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 men of the Seventy-first New York Volunteers joined promiscuously in the charge. To the right rose Kettle Hill, jutting out and Banking the approach to the main position. Facing it and dismounted were the First and Ninth Regular Cavalry, the latter a negro regiment, and the Rough Riders under Colonel Roosevelt. The Tenth Infantry was between the two wings, and divided in the support of both. A battery of Gatling guns was placed in position. The Americans steadily advanced in an irregular line, though kept in some sort of formation by their officers. Breaking down brush and barbed wire and sheltering themselves in the high grass, the men on the right wing worked their way up Kettle Hill, but before they reached the rifle pits of the enemy, they saw the Spaniards retreating on the run. The audacity of the Americans at the critical moment had insured the ultimate success of their attack and they found the final capture of the hill easy. The longer charge against the center of the enemy was in the meantime being pressed home, under the gallant leadership of General Hawkins, who at times was far in advance of his line. The men of the right wing who looked down from their new position on Kettle Hill, a quarter of a mile distant, saw the Spaniards give way and the American center dash forward. In order to support this advance movement, the Gatlings were brought to Kettle Hill, and General S.S. Sumner and Colonel Roosevelt led their men down Kettle and up San Juan Hill, where they swept over the northern jut only a moment after Hawkins had carried the main blockhouse.