Show SANTIAGO DE CUBA TN IN WAR TIME santiago de cuba aug 11 1898 miss annie wheeler youngest daughter of gen wheeler of alabama a fragile girl of 24 years has charge of the female nurses in the army admy hospital of santiago how ho w she became a red cross nurse is a romantic story the motherless girl Is peculiarly devoted to her father whom she calls her sweetheart she accompanied him and her brother to tampa and was daily seem riding about the camps with them on horseback horse back to be by her fathers side she he would gladly have gone into battle but since that could not be she determined to do the next best beat thing and go front as a nurse in order to remain as near to him as possible she met with strongest opposition on every hand but with the blood of the fighting wheelers in her veins miss annie la Is not easily swerved from a food purpose gen wheeler earnestly protested against the project but would nut net oppose a command to the dictates of his daughters conscience some of the heads of the army absolutely refused her transportation to cuba and others denied her permission to land when she finally arrived off santiago only gen miles after recapitulating the dangers which she well understood and urging her to return to safety lent his strong helping hand and enabled her to enter upon her chosen path of duty when she first joined miss barton female help was aras very scarce in santiago for a week she was almost in the crowded waterside hospital so far as an other women are concerned there were several male attendants to lif lift t the sick to bring in patients and carry out the dead besides an efficient steward and two or three visiting physicians and now there are also four white and three colored female nurses under miss wheelers direction early and late she toils rising at 5 a m and leaving the scene ot of her labors only at nightfall often walking unattended through the darkened streets of santiago but as sate safe as in her own parlor under the all protecting symbol of the red cross in the hospital she is an a ray of sunshine her slender r figure dressed in girlish white or in blue cambric with snowy apron and kerchief her curling hair brushed neatly back and blue eyes shining with earnest purpose washing sick mens floes aes writing lieme hame letters for them administering iod food or medicine and taking the last messages of the dying no ko necessary service however mental menial or repellant is ever shirked by her nor will she weary in well doing the old oid rule holds good here as everywhere else in this odd old world that the worst kickers who loudest bewall bewail scant army rations aad lack of home comforts are those who have been least accustomed to luxury miss wheeler the child of wealth and ornament of society whose washington winters are spent in the luxurious arlington ard has never uttered one wor word d of complaints she is a prayerful girl who begins and ends each day on her knees I 1 beside her army cot and only heaven i 1 knows how many times during the long hard days her soul Is on its knees in the language of hugo the lover father and brother have been ordered north and she alone of all othe the fighting wheelers remain in cuba but she will not desert the work wherein she was never more needed than today and as for protection there to Is not a soldier in our army who would not loot lay down his life tor for her if needs ke be the hospital of which I 1 write though created only a few weeks ago by the necessities of war la is by far the best in cuba it Is the boathouse boat house of the swell american club loaned for the temporary purpose it is built directly over the bay some rods from shore and Is reached by a long pier its great banqueting hall whose fattic red walls can be raised to admit every vagrant breeze is now closely set with army cots and double rows of the same are ranged along the encircling verandas the smaller apartments have all their special uses and in a little anteroom ante room several oil stoves are set over which beef tea malted milk and gruel are prep prepared ared not an inch of space is unfilled and were the commodious building ten times as big it would be equally terow ded when I 1 first saw this hospital two weeks ago the sick were lying on the bare floors but now thanks to the red cross they are amply supplied with cots and bedding considerable army red tape is squandered in getting patients into this haven of refuge so that sometimes a half conscious man brought on a mule cart or a stretcher lies for hours in the sun at the street nd of the plen before an order can be obtained from the palace a mile up town for his admission to the hospital but when once inside a mans chances of recovery are wonderfully increased for example there have been but three deaths in this hospital in a fortnight while in the fever hospitals at siboney they are dying by hundreds I 1 and in the various field hospitals at an average of twenty per day out in the camps the sick men are yet lying on the ground under dog tents alternately i soaked with rain scorched by the noon day sun chilled to the marrow at night unattended except by their comrades and with nothing to io eat but beans bacon and hardtack hard tack even for those dying of dysentery no wonder that fever Is daily increasing among them and