Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I guessed this must mean that I now was well in advance of the farthest point to which Capron's troop had moved, and I was running forward feeling confident that I must be close on our men, when I saw the body of a sergeant blocking the trail and stretched at full length across it.
For the next three or four hours the battle was little more than a rifle duel at about six hundred yards' range. Capron's battery, from the top of the distant hill, continued to bombard the fort and the village at intervals, but its fire was slow and not very effective.
Lieutenant Thomas, of Captain Capron's troop, and who was wounded himself during that sweltering June day, tells some interesting stories of the battle. He comes of a fighting family. His father fought in the Civil War, his grandfather was killed in the Mexican War, and three ancestors fell in the war of the Revolution.
There was the 7th Cavalry, Custer's old command, the 6th and 9th Cavalry, the 10th, 2nd, and 17th Infantry, the late lamented and gallant Capron's flying battery of artillery, besides others General Miles personally assumed command, and the campaign was short, sharp, brilliant and decisive.
During the afternoon I assembled the division commanders and explained to them my general plan of battle. Lawton's Division, assisted by Capron's Light Battery, was ordered to move out during the afternoon toward El Caney, to begin the attack there early the next morning. After carrying El Caney, Lawton was to move by the El Caney road toward Santiago, and take position on the right of the line.
Next behind the scouts came a "point" of five men, then Capron's troop strung out in single file and acting as advance-guard. Behind these followed the main body of the little army, headed by Colonel Wood.
Tiffany, by great exertions, had corralled a couple of mules and was using them to transport the Colt automatic guns in the rear of the regiment. The dynamite gun was not with us, as mules for it could not be obtained in time. Captain Capron's troop was in the lead, it being chosen for the most responsible and dangerous position because of Capron's capacity.
I also found Fish and pulled him under cover he was quite dead Then I borrowed a carbine and joined Capron's troop, a second lieutenant and his Sergeant were in command. The man next me in line got a bullet through his sleeve and one through his shirt and you could see where it went in and came out without touching the skin.
We could not have made half a mile an hour in such a formation, and would have been at least four hours too late for the fighting. On page 92 Mr. Bonsal says that Captain Capron's troop was ambushed, and that it received the enemy's fire a quarter of an hour before it was expected. This is simply not so.
The column then continued along the trail in single file. The Cubans were at a distance of two hundred and fifty yards; the "point" of five picked men under Sergeant Byrne and duty-Sergeant Fish followed them at a distance of a hundred yards, and then came Capron's troop of sixty men strung out in single file.
Word Of The Day