command. Both he and General Wheeler, however, were suffering
from the climate and were unable to be with the troops. The
problem of making a concerted advance through the thick
underbrush was a difficult one, and the disposition of the
American troops was at once revealed by a battery of artillery
which used black powder, and by a captive balloon which was
injudiciously towed about.

The right wing here, after assuming an exposed position, was
unable to act, as Lawton, by whom it was expecting to be
reinforced, was delayed at El Caney. The advance regiments were
under the fire of the artillery, the infantry, and the skillful
sharpshooters of an invisible enemy and were also exposed to the
fierce heat of the sun, to which they were unaccustomed. The
wounded were carried back on litters, turned over to the
surgeons, who worked manfully with the scantiest of equipment,
and were then laid, often naked except for their bandages, upon
the damp ground. Regiment blocked regiment in the narrow road,
and officers carrying orders were again and again struck, as they
emerged from cover, by the sharpshooters' fire. The want of means
of communication paralyzed the command, for all the equipment of
a modern army was lacking: there were no aeroplanes, no wireless
stations, no telephones.

Throughout the morning the situation grew worse, but the nerve of
the men did not give way, and American individual initiative rose
to the boiling point. Realizing that safety lay only in advance,
the officers on the spot began to take control. General Hawkins,
with the Sixth and Sixteenth Regulars, advanced against the main
blockhouse, which crested a slope of two hundred feet, and the