Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1898 — SENSATION OF BEING SHOT. [ARTICLE]

SENSATION OF BEING SHOT.

How It Feela to Get a Mauser Bullet in the Face. First Lieut. W. H. Wassell, Twentysecond United States Infantry, writing to his parents in Pittsburg, Pa., says: “I was shot about 4 o’clock in the afternoon of July 1 while storming El Caney, northeast of Santiago. I was looking througih field glasses at the time, and the ball cut through the outer part of the little finger of the left band, joint next to the hand, then through the palm of my hand, out just below the index finger, then in the cheek about half an inch from the left corner o|my mouth, back through my moulth, taking several back teeth, downward through my neck, still downward and toward my spine, coming out about half way down my back and about four* inches from my spine. I haven’t a bone broken. I can swallow, and, thank God, I am strong, and, aside from possible scars, I will be no worse off. “I will never forget the sensation of being shot. We had been under fire all day—tha hottest rain of bullets that men ever went againt. The Spaniards were all intrenched. They shot us from behind their earthworks, blockhouses, trees, and church towers. All at once it seemed as if I was lifted up from the ground and whirled round and round. Oh, so terribly fast. I never lost consciousness during the sensation. 1 felt myself going, but I seemed to realize that if I let myself go it would be all over, so I took a brace, and after what seemed an age of this terrible whirling I was dropped to the ground. Then it seemed as If no one would notice that I had been hit. “It seemed as age before I heard a man swear and say: ‘They have hit Lieut. Wassell.’ He picked me up to carry me down behind the crest of a hill, and what a storm of bullets the poor fellow got as he raised me. I didn’t know how badly I was hurt, but from the blood gushing from my mouth and the pain in my back where the bullet had left me I imagined I was in it pretty badly. Capt. Lochinvar came up to me, and I remember telling him I didn’t know whether I was done for or only scared to death. One of tixq men dressed me as well as he could with my first aid bandages, and I lay under a tree until about 6 o’clock. About that time some of the Spaniards began a riot on the cither side of mo, and fox* a little while the bullets from friend and foe whirled over me and struck near me. About sundown, the firing having ceased, I was carried about a mile to the bridge hospital. Here I was dressed. The doctors were worked to death and did their best.”