The scenes of Saturday were like those of the previous day, but with
added details of misery and horror. Many of the wounded, brought in from
the extreme right flank of the army at Caney, had had nothing to eat or
drink in more than twenty-four hours, and were in a state of extreme
exhaustion. Some, who had been shot through the mouth or neck, were
unable to swallow, and we had to push a rubber tube down through the
bloody froth that filled their throats, and pour water into their
stomachs through that; some lay on the ground with swollen bellies,
suffering acutely from stricture of the urinary passage and distention
of the bladder caused by a gunshot wound; some were paralyzed from the
neck down or the waist down as a result of injury to the spine; some
were delirious from thirst, fever, and exposure to the sun; and some
were in a state of unconsciousness, coma, or collapse, and made no reply
or sign of life when I offered them water or bread. They were all placed
on the ground in a long, closely packed row as they came in; a few
pieces of shelter-tenting were stretched over them to protect them a
little from the sun, and there they lay for two, three, and sometimes
four hours before the surgeons could even examine their injuries. A more
splendid exhibition of patient, uncomplaining fortitude and heroic
self-control than that presented by these wounded men the world has
never seen. Many of them, as appeared from their chalky faces, gasping
breath, and bloody vomiting, were in the last extremity of mortal agony;
but I did not hear a groan, a murmur, or a complaint once an hour.
Occasionally a trooper under the knife of the surgeon would swear, or a
beardless Cuban boy would shriek and cry, "Oh, my mother, my mother!" as
the surgeons reduced a compound fracture of the femur and put his leg in
splints; but from the long row of wounded on the ground there came no
sound or sign of weakness. They were suffering,--some of them were
dying,--but they were strong. Many a man whose mouth was so dry and
parched with thirst that he could hardly articulate would insist on my
giving water first, not to him, when it was his turn, but to some
comrade who was more badly hurt or had suffered longer. Intense pain and
the fear of impending death are supposed to bring out the selfish,
animal characteristics of man; but they do not in the higher type of
man. Not a single American soldier, in all my experience in that
hospital, ever asked to be examined or treated out of his regular turn
on account of the severity, painful nature, or critical state of his
wound. On the contrary, they repeatedly gave way to one another,
saying: "Take this one first--he's shot through the body. I've only got
a smashed foot, and I can wait." Even the courtesies of life were not
forgotten or neglected in that valley of the shadow of death. If a man
could speak at all, he always said, "Thank you," or "I thank you very
much," when I gave him hard bread or water.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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