar sensation.
THE chap who shot me was not
more than thirty feet away. He rose
up suddenly before me, and I never
before or since saw such a look on a
human face. 1t was look of desper-
alton. He looked as if he thought:
| III kill one white man, no matter
what happens to me afterward.'
He drew his Remington rifle to his
/ shoulder as he rose / remember
| thinking contemptuously, That chap
! can't hit me- l saw, however, that he
! had his gun pointed directly at my
waist, and L thought best, in spite of
| the common contempt for the very I'M
| sOldierly craftsmanship of the blacks,
to turn my side to him so 1 would be a
| little thinner mark Just as l turned
ne fired Had I not shifted when /
did the bali would have entered my
abdomen and it would have been all
] over in a few moments. / raised my
/ own rife and fired, but things were
! swimming and swaying and looking
black just then. and L don't know
whether 1 got him. My left leg had
| given way when the bullet entered that
side, and L fell as soon as 1 had dis
1 charged my gun. I heard the men
rush by me and yell when the enemy
fed l lay on that battlefield seven
] hours before being placed in hos
pital, and once there, l stayed for a
| year. The doctors went to work fish
/ ing out mineral specimens. When they
| had taken out the bulk of the bullet
which you see hanging here, and forty
| four other pieces of lead and of the
| brass jacket the ball had worn, the
wound still refused to heal I told the
| doctors there was something more in
it. They said they had taken out
| enough lead TO make a bullet. but ]
| told them I couldn't help that; there
| was something in that wound thai
didn't belong there. They probed again
| and found two bits of shrapnel-ons
an inch long and the other round
| about the size of a dime. Where these
came from was a mystery, as l hao
| been wounded but once The only the
ory-which was possible but remark
able as a coincidence-was that the
ball, in going through the air, STRUCK
the bits of shrapnel-the air being
filed with flying debris from bursting
shelIs-and carried them with it into
my body. When all these particles
| were removed the wound healed
though il was a year before l was
| strong again.
4 Sergeant Harbour is splendit
specimen of physical manhood ant