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From the Library of
SIMEON E. BALDWIN, Y '61
Gift of his children
HELEN BALDWIN GILMAN
ROGER SHERMAN BALDWIN, Y '9a
1927

THE CUBAN AND
PORTO RICAN
CAMPAIGNS

Officers Watching the Artillery Play on Coamo.
Drawn by F. C. Yohn from a photograph by the Author.

THE CUBAN AND
PORTO RICAN
CAMPAIGNS

BY

RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, F.R.G.S.
AUTHOR OF "SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE," "GALLAGHER AND OTHER
STORIES," "THE PRINCESS ALINE," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1898

Copyright, 1898, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The First Shot  1

CHAPTER II.
The First Bombardment  24
CHAPTER III.
The Rocking-chair Period  45
CHAPTER IV.
The Voyage of the Transports .... 86
CHAPTER V.
The Guasimas Fight  120
CHAPTER VI.
The Battle of San Juan  173
CHAPTER VII.
In the Rifle-pits  224
CHAPTER VIII.
The Porto Rican Campaign  296

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Officers Watching the Artillery Play on Coamo . Frontispiece
PAGE
Key West Hotel . . . . . 2
The First Prize of the War, Buena Ventura, Showing
Some of the Prize Crew on her Deck . 9
Group of Prizes — Key West . . 13
The Flag-ship New Yore Cleared for Action . 16
"Messenger!" . .... 18
The First Prisoner of the War ... 20
The Flag-ship New York Under Way at Full Speed in
Cuban Waters . . . . 25
The Admiral's Bridge . . .28
Lieutenant Mulligan and Ensign Boone .... 29
Junior Officers of the New York . . . .32
Sunday Inspection on Board the New York ... 38
Lobby — Tampa Bay Hotel  47
Tampa Bay Hotel Piazza . . 49
Correspondent Bargaining for a Horse . 52
A Group of War Correspondents . . 54
Major-General Joseph Wheeler 55
Captain Arthur H. Lee and Count von Goetzen, British
and German Military Attaches . . . . .57
Foreign Attaches at Tampa . . 59
General View of the Camp at Tampa, Eighth Infantry
in the Foreground .... 61
First Artillery Horses Bathing in the Surf . 64
Leaving the Water . .... 65
ix

LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS PAGE
Second Infantry Drill at Tampa ... . . 67
An Artillery Brigade . . . . . . . . 77
Third Cavalry at Drill  81
"Who said oats?"  84
Port Tampa on Day of Sailing of Transports . . 87
Generals Miles and Shafter on Deck of the Transport
Seouranoa at Port Tampa  91
Artillery for Cuba ......... 93
Waiting for the Expedition to Move  95
General Miles on the Day of Sailing of Transports " 97
Transports Off for Cuba .... . . 99
General Shafter at Port Tampa Superintending Embarka
tion  . . 101
Admiral Sampson and General Shafter Going Ashore at
aserraderos ....... . 104
Captain Stewart Brice Being Carried Ashore at Aserra-
deros ..... ..... 106
Generals Shafter and Garcia with Cuban Volunteers . 109
A Cheer by the Rough Riders ...... 118
Colonel Roosevelt  121
Colonel Roosevelt and Richard Harding Davis . . 122
Landing of American Forces at Siboney . . . 124
Another View of the Landing ...... 126
A Group of Officers .  129
Captain O'Neill of the Rough Riders  134
American Boats Landing Cubans at Siboney . . . 138
The Place Where the Guasimas Fight Began . . . 143
Siboney, from the Hill over which the Wounded Rough
Riders Retired After the Fight ..... 147
A Group of Rough Riders ....... 152
Wounded Rough Riders Coming Over the Hill at Siboney 157
Map of the Country Before San Juan ..... 174
General Chaffee in the Field . . ... 176
x

LIST OF ILLTJSTKATIONS PAGE
The Farm House Below El Poso Hill  179
Stone Breastwork with Palm-leaf Roof at South Side of
El Caney  181
Men of the Twelfth Infantry on thf Firing Line at El
Caney  184
Brigadier-General Sumner and Aides ..... 187
The War Balloon Making its First Ascension . . . 189
Capron's Battery in Action at El Caney .... 191
Gun No. 1 of Grimes's Battery  195
Artillery Coming up El Poso Hill  197
El Poso, Immediately After the Spanish Fire Ceased . 200
Grimes's Battery at El Poso  201
Fording a Stream on the Way to the Front . . . 205
Mule Train Carrying Ammunition from Siboney to San Juan 207
General Hospital of the First Division . . . .210
The Fight at the San Juan Block-house, July 1st . . 215
San Juan Block-house, Showing Marks of Shot . . .219
The San Juan Hill, Showing General Wheeler's Camp . 221
United States Troops in the Trenches Before Santiago . 225
Making Observations while Under Heavy Spanish Fire . 228
Looking Toward Santiago from the Trenches of the Col
ored Troops  233
A Detachment of the Seventy-first New York Volunteers
just Before Going into Action  239
Digging Trenches Before Santiago, about July 10, 1898 . 242
Generals Wheeler, Chaffee, and Lawton in Consultation 243
Outside Trenches of the Second Infantry .... 245
Trench to Right of San Juan Block-house Occupied by
American Troops  249
The Trenches of the Fourth Infantry ..... 253
Looking to the Left Down the Trench of the Second
Infantry  257
Looking Toward Santiago from the Trenches in Front of
the San Juan Block-house  259
ad

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE
The Spanish Prisoners being Escorted to the Lines to be
Exchanged for Hobson and his Merrimac Crew . 263
Another View of the Spanish Prisoners on the way to
be Exchanged . . . . . 267
Blindfolded Spanish Prisoners on the way to the Meet
ing-place BETWEEN THE LlNES . . . . 271
Artillery Entrenched ...... . 274
Hobson's Merrimac Crew Arriving within the American
Lines, just after the Exchange . . 275
San Juan Block-house — American Troops in Trenches 279
Trenches of the First Cavalry Before Santiago . . 284
Lieutenant William Tiffany . . .... 287
Raising the Flag Over Santiago .... 289
The Trenches of the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill 293
John Fox, Jr., War Correspondent . . 295
Seal of the Corporation of the City- of Ponce . . 296
The Gloucester Bombarding Juanica, Porto Rico . . . 297
General Miles in Launch of Massachusetts Towing Pon
toons, at Juanica, Porto Rico . . . 301
Captain Henry H. Whitney . . . . 304
United States Artillery Entering Ponce . . 307
Map Showing Location of United States Military Tele
graph Lines and Offices . . . . . . 311
Ensign Curtin of the Wasp ... . 312
Troops Entering Ponce . ... . 313
General Miles and Staff in the Patio of the Hotel Fran-
cais at Ponce ....... 315
Market Place at Ponce .  317
Crossing the River Rio Bucana ..... 320
American Soldier Showing a Rifle to Spaniards . 321
Unloading Army Supplies from the Transports at Port
Ponce . . . 323
City Troops Marching through the Town of Santa Isabel 327
Arrest of a Spanish Spy in Ponce  330
xii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE
City Troop on Road between Guayana and Ponce . . 332
General AVilson Entering Coamo . . . 333
City Troop Marching on Road between Ponce and Guayana 335
Third Wisconsin Entering Coamo . . . . 337
The Women of Coamo Receiving the American Soldiers . 339
Colonel Biddle, of General Wilson's Staff, Interrogating a
Spanish Prisoner . 342
Third Wisconsin Volunteers Passing Spanish Rifle-pit
Thrown up Across the Street in Coamo . . 345
Main Road between Ponce and Port Ponce . . . 348
Map of the Spanish Position near Aibonito . . • 349
Officers of First City Troop of Philadelphia . . . 351
Battery "A," under Captain Warburton, Loading Lighter
with Guns ......... 356
Troops Embarking for Home ....... 357
Sentries at Cavalry Outpost on Cayey Road, about two
and a half Miles from Guay'ana ..... 359

MAPS
Santiago de Cuba and Vicinity,  160
General Map of Cuba, . . . End of volume
General Map of Porto Rico, . . . "

THE CUBAN AND PORTO KICAN
CAMPAIGNS

CHAPTER I
THE FIRST SHOT
I~T was half -past four on the afternoon of April
¦*- 2 2d, and that peace which only exists when
the sun is at 103° brooded over the coral islands
of Key West and over the war-ships of the North
Atlantic Squadron in her bay. The flags at the
mast-heads moved irritably in the hot air, the
palms at the Custom-house moved not at all,
but were cut against the glaring blue sky like
giant petals of tin ; in the streets the colored
drivers slept in their open hacks, and on the porch
of the hotel a row of officers in white duck and
of correspondents in yachting-caps sat with tilt
ed chairs and with their feet on the railings be
fore them, in a state of depressed and sweltering
silence. For two months they had been waiting at Key

THE CUBAN AND POETO EICAN CAMPAIGNS
West. They had waited while the President's
message had been postponed once, and three times
while Representatives and Senators moved and
amended and referred, while foreign powers had
offered services more or less friendly, and while

Key West Hotel.
all the machinery of diplomacy had been put in
motion to avert or to delay the inevitable end.
And they had lost hope and interest. For three
weeks the White Squadron had been disguised in
a war-paint of lead. The decks of the war-ships
had been cleared for action, and the great battle
ships that were to lead the way, and which stood

THE FIRST SHOT
seven miles nearer to the goal than the others, for
three weeks had strained and tugged at their an
chorage, like dogs struggling in their chains.
Ever since February the loth, when the Maine
settled into the mud of Havana Harbor, these
men at Key West had held but one desire and
one hope, and at half-past four of that hot and
peaceful afternoon their reward came. It wore,
when it came, the obvious and commonplace garb
of every day. A small boy fell off his bicy
cle in front of the hotel and ran his eyes along
the porch until they rested on a correspondent of
the New York Herald. To him he handed a tel
egram, and, mounting his wheel again, rode away
up the hot and dusty street. The correspondent
opened the envelope with his thumb, and read :
"Rain and hail," and started ; and then, seeing
that the watchful eyes of half the row were upon
him, turned his back and took a narrow code-book
from his pocket, and ran his finger down its page.
He held it toward me, as I stood looking over his
shoulder, and I read : " Rain and hail " = " War
is declared, fleet ordered to sea." A few moments
later the porch was empty, the hall of the hotel
was piled high with hand-bags and sailors' kits,
and hackmen were lashing their horses down the
dusty street ; and at the water's edge one could

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
see launches, gigs, and cutters streaking the blue
surface of the bay with flashes of white and brass ;
signal flags of brilliant reds and yellows were
spreading and fluttering at the signal halyards;
wig-waggers beat the air from the bridges, and
across the water, from the decks of the monitors,
came the voices of the men answering the roll :
" One, two, three, four ! one, two, three, four ! "
There were still ships to coal, or Captain Samp
son, who had become Admiral Sampson since half-
past four, would on the \yord have started to
blockade Havana. But as they could not be left
behind, all of those ships that were ready were
moved outside the harbor and the fleet was sig
nalled to be in readiness to start at four o'clock
the next morning. That night as the sun sank —
and it sinks at Key West with a splendor and
glory that it assumes in but few other ports in the
world — it spread a fiery red background for
thirteen black ships of war outlined with gallows
like yards against the sky. Some still lay at
anchor, sparkling with cargo lights and with the
coaling barges looming bulkily along side, and
others moved across the crimson curtain looking
less like ships than a procession of grotesque
monsters of the sea — grim, inscrutable, and men
acing. 4

THE FIRST SHOT
War had been declared. It had come at last,
and, as the fleet lay waiting for the day, it is a
question if any man in the squadron slept that
night, but did not instead keep watch alone, and
wonder what war might bring to him. To whom
would it bring honor, to whom honor with death,
to whom would the chance come, and who would
seize it when it came, and who would make it
come ?
In the quick changes of war and under its cruel
tests, unknown men would become leaders of men,
and those who had attained high places and had
risen and fattened in the days of peace would be
pushed aside into oblivion ; the political generals
would see a gunner's mate become in an hour the
nation's hero ; new conditions and new problems
would rise, to find men ready to grasp them. Any
thing was possible — new alliances, new enemies,
and new friends. The declaration of war meant
all these things — a new map and a new chapter in
the history of the world.
And yet while men wondered as to what the
morrow might bring forth, the physical aspect of
the night was one in strange contrast to the great
change of the day. We could imagine the interest
and excitement which the declaration of war had
roused in all corners of the country ; we knew that

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
for the moment Key West was the storm-centre
of the map of the United States, and that where
the squadron would go, what it would do, and
how soon it would move upon the enemy were
questions that men were asking in clubs and on
street corners ; we knew that bulletin-boards were
blocking the streets of lower New York with
people eager for news, and that men and women
from Seattle to Boston were awake with anxiety
and unrest.
And yet at the heart of it all, in the harbor of
Key West, save for the water lapping against the
great sides of the ships and the bells sounding in
chorus across the stretches of the bay, there was
only silence, and the night wore every aspect of
peace. For though all through that night the
vessels talked with one another, they spoke in a
language of signs — a language that made less
sound than a whisper. That was the only promise
for the morrow, their rows of lanterns winking
red and white against the night, and vanishing
instantly in mid-air, and the great fingers of the
search-lights sweeping grandly across the sky,
halting upright for a moment, and then sinking
to the water's edge, measuring out the heavens
and carrying messages of command to men many
miles at sea. 6

THE FIRST SHOT
The morning of the 23d awoke radiantly
beautiful with light and color. In the hollows of
the waves deep blue and purple shadows caught
the million flashes of the sun, and their white
crests danced in its light. Across this flashing
picture of light and movement and color, the
leaden-painted war-ships moved heavily in two
great columns, the battle-ships and monitors lead
ing on the left, the cruisers moving abreast to
starboard, while in their wake and on either flank
the torpedo-boats rolled and tossed like porpoises
at play. To the active imagination it might have
appeared that each was racing to be the first to
throw a shell into Cabanas prison, to knock the
first stone from the ramparts of Morro Castle, to
fire the first shot of the War of '98. But the first
shot of the war was reserved for no such serious
purpose. For while the houses of Key West were still
well in view, there came into the lines of the
squadron a courteous Spaniard, who, unsuspect
ing and innocent of war, steered his tramp steam
er, the Buena Ventura, into the very jaws of the
enemy. And it was upon him that the unsought-
for honor fell of receiving the first shot our navy
had fired " in anger " in thirty years.
According to the story of the Spanish captain,

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
as told that same afternoon in the harbor of Key
West, when he saw so many " beautiful " war
ships flying the American flag, he said to him
self : " Behold ! the courtesy of my race requires
that I salute these beautiful war-ships." Those
are his exact words. And in admiration and in
nocence the poor man raised the red and yellow
standard of Spain.
This was at half-past five in the morning of
April 23d. Lieutenant Frank Marble was officer
of the deck on the flag-ship, and from the forward
bridge he had reported the presence of a vessel
on the starboard bow. The admiral signalled
the ship nearest the Buena Ventura, which hap
pened to be the Nashville, " What colors does the
stranger show ? "
Both the Helena and the Nashville signalled
back *' Spanish," and the answer came from the
flag-ship to the Nashville, "Capture her."
The signal as it is in the code-book is really
much fuller than that, but that is its meaning.
So the Nashville fired a shot across the Buena
Venturis bow. Patrick Walton fired it. It
was the first shot of the war. A second shot fol
lowed, and the Buena Ventura hove to, and a
prize crew, under Ensign Magruder, boarded her ;
and a press-boat buried her bows in the water
8

The First Prize of the War, Buena Ventura, Showing Some of the
Prize Crew on her Deck.

