Here Captain Watson told us to remain while he
went to another part of the line to look for the rest of his troop. He
did not come to that part of the field again.
The Colonel made a slight error when he said his mixed command
contained some colored infantry. All the colored troops in that
command were cavalry men. His command consisted mostly of Rough
Riders, with an aggregate of about one troop of the Tenth Cavalry, a
few of the Ninth and a few of the First Regular Cavalry, with a half
dozen officers. Every few minutes brought men from the rear, everybody
seeming to be anxious to get to the firing line. For a while we kept
up a desultory fire, but as we could not locate the enemy (he all the
time keeping up a hot fire on our position), we became disgusted, and
lay down and kept silent. Private Marshall was here seriously wounded
while standing in plain view of the enemy, trying to point them out to
his comrades.
There were frequent calls for men to carry the wounded to the rear,
to go for ammunition, and as night came on, to go for rations and
entrenching tools. A few colored soldiers volunteered, as did some
from the Rough Riders. It then happened that two men of the Tenth were
ordered to the rear by Lieutenant Fleming, Tenth Cavalry, who was then
present with part of his troop, for the purpose of bringing either
rations or entrenching tools, and Colonel Roosevelt seeing so many men
going to the rear, shouted to them to come back, jumped up and drew
his revolver, and told the men of the Tenth that he would shoot the
first man who attempted to shirk duty by going to the rear, that he
had orders to hold that line and he would do so if he had to shoot
every man there to do it.
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