In another tent, a short distance away, I found a smooth-faced American soldier about thirty years of age, who had been shot in the head, and also wounded by a fragment of a shell in the body. He was naked to the waist, and his whole right side, from-the armpit to the hip, had turned a purplish-blue color from the bruising blow of the shell. Blood had run down from under the bandage around his head, and had then dried, completely covering his swollen face and closed eyelids with a dull-red mask. On this had settled a swarm of flies, which he was too weak to brush away, or in too much pain to notice. I thought, at first, that he was dead; but when I spoke to him and offered him water, he opened his bloodshot, fly-encircled eyes, looked at me for a moment in a dull, agonized way, and then closed them and faintly shook his head. Whether he lived or died, I do not know. When I next visited the tent he was gone.
As soon as possible after my arrival at the hospital I had obtained an order from Lieutenant-Colonel Pope, chief surgeon of the Fifth Army-Corps, for wagons, and on Saturday afternoon I telephoned Miss Barton from General Shafter's headquarters to send us blankets, clothing, malted milk, beef extract, tents, tent-flies, and such other things as were most urgently needed. Sunday afternoon, less than twenty-four hours after my message reached her, she rode into the hospital camp in an army wagon, with Mrs. Gardner, Dr. Gardner, Dr. Hubbell, and Mr. McDowell. They brought with them a wagon-load of supplies, including everything necessary for a small Red Cross emergency station, and in less than two hours they were refreshing all the wounded men in the camp with corn-meal gruel, hot malted milk, beef extract, coffee, and a beverage known as "Red Cross cider," made by stewing dried apples or prunes in a large quantity of water, and then pouring off the water, adding to it the juice of half a dozen lemons or limes, and setting it into the brook in closed vessels to cool. After that time no sick or wounded man in the camp, I think, ever suffered for want of suitable food and drink.
On Monday Miss Barton and Dr. Hubbell went back to the steamer at Siboney for additional supplies, and in twenty-four hours more we had blankets, pillows, and hospital delicacies enough to meet all demands. We should have had them there before the battle began, if we could have obtained transportation for them from the sea-coast. As fast as possible the wounded were taken in army wagons from the field-hospital to Siboney, where they were put on board the transports, and at eight o'clock on Tuesday evening Major Johnson was able to report to Major Wood that every wounded man left in the hospital was in a tent, with a rubber poncho or tarpaulin under him and a blanket over him.