General Wheeler at Santiago

"[During one of the most active engagements of the Cuban campaign during the Spanish-American War,] General Wheeler started on the two-mile journey to the front in an ambulance [suffering from yellow fever]. About half-way to the front, he met some litters bearing wounded. The veteran [Wheeler], against the protest of the surgeons, immediately ordered his horse, and after personally assisting the wounded into the ambulance, mounted and rode onward. The men burst into frantic cheers, which followed the General all along the line." – Correspondence, New York Tribune.]

Into the thick of the fight he went, pallid and sick and wan,

Borne in an ambulance to the front, a ghostly wisp of a man;

But the fighting soul of a fighting man, approved in the long ago,

Went to the front in that ambulance and the body of Fighting Joe.

Out from the front they were coming back, smitten of Spanish shells-

Wounded boys from the Vermont hills and the Alabama dells;

"Put them into this ambulance; I’ll ride to the front," he said:

And he climbed to the saddle and rode right on, that little old ex-Confed.

From end to end of the long blue ranks rose up the ringing cheers,

And many a powder-blackened face furrowed with sodden tears,

As with flashing eyes and gleaming sword, and hair and beard of snow,

Into the hell of shot and shell road little old Fighting Joe!

Sick with fever and racked with pain, he could not stay away,

For he heard the song of the yester-years in the deep-mouthed cannon’s bay –

He heard in the calling song of the guns there was work for him to do,

Where his country’s best blood splashed and flowed ‘round the old Red, White and Blue.

Fevered body and hero heart! This Union’s heart to you

Beats cut in love and reverence --- and to each dear boy in blue

Who stood or fell mid the shot and shell, and cheered in the face of the foe,

As, wan and white, to the heart of the fight rode little old Fighting Joe!

---- James Lindsay Gordon in the New York Tribune