THE FIRST SHOT
and rushed back to the United States with the
news that the squadron had taken her first prize,
and that the blockade had begun. And so it
came about that a fluttering of flags and a couple
of shots aimed at a flashing, dancing sea formed
the first hostile act of our war with Spain.
For twelve days after war was declared the flag
ship New York lay ten miles off Morro Castle,
blistering in the sun by day and made beautiful by
the moon at night. She was the central office of
the blockading squadron, and from her messen
ger-boys, in the shape of black and grimy tor
pedo-boats, carried orders to the men-of-war that
stretched along the coast from Cardenas to Bahia
Honda. While they lay waiting or patrolling
their stations, alert and watchful, the flag-ship
planned and arranged and issued commands. She
was the bureau of information for the fleet, the
mouth-piece of the Strategic Board at Washing
ton, and all through the hot brilliant days her red
and yellow signals fluttered and flapped and her
wig-waggers beat the air. Other war-ships drew
up beside her, and their officers came on board to
receive instructions ; tug-boats converted into aux
iliaries flew to her for aid, to ask for the loan of
a few casks of drinking-water, or the services of
a mechanic to mend a leak, or to deliver the mail-
11

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
bags and, what was of equal value, clothes from
the laundry.
The New York was the clearing-house of the
fleet, the first to receive the news, the one place
from which news was disseminated. It came to
us from officers of prize-crews on their way back
to their ships, who halted to report to the Ad
miral and to tell their adventures to the ward
room mess ; and it was brought to us by the fleet
of press-boats, which in return received the news
of the day on the flag-ship. Sometimes they
received this through a megaphone, sometimes
they sent a correspondent over the side to get it
at first hand, and sometimes, when the sea was
rough, we threw it to them done up in a glass
bottle. The flag-ship was the only place from
which to view and comprehend the blockade.
What was seen from a press-boat was at long
range ; from its deck the motive and result of any
move was of necessity problematical. It was like
reporting the burning of the Waldorf-Astoria
from the Brooklyn Bridge. The observer in the
distance might see much smoke and some flame,
but whether the cause of the fire were accidental
or incendiary, whether there were loss of life or
deeds of heroism, he could only guess.
In its creature-comforts life on board the flag-

>1 I

o

THE FIRST SHOT
ship was like that on board of a yacht cruising in
summer seas ; but overshadowing its comforts was
an organization as complete as that of the Bank
of England, and discipline as absolute as that of
a monastery. In no military post, from Knights-
bridge Barracks to Gibraltar, from Fort Houston
to Fort Sill, nor in Greece, Egypt, France, Rus
sia, or Germany have I seen discipline better ob
served, or such " smartness," or such intelligent
obedience as I noted during the ten days that I
remained on the New York. In that time there
were many novel experiences to impress one ;
there was much that was entirely new and quite
incomprehensible. There were some exciting
races after blockade-runners, some heavy firing,
some wonderful effects of land and sea and sky,
some instances of coolness and courage and of
kindness and courtesy ; but what was more im
pressive than all else besides, was the discipline
of the ship's company and the perfection of her
organization. Many men can swagger and be
brave and shoot off a gun. That our sailors are
brave no one has ever doubted, even before the
victory of Manila Harbor ; but the best sailor is
the man who not only can stand by his gun, but
who can stand watch eight hours on end without
stealing a few minutes' sleep ; who respects him-
15

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
self, his ship, and her officers ; who is as thor
oughly in earnest when he is alone cleaning a bit
of brasswork as when he is aiming a four-inch
gun in the presence of the enemy.
The discipline of the New York was rigid, in
telligent, and unremitting, and each of the five

The Flag-ship New York Cleared for Action.
hundred men on this floating monastery moved in
his little groove with the perfect mechanism of
one of the eight-inch guns. A modern war-ship is
the perfection of organization. It is the embodi
ment of the axiom that "a stitch in time saves
nine." It is the eternal vigilance which obtains
on board that keeps her what she is, the hourly
16

THE FIRST SHOT
fight against rust and dust that makes her always
look as though she had just been made com
plete that morning. All the old homely sayings
seem to be the mottoes of her executive. There
is " a place for everything and everything in its
place," whether it is a projectile weighing half a
ton, or signal flag No. 22, or a roll of lint for
the surgeon, or the blue-jacket in charge of the
search-light. A ship of war is like a moving village. She has
to house and feed and give employment to her in
habitants, and to place them at certain points at
a moment's notice, to face unknown conditions
and to face them coolly and intelligently. You
can imagine the confusion in a village of five
hundred people should they be dragged out of
bed at midnight by an alarm of fire. But in the
floating village of the war-ship New York disci
pline and training have taught the inhabitants to
move to certain places, and to perform certain
work when they get there, within a space of two
minutes. It is so on every other war-ship in the
Navy of the United States. And it does not con
sist entirely in manning a gun and pulling a lan
yard. That is the showy work — the work that
tells in the despatches, and which is illustrated
in the weekly papers. 17

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

Messenger

There are also those who serve "who only
stand and wait" ; who see nothing of the fighting,
but take equal risk
with those who
fight; who are not
inspired by the
consciousness that
all is going well,
but who remain at
their posts in the
semi - darkness be
low decks, shaken
by concussions
above, and not
knowing how soon the sides of the ship may part,
or the decks below rise, or a projectile crash
bursting and burning through the deck above
and choke them with vile suffocating fumes.
They feed the fires with coal and haul on am
munition-lifts, like miners in a coal-pit. Their
work is just as important as is that of the gunner
who trains and fires the big gun ; but when it is
over they go back to set the table for the officers'
mess, or to play a bass viol in a string band, or
sweep out the engine-rooms. They are just as
valuable to the village as is the gunner's mate,
and they should be remembered. 18

THE FIRST SHOT
Admiral Schley remembered them at the time
of the destruction of Cervera's fleet, and every few
minutes sent messengers below decks to the en
gine-rooms to tell the men there how the fight
was going, and that the American ships were
driving the Spanish vessels from the sea. They
were deserving of such consideration ; for a more
earnest, alert, and self-respecting class of men
than are on our war-ships are not to be found in
any class or profession in our country, and that
is as true of the admiral as of the crew, and of
the crew as of the admiral.
It was very difficult to believe that we were
really at war. A peaceful blockade does not lend
itself to that illusion. From the deck of the New
York, we overlooked the coast of Cuba as from
the roof of a high building ; and all that we saw
of war was a peaceful panorama of mountain-
ranges and yellow villages, royal palms and tiny
forts, like section-houses along the line of a rail
road, and in the distance Morro Castle and the
besieged city of Havana basking in a haze of
glaring sunlight.
So, the first prisoner of the war was almost as
much of a surprise to the ship as the ship was to
him. Up to the time of his arrival a Spaniard,
to most of the officers and crew, was an unknown
19

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

quantity — a picture of a bull-fighter in the comic
papers, something hidden away somewhere along
the smiling line of coast. The first prisoner in
troduced us to the enemy, and his uniform of
blue drill, his Panama hat, and his red and yellow
cockade made the Spaniard for the first time

The First Prisoner of the. War. The Spaniard is the one pulling his
mustache ; Sylvester Scovel is in the centre, in a yachting suit and
cap.
real and human. I had seen Spanish officers in
Cuba swaggering in cafes and plazas, tramping at
the head of their troops through dusty roads, di
recting the burning of huts and cane-fields, and
giving the order to fire on insurgent prisoners,
and I must confess to a sneaking sense of joy
when this poor Second Lieutenant came silently
20

THE FIRST SHOT
into Captain Chadwick's cabin twisting his hat
between his hands, and sank gratefully into the
chair they placed for him. The first question
Captain Chad wick asked was whether he would
have breakfast, but the prisoner said he had no
appetite; then the captain offered him a cigar,
but he shrugged his shoulders and bowed and
said he did not care to smoke. Then the Captain
told Sylvester Scovel, who was interpreting, to
ask the prisoner to say from where he came, and
how he happened to get caught. But to every one
of these questions Scovel added six of his own,
inquiring as to how many troops the Spaniards
had placed along the coast, where forts were sit
uated, where patrols met, and how deep the
water was in certain ports. Every now and then
Chadwick would say, " That will do, tell him he
is free ; " but Scovel would object : " No, don't
let him go yet; he is telling me things he
shouldn't." And then Scovel would smile with innocent blue
eyes upon the prisoner, and nod encouragingly,
and the unhappy Lieutenant would proceed to
give him the information which the blockading
squadron desired.
The name of Sylvester Scovel is probably
better known in Cuba than that of any other
21

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
American, even than that of Fitzhugh Lee. He
is certainly more cordially hated than any other
of the " nation of pigs," and a reward of $10,000
was for some time placed upon his head. The
Spaniards captured him once, after he had eluded
them hundreds of times ; the Senate of the United
States demanded that he should be set at lib
erty, and after a month's imprisonment he was
released. If he had been taken in Cuba during
the war, he would have been shot or hung on the
instant ; and the death of no other hanged Ameri
can would, I believe, have caused such universal
rejoicing among Spanish officers and Spanish resi
dents. Consequently, it was rather amusing to
see the Spanish Lieutenant, Juan de Rio, cling
ing close to Scovel's elbow, and showing him the
utmost deference and gratitude. Scovel -wore a
yachting cap and a suit of blue serge, so it is
probable that the Spaniard mistook him for one
of the ship's junior officers. But when they
parted, after Scovel had shown him over the
ship, there was a little scene. They had said fare
well with many flourishes, and the Spaniard had,
after the fashion of his race, made a pretty speech
to the effect that he saw it was impossible to
surpass the courtesy of an American officer as to
surpass his war-ship. 22

THE FIRST SHOT
" You have been most kind to me," he added,
" and I should like to know your name. I shall
always remember it."
Scovel laughed and nodded. " My name is
Sylvester Scovel," he said, bowing. " I am the
correspondent of the New York World."
The Spanish have no sense of humor, and this
one could not rise to the occasion. He only
gasped and stared, and backed hastily away. He
can hardly be blamed. It must be bewildering
to find that you have been overwhelmed with
courtesies by the man whose death, had he been
your prisoner and you had killed him, would
have brought you a reward of $10,000 and a
vote of thanks from your Government.

23

CHAPTER II
THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
WHILE I was on board the New York the
big guns were twice brought into service —
once at the bombardment of the batteries at Ma-
tanzas, and again when they were trained on some
impudent cavalry men who had fired on the ship
from the shore. Why they did so, unless they had
heard that French cavalry once captured a fleet
of war-ships, it is impossible to say. The first
of these bombardments was chiefly important
because it was the first; the second was of no
importance at all.
The quarter of an hour during which the firing
lasted at Matanzas was of interest in giving some
knowledge of how a war-ship in action acts upon
herself. With land forces the effect of their fire
upon the enemy is the only thought ; on the sea,
in one of these new inventions of warfare, the
effect of the batteries on the ship herself is an
added consideration.
The bombardment of the shore batteries at
24

The Flag-ship New York Under Way at Full Speed in Cuban Waters.

