Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee

[41] had them carried to a house by the roadside, where they were attended by Mexican surgeons; of his finding by the side of a hut a little Mexican boy who had been a bugler or drummer, with his arm terribly shattered, and how a large Mexican soldier, in the last agonies of death, had fallen on him; how he was attracted to the scene by the grief of a little girl; how he had the dying Mexican taken off the boy, and how grateful the little girl was. “Her large black eyes,” he said, “were streaming with tears, her hands crossed over her breast; her hair in one long plait behind reached her waist, her shoulders and arms bare, and without stockings or shoes. Her plaintive tone of ‘Mille gracias, Signor,’ as I had the dying man lifted off the boy and both carried to the hospital, still lingers in my ear. After I had broken a way through the chaparral and turned toward Cerro Gordo I mounted Creole, who stepped over the dead men with such care as if she feared to hurt them, but when I started with the dragoons in the pursuit, she was as fierce as possible, and I could hardly hold her.”

From Cerro Gordo to the capital of Mexico, Captain Lee at every point increased the reputation he was acquiring. At Contreras, Churubusco, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec he was constantly in the saddle, performing with alacrity and courage the duties of a trusted staff officer. “Before the battle of Contreras,” wrote one of the most distinguished soldiers of that war, “General Scott's troops had become separated in the field of Pedrigal, and it was necessary to communicate instruction to those on the other side of this barrier of rocks and lava. General Scott says in his report that he had sent seven officers since about sundown to communicate instructions; they had all returned without getting through, but the gallant and indefatigable Captain Lee, of the engineers, who has been constantly with the operating forces, is just in from Shields, Smith, Cadwalader, etc.. .. .”

Subsequently Scott, while giving testimony before a court of inquiry, said: “Captain Lee, of the engineers, came to me from Contreras with a message from Brigadier-General Smith. I think about the same time (midnight) he, having passed over the difficult ground by ”