yesterday out of a whole regiment only two men were able to report for duty i I 1 spend a few hours every day in the water side hospital where mine is the unofficial and inglorious part of cheering the convalescent chatting awhile with this man reading to that man feeding another writing home letters for others doing comparatively unimportant things for which the busy nursed nurses have no time but which so minister wheeler says are sometimes more useful than medicine most of the men are very considerate realizing that nurses are constantly on their feet doing their best to meet a thousand demands of bourse there are querulous ones who send their tired sisters on some fling errand from one end of the big building to the other and who are never suited with anything that Is done but they are few and never once have any of the ladles met with the slightest rudeness or insult officers and private soldiers rich mens sons and their servants lie side by side all clad in red cross pajamas which I 1 regret to add are not plentiful enough to be changed as often as they should be in nearly every case the milion millon alres have borne suffering and hardship far better than their hostlers hustlers host lers and valets almost without exception the rich young society swells have been unexpected revelations of heroism giving up their own few comforts to needier men braved brave and uncomplaining to the last As the united states is now so largely un american her army was recruited from all the nations of the arth hence in the hospitals we see the unmistakable irish lip and edep eye of irish blue besides the german on the next pillow and the blonde sax on in contrast to the swarthy batill ladd some are grey haired middle aga 1 men other boys in their teens and aft X are so bronzed by exposure and kempt as to hair and beard that it doubt if their own mothers wo woula know them every case Is sad eno enouchs heaven knows of strong men bro brought to the gates of death not nol on the field of battle but by unnecessary espos expos exposure afterwards and the criminal ca careless 3 ness of their superiors and some art positively heartrending heart rending ab por for example A young hermle whose name nobody knows raved days and nights in the delirium of ty until death ended hi his 13 B sufferina suffer r ina he lies in an unmarked grave ate identity not yet discovered another mothers boy a sweet faced gentle ge fellow under 20 died of lung fe fever v from sleeping on the wet ground in HIT rain soaked clothes most of the he mea have the local calentura calenture calen tura a swift sh sharo fever which runs its course in a t or two induced from lying in taft trenches with insufficient food du durant that dreadful first week in jul july the most pecolar ease case thay that has co under my observation is that of a taz bronzed cavalryman who for six days and nights has lain most of the time in an unconscious state nobody kil inov who he is he came rushing ID into the hospital one hot midday mid day a week abed delirious with fever having wa walkes from some distant camp in the bro braul sun he spoke of himself as gvay and is now known by that name whether it really belongs to him ate family or given name none can a aa 1 I he spent the first night altern alter naWT adew stalking up and down the hospital hos imagining that he was cOm command marn haSs regiment and struggling with the at tend ants in efforts to leap over veranda rail into the bay TO morning he lapsed into unconscious ness and lay for three days like conff dead jaw dropped eyes rolled ati fa back into his head the only sign of ha hl a faint fluttering of the pulse tho death was momentarily expected isy faithful steward injected medicine into his arm at regular intervals and a few drops of nourishment down d throat and still he lingi ered hour r hour no fever now no weaken weakening the pulse no change in the ron rolled eyes and fixed expression it such a pity a strong looking man mai die and give no sign on the jo fol day I 1 sat beside him holding holdina his vw warm limp hands between I 1 both AS own praying within myself that he heavert would send the poor soul back froni borderland border land of shadows if only k 1 enough to send some message to waiting wife or mother when su budde 1 a change flashed over the cou niena ten first an expression of agony qui am followed by a smile and then the unclosed and looked with full in int gence into mine holding fast hands as if by that means to atay fluttering soul I 1 bent over him said guy tell me where you I 1 levna I 1 will write to your people he stood and made a desperate effort 0 ti speak the lips moved but no came then the eyes turned again till nothing but the whites wrife j visible and the strange half unconscious state returned but he was not no at together insensible he moved him ta to the edge of the cot as doge close to rao me as possible and as aa long as I 1 held hw hands remained quiet but afie insist Z I 1 laid his hands upon his b breast axa tried to move away his arms arm rear beat air like ilke windmills and a teaful ex elpi sion came to his face so there I 1 till dark and still he made no N then it was impossible to stay because imperative duties awal awaited elsewhere I 1 went reluctantly ass night long was worried by the wb might