r own sick
and wounded soldiers, what more could they do than devote themselves to
the Cubans? Two days later, fortunately, Major Lagarde, chief surgeon at
Siboney, over-ruled the judgment of his subordinate, accepted the
services of the nurses, and set them at work in a branch of the military
hospital, under the direction of Dr. Lesser. There they all worked,
almost without rest or sleep, until Dr. Lesser, Mrs. Lesser, Mrs. White
(a volunteer), and three of the Red Cross nurses were stricken with
fever, and four of them were carried on flat-cars to the yellow-fever
camp in the hills two miles north of the village. The surgeon of the
_Olivette_ would have shown a more generous and more manly spirit if, in
his report to the surgeon-general, he had mentioned these facts, instead
of adroitly insinuating that the Red Cross surgeons and nurses were
loafing on board the _State of Texas_ when they should have been at work
in the hospitals.

But Dr. Appel further says, in the report from which I have quoted, that
at the time when the _State of Texas_ reached Siboney--two days after
the fight at Guasimas--"there was no lack whatever of medical and
surgical supplies."

If Major Lagarde, Dr. Munson, Dr. Donaldson, and other army surgeons who
worked so heroically to bring order out of the chaos at Siboney, are to
be believed, Dr. Appel's statement concerning hospital supplies is as
false as his statement with regard to the Red Cross surgeons and nurses.
In an official report to the surgeon-general, dated July 29 and
published in the New York papers of August 9, Captain Edward L. Munson,
assistant surgeon commanding the reserve ambulance company, says: "After
the fight at Las Guasimas there were absolutely no dressings, hospital
tentage, or supplies of any kind, on shore, within reach of the surgeons
already landed." Dr. Munson was the adjutant of Colonel Pope, chief
surgeon of the Fifth Army-Corps, and he probably knew a good deal more
about the state of affairs at Siboney after the battle of Guasimas than
Dr. Appel did. Be that, however, as it may; I know from my own
observation and experience that there _was_ a lack of medical and
hospital supplies at Siboney, not only when we arrived there, but for
weeks afterward. Dr. Frank Donaldson, surgeon of the Rough Riders, in a
letter from Siboney, published in the Philadelphia "Medical Journal" of
July 23, says: "The condition of the wounded on shore here is beyond
measure wretched, a