On the morning of Friday, July 1, Dr. Egan and I, with three Cuban soldiers put at our service by General Castillo, set out on foot for the front, carrying on our backs or in our hands such medicines and hospital supplies as we thought would be most needed by the wounded, as well as hammocks, blankets, cooking-utensils, and four or five days' rations for ourselves. The march was a long and tiresome one, and it was after noon before we reached the glade, or opening, near the Pozo house which had been selected as the site for the first and only field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps. We reported at once to Major Wood, chief surgeon of the First Division, who gave us a hearty welcome and at once granted our request to be set at work. The second day's battle was then in progress; the booming of cannon and the rattle of Krag-Jorgensens could be plainly heard a short distance in advance, and wounded men by the score were coming back in army wagons from the firing line.
The First Division hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps was established in the field, about three miles east of Santiago, Wednesday, June 29. At that time it was in advance of the whole army, and had no other protection than a line of pickets thrown out toward the enemy's intrenchments. The site of the camp was a large, partly open glade, or field, on the floor of a wooded valley, which was bounded on the northeast, at a distance of three miles, by a range of mountains, and which extended to within a mile of Santiago. Through this valley ran the Siboney-Santiago road, nearly parallel with a brook which had its source in the mountains to the northward, and after being joined by a number of other brooks coming from the same direction, fell into the sea through a notch in the coast rampart three or four miles east of Morro Castle. The glade, or field, in which the hospital camp stood was one of a series of similar glades stretching away to the northeast toward the base of the mountains, and resembling a little in outline and topographical arrangement the openings known as "barrens" in the forests of Nova Scotia. In every other direction except the one taken by this line of glades the camp was bounded by a dense tropical jungle through which the Siboney-Santiago road had been cut. The opening occupied by the hospital camp was covered with a dense growth of high wild grass, shaded here and there by small clumps of piñon-bushes, with a few larger trees of kinds to me unknown. South and southwest of the camp lay a tropical forest which I did not undertake to explore, but which our pickets said was so wild and so tangled with vines and creepers as to be almost impenetrable. The site of the camp between the road and the brook was well chosen, and it was, perhaps, as satisfactory a place for a hospital as could have been found in that vicinity.