revive for the last time when nobody was at hand to learn his name an slad fn that some woman waiting at home would never know what became of her cowed one next morning they told me that to wiard midnight he opened his eyes and add almot shouted where is she abere is she tell her to write to my and then the poor soul was 00 again into the shadowy land it 1 needless to say that since then I 1 T awe spent a good deal of time by the taah ta cavalry mans cot and yet we iribe learned nothing A dozen times big be has looked at me with full intelli seme fence in his eyes and several times has called me rosa doubtless the name of somebody he loves he knows when f X am with him takes his beat bead tea or of brandy obediently smug atea act up as closely as possible and goes contentedly to sleep but all efforts 0 to o get his home address have so fa far r failed he only smiles happily and ys yes rosa write please write itle it la barely possible that some one who avilda this may have an idea who he is 1 I judge that he be is not a city bred man abbt from the rural districts of the mid aj e west me ile is apparently about 40 years old ir yes pale blue black hair slightly with gray heavy beard and tawny moustache this is his sixth amy say of now and abare there to is no change except that his body strewing ST rowing weaker and his lucid inter awis alst more frequent the doctor says 6 ls Is some hope of his life and that thai AM effae e does recover lecove r it is a miracle K by womans comans care pardon this f ato long story of an individual case I 1 it to you as an example of hos experience 1 today I 1 talked with a yellow fever ii q fresh from siboney he V id that of the patients in that only about have yellow fever and the proportion of deaths gk afy f aang them is 50 per cent he told af a man who was sent from washing y axt s t to 0 santiago as postal clerk whose y he could not remember two sew aab he was brought to tad the siboney tal a and nd died the same evening it ft estimated abed that a daily average ot of yellow fever cases are scattered r blosa t santiago exclusive of the army nihls a part par of cuba the dread disease its worst between the middle ot of t and the last of september yes by a man was brought into miss misa alers ers hospital shaking like a leaf the deadly chill who sank into 8 before they could get him jed bed halt half an hour later the doc tar came ne me pronounced it a case of yel lor bever ver and ordered the victim to be le removed tor for the sake of the others othera the poor fellow was aft 0 nn n a stretcher put aboard a boat aft rowed wed to siboney and was dead deab alsen ne he rea reached Aed there this morning amow were brought to the door with ath an order from the febe ace for thear admission each was feted te ted d by two comrades who held him F achler the armpits arm ami pits and sank into pitiful heap on the floor when tha lulng ng hands were withdrawn just sten n the at steward eward came along th in Is name 11 said he what are these bedow ow feve fever men doing here out with clotem I 1 quick as you can pity them t lot we did there was no help for it of the immune nurses hurried the tog ng fellows back over the long to the suspect building another gp smaller boat house a few roada roa da oft our hospital there the poor fel waited more dead than alive the boat came then with two 1 ets 11 and a yellow fever corpse qu on a board they were taken to 1 19 16 miles distant A sadder sight I 1 hope never to see than that boatload boat load of the quick and the dead the outstretched corpse in its sheet the most conspicuous object and the living men in their mud stained uniforms and gray slouch hats trying to keep up a brave front on their way to almost certain death the same thing may happen to any of us tomorrow today two lines of a half forgotten poem run continually through my mind I 1 the wind howls heavy with death and sorrow borrow today it is thee may be me tomorrow yesterday a dark haired young irishman lay on a cot so closely beside me that with one sweep of my fan I 1 could keep the flies files off both him and guy this ni rh orning the cot was empty what has become of the man who was here I 1 asked the nearest male attendant ask me an easier one toes hes dead replied the immune with a ghastly attempt at wit yellow jack got hold of him in the night we started him off for siboney but he dian t live to get there another sad sad case is that of capt feederle of akron ohio A handsome and gallant young officer the picture of robust health and beloved by everybody lie he came into the hospital the other day suffering from headache he said he was not a bit sick but thought he would like to lie down and rest awhile he was given a cot his head bandaged with cold water and presently he seemed to feel very comfortable for table happening to recognize me as I 1 sat by guy at the other end of the room roam he sent to ask if I 1 would come ard talk to him awhile I 1 went and for halt half an hour we chatted of ohio friends and of long ago camping experiences among the small lakes of the western reserve when I 1 left him he was in most cheerful mood saying that he expected to be sent home with his regiment in a a day or two waha what t was my horror borror on going next morning to the hospital hosi pital to be told that |