In a report to Surgeon-General Sternberg dated July 29, Dr. Edward L. Munson, commander of the reserve ambulance company, says that for two days after his arrival at Siboney he was unable to get any transportation whatever for medical supplies from the ships to the shore. On the third day he was furnished with one rowboat, but even this was taken away from him, when it had made one trip, by direct order of General Shafter, who wished to assign it to other duty. Some days later, with the boats of the _Olivette_, _Cherokee_, and _Breakwater_, he succeeded in landing medical supplies from perhaps one third of the transports composing the fleet. "I appealed on several occasions," he says, "for the use of a lighter or small steamer to collect and land medical supplies, but I was informed by the quartermaster's department that they could render no assistance in that way.... At the time of my departure large quantities of medical supplies, urgently needed on shore, still remained on the transports, a number of which were under orders to return to the United States." "In conclusion," he adds, "it is desired to emphasize the fact that the lamentable conditions prevailing in the army before Santiago were due (1) to the military necessity which threw troops on shore and away from the possibility of supply, without medicines, instruments, or hospital stores of any kind; and (2) to the lack of foresight on the part of the quartermaster's department in sending out such an expedition without fully anticipating its needs as regards temporary wharfage, lighters, tugs, and despatch-boats." Dr. Frank Donaldson, assistant surgeon attached to Colonel Roosevelt's Rough Riders, states in a letter to the Philadelphia "Medical Journal," dated July 12, that "a desperate effort" was made to secure a few cots for the sick and wounded in the field-hospitals at the front. There were hundreds of these cots, he says, on one of the transports off Siboney, but it proved to be utterly impossible to get any of them landed. Whether they were all carried back to the United States or not I do not know; but large quantities of supplies, intended for General Shafter's army, _were_ carried back on the transports _Alamo_, _Breakwater_, _Vigilancia_, and _La Grande Duchesse_.