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
Matanzas came out of a clear sky. We knew
something unusual was going forward, but only
that. We had been lying off Morro and sud
denly started at good speed to the east, and when
we reached Matanzas we came slowly in toward
the mouth of the harbor and then drifted. The
New York was nearly two miles away from the
shore, but with a glass one could see soldiers gath
ered on a long rampart of fresh earth. To the
naked eye the yellow soil made a line against the
green manigua bushes on the point.
I was in a gun-turret on the main deck listen
ing to a group of jackies disagreeing as to whether
the port before us was that of Matanzas or Car
denas. I had visited both places and ventured
the opinion that it was Matanzas. So they
crowded in to ask about the houses that we saw
on shore, and as to whether there were mines in
the harbor, and what we were doing there any
way ; and I was just congratulating myself on
having such a large and eager audience, when
someone blew a bugle and my audience vanished,
and six other young men came panting into the
gun-turret, each with his hair flying and his eyes
and mouth wide open with excitement.
I asked if that particular bugle call was " gen
eral quarters," and a panting blue-jacket as he
27

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
rushed by shouted " Yes, sir ! " over his shoulder
and ran on. Everybody was running — officers,

The Admiral's Bridge.
middies, and crew. Everyone seemed to have
been caught just at the wrong end of the ship
and on the wrong deck, at the exact point
farthest from his division. They all ran for
about a minute in every direction, and then
there was absolute silence, just as though some
one had waved a wand over each of them and had
fixed him in his place. But it was apparently
the right place. Captain Chadwick ran down
the ladder from the forward bridge, and shouted
at Ensign Boone, " Aim for 4,000 yards, at that
28

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
bank of earth on the point." Then he ran up to
the bridge again, where Admiral Sampson was
pacing up and down, looking more like a calm
and scholarly professor of mathematics than an
admiral. For the Admiral is a slow-speaking,
quiet- voiced man, who studies intently and thought
fully the eyes of everyone who addresses him ; a
man who would meet success or defeat with the
same absolute quietness ; an intellectual fighter, a
man who impresses you as one who would fight
and win entirely with his head.

Lieutenant Mulligan in the Centre. Ensign Boone, who Fired the First
Shot at Matanzas, is on the Right.
Ensign Boone's gun was in the waist amidships,
and he had been especially chosen to fire the first
29

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
gun because the Captain had picked him out from
among the other junior officers as an eager and
intelligent ensign, and also because the jealousy
that rages between the eight-inch guns in the
fore and after turrets is so great that not even
the Admiral himself would dare to let one of
them fire the first shot of the war — that is, the
first shot " with intent to kill " — for fear of hurt
ing the feelings of the others. So Captain Chad-
wick cut the knot by ordering Ensign Boone to
let loose first. It was a proud moment in the life
of Ensign Boone, and, as he is one of the class
that was turned out of Annapolis before its time,
he is a very young man to have such an honor
thrust upon him. But, fortunately, he is modest
and bore it bravely.
At first I tried to keep count of the shots fired,
but soon it was like counting falling bricks. The
guns seemed to be ripping out the steel sides of
the ship, and to be racing to see which could get
rid of the most ammunition first. The thick deck
of the superstructure jumped with the concus
sions, and vibrated like a suspension-bridge when
an express train thunders across it. They came
crashing from every point, and, when you had
steadied yourself against one volley, you were
shaken and swayed by the. backward rush of
30

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
the wind from another. The reports seemed to
crack the air as though it were a dense body.
It opened and shut and rocked you about with
invisible waves. Your ear-drums tingled and
strained and seemed to crack. The noise was
physical, like a blow from a base-ball bat; the
noise itself stung and shook you. The concussions
were things apart ; they shook you after a fashion
of their own, jumping your field-glasses between
the bridge of your nose and the brim of your hat
and hammering your eyebrows. With this there
were great clouds of hot smoke that swept across
the decks and hung for a moment, hiding every
thing in a curtain of choking fog, which had a
taste of salt, and which rasped your throat and
nostrils and burned your eyes.
The ship seemed to work and to fight by her
self; you heard no human voice of command,
only the grieved tones of Lieutenant Mulligan,
rising from his smoke-choked deck below, where
he could not see to aim his six-inch gun, and
from where he begged Lieutenant Marble again
and again to " Take your damned smoke out of
my way." Lieutenant Marble was vaulting in
and out of his forward turret like a squirrel in a
cage. One instant you would see him far out on
the deck, where shattered pieces of glass and
31

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
wood-work eddied like leaves in a hurricane, and
the next pushing the turret with his shoulder as
though he meant to shove it overboard ; and then
he would wave his hand to his crew inside and

Junior Officers of the New York. Ensign Boone in the Centre.

there would be a racking roar, a parting of air
and sea and sky, a flash of flame vomiting black
smoke, and he would be swallowed up in it like
a wicked fairy in a pantomime. And instantly
32

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
from the depths below, like the voice of a lost
soul, would rise the protesting shriek of Dick
Mulligan asking, frantically, " Oh, will you take
your damned smoke out of my way ! "
The New York did not have all the fighting to
herself, for the Puritan and the Cincinnati were
a few hundred yards out at sea, and almost broke
their signal halyards in begging the Admiral to
be allowed to come in too. They were like
school-boys snapping their fingers at the school
master in their eagerness to show off their knowl
edge, and well they showed it. An impudent
battery had opened from the eastern coast of the
harbor, and they turned on that. The Puritan
was a wonderful sight. Her decks were lashed
with two feet of water, the waves seemed to be
running in and out of her turrets, and the flames
and smoke from her great guns came from the
water-line, so that it looked to us as though she
were sinking and firing as she sank. The Cincin
nati fired broadsides as rapidly as a man can
shoot a self -cocking revolver; it was perhaps the
most remarkable performance of the day. The
aim throughout was excellent — although it is not
necessary to say that of American marksmanship
— and the shots fell fairly in the ramparts, throw
ing the earthworks fifty feet in the air and cut-
33

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
ting them level with the ground. Only three
shots from the batteries struck near the New
York, and none of them came closer than one
hundred yards. The engagement lasted fifteen
minutes, but it was so exciting while it lasted
that they did not seem more than five.
On the whole, the concussions were not as
deafening as I had been led to think they would
be, but what the effect would be on one, if an
enemy's shots of like force were striking and
bursting around the ship, 1 cannot even imagine.
The thought of it makes me want to take off my
hat to every blue- jacket I meet.
No shots passed near us, but I found the wear
and tear from our own guns alone during that
quarter of an hour in which they were in action
far more trying than all the Turkish shells had
been at Velostinos, when they raced continuously
overhead for the better part of two long, hot
days. But there you were a free agent ; you
only moved because you thought yoU were going
to be hit. On the New York you moved because
you could not help yourself, because the guns of
your own side beat you about and deafened and
blinded and shook you.
It is not likely that anyone will undervalue
the qualities of our sailors, but no one need feel
34

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
the least afraid of giving them too much honor,
or of praising them beyond their deserts. Their
footing on one of these floating iron-foundries in
action is about as secure as that of a parcel of
flies on a window-pane when someone hits it with
a rock. With the army, a soldier always has the
satisfaction of knowing that, if he is not victori
ous, he can retreat through several States before
he is forced into the Pacific Ocean, but the sailor
of our navy has no such consolation. He must
either win, or sink in his coffin.
One night, just at the dinner-hour, the flag-ship
passed the harbor of Cabanas, which opens in the
land a few miles west of Mariel. As she skirted
in near shore there was a rattle of volley firing
to the left. It appeared to come from a group
of buildings on a hill that at one time formed a
part of the cenPrale of the Count de la Runion,
who owns the sugar plantation of La Herradura,
or the Horseshoe, as it is called on account of the
way the land curves around the fresh water lake
which lies east of Cabanas Harbor.
The firing continued for some minutes, but it
sounded so futile, so inadequate, and so imperti
nent that those on the deck of the flag-ship gazed
shoreward in astonishment, and no one moved to
reply. 35

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
It grew louder and bolder, and an officer said :
" That should be answered ; " but as he spoke a
stoker leaning out of the hatch of the Porter,
grimy and sweating and black, took his pipe
from between his teeth and laughed.
We could hear his laugh across the water. It
was sublime in its irony. It was perhaps the
best answer that anyone could have made ; but
volley firing could not be taken only as a joke,
and so the four-inch guns in the stern were run
out and turned on the Horseshoe.
It was as ill-chosen a name for that building
under the circumstances, as was Buena Ventura
for that first prize of the war.
The four-inch gun was aimed at the Horseshoe
and struck the roof, and as it spoke the deck of
the flag-ship heaved as suddenly as an elevator
starts when it rises with a jerk, and for a few
moments the gun continued to hurl flashes of
flame and clouds of hot smoke and volleys, that
shook the leaves of the palms and echoed among
the hills of Cuba.
It was just at sunset, when the sky was blaz
ing with a gridiron of red and gold. On the
decks and on the superstructure, in the turrets
and on the bridges, the blue -jackets and the
marines crowded together, leaning forward and
36

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
peering into the fading light. As each shell
struck home they whispered and chuckled as
though they were seated in the gallery at a play,
for there had been no general call to quarters.
It was only a bit of gun practice in passing, in
tended to teach infantrymen not to interfere
with their betters, and possibly also to discover
if there were any masked batteries near Cabanas
which might be tempted by the bombardment to
disclose their hiding-places. Meanwhile from
below came the strains of the string band play
ing for the officers' mess, and the music of
Scheur's "Dream of Spring" mingled with the
belching of the four-inch gun.
This is not a touch of fiction, but the reporting
of cold coincidence, for war as it is conducted at
this end of the century is civilized.
The ship ran up nearer to the shore, and as
she did so a troop of cavalry galloped into view
across the fields and formed a cordon under a
great tree. What evil purpose they intended tow
ard the New York a mile out at sea did not
disclose itself, for Captain Chadwick, who was
below decks, chose to aim the last shot himself.
He trained the four-inch gun on the group around
the tree and pulled the lanyard.
There was the same flash as before ; it lit up
37

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
the faces of the officers and crew as though they
were being taken in a flash-light photograph.
There was the same backward rush of pungent
smoke, the same bellowing roar, and the same
upheaval of the massive deck, but when the
smoke had cleared there was no cavalry troop

Sunday Inspection on Board the New York.
around the tree. The horsemen were riding
madly in fifty directions, like men at polo, and
at a speed unequalled even in their retreats be
fore machete charges.
But I still think the answer of the grimy
stoker was the better one.
We had several calls to " general quarters " at
night. They were probably the most picturesque
38

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
moments of the ten days spent on the flag-ship.
To the landsman one bugle-call was like another ;
" general quarters " meant no more to him than
the bugle- call which announced that the mail was
going ashore in ten minutes. It was three sleepy
Japanese stewards who told me we were going
into action. Whenever I woke to find them in
the wardroom, I knew someone was going to fire
off a six-inch gun.
They opened a hatch just beyond my berth and
pulled on a creaking ammunition-hoist. They
did this drowsily and stiffly, with the clutches of
sleep still on their limbs, and heavy on their eye
lids. The officers would run by buttoning tunics
over pajamas, and buckling on swords and field-
glasses. Even below decks you could hear the
great rush of water at the bows and the thump
ing of the engines, which told that the ship was
at racing speed ; and when you had stumbled on
deck the wind sweeping past awoke you to the
fact that in two minutes five hundred men had
fallen out of hammocks and into cutlasses and re
volvers, and that the ship was tearing through
the dark water in pursuit of a bunch of lights.
There were no orders shouted, but wherever you
peered in the darkness — for the flag-ship showed
no lights — you discerned silent, motionless figures.
39

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
They were everywhere — on the bridges, at the
foot of the gangways, grouped around the guns,
crouched in the turrets. You tumbled over them
at every step ; you saw them outlined against the
stars. And then, shining suddenly from the flying
bridge and rising and reaching out across the
waves, would shoot the finger of the search-light.
It showed the empty waters, and the tossing
white-caps in a path of light. " To the left ! " a
voice would call from the height of the forward
bridge, and, as though it were a part of the
voice, the light shifted. " No, higher ! " the
voice would call again, and the obedient light
would rise, turning the glare of day upon a
half-mile more of troubled water and exposing
on its horizon a white, frightened steamer, scud
ding at full speed for her life. Sometimes she
backed, sometimes she changed her course, but
the light never loosened its clasp. It gripped
her like a thief held in the circle of a policeman's
lantern. It was like a cat playing with a mouse, or a
hound holding a fox by its scent. In the silence
of the great war-ship, where the darkness was so
great that the men, crowded shoulder to shoulder,
could not see each other's face, the blockade-run-
40

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
ner, exposed and pointed out and held up to our
derision, seemed the only living thing on the sur
face of the waters. She was as conspicuous as a
picture thrown by a stereopticon on a screen.
And then one of the forward guns would speak,
flashing in the night like a rocket and lighting up
the line of the deck and the faces of the men,
and it would speak again and again. And the
flying steamer, helpless in the long-reaching clutch
of the search-light, and hearing the shells whistle
across her bows, would give up the race and come
to a standstill, sullen and silent.
While I was on the New York I received a
cablegram asking me to relate how the crew be
haved during the action at Matanzas. I did not
answer it, because I thought there were a few
things the American people were willing to take
for granted, and because the bombardment at Ma
tanzas was no test of the courage of the crew, but
of its marksmanship. There is a story, however,
which illustrates the spirit of the men on the
New York, and which answers, I think, any
queries that anyone may make as to how they
might behave in action.
Taylor, a young gunner's mate, was shot on
April 26th by a revolver. It was an accident ;
but it is possible he was more seriously hurt than
41

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
was any of the six wounded men who went
through the seven hours' battle at Manila, for the
ball passed through his arm and into his right
side, and came out nearly a foot away under his
left armpit. Junior Surgeon Spear said that, if
he had tried to dodge the vital parts in Taylor's
body with a surgical instrument, he could not
have done it as skilfully as did the bullet, which
was neither aimed nor guided by a human hand.
It was Junior Surgeon Spear who performed the
operation, while the Fleet Surgeon, Dr. Gravatt,
watched him and advised. It was a wonderful
operation. It lasted nearly two hours, and it left
the layman uncertain as to whether he should the
more admire the human body or the way a sur
geon masters it. What they did to Taylor I can
not tell in technical language, but I know they
cut him open and lifted out his stomach and put
it back again and sewed him up twice. He could
not get wholly under the influence of the ether,
and he raved and muttered, and struggled so
that at times it required the efforts of two men to
hold him down. Just before the Surgeon began
to operate the boy gave the Chaplain his mother's
address, and reached out his hand and said, " So
long, Chaplain."
He was a typical New York boy. He came
42

