This was the account of the battle that got back to the
newspapers in the form of a "scoop," and it was nothing more nor less
than the excited imagination of the only coward who at that time or
ever afterwards was a member of the famous Rough Riders. He was
consequently returned to civil life prematurely.
The newspaper correspondent in Cuba was of a distinguished type. You
recognized him immediately. He was utterly fearless; he delighted in
getting up on the firing-line--that is, a few of him did. Among these
few might be mentioned Marshall, and Davis, and Remington, and
Marcotte, and King, and some half-dozen others; but there was another
type of newspaper correspondent in Cuba, who hung around from two
miles and a half to three miles in rear of the firing-line, and never
by any possibility got closer to the enemy than that. The members of
this guild of the newspaper fraternity were necessarily nearer the
cable office than their more daring comrades; in fact, there were a
few who were known to have been eight or nine miles nearer to the
cable office during battles, and those correspondents were the ones
who made the great "scoop" in the New York papers, by which a regiment
that laid down and skulked in the woods, or ran wildly to the rear,
was made to do all the fighting on the first day of July.
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