| | 1 | Author: | Crane, Stephen, 1871-1900 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Marines Signaling Under Fire at Guantanamo  | | | | Published: | 1996 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | THEY were four Guantanamo marines, officially known for the time as
signalmen, and it was their duty to lie in the trenches of Camp
McCalla, that faced the water, and, by day, signal the "Marblehead"
with a flag and, by night, signal the "Marblehead" with lanterns.
It was my good fortune—at that time I considered it my bad
fortune, indeed—to be with them on two of the nights when a wild
storm of fighting was pealing about the hill; and, of all the
actions of the war, none were so hard on the nerves, none strained
courage so near the panic point, as those swift nights in Camp
McCalla. With a thousand rifles rattling; with the field-guns
booming in your ears; with the diabolic Colt automatics clacking;
with the roar of the "Marblehead" coming from the bay, and, last,
with Mauser bullets sneering always in the air a few inches over
one's head, and with this enduring from dusk to dawn, it is
extremely doubtful if any one who was there will be able to forget
it easily. The noise; the impenetrable darkness; the knowledge
from the sound of the bullets that the enemy was on three sides of
the camp; the infrequent bloody stumbling and death of some man
with whom, perhaps, one had messed two hours previous; the
weariness of the body, and the more terrible weariness of the mind,
at the endlessness of the thing, made it wonderful that at least
some of the men did not come out of it with their nerves hopelessly
in shreds. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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