THE FIRST BOMBARDMENT
from Brooklyn, but nevertheless he looked and
talked and thought as you would expect and hope
that an apprentice from the St. Mary's training-
ship would look and talk and think. His skin
was as tough as a shoe which had remained long
in the salt water, but it was beautifully white and
spotless, like a girl's, and the contrast it made
with the skin which the sun and wind had tanned
was as sharp as the stripes on the flag.
When the second part of him was sewn up
Taylor was carried to a cot. He lay there so still
that I thought he was dead, and, as it was, they
had to inject strychnine into his veins to keep his
heart beating. But a minute later he opened his
eyes and turned them to the operating- table,
where he remembered in a half-drunken way
they had placed him two hours before. His eyes
were dazed with the ether, his lips were blue, and
his face was a ghastly gray. He looked up
at the four figures leaning over him, their bare
arms covered with his blood, and back at the op
erating-table that dripped with it. What had
happened, who had attacked him, and why, he
could not comprehend. He did not know that
parts of him which had lain covered for many
years had been taken out and held up naked, pal
pitating, and bleeding to the ruthless light of the
43

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
sun, to the gaze of curious messmates crowded at
the end of the sick-bay ; that these parts of him
self had been picked over and handled as a man
runs his fingers over the keys of a piano, and had
then been pushed and wedged back into place and
covered over as one would sew a patch on an old
sail, to lie hidden away again for many, many
years more.
He only knew that some outrageous thing had
been done to him — that he had been in a night
mare in hell ; and to Taylor, still drunk with
ether, these men whose wonderful surgery had
saved his life were only the bloody assassins who
had attempted it and failed.
He was pitiably weak from loss of much blood,
from the shock of the heavy bullet that had dug
its way through his body, from the waves of nau
sea that swept over him, but the boy opened his
eyes and regarded the surgeons scornfully. Then
he shook his head from side to side on the pillow
and smiled up at them.
" Ah, you'se can't kill me," he whispered. " I'm
a New Yorker, by God ! You'se can't kill me."
That is the spirit of the men who sunk the
Spanish fleet at Manila and at Santiago, and of
the crew of the war-ship that is named after the
city of New York. 44

CHAPTER III
THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
AFTER Dewey's victory on May 1st, and
while Sampson was chasing the will-of-the-
wisp squadron of Spain, the army lay waiting at
Tampa and marked time. The army had no wish
to mark time, but it had no choice.
It could not risk going down to the sea in ships
as long as there was the grim chance that the
Spanish fleet would suddenly appear above the
horizon line and send the transports to the bot
tom of the Florida Straits. The army longed to
be " up and at them." It was impatient, hot, and
exasperated ; but there was true common-sense in
waiting and a possible failure in an advance with
out a convoy, and so it continued through the
month of May to chafe and fret and perspire at
Tampa. Tampa was the port selected by the
Government as the one best suited for the em
barkation to Cuba. There is a Port of Tampa,
and a city nine miles inland of the same name.
The army was distributed at the port and in the
45

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
pine woods back of the city ; and the commanding
generals of the invading army, with their several
staffs, made their head-quarters at the Tampa Bay
Hotel. And so for a month the life of the army was
the life of an hotel ; and all those persons who
were directly or indirectly associated with the
army, and who were coming from or going to
Key West, halted at this hotel and added to its
interest. It was fortunate that the hotel was out
of all proportion in every way to the size and
wealth of Tampa, and to the number of transient
visitors that reasonably might be expected to
visit that city. One of the cavalry generals said :
" Only God knows why Plant built an hotel here ;
but thank God he did."
The hotel stands on grounds reclaimed from
the heavy sand of the city. It is the real oasis
in the real desert — a giant affair of ornamental
brick and silver minarets in a city chiefly com
posed of derelict wooden houses drifting in an
ocean of sand ; a dreary city, where the sand has
swept the paint from the houses, and where sand
swamps the sidewalks and creeps into the doors
and windows. It is a city where one walks an
kle-deep in sand, and where the names of avenues
are given to barren spaces of scrubby under-
46

Lobby -Tampa Bay Hotel.

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
growth and palmettoes and pines hung with
funereal moss.
In the midst of this desolation is the hotel. It
is larger than the palaces which Ismail Pasha
built overnight at Cairo, and outwardly not un
like them in appearance, and so enormous that

Tampa Bay Hotel Piazza.
the walk from the rotunda to the dining-room
helps one to an appetite.
Someone said it was like a Turkish harem with
the occupants left out. For at first there were
no women at the hotel. It was an Eveless Eden,
and during the early part of May the myriads of
rocking-chairs on the long porches were filled
49

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
with men. This was the rocking-chair period of
the war. It was an army of occupation, but it
occupied the piazza of a big hotel.
Everyone believed that the army was going to
move in two days. " Well, certainly by Monday,"
they would say. So at first everyone lived on a
war basis. All impedimenta were shipped North.
White linen was superseded by flannel shirts,
collars were abandoned for polka-dot kerchiefs.
Men, fearing the mails would prove too slow,
telegraphed for supplies, not knowing that they
could walk North and back again before the
army would move.
Those were the best days of the time of wait
ing. Officers who had not met in years, men who
had been classmates at West Point, men who had
fought together and against each other in the
last war, who had parted at army posts all over
the West, who had been with Miles after Geron-
imo, with Forsythe at Wounded Knee, with
Hardie and Hunter in the Garcia campaign along
the Rio Grande, were gathered together appar
ently for an instant onslaught on a common
enemy, and were left to dangle and dawdle under
electric lights and silver minarets. Their talk
was only of an immediate advance. It was to be
"as soon as Sampson smashes the Cape Verde
50

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
fleet." " It will be all over in two weeks," they
said. " We're not going to have a look in at all,"
they growled. " Do you know what we are ?
We're an army of occupation, that's all we are.
Spain will surrender when her fleet is smashed,
and we'll only march in and occupy Havana."
So they talked and argued and rocked and drank
gallons of iced tea, and the hot days wore into
weeks. Life then centred around the bulletin-
board; men stood eight deep, peering over each
other's shoulders as each new telegram followed
fast and was pasted up below the last. Outside,
in the sun, horse-dealers from every part of the
State led their ponies up and down before the
more or less knowing eyes of dough-boy officers
and war correspondents; and this daily sale of
horses was the chief sign of our activity — this
and the frequent reappointment of commanding
generals. One day General Wade was the man of the
hour, the next it was General Shafter ; and every
day came promises of the arrival of the Command
er-in-Chief himself. " Miles is coming in a spe
cial car," everybody told everybody else. " Now
we shall certainly start," everybody said ; and each
man began to mobilize his laundry, and recklessly
paid his hotel bill, and went over his campaign
51

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
kit for the thirtieth time. But the Commander-
in-Chief did not come until after many false
alarms, and gloom fell upon the hotel ; and many
decided it would be cheaper to buy it outright

Correspondent Bargaining for a Horse.
than to live there any longer, so they slept under
canvas with the soldiers, and others shaved again
and discarded piece by piece the panoply of war.
Leggings and canvas shooting-coats gave way to
white duck, fierce sombreros to innocent straw
52

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
hats ; and at last wives and daughters arrived on
the scene of our inactivity, and men unstrapped
their trunks and appeared in evening dress. It
was the beginning of the end. We knew then
that whether Sampson smashed the ubiquitous
fleet or not, we were condemned to the life of a
sea-side summer resort and to the excitement of
the piazzas. The men who gathered on those
piazzas were drawn from every part of the
country and from every part of the world,
and we listened to many strange stories of
strange lands from the men best fitted to tell
them. Lieutenant Rowan, just back from six
weeks with Garcia, and bronzed and hidden in
an old panania hat, told us of the insurgent
camp; Major Grover Flint, who had been
" marching with Gomez," told us of him ; Will
iam Astor Chanler, in the uniform of a Cuban
colonel, from which rank he was later promoted
to that of captain in our own Volunteer Army,
talked of Africa with Count von Goetzen, the
German military attache, who was also an Afri
can explorer ; Stephen Bonsai and Caspar Whit
ney, both but just back from Siam, discoursed
on sacred elephants and white ants ; and E. F.
Knight, the London Times correspondent, lin
gered with the army of the rocking-chairs for a
53

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

day before swimming into Matanzas Harbor and
going to Cabanas prison. Captain Dorst tried
to explain why the Oussi'e expedition failed, as
though its name were not reason enough; and
young Archibald, who accompanied it, and who

Frederic Remington

Caspar Whitney.
Grover Flint.

Richard Harding Davis.
Capt. Arthur H. Lee, R.A.,
British Military A ttachi.

A Group of War Correspondents.
54

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD

was the first correspondent to get shot, brought
wounds into contempt by refusing to wear his
in a bloody bandage, and in
stead hid his honors under
his coat.
There were also General
O. O. Howard and Ira San-
key, who busied about in the
heat, preaching and singing
to the soldiers; Miss Clara
Barton, of her own unofficial
Red Cross Army; Mr.
George Ken nan and Mr.
Poultney Bigelow, who had
views to exchange on Russia
and why they left it, and
General Fitzhugh Lee, look
ing like a genial Santa Claus,
with a glad smile and glad
greeting for everyone, even
at the risk of his becoming
Vice-President in consequence ; and there was
also General "Joe" Wheeler, the best type of
the courteous Southern gentleman, the sort of
whom Page tells us in his novels, on whom poli
tics had left no mark, who was courteous be
cause he could not help being so, who stood up
55

Major-Gen eral Joseph
Wheeler.

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
when a second lieutenant was introduced to him,
and who ran as lightly as a boy to help a woman
move a chair, or to assist her to step from a car
riage. There was also, at the last, Lieutenant-
Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, with energy and
brains and enthusiasm enough to inspire a whole
regiment; and there were military attaches in
strange, grand uniforms, which kept the volunteer
army gaping.
But the two men of greatest interest to the
army of the rocking-chairs were probably Ameri
ca's representative, Frederic Remington, and
Great Britain's representative with our army,
Captain Arthur H. Lee. These two held im
promptu receptions at every hour of the day,
and every man in the army either knew them
or wanted to know them. Remington was, of
course, an old story ; but Lee, the new friend and
the actual sign of the new alliance, ran him close
in popularity. There was no one, from the gen
erals to the enlisted men, who did not like Lee.
I know many Englishmen, but I know very few
who could have won the peaceful victory this
young captain of artillery won; who would have
known so well just what to see and to praise
— and when to keep his eyes and mouth shut.
No other Englishman certainly could have told
56

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
American stories as well as he did and not have
missed the point.
Many strange experiences and many adventures

Captain Arthur H. Lee and Count von Goetzen, British and German
Military Attaches.
had' fallen to the lot of some of these men; and
had the war been delayed a little longer, the
stories they told under the colored lights of the
57

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
broad verandas would have served for a second
"Thousand and One Nights," and would have
held as great an interest. They were as familiar
with the Kremlin as with the Mosque of St.
Sophia, with Kettner's Restaurant as with the
Walls of Silence. They knew the love-story of
every consul along the Malaysian Peninsula and
the east coast of Africa, and why he had left
home; they disagreed as to whether laced leg
gings or heavy boots are better in a Borneo
jungle; they talked variously in marks, taels,
annas, and shillings ; they had been chased by
elephants and had shot rhinoceri ; and they had
themselves been fired over, with the Marquis
Yamagata in Corea, with Kitchener in Egypt,
with Maceo in Cuba, and with Edhem Pasha in
Thessaly. One of them had taken six hundred
men straight across Africa, from coast to coast ;
another had explored it for a year and a half
without meeting a white man. This man had ex
plored China disguised as a Chinaman and Russia
as a Russian ; that had travelled more hundreds
of miles on snow-shoes than any other American,
Indian, or Canadian. There was one who had
been to school with an emperor, and another who
had seen an empress beheaded, and Captain
Paget, the English naval attache, who had shot
58

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
thirteen lions, and then, feeling some doubt as to
his nerve, dropped four thousand feet out of a
balloon to test it.
On the whole, it was an interesting collection

Foreign Attaches at Tampa.

of men — these generals with new shoulder-straps
on old tunics, these war correspondents and mili
tary attaches, who had last met in the Soudan
and Greece, and these self-important and gloomy

59

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
Cuban generals, credulous and mysterious ; these
wealthy young men from the Knickerbocker Club,
disguised in canvas uniforms and Cuban flags,
who are not to be confused with the same club's
proud contribution" to the Rough Riders. There
were also women of the Red Cross Army, women
of the Salvation Army, and pretty Cuban ref
ugees from Havana, who had taken a vow not to
dance until Havana fell. Each night all of these
people gathered in the big rotunda while a band
from one of the regiments played inside, or else
they danced in the big ball-room. One imagina
tive young officer compared it to the ball at
Brussels on the night before Waterloo ; another,
less imaginative, with a long iced drink at his
elbow and a cigar between his teeth, gazed at the
colored electric lights, the palm-trees, the whirl
ing figures in the ball-room, and remarked sen-
tentiously : " Gentlemen, as General Sherman
truly said, ' war is hell.' "
Four miles outside of this hotel, sleeping un
der the pines and in three inches of dirty sand,
there were at first ten thousand and then twenty-
five thousand men. They were the Regulars and
Volunteers, and of the two the Volunteers were
probably the more interesting. They were an
unknown proposition ; they held the enthusiasm
60

General View of the Camp at Tampa. Eighth Infantry in the Foreground.

