When The
White Soldiers With Me Offered To Carry Him Back To The Dressing-
Station, The Negroes Resented It Stiffly.
"If the Lieutenant had
been able to move, we would have carried him away long ago," said the
sergeant, quite overlooking the fact that his arm was shattered.
"Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me," Roberts added, cheerfully.
"They must be very busy. I can wait."
As yet, with all these killed and wounded, we had accomplished
nothing - except to obey orders - which was to await further orders.
The observation balloon hastened the end. It came blundering down
the trail, and stopped the advance of the First and Tenth Cavalry,
and was sent up directly over the heads of our men to observe what
should have been observed a week before by scouts and reconnoitring
parties. A balloon, two miles to the rear, and high enough in the
air to be out of range of the enemy's fire may some day prove itself
to be of use and value. But a balloon on the advance line, and only
fifty feet above the tops of the trees, was merely an invitation to
the enemy to kill everything beneath it. And the enemy responded to
the invitation. A Spaniard might question if he could hit a man, or
a number of men, hidden in the bushes, but had no doubt at all as to
his ability to hit a mammoth glistening ball only six hundred yards
distant, and so all the trenches fired at it at once, and the men of
the First and Tenth, packed together directly behind it, received the
full force of the bullets.
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