Trooper Tales — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Recruit in the Black Cavalry. 23 many other block-houses, also barbed pitfalls, intrench- ments—and graves. It was upon that hill that the black | demons broke their leash, forgot their thirst, and gained everything save the glory they deserved. But they were only regulars. Something went wrong in a volunteer battalion that afternoon. They were good men and brave, but raw. They had not eaten for many hours. The sun beat piti- lessly down. It soaked into the wet sand and sent forth a sickening steam. It sank through the dusty campaign hats of the volunteers and put mad thoughts in every brain. It swung a black-dotted haze before every eye. It chafed the skin- under every cartridge belt, and blis- tered every neck. And all the while there came down from the hill the nagging, maddening patter of the long- range Mausers. And all the while there came down from the sky the stifling, pitiless pressure of the sun. The volunteer battalion wavered and fell back—“re- tired in disorder,” the official report read. It was the one ugly blotch on the American soldiers in Cuba. The volunteers have long since been forgiven by the friends of their native State; but the colored cavalry troops, and the other regulars who did not fall back, will never for- give that battalion for what the sun madness wrought in their raw ranks at the base of San Juan hill that July day. The “niggers” went by them—a cursing, unfeeling » mass of animals. They preserved a ragged skirmish line all the way. They ran a little, dropped to their bellies COMIC NOKOLKSEEO)