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
of amateurs ; they were making unusual sacri
fices, and they were breaking home-ties which the
Regulars had broken so long before the war
came that the ties had had time to reknit. The
wife or mother of the Regular had grown ac
customed to his absence, and had arranged her
living expenses on a basis of his monthly pay ;
the family of the Volunteer, on the contrary,
was used to see him come home every evening
and hang his hat in the hall, and had been living
on the salary he received as a book-keeper, sales
man, or mill-hand. So the Volunteers had cares
for those at home which the Regulars did not
feel, as well as the discomforts of the present
moment. Neither of them showed much anxiety
as to the future.
The first two regiments of Volunteers to arrive
at Lakeland, which lies an hour's ride farther
back than' Tampa, were the Seventy-first New
York and the Second Massachusetts. They made
an interesting contrast. The New York men
were city-bred ; they had the cockney's puzzled
contempt for the country. Palm-trees, moss hang
ing from trees, and alligators were as interesting
to them as the first sight of a Pathan prisoner
to a British Tommy. Their nerves had been
edged by the incessant jangle of cable-cars and
63

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
the rush and strain of elevated trains. Their
palates had been fed on Sunday papers and Wall
Street tickers ; their joys were those of the roof-
gardens, and Muschenheim's, of Coney Island, and

1*4 ** ** i

First Artillery Horses Bathing in the Surf.
the polo grounds. The Massachusetts men, on
the other hand, were from the small towns in the
western half of Massachusetts ; they were farm
ers' sons, and salesmen in village stores ; some of
them were country lawyers, and many of them
worked in the mills. They took to the trees and
64

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
lakes contentedly ; their nerves did not jerk and
twitch at the enforced waiting ; they had not
been so highly fed with excitement as the New
York boys ; they did not miss the rush and hurry

Leaving the Water.
of Broadway. Their desires were curiously in
character. One of them " wanted to see a stone
fence once more before he was shot," and another
" wanted to drink water from a well again out of
a bucket." He shut his eyes and sucked in his
lips at the recollection. The others all nodded
65

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
gravely; they all knew they had drunk out of
wooden buckets. The New York men knew
nothing of stone walls. They made jokes of their
discomforts, and added others from Weber &
Fields, and their similes showed that they had
worked when at home in the law courts, the city
hospitals, and in the department stores. " The
food was not exactly Shanley's," they said, and
the distance across the lake was about that of the
home-stretch at Morris Park. They were more
restless, nervous, and argumentative than the New
England men, and they, at that distance, held the
Spaniard in fine contempt. They " wouldn't do a
thing to him," they said. And later they certainly
kept their word. The Massachusetts men were
more modest, I told them that the New York men
were getting up athletic sports, and running races
between the athletes of the different companies.
" Oh, well," said one of the New England men,
"when they find out who is their fastest runner,
I'll challenge him to run away from the first
Spaniard we see. I'll bet I beat him by a mile."
It is a good sign when a regiment makes jokes at
the expense of its courage. It is likely to be
most unpleasant when the fighting begins.
It seemed a fact almost too good to be true,
that the great complaint of the New York men
66

Second Infantry Drill at Tampa. The regiment entrenching itself
(time, seven minutes).

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
was the superabundance of beans served out to
them, and that the first complaint of the sons of
Massachusetts was that they had not received
beans enough. " Beans for breakfast, beans for
lunch, beans for dinner — what t'ell ! " growled the
New Yorkers.
" And as for beans," shrieked a Massachusetts
warrior, " they don't give you enough to fill a
tablespoon." While the Second Massachusetts was in camp
there was a military funeral under the pines of
Lakeland when the body of Weslie S. Brass, of
Company I, who died of pneumonia, was sent
North. His company was detailed to escort the
body to the train, but every other company in the
regiment volunteered to march behind it also, and
all the citizens of Lakeland lined the sandy streets
and stood with heads uncovered as it passed.
Before many weeks had passed men of higher
rank than that of private were killed in battle,
but had this boy been a major-general, or had
he been killed leading a forlorn hope, no greater
honor could have been shown him nor more ten
derness and consideration.
The State of Florida is not very far from the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts when a boy is
dying under a tent, and a woman stood outside
73

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
the little chapel crying because the officers had
not allowed her to take the sick soldier to her
own house. She was only one of many women,
each of whom came to the camp to ask if she
could not nurse the soldier, or bring him home
with her so that she might feel that she was
doing something for the cause, so that his mother
up in Massachusetts might feel that some other
mother had been with him at the last. Colonel
Clarke knew the boy was far better off in the
camp hospital than he could be in the hands of
untrained nurses. So the women of Lakeland
had to content themselves with robbing their own
gardens and the fields of flowers for his coffin,
and in joining in the procession to his funeral.
The chaplain held the service just at sunset, in
a little Episcopal church set in a grove of pines
at the edge of the lake. Beside the coffin a
guard of honor had stood all day in white gloves
and brightened brass and dustless blue, objects
of cleanliness and smartness, the like of which no
one had seen near Tampa for many weeks. But
their presence alone was not honor enough for a
Volunteer, so the Colonel came with his staff, and
the regimental band followed up the hill, the
drums rolling heavily and the bugles breathing
a dirge, and following after them marched com-

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
pany after company, winding out from under the
trees and up the dusty road in an endless column
of blue, hundreds of young soldiers, erect and
clear-eyed, with clean-cut New England faces,
the sons of farmers, mill-hands, lawyers, the in
dividuality of each heightened by the uniform he
wore. There was not standing-room enough in
the chapel for more than a third of them, so the
other companies surrounded it in long, motionless
lines, while the voices of two officers and two
privates, singing together, sounded through the
open windows in the hush of the twilight.
The day is spent and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on,
they sang, and a stillness came over the little vil
lage and upon the townspeople lining the side
walks and leaning on the garden gates, upon the
lake and the hundreds of white tents among the
moss-bearing pines.
" I am the resurrection and the life," the chap
lain read, and a thousand young men in blue
uniform bent their heads.
It was a good sight for the people of Florida
to see. It showed them all that not even one
of 80,000 Volunteers can fall from the ranks
either by illness or by a hostile bullet without
75

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
receiving honor and attaining his reward. Wes-
lie S. Brass was honored with a funeral that a
marshal of France might have deserved and one
which taught a fine lesson. It woke deep, serious
thoughts in the hearts of many young men. It
helped draw two little towns in far distant States
close together. It showed that the man who is
in uniform is the man his countrymen honor
above all other men, even if he is only a private
of one regiment among many. If a college pro
fessor, no matter how distinguished, had died in
Lakeland, it is doubtful whether a thousand men
would have asked to be allowed to march be
hind his body, or whether the people would have
lined the streets to see it pass, or whether every
mother would have wept as though for her own
son. It was what Weslie Brass had volunteered
to do for the Union that gained him a tribute
from his countrymen in a far-away State. It
was the offer of his services, and, if need be, of
his life, that won him a public funeral. That he
died before he saw the enemy did not count for
much with his colonel, nor with his fellow-
countrymen. He had started for the front, and
that was enough in Westfield, Massachusetts, and
in Lakeland, Florida.
The Regular soldier was professionally indif-
76

An Artillery Brigade.

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
ferent. He was used to camp-life, and regarded
soldiering as a business. Indeed, some of them
regarded it so entirely as a business, and as noth
ing more, that those whose time had expired in
camp did not re-enlist for the war, but went off
into private life in the face of it. That is where
they differed from the Volunteer, who left pri
vate life the moment war came. But a great many
of these time-expired Regulars did not re-enlist,
because they preferred to join the Volunteers,
where advancement is more rapid, and where
their superior experience would soon obtain for
them the rank of sergeant, or possibly a commis
sion. Those who did remain were as fine a looking
body of soldiers as can be seen in any of the
Continental regiments. Indeed, there are so few
of them that the recruiting officer has only him
self to blame if he fails to pick out the best, and
the result of his selection is that the men of our
Regular army correspond to the corps d1 elite of
European armies. Whether it was General Ran
dolph's artillerymen firing imaginary shrapnel at
imaginary foes, or the dough-boys in skirmish-
line among the roots of the palmettoes, or at
guard-mounting, or the cavalrymen swimming
their horses, with both horse and man entirely
79

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
stripped for action, the discipline was so good
that it obtruded itself ; and the manner in which
each man handled his horse or musket, and es
pecially himself, made you proud that they were
American soldiers, and desperately sorry that
there were so few of them.
An American citizen thinks the American sol
dier is the best, for the easy reason that he is
an American ; but there were three Englishmen
whose profession had qualified them to know
soldiers of every land, and who -were quite as
enthusiastic over the cavalry as any American
could be. For one thing, all of our men are
physically as large as Life Guardsmen, and what
they lose in contrast by lack of gold and pipe
clay, and through the inferiority of their equip
ment and uniform, is made up to them in the
way they ride a horse. A German or English
trooper sits his horse like a clothes-pin stuck on
a line — the line may rise or sag, or swing in the
wind, but the clothes-pin maintains its equilib
rium at any cost, and is straight, unbending, and
a thing to itself. The American trooper, with
his deep saddle and long stirrup, swings with
the horse, as a ship rides at anchor on the waves ;
he makes aline of grace, and strength and supple
ness from the rake of his sombrero to the toe of
so

Third Cavalry at Drill.

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
his hooded stirrup. When his horse Avalks, he
sits it erect and motionless ; when it trots, he rises
with it, but never leaves the saddle ; and when it
gallops, he swings in unison with it like a cowboy,
or a cockswain in a racing-shell.
It was a wonderful sight to see two thousand
of these men advancing through the palmettoes,
the red and white guidons fluttering at the fore,
and the horses sweeping onward in a succession
of waves, as though they were being driven for
ward by the wind. It will always puzzle me to
know what the American people found to occupy
them that was of such importance as to keep them
from coming to see their own army, no matter how
small it was, while it was rehearsing and drilling
among the pines and palms of Florida. There
will be few such chances again to see a brigade
of cavalry advancing through a forest of palms
in a line two miles long, and breaking up into
skirmishes and Cossack outposts, with one troop
at a trot and another at a walk, and others tear
ing, cheering through the undergrowth, their
steel swords flashing over their heads and the
steel horse-shoes flashing underfoot. It was a
fine spectacle, and it was due to such occasional
spectacles in and around the camps that the
rocking-chair life was rendered bearable.
83

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
But at last it came to an end, for the Com
mander-in-Chief finally arrived, and with him his
staff in the new uniform, looking very smart and
very soldierly ; and all the other officers who had
been suffering at Tampa, in heavy blue tunics
without pockets, gazed but once upon the staff,
and with envy, and then telegraphed frantically
for the khaki outfit that would not come. We

' Who said oats ?

were all desperately hurried then ; we had no
idea where we were going, nor for how long.
No secret, be it said to the credit of the censor
and the staff officers, was ever better kept ; but
we knew, at last, that we were going, and that
was joy, and the tears and rage of those who
were to be left behind -was a fine thing to see.
One hour Ave thought Santiago was the place,
and the next Porto Rico, and the next we swung
84

THE ROCKING-CHAIR PERIOD
back to Santiago. We thought this because A,
of such a staff, had told B, of anothei' staff, who
had told C, that we should take only ten days'
rations. On the other hand, the Japanese mili
tary attache had been told to take his tent with
him ; so that must mean a landing at Mariel.
Still, the censor had objected to the word
" spurs," so it must be Matanzas. It was all
quite as absurd as that, and, as a matter of
fact, no one knew up to the hour when we were
ordered on board.

85

CHAPTER IV
THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
THE departure of the transports from Tampa
Bay, when it came after many weary post
ponements and delays, was neither picturesque
nor moving. The band did not play " The Girl I
Left Behind Me," nor did crowds of Aveeping
Avomen cling to the bulkheads and wave their
damp handkerchiefs ; the men AArho were going to
die for their country did not swarm in the rig
ging and cheer the last sight of land. They had
done that on the morning of June 8th, and had
been ingloriously towed back to the dock ; they
had done it again on the morning of June 10th,
and had immediately dropped anchor a few hun
dred yards off shore. So they were suspicious
and Avary, and when the head-quarters ship, the
Seguranga, left the dock three colored women and
a pathetic group of perspiring stevedores and
three soldiers represented the popular interest in
her departure. The largest number of United
States troops that ever Avent doAvn to the sea in
86

Port Tampa on Day of Sailing of Transports,

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
ships to in\rade a foreign country were those that
formed the Fifth Army Corps when it sailed for
Santiago. The thought of twelve thousand men
on thirty-two troop ships and their escort of four
teen war-ships suggests the Spanish Armada.
It brings up a picture of a great flotilla, grim,
sinister, and menacing, fighting its way through
the waves on its errand of vengeance and con
quest. But as a matter of fact the expedition
bore a most distinct air of the commonplace. It
moved through a succession of sparkling, sunlit
days, over a sea as smooth as a lake, undisturbed
by Spanish cruisers or by shells from Spanish
forts. As far as the eye could see it had the
ocean entirely to itself.
Scattered over a distance of seven miles the
black passenger steamers and the mouse- colored
war-ships steamed in three uneven columns and
suggested a cluster of excursion steamers, and
yachts and tugs as one sees them coming back
from Sandy Hook after an international yacht-race.
The troop-ships were fitted up with pine cots
and a small proportion of stalls for the horses;
the first-class cabins were turned over to the
officers. On some of them the men swarmed over
every part of the ship, on others the officers held
only the bridge to themselves. 89

