here was never a more welcome sound than his Gatlings as they opened.
It was the only sound which I ever heard my men cheer in battle.

The infantry got nearer and nearer the crest of the hill. At last we
could see the Spaniards running from the rifle-pits as the Americans
came on in their final rush. Then I stopped my men for fear they
should injure their comrades, and called to them to charge the next
line of trenches, on the hills in our front, from which we had been
undergoing a good deal of punishment. Thinking that the men would all
come, I jumped over the wire fence in front of us and started at the
double; but, as a matter of fact, the troopers were so excited, what
with shooting and being shot, and shouting and cheering, that they did
not hear, or did not heed me; and after running about a hundred yards
I found I had only five men along with me. Bullets were ripping the
grass all around us, and one of the men, Clay Green, was mortally
wounded; another, Winslow Clark, a Harvard man, was shot first in the
leg and then through the body. He made not the slightest murmur, only
asking me to put his water canteen where he could get at it, which I
did; he ultimately recovered. There was no use going on with the
remaining three men, and I bade them stay where they were while I went
back and brought up the rest of the brigade. This was a decidedly cool
request, for there was really no possible point in letting them stay
there while I went back; but at the moment it seemed perfectly natural
to me, and apparently so to them, for they cheerfully nodded, and sat
down in the grass, firing back at the line of trenches from which the
Spaniards were shooting at them. Meanwhile, I ran back, jumped over
the wire fence, and went over the crest of the hill, filled with anger
against the troopers, and especially those of my own regiment, for not
having accompanied me. They, of course, were quite innocent of
wrong-doing; and even while I taunted them bitterly for not having
followed me, it was all I could do not to smile at the look of injury
and surprise that came over their faces, while they cried out, "We
didn't hear you, we didn't see you go, Colonel; lead on now, we'll
sure follow you." I wanted the other regiments to come too, so I ran
down to where General Sumner was and asked him if I might make the
charge; and he told me to go and that he would see that the men
followed. By this time everybody had his attention attracted, and