Appendix D 33 



pick up troopers of the Ninth Cavalry who had 

 drifted from their commands, and soon had so 

 many they demanded nearly all my attention. With 

 a line thus made up, the colored troopers on the 

 left and yours oa the right, the portion of Kettle 

 Hill on the right of the red-roofed house was first 

 carried. I very shortly thereafter had a strong 

 firing-line established on the crest nearest the en- 

 emy, from the corner of the fence around the house 

 to the low ground on the right of the hill, which 

 fired into the strong line of conical straw hats, 

 whose brims showed just above the edge of the 

 Spanish trench directly west of that part of the 

 hill.* These hats made a fine target! I had placed 

 a young officer of your regiment in charge of the 

 portion of the line on top of the hill, and was about 

 to go to the left to keep the connection of the bri- 

 gade Captain McBlain, Ninth Cavalry, just then 

 came up on the hill from the left and rear when 

 the shot struck that put me out of the fight. 



There were many wholly erroneous accounts of 

 the Guasimas fight published at the time, for the 

 most part written by newspaper-men who were in 

 the rear and utterly ignorant of what really oc- 

 curred. Most of these accounts possess a value so 

 purely ephemeral as to need no notice. Mr. Stephen 

 Bonsai, however, in his book, "The Fight for San- 



* These were the Spaniards in the trenches we carried 

 when we charged from Kettle Hill, after the infantry had 

 taken the San Juan block-house. 