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
Probably half of the men forming the expedi
tion had never been to sea before. They probably
will desire never to go again, but will say from
the depth of their one experience that the dangers
of the deep are vastly exaggerated. They will
not wish to go again, because their first expe
rience Avas more full of discomfort than any other
trip they are likely to take could possibly be ; on
the other hand, they may sail the seas many times
before they find it as smooth, or the rain as in
frequent, the sun as beautiful, or the heavens as
magnificent. We travelled at the rate of seven miles an hour,
with long pauses for thought and consultation.
Sometimes we moved at the rate of four miles an
hour, and frequently we did not move at all. Our
delays were chiefly due to the fact that two of
the steamers were each towing a great scow or
lighter, on which the troops were to be conveyed
to shore, and because another one was towing a
schooner filled with water. The speed of the
squadron was, of course, the speed of the slowest
ship in it, so the water-boat set the pace.
The AArar-ships treated us with the most punc
tilious courtesy and concealed contempt. And
Ave certainly deserved it. We could not keep in
line and Ave lost ourselves and each other, and the
90

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
gun-boats and torpedo-boats were kept busy round
ing us up, and giving us sharp, precise orders in
passing, through a megaphone, to which either

Generals Miles and Shafter on Deck of the Transport Seguranca at
Port Tampa.

nobody on board made any reply, or everyone
did. The gun-boats Avere like SAvift, keen-eyed,
intelligent collies rounding up a herd of bungling
sheep. They looked so Avorkmanlike and clean,
91

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
and the men were so smart in their white duck,
that the soldiers cheered them all along the line,
as they dashed up and down it, waving their wig
wags frantically.
The life on board the head-quarters ship Avas
uneventful for those who were not in command.
For these their tables and desks were spread in
the " social hall," and all day long they worked
busily and mysteriously on maps and lists and
orders, and six typewriters banged on their
machines until late at night. The ship Avas
greatly overcrowded ; it held all of General Shaf
fer's staff, all of General Breckinridge's staff, the
Cuban generals, the officers and five hundred men
of the First Regiment, all the foreign attaches, and
an army of stenographers, secretaries, clerks, ser
vants, couriers, valets, and colored waiters.
All of these were jumbled together. There
Avere three cane chairs Avith seats and two cane
chairs without seats. If you Avere so unlucky as
not to capture one of these, you clung sidewise to
the bench around the ship's rail or sat on the
deck. At no one moment were you alone. Your
most intimate conversation Avas overheard by
everyone, whether he wished to do so or not ; the
attaches could not compare notes on our deficien
cies without being betrayed, nor could the staff
92

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS

Artillery for Cuba.

discuss its plan of campaign without giving it to
the whole ship. Seven different languages were
in course of constant circulation, and the griev-

93

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
ances of the servants and the badinage of the
colored cooks mingled with the latest remarks on
the war. At night you picked your way over
prostrate forms of soldiers and of overworked
stewards, who toiled eighteen hours a day in a
temperature of 102 degrees.
The water on board the ship was so bad that
it could not be used for purposes of shaving. It
smelled like a frog-pond or a stable-yard, and it
tasted as it smelt. Before we started from
Tampa Bay the first time it was examined by the
doctors, who declared that in spite of the bad
smell and taste it was not unhealthy, but Colonel
J. J. Astor offered to pay for fresh water, for
which Plant charged two cents a gallon, if they
would empty all of the bad-smelling water over
board. General Shafter said it was good enough
for him, and Colonel Astor's very considerate
offer was not accepted. So we all drank apolli-
naris water or tea. The soldiers, however, had
to drink the water furnished them, except those
who were able to pay five cents a glass to the
ship's porter, Avho had a private supply of good
water which he made into lemonade. The ship's
crew and engineers used this water.
Before handing the ship over to the Govern
ment, the company removed all of her wine stock
94

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
and table-linen, took out two of her dining-tables
and generally stripped her, and then sent her
South undermanned. Her steward hired and
borrowed and bought linen and servants and ta
ble-waters at Tampa, but there was so little linen

Waiting for the Expedition to Move.

that it was seldom changed, and had it not been
that the servants of the officers were willing to
help wait at table, there would have been four
stewards to look after the wants of fifty or sixty
passengers. The food supplied by the line to
which the ship belonged was villanous ; the en
listed men forward were much better served by
95

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
the Government Avith good beans, corned beef,
and coffee. Apparently, no contract or agreement
as to quantity or quality of food for the officers
had been made by the Government with the
owners. The squadron at night, with the lights showing
from every part of the horizon, made one think
he was entering a harbor, or leaving one. But
by day Ave seemed adrift on a sea as untravelled
as it was when Columbus first crossed it. On the
third day out we saw Romano Key. It was the
first sight of land, and after that from time to
time we made out a line of blue mountains on the
starboard side. The squadron, though, had ap
parently been sighted from the shore, for the
light-houses along the coast were dark at night,
which would seem to show that the lesson of the
Armada has not been lost on the Spaniard.
Someone has said that " God takes care of
drunken men, sailors, and the United States."
This expedition apparently relied on the proba
bility that that axiom would prove true. "The
luck of the British Army," of Avhich Mr. Kipling
boasts, is the luck of Job in comparison to the
good fortune that pursued that expedition. There
Avas really nothing to prevent a Spanish torpedo-
boat from running out and sinking four or five
96

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
ships while they were drifting along, spread out
over the sea at such distance that the vessels in
the rear were lost to sight for fourteen hours at a

General Miles on the Day of Sailing of Transports.
time, and no one knew whether they had sunk or
had been blown up, or had grown disgusted and
gone back home. As one of the generals on board
said. "This is God Almighty's war, and Ave are
only His agents.' 97

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
The foreign attaches regarded the fair weather
that accompanied us, the brutal good health of
the men, the small loss of horses and mules, and
the entire freedom from interference on the part
of the enemy with the same grudging envy that
one watches a successful novice winning continu
ously at roulette. At night the fleet Avas as con
spicuous as Brooklyn or New York, with the
lights of the Bridge included, but the Spanish
took no advantage of that fact ; no torpedo-de
stroyers slipped out from Cardenas or Nuevitas,
or waited for us in the old Bahama Channel,
where for twelve miles the ships were crowded
into a channel only seven miles across. Of course,
our own escort would have finished them if they
had, but not before they could have throAvn tor
pedoes right and left into the helpless hulks of
the transports, and given us a loss to remember
even greater than that of the Maine.
But as it was, nothing happened. We rolled
along at our own pace, with the lights the navy
had told us to extinguish blazing defiantly to the
stars, with bands bauging out rag-time music, and
with the foremost vessels separated sometimes for
half a day at a time from the laggards in the
rear. It Avas a most happy-go-lucky expedition, run
98

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS

Transports Off for Cuba.

with real American optimism and readiness to
take big chances, and with the spirit of a people
who recklessly trust that it will come out all right
in the end, and that the barely possible may not
99

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
happen, that the joker may not turn up to spoil
the hand, who risk grade crossings and all that
they imply, who race transatlantic steamers
through a fog for the sake of a record, and who
on this occasion certainly " euchred God's al
mighty storm and bluffed the eternal sea."
No one complained and no one grumbled. The
soldiers turned over to sleep on the bare decks,
with final injunctions not to be awakened for any
thing under a Spanish battle-ship, and Avhenever
the ships drew up alongside, the men bombarded
each other with jokes on the cheerful fact that
they Avere hungry and thirsty and sore for sleep.
But, for all that, our army's greatest invasion
of a foreign land was completely successful, but
chiefly so, one cannot help thinking, because the
Lord looks after his own.
There are three places in the West Indies where
Columbus is said to have first landed ; one of them
is at Santiago. Some hundreds of years from now
there will probably be as great a dispute as to
Avherethe American troops first landed Avh en they
came to drive the Spaniard across the sea and to
establish the republic of Cuba. There Avere two
"first landings" of the army of invasion; but be
fore it came to Cuba soldiers of the Regular Army
Avere put ashore at Arbolitas Point, when they
100

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS

General Shatter at Port Tampa Superintending Embarkation.
acted as an escort to the Gussie expedition. On
this occasion a Spanish lieutenant and several of
his soldiers were killed, and on the American side
a correspondent was shot through the arm. Still
101

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
another landing was made before the Regulars
came in force, this time by marines, at Guanta-
namo Bay ; and as they established a camp there
and remained on shore, the credit of first raising
the American flag on Cuban soil, and of keeping
it in its place, belongs to them, and through them
to the navy. The first American flag raised tem
porarily Avas put up on a block-house near Car
denas by Lieutenant Willard, also of the navy.
When the army came at last, sixteen thousand
strong, in thirty-one transports, and Avith an escort
of fourteen war-ships, it made two landings : a
preliminary one on June 20th, when only twenty
people went ashore at Aserraderos, and on June
22d at Baiquiri, Avhen all through the day there
was a continuous going and coming of shore-boats
from the transports, each carrying from twenty
to thirty men, and following after each other as
swiftly as cable-cars on Broadway.
The preliminary landing was made by General
Shafter and Admiral Sampson without any escort
or protection from United States troops.
The Seguranca ran away from the rest of the
troop-ships on the morning of June 20th. Cap
tain Chadwick, Commander of the New York, had
come over the side when we Avere twenty miles
from Santiago, and Admiral Sampson had fol-
102

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
lowed him. When the ship was within five miles
of Morro Castle they conferred with General
Shafter in his cabin and decided that he should
go ashore at Aserraderos at once to see General
Garcia and discuss the question of a landing-
place for the army.
So we abandoned the transports altogether
and steamed off selfishly to make the first land
ing of the expedition alone. It was an interest
ing landing in every way, and especially so as I
have said, because it was made without the es
cort or protection of any American troops. Only
four boatloads left the ship, carrying only thirty
of her six hundred passengers.
Among these were Generals Shafter and Lud
low, Colonels McClernand, Astor, and Wagner,
Lieutenants Miley and Noble, Captain Stewart
Brice, Captain Lee, of the British Army, Captain
Count von Goetzen, of the German Army, Gen
eral Castillo, of the Cuban Army, and Admiral
Sampson and Lieutenant Staunton, of the New
York, and Frederic Remington, Caspar Whitney,
Stephen Bonsai, and the writer.
The landing was made in a little bay overhung
by a grove of cocoa-nut palms at the base of a
great range of mountains eighteen miles west of
Santiago. The mountains stretched back from
103

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
the jungle of manigua bushes on the coast until
they met the clouds. There was no sign of life
or of man's habitation on any part of their great
terraces except where here and there a cattle
trail zigzagged up and down across the valleys.

Admiral Sampson and General Shafter Going Ashore at Aserraderos.
Drawn up under the cocoa-nut palms were a
double row of Cuban officers, and as the blue-jack
ets drove the long-boat from the Vixen toward
the shore, the Cubans dashed into the water up
to their Avaists and came toAvard us, cheering
and shouting, and the officers on horseback sur-
104

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
rounded the boat, splashing and churning up the
water, and saluting the two men whose coming
meant for them the freedom and independence of
their island.
It was a remarkable and most dramatic pict
ure. In the background were the towering, grim
green mountains, with their tops lost in the
clouds, the motionless palms and the ragged, half-
naked foot-soldiers crowding far into the water,
and in the foreground the white long-boat, with
her crew of blue-jackets and with the American
flag fluttering at the stern.
There were mules and ponies waiting for the
commanding officers, and, as the shore-boats from
the Seguranga were rowed after them into the
cove, they disappeared up the trail, surrounded
by the mounted escorts. There Avas no cavalry
escort to guide us, so our boats promptly ran
aground on a shoal, and the Cuban patriots
dashed into the Avater up to their waists and car
ried us ashore on their shoulders.
The picture presented by Captain Stewart
Brice, late city Councilman of Greater New York
$nd now of the Volunteer Army, clasping a naked
negro around the neck and digging him in the
stomach with his spurs, was one that would have
made his fellow-members of Tammany Hall proud.
105

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
The trail up the mountain to Garcia' s camp
was steep and rough, but the fresh, pungent odor
of earth and grass and trees, after the stuffy,

Captain Stewart Brice Being Carried Ashore at Aserraderos.
sweating decks of the overcrowded troop-ship,
made the climbing easy.
It Avas pathetic and beautiful to see with what
eagerness and tender anxiety the Cubans and ne
groes combined to welcome the American officers
106

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
and to cater to their entertainment out of their
own absolute want and poverty. It was not
enough that they stood in salute to the General
in two long lines from the place of his arrival un
til he had reached their camp, but they brought
us the milk of cocoa-nut and limes, and mangoes
and pineapples, and made coffee and offered us
Avater, and forced us to mount on their half-
starved horses, while they walked.
The conference of the powers Avas held under a
thatched roof of palm-leaves that drooped over
the sides, making four hanging walls. Under
this sat General Shafter, in his blue blouse, Avith
its double rows of buttons that mark the major-
general ; Admiral Sampson, in fresh white duck,
and General Garcia, in a slouch hat and linen uni
form, with high military boots.
Garcia is a handsome man, with a white mus
tache and goatee, and looks like Caprivi, the Ger
man Chancellor. In his forehead, between the
snow-white eyebrows, is a deep bullet wound,
which shows where he tried to kill himself when,
ten years ago, he Avas a prisoner in the hands of
the Spaniards.
It had been a long, hard, and desperate struggle
for the Avhite-haired old soldier, and as he sat at
last in his own camp, with the Admiral of the
107

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
Atlantic Squadron on his right and the American
General on his left, he must have thought that at
last his reward had come.
Apart from its political value, the scene was
one of wonderful tropical beauty. It was Avorthy
of a meeting of such importance in the history of
the Republic of Cuba and to the great Republic
across the Florida Straits.
Beneath the camp the sea stretched in a mo
tionless plain of dark blue, lying pulseless in the
heat; overhead the mountains rose through a
misty haze of heat to meet clouds of a glaring,
blinding white. Every feature of the landscape
was painted in high lights ; there was no shading,
it Avas all brilliant, gorgeous, and glaring.
The sea was an indigo blue, like the blue in a
washtub ; the green of the mountains was the
green of corroded copper ; the scarlet trees Avere
the red of a Tommy's jacket, and the sun was
like a lime-light in its fierceness.
While the great men talked under the palm-
trees, the Americans and the Cubans made each
other's acquaintance, and the blue-jackets mixed
with the barefooted soldiers, and the two attaches
made snap-shot photographs for the education of
the British and German armies. Their presence
with the invading army filled the officers of the
108

Generals Shafter and Garcia with Cuban Volunteers.

