They held their ground, but could do no more. The Spanish
poured volley after volley into their ranks. At the moment when
it looked as if the whole regiment would be swept down by the
steel-jacketed bullets from the Mausers, four troops of the 10th
U.S. Cavalry (colored) came up on "double time." Little thought the
Spaniards that these "smoked yankees" were so formidable. Perhaps they
thought to stop those black boys by their relentless fire, but those
boys knew no stop. They halted for a second, and having with them a
Hotchkiss gun soon knocked down the Spanish improvised fort, cut the
barb-wire, making an opening for the Rough Riders, started the charge,
and, with the Rough Riders, routed the Spaniards, causing them to
retreat in disorder, leaving their dead and some wounded behind. The
Spaniards made a stubborn resistance. So hot was their fire directed
at the men at the Hotchkiss gun that a head could not be raise, and
men crawled on their stomachs like snakes loading and firing. It is
an admitted fact that the Rough Riders could not have dislodged the
Spanish by themselves without great loss, if at all.
The names of Captain A.M. Capron, Jr., and Sergeant Hamilton Fish,
Jr., of the Rough Riders, who were killed in this battle, have been
immortalized, while that of Corporal Brown, 10th Cavalry, who manned
the Hotchkiss gun in this fight, without which the American loss in
killed and wounded would no doubt have been counted by hundreds, and
who was killed by the side of his gun, is unknown by the public.
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