nt in
life, remained a giant in death--his very attitude was one of attack; his
fists were clinched, his jaw set, and his eyes, which were still human,
seemed fixed with resolve. He was dead, but he was not defeated. And so
Hamilton Fish died as he had lived--defiantly, running into the very face
of the enemy, standing squarely upright on his legs instead of crouching,
as the others called to him to do, until he fell like a column across the
trail. "God gives," was the motto on the watch I took from his blouse,
and God could not have given him a nobler end; to die, in the fore-front
of the first fight of the war, quickly, painlessly, with a bullet through
the heart, with his regiment behind him, and facing the enemies of his
country.

The line at this time was divided by the trail into two wings. The right
wing, composed of K and A Troops, was advancing through the valley,
returning the fire from the ridge as it did so, and the left wing, which
was much the longer of the two, was swinging around on the enemy's right
flank, with its own right resting on the barbed-wire fence. I borrowed a
carbine from a wounded man, and joined the remnant of L Troop which was
close to the trail.

This troop was then commanded by Second Lieutenant Day, who on account of
his conduct that morning and at the battle of San Juan later, when he was
shot through the arm, was promoted to be captain of L Troop, or, as it
was later officially designated, Capron's troop. He was walking up and
down the line as unconcernedly as though we were at target practice, and
an Irish sergeant, Byrne, was assisting him by keeping up a continuous
flow of comments and criticisms that showed the keenest enjoyment of the
situation. Byrne was the only man I noticed who seemed to regard the
fight as in any way humorous. For at Guasimas, no one had time to be
flippant, or to exhibit any signs of braggadocio. It was for all of
them, from the moment it started, through the hot, exhausting hour and a
half that it lasted, a most serious proposition. The conditions were
exceptional. The men had made a night march the evening before, had been
given but three hours' troubled sleep on the wet sand, and had then been
marched in full equipment uphill and under a cruelly hot sun, directly
into action. And eighty per cent. of them had never before been under
fire. Nor had one man in the regiment ever fired a Krag-Jorgensen
carbine until he fired it at a Spaniard, fo