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
Cuban Army with an idea that their struggle for
liberty was stirring the nations of the world.
When they heard that on the Seguranga were
also military attaches from as far afield as Japan,
they could not express their surprise, and when
they learned that there was one from Austria as
well, they could not understand it at all. Aus
tria, they argued, was helping Spain, so they
could not comprehend why one of that nation
was allowed with the American Army, but they
satisfied themselves at last by arguing that Cap
tain Lee, the British attache, was there to look
after the Cuban interests, and in case Austria in
terfered, to order out the British Army.
It was the first time we had seen the Cuban
revolutionists in the field, and what impressed us
most favorably was the appearance of the officers.
They were fine-looking, young gentlemen, well,
and even smartly, uniformed, and with the bear
ing and assurance of officers and of men accus-
tomed to command. Their soldiers were ragged
and half- starved, and inadequately armed, but
they obeyed the few commands we heard given
them correctly, and showed a rudimentary grasp
of company drill and discipline. They spent
the time given to the conference in studying the
new-comers with cheerful curiosity, but their offi-
111

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
cers Avent on about their duties Avithout wasting
time on men who did not for the moment concern
them. When the conference was ended a line of Cuban
soldiers again lined the trail for General Shaffer's
return., and to the sound of calls on the trumpets,
and to presented arms, he rode back to his boat,
and the first landing of the first detachment of
the American army of invasion had been success
fully accomplished.
The landing in force took place the second day
after this at nine o'clock in the morning. All
we had been told Avas that the landing would
take place at daybreak, and at that hour we Avoke
to find the transports drawn up in their usual
disorder opposite the town of Nueva Salamanca,
which lies eighteen miles east of Santiago. Just
above this village is the river Baiquiri, and it was
this river and not the town that gave its name
to the landing-place. We watched the landing
from the decks of the Seguranga, which in order
that General Shafter might the better direct the
landing, was the ship that ran in closest to the
shore. To better understand Avhat followed, the
reader might knoAV Avhat Ave did not know — the
plan of operations as it was prepared beforehand.
The full plot is given in the bulletin from the
112

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
flag-ship Nero York, issued on the day before the
landing, which the newspapers have already fre
quently printed. Some of its most important
orders were as follows :
NORTH ATLANTIC STATION, U. S. FLAG-SHIP NEW
YORK (1st Rate),
Off Santiago de Cuba, June 21, 1898.
ORDER OF BATTLE.
1. — The Army Corps will land to-morrow morning, the
entire force landing at Baiquiri. The landing will begin at
daylight, or as soon thereafter as practicable. General Cas
tillo, with a thousand men coming from the eastward of Bai
quiri, will assist in clearing the way for an unopposed land
ing, by flanking out the Spanish forces at that point.
2. — Simultaneously with the shelling of the beach and
block-houses at Baiquiri, the Ensenada de los Al tares, and
Aguadores, both to the eastward of Santiago, and the small
Bay of Cabdiias, about two and one-half miles to the west
ward of Santiago, will be shelled by the ships stationed there
for that purpose.
3. — A feint in force of landing at CabSfias will be made,
about ten of the transports, the last to disembark their forces
at Baiquiri, remaining during the day, or greater part of the
day, about two miles to the southward of Cabiifias, lowering
boats and making apparent preparations for disembarking a
large body of troops ; at the same time General Rabi with five
hundred Cuban troops will make a demonstration on the west
side of Cabanas.
4. — The following vessels are assigned to bombard the four
points mentioned above :
At Cab&nas, the Scorpion, Vixen, and Texas.
At Aguadores, the Eagle and Gloucester.
At Ensenada de los Altares, the Hornet, Helena, and Ban
croft. 113

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
At Baiquiri, the Detroit, Castine, Wasp, and New Orleans,
the Detroit and Castine on the westward flank, the Wasp and
New Orleans on the eastern flank. All the vessels named will
be in their position at daylight.
6. — The Texas and Brooklyn will exchange blockading sta
tions, the Texas going inside to be near Cabanas. The Brook
lyn, Massachusetts, Iowa, and Oregon will retain their block
ading positions, and will keep a vigilant watch on the harbor
mouth. The Indiana will take the New Orleans's position
in the blockading line east of Santiago, and between the flag
ship New York and the shore. This is only a temporary as
signment for the Indiana, to strengthen the blockading line
during the landing, and avoid any possibility of the enemy's
breaking through should he attempt to get out of the port.
7. — The Suwanee, Osceola, and Wompatuck will be pre
pared to tow boats. Each will be provided with two five or
six-inch lines, one on each quarter ; each long enough to take
in tow a dozen or more boats.
8. — These vessels will report at the New York at 3.30 A.M.
on June 22d, prepared to take in tow the ships' boats which are
to assist in the landing of troops and convey them to Baiquiri.
9. — The Texas, Brooklyn, Massachusetts, Iowa, Oregon,
New York, and Indiana will send all their steam-cutters and
all their pulling boats, with the exception of one retained on
board each ship, to assist in the landing. These boats will
report at the New York at 3 A. M.
10. — Each boat, whaleboat, and cutter will have three
men ; each launch five men, and each steam-cutter its full
crew and an officer for their own management. In addition
to these men, each boat will carry five men, including one
capable of acting as coxswain to manage and direct the trans
ports' boats. Each steam-launch will be in charge of an offi
cer, who will report to Captain Goodrich. Care will be taken
in the selection of boat-keepers and coxswains, to take no men
who are gun-pointers or who occupy positions of special im
portance at the battery. 114

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
14. — The attention of Commanding Officers of all vessels
engaged in blockading Santiago de Cuba is earnestly called
to the necessity of the utmost vigilance from this time for
ward — both as to maintaining stations and readiness for ac
tion, and as to keeping a close watch upon the harbor-mouth.
If the Spanish Admiral ever intends to attempt to escape, that
attempt Avill be made soon.
William T. Sampson,
Rear Admiral, Commander-in-Chief, U. S. Naval Force,
North Atlantic Station.
At Baiquiri are the machine-shops and ore-dock
of the Spanish-American Iron Company. The
ore-dock runs parallel with the coast-line, and back
of it are the machine-shop and the company's
corrugated zinc-shacks and rows of native huts
thatched with palm-leaAres. Behind these rise the
mountains, and on a steep and lofty spur is a
little Spanish block-house with a flag-pole at its
side. As the sun rose and showed this to the wait
ing fleet it is probable that every one of the thou
sands of impatient soldiers had the same thought,
that the American flag must wave over the block
house before the sun sank again.
The morning broke cool and clear. There Avas
no sign of life in the village, and, except that
the machine-shop and one of a long row of ore-
cars on the ore-pier were on fire and blazing
briskly, we should have thought that the place
was deserted. Until nine o'clock nothing hap-
115

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
pened, and then from Siboney came the first
sounds of bombardment. It is probable that to
ninety per cent, of the soldiers it Avas the first
shot they had ever heard fired in anger. There
was another long wait while the launches sped
from ship to ship with shore-boats rocking in tow
on cables behind them, and in time they were
filled, but not without much mirth and a few ac
cidents. It was delightful to see the fine scorn of the
coxswains as the " dough-boys " fell and jumped
and tumbled from the gangway ladder into the
heaving boats, that dropped from beneath them
like a descending elevator or rose suddenly and
threw them on their knees. It was much more
dangerous than anyone imagined, for later in the
day when two men of the Twenty-fifth Regi
ment were upset at the pier, the weight of the
heaAW cartridge-belt and haversack and blanket-
roll carried them to the bottom. Soon the sea
was dotted with rows of Avhite boats filled with
men bound about Math white blanket-rolls and
with muskets at all angles, and as they rose and
fell on the water and the newspaper yachts and
transports crept in closer and closer, the scene
was strangely suggestive of a boat-race, and one
almost waited for the starting gun.
116

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
It came at last, though in a different spirit,
from the New Orleans, and in an instant the
Detroit, the Castine, and the little Wasp were
enveloped in smoke. The valleys sent back the
reports of the guns in long, thundering echoes
that reverberated again and again, and the moun
tain-side began at once to spurt up geysers of
earth and branches of broken bushes, as though
someone had stabbed it with a knife and the
blood had spurted from the wound. But there
were no ansAvering shots, and under the cover of
the smoke the long-boats and launches began to
scurry toward the shore. Meanwhile, the war
ships kept up their fierce search for hidden bat
teries, tearing off the tin roofs of the huts, dis
mantling the block-houses, and sending the
thatched shacks into bonfires of flame. The men
in the boats pulled harder at the oars, the
steam-launches rolled and pitched, tugging at
the weight behind them, and the first convoy of
five hundred men were soon bunched together,
racing bow by bow for the shore. A launch
turned suddenly and steered for a long pier un
der the ore-docks, the Avaves lifted it to the
level of the pier, and a half-dozen men leaped
through the air and landed on the pier-head,
waving their muskets aboAre them. At the same
117

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
moment two of the other boats were driven
through the surf to the beach itself, and the men
tumbled out and scrambled to their feet upon
the shore of Cuba. In an instant a cheer rose
faintly from the shore, and more loudly from the

ii.-- ¦'. "v-4i

A Cheer by the Rough Riders.

war-ships. It was caught up by every ship in the
transport fleet, and was carried for miles OArer the
ocean. Men Avavecl their hats, and jumped up
and down, and shrieked as though they them
selves had been the first to land, and the com-
118

THE VOYAGE OF THE TRANSPORTS
bined cheering seemed as though it must surely
reach to the walls of Santiago and tell the enemy
that the end was near. But the cheers were
whispers to what came later, when, outlined
against the sky, Ave saw four tiny figures scaling
the sheer face of the mountain up the narrow
trail to the highest block-house. For a moment
they were grouped together there at the side
of the Spanish fort, and then thousands of feet
above the shore the American flag Avas thrown
out against the sky, and the sailors on the men-
of-war, the Cubans, and our OAvn soldiers in the
village, the soldiers in the long-boats, and those
still hanging to the sides and ratlines of the
troop-ships, shouted and cheered again, and every
steam-Avhistle on the ocean for miles about
shrieked and tooted and roared in a pandemo
nium of delight and pride and triumph.

119

CHAPTER V
THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
THE problems which presented themselves to
the commanding general of the Santiago
expedition might be placed in a list, as follows :
1. To disembark 12,000 men, artillery, and sup
plies from thirty-two transports.
2. To move the men, rations, ammunition, and
artillery toward Santiago, up a steep and narrow
trail through a Avooded country.
3. To reconnoitre the approach to Santiago, to
clear away any forces which might retard the ad
vance of the army upon it, and, finally, to take
Santiago by assault, or by siege.
The selection of a landing-place for the army
was one much discussed, and, possibly, Siboney
and Baiquiri were as suitable for the purpose as
any of the others might have been, but when we
recollect the original purpose of the expedition
they seem unnecessarily distant from the seat of
the proposed operations. The original reason for
sending an army to Santiago was a someAvhat pe-
120

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT

culiar one. It was because our war-ships could
not reach the war-ships of the enemy. It has
often happened that an army has asked the naATy
to assist it in an assault upon a fortified port. But

Colonel Roosevelt.
this is probably the only instance when a fleet has
called upon an army to capture another fleet.
Cervera and his ships of war lay bottled up in
Santiago harbor, and on account of the forts and
mines which guarded the approach to the inner
121

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
harbor, our vessels could not reach him. Accord
ingly, the army was asked to attack these forts in
the rear, to capture them, to cut the wires con-

Colonel Roosevelt and Richard Harding Davis.
necting them with the mines in the harbor, and
so clear the Avay for our fleet to enter and do bat
tle with the enemy.
To carry out this programme, the army might
have landed at Aguadores, on the east of the
122

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
mouth of the harbor of Santiago, and at Cabanas,
on the Avest. Each of these ports is but three
miles in the rear of the batteries which guard the
entrance to the harbor. To convey troops, and
artillery, and rations three miles would not have
been a difficult problem. Or, had the navy de
cided against Aguadores as a suitable landing-
place, it Avould still have been possible to have
made the landing at Siboney, and then marched
the troops along the railroad which clings to the
coast from Siboney to Aguadores, under the shel
ter of a steep range of cliffs. This advance could
haA^e been made safely under the cover of the
guns of the fleet. No Spanish force could have
lived on the railroad, or on the cliffs above it, un
der such a fire. It has been argued that had the
army approached Santiago from Aguadores, a road
of retreat for the Spanish garrison would have
been left uncovered. This was equally true of the
place selected for the actual attack, which left
the road of retreat to Holguin open until July
8th. For other reasons, however, the landing was
made at Baiquiri, eighteen miles away from the
harbor, and the point of attack was not the
forts, but the city itself. Further, the attack
Avas made at a time Avhen the city was protected
by Cervera's guns, and in the face of the fact
123

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
that he had declared if the Americans succeeded
in entering the city, he would instantly bombard
it, and so render it untenable, which he could
very easily have done. When General Nelson
A. Miles arrived he decided that the attack on
the forts was even then the proper method to

Landing of American Forces at Siboney.

