A few days later came the fight at San Juan.  Colonel Wood had been put in command of the brigade, so Roosevelt led the regiment of Rough Riders.  It was a fearfully hot day; many men dropped from exhaustion.  The regular regiments of cavalry, together with the Rough Riders, all fighting on foot, moved forward against the low hills on which were the Spaniards in block-houses or trenches.  For some while they were kept waiting in reserve, taking what shelter they could from the Mauser bullets, which came whirring through the tall jungle grass.  This is the most trying part of a fight.  It is all right when at last you can charge your enemy and come to close quarters with him, but to lie on the ground under fire, unable to see anybody to fire upon, is the worst strain upon the soldiers’ nerves.  As one after another is shot, the officers begin to watch the men closely to see how they are standing it.  Roosevelt received a trifling wound from a shrapnel bullet at the beginning of the fight.  Later his orderly had a sun-stroke, and when he called another orderly to take a message, this second man was killed as he stood near, pitching forward dead at Roosevelt’s feet.

Finally came the order to charge.  Roosevelt was the only mounted man in the regiment.  He had intended to go into the fight on foot, as he had at Las Guasimas, but found that the heat was so bad that he could not run up and down the line and superintend things unless he was on horseback.  When he was mounted he could see his own men better, and they could see him.  So could the enemy see him better, and he had one or two narrow escapes because of being so conspicuous.

He started in the rear of the regiment, which is where the Colonel should be, according to the books, but soon rode through the lines and led the charge up “Kettle Hill,”—­so-called by the Rough Riders because there were some sugar kettles on top of it.  His horse was scraped by a couple of bullets, as he went up, and one of the bullets nicked his elbow.  Members of the other cavalry regiments were mingled with the Rough Riders in the charge,—­their officers had been waiting for orders, and were glad to join in the advance.  The Spaniards were driven out and the Rough Riders planted their flags on the hill.

But there were other hills and other trenches full of Spaniards beyond, and again the Rough Riders, mixed with men of other regiments, went forward.  In cleaning out the trenches Roosevelt and his orderly were suddenly fired on at less than ten yards by two Spaniards.  Roosevelt killed one of them with his revolver.  The Rough Riders had had eighty-eight killed and wounded out of less than five hundred men who were in the fight.

The American forces were now within sight of Santiago, but they had to dig in and hold the ground they had taken.  There was a short period in the trenches, which seemed tedious to the riders from the plains, but was nothing to what men, years later, had to endure in the Great War against Germany.  At last Santiago surrendered, on July 17.