pursue in order to capture the city, and he or
dered General Guy Henry to reconnoitre Cabanas,
and prepare to land artillery. General Henry
made the reconnoissance, but before further move
ment was ordered, the surrender of Santiago,
which had been made necessary by the departure
of Cervera from the harbor, and by the capture of
124

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
the hills overlooking the city by our army, was
an accomplished fact.
The disembarkment at Baiquiri Avas a marvel
lous and Avonderful thing. Only two men were
drowned. What makes this so remarkable is the
fact that the boats carrying the men Avere run up
through the surf, and either beached, or brought
to a pier so high that to reach it the men had to
jump from the boat at the exact moment it rose
on the wave. Seven thousand men were put
ashore in this way. The greater part of the pier
was covered with loose boards, and the men
walked on these or stepped across open girders,
two feet apart. While doing this, they carried
their packs, arms, and ammunition. Three weeks
later, when I returned to this pier with General
Miles, then on his way to Porto Rico, the loose
boards were still loose, and he landed in the same
way, by scrambling up the pier as the boat rose,
and picked his way over the same open girders.
During those three weeks thousands of men, thou
sands of tons of supplies, and thousands of boxes
of ammunition had been piled up high upou this
pier, and carried away from it, and yet, appar
ently, no attempt had been made to render it safe,
either for the arms or for the men. It was still
impossible to cross it without running the risk of
125

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
stepping into space, or of treading on the end of
a loose board and falling between the girders. It
was obviously the Avork of the engineers to im
prove this wharf, or build a better one. But the
engineers happened to be on board the transport
Alamo, and on the day of landing General Shaf-

Another View of the Landing.

ter sent the Alamo to Aserraderos for three days
to build pontoon bridges for the Cubans. In con
sequence, the men whose services at that time
were most greatly needed, were thirty-six miles
up the coast, employed as ferrymen for our Cuban
allies. At Siboney matters were rather worse, as there
126

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
was not even a pier as inadequate as that at Bai
quiri. There the men Avere - dumped out into the
surf and waded for the shore. After several days
a pier Avas begun, but it also was washed by the
waves, and onty lighters and tugs could approach
it. This made it necessary to handle the supplies
four or five times, instead of landing them direct
ly from the transports on a pier big enough, and
in Avater deep enough, to allow the transports to
draw up alongside.
To add to the confusion which retarded the
landing of supplies, the transport captains acted
with an independence and in disregard of what
was required of them, that should, early in the
day, have led to their being placed in irons. The
misconduct of the transport captains was so im
portant a matter that much more space must be
devoted to it than can be alloAved here. In a
word, they acted entirely in Avhat they believed
to be the interests of the " Owners," meaning, not
the Government, which was paying them enor
mous rents per day, but the men who employed
them in time of peace. For the greater part of
each day these men kept from three to twenty
miles out at sea, where it was impossible to com
municate Avith them, and Avhere they burned coal
at the expense of the Government. Had they
127

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
been given stations and ordered to anchor over
them, they could have been found when the sup
plies they carried were wanted, and the cost of
coal saved. I was on six different transports, and
on none of them did I find a captain who was, in
his attitude toward the Government, anything
but insolent, un-American, and mutinous, and
when there was any firing of any sort on shore
they showed themselves to be the most abject
cowards and put to the open sea, carrying the
much-needed supplies with them.
When our war-ships had destroyed the Maria
Teresa, and four hundred of her Spanish crew
were clinging to the wreck, the captain of one of
the transports refused to lower his boats and go
to their aid. This was after the firing had en
tirely ceased, and there was no danger. Had it
not been for the Gloucester, which had just been
engaged with the enemy, and her two small shore-
boats, the entire four hundred prisoners would
have been washed into the sea, and drowned.
The English Government pays the merchant A~es-
sels it uses for transports ten per cent, over their
usual freight rates ; our Government paid these
transports two hundred to three hundred per
cent, over freight rates, possibly because our Gov
ernment, like nature, is not economical, and for
128

Major Major Major-Gen. Chaplain Colonel
Dunn. Brodie. Jos. Wheeler. H. A. Brown. Leonard Wood.

Lieut.-Colonel
Theodore Roosevelt.

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
the reason that many of the vessels were passen
ger-carriers, as well as freighters. But the great
er number of the owners, before sending their
vessels south, stripped them of everything needed
on a passenger-ship, even of bed-linen and towels,
and sent them to sea undermanned, so they were
virtually nothing but freight-carriers and ocean
tramps. The fact that this floating collection of
stores was in shore one day, and out of sight
twenty miles at sea the next, was one of the
causes of the failure to supply the troops with
rations. These captains knew that the soldiers at
the front needed food, and that the food needed
was in the hulls of the ships they commanded,
but in order to save the owners a smashed davit,
or a scratched hull, or for no other reason than
their own will, they allowed the men at the front
to starve while they beat up and down as they
pleased. Had there been a strong man in command of
the expedition, he would have ordered them into
place, stern and bow anchors would have kept
them there, and a signal officer on shore could
have communicated with them at their different
stations in the harbor. But there was no Captain
of the Port appointed, and instead of a Signal
Officer to wig-wag to them, the transports were
131

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
chased over many miles of sea in small row-boats.
The transport captains were civilians for the time
being, under the direction of the Government,.
and were amenable to military laws. When the
stevedores mutinied at Guanica, and at the Port
of Ponce, under General Miles, they were given
three minutes to resume work, Avith the choice
of being put in irons if they did not, and were
informed if they jumped overboard and tried to
escape, they would be shot in the water as
deserters. This inability to keep the transports near the
shore, and the inexcusable failure to build a
wharf on which to land supplies, explains why
the rations came so slowly to the front. To get
them there was the first problem of the Com
manding General, and each succeeding day, as
the tide rose higher, and the surf became more
dangerous, it continued to confront him with
graver insistence.
The first accounts of the fight of the Rough
Riders at Guasimas came from correspondents
three miles away at Siboney, who received their
information from the wounded when they Avere
carried to the rear, and from an officer Avho stam
peded before the fight had fairly begun. These
men declared they had been entrapped in an am-
132

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
bush, that Colonel Wood was dead, and that their
comrades were being shot to pieces. When the
newspapers reached the front, it was evident that
the version these wounded men gave of the fight
had been generally accepted in the States as the
true account of what had occurred, and Colonel
Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, while
praised for their courage, were condemned edi
torially for having advanced into the enemy's
country Avithout proper military precautions, for
rushing blindly into an ambuscade, and through
their " recklessness " and " foolhardiness " sacrific
ing the lives of their men.
Indeed, one Congressman, who from the marble
rotunda of the Capitol was able to master a mili
tary problem in a Cuban swamp two thousand
miles away, declared that Roosevelt ought to be
court-martialled. It is quite true that the fight was a fight against
an enemy in ambush ; in a country with such ad
vantages for ambush as this, the Spaniards would
be fools to fight us in any other way, but there is
a vast difference between blundering into an am
buscade and setting out with a full knowledge
that you will find the enemy in ambush, and find
ing him, there and then driving him out of his
ambush and before you for a mile and a half into
133

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
a full retreat. This is what Major-General Joseph
Wheeler planned that General Young and Colonel
Wood should do ; so if the conduct of these offi
cers was reckless, it was recklessness due to their

Captain O'Neill of the Rough Riders, also Mayor of Prescott, Ariz.
Killed at San Juan.
following out the carefully prepared orders of a
veteran general.
At the time of this fight General Wheeler was
in command of all troops on shore, and so contin
ued as long as General Shafter remained on board
134

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
the flag-ship. What orders he gave then were in
consequence final, but in starting General Young
and Colonel Wood to the front when he did, he
disarranged the original order in which the troops
were to move forward, as it had been laid down
by General Shafter before the transports arrived
at Baiquiri. According to this original plan, Gen
eral Lawton's division of infantry should have
been in the van, and in pushing forward regi
ments from his own division of dismounted cav
alry General Wheeler possibly exceeded his au
thority. That, however, is entirely a question
between the two major-generals and does not con
cern either General Young or Colonel Wood, who
merely obeyed the orders of their superior officer.
The fact that the Rough Riders, in their anxiety
to be well forward, had reached Siboney by mak
ing a forced march at night, does not alter the
fact that their next forward movement on Guasi-
mas was not made in a spirit of independence, but
by order of the Commanding General.
On the afternoon of June 23d a Cuban officer
informed General Wheeler that the enemy were
intrenched at Guasimas, blocking the way to San
tiago. Guasimas is not a village, nor even a col
lection of houses ; it is the meeting-place of two
trails which join at the apex of a V, three miles
135

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
from the seaport town of Siboney, and continue
merged in a single trail to Santiago. General
Wheeler, accomj>anied by Cubans, reconnoitred
this trail on the afternoon of the 23d, and with
the position of the enemy fully explained to him,
returned to Siboney and informed General Young
and Colonel Wood that he would attack the place
on the following morning. The plan was dis
cussed while I was present, so I know that so far
from anyone's running into an ambush unaware,
every one of the officers concerned had a full
knowledge of where he was to go to find the ene
my, and Avhat he was to do Avhen he got there.
No one slept that night, for until two o'clock in
the morning troops Avere still being disembarked
in the surf, and two ships of war had their search
lights turned on the landing-place, and made Si
boney as light as a ball-room. Back of the search
lights was an ocean white with moonlight, and on
the shore red camp-fires, at which the half -drowned
troops were drying their uniforms, and the Rough
Riders, who had just marched in from Baiquiri,
were cooking their coffee and bacon. Below the
former home of the Spanish comandante, Avhich
General Wheeler had made his head-quarters, lay
the camp of the Rough Riders, and through it
Cuban officers Avere riding their half-starved po-
136

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
nies, scattering the ashes of the camp-fires, and
galloping over the tired bodies of the men with
that courtly grace and consideration for Ameri
cans which invariably marks the Cuban gentleman.
Below them was the beach and the roaring surf,
in which a thousand or so naked men were assist
ing and impeding the progress shoreward of their
comrades, in pontoons and shore-boats, which
were being hurled at. the beach like sleds down
a water-chute. It was one of the most weird and remarkable
scenes of the war, probably of any war. An
army was being landed on an enemy's coast at
the dead of night, but with somewhat more of
cheers and shrieks and laughter than rise from
the bathers in the surf at Coney Island on a hot
Sunday. It was a pandemonium of noises. The
men still to be landed from the " prison hulks,"
as they called the transports, were singing in
chorus, the men already on shore were dancing
naked around the camp-fires on the beach, or
shouting with delight as they plunged into the
first bath that had offered in seven days, and
those in the launches as they were pitched head
first at the soil of Cuba, signalized their arrival
by howls of triumph. On either side rose black
overhanging ridges, in the lowland between were
137

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
white tents and burning fires, and from the ocean
came the blazing, dazzling eyes of the search-lights
shaming the quiet moonlight.
The Rough Riders left camp after three hours'
troubled sleep at five in the morning. With the
exception of half a dozen officers they were dis-

American Boats Landing Cubans at Siboney.
mounted, and carried their blanket-rolls, haver
sacks, ammunition, and carbines. General Young
had already started toward Guasimas the First
and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and according to
the agreement of the night before had taken the
eastern trail to our right, Avhile the Rough Riders
climbed the steep ridge above Siboney and start
ed toward the rendezvous along the trail to the
138

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
west, which was on high ground and a half mile
to a mile distant from the trail along which Gen
eral Young was marching. There was a valley
between us, and the bushes were so thick on
both sides of our trail that it was not possible at
any time, until we met at Guasimas, to distin
guish his column.
As soon as the Rough Riders had reached the
top of the ridge not twenty minutes after they
had left camp, which was the first opportunity
that presented itself, Colonel Wood took the
precautions he was said to have neglected. He
ordered Captain Capron to proceed with his
troop in front of the column as an advance guard,
and to choose a " point " of five men skilled as
scouts and trailers. Still in advance of these he
placed two Cuban scouts. The column then con
tinued along the trail in single file. The Cubans
were just at a distance of two hundred and fifty
yards ; the " point " of five picked men under
Sergeant Byrne and duty-Sergeant Fish followed
them at a distance of a hundred yards, and
then came Capron's troop of sixty men strung
out in single file. No flankers were placed for
the reason that the dense undergrowth and the
tangle of vines that stretched from the branches
of the trees to the bushes below made it a physi-
139

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
cal impossibility for man or beast to move for
ward except along the beaten trail.
Colonel Wood rode at the head of the column,
followed by two regular army officers who were
members of General Wheeler's staff, a Cuban
officer, and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt. They
rode slowly in consideration of the troopers on
foot, who carried heavy burdens under a cruelly
hot sun. To those who did not have to walk it
was not unlike a hunting excursion in our West ;
the scenery was beautiful and the view down the
valley one of luxuriant peace. Roosevelt had
never been in the tropics and Captain McCor-
mick and I were talking back at him over our
shoulders and at each other, pointing out unfa
miliar trees and birds. Roosevelt thought it
looked like a good deer country, as it once was ;
it reminded McCormick of southern California ;
it looked to me like the trail across Honduras.
They advanced, talking in that fashion and in
high spirits, and congratulating themselves in be
ing shut of the transport and on breathing fine
mountain air again, and on the fact that they
were on horseback. They agreed it was impos
sible to appreciate that we were really at war —
that we were in the enemy's country. We had
been riding in this pleasant fashion for an hour
140

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
and a half with brief halts for rest, when Wood
stopped the head of the column, and rode down
the trail to meet Capron, who Avas coming back.
Wood returned immediately, leading his horse,
and said to Roosevelt :
"Pass the word back to keep silence in the
ranks." The place at which we had halted was where
the trail narrowed, and proceeded sharply down
ward. There was on one side of it a stout
barbed- wire fence of five strands. By some
fortunate accident this fence had been cut just
where the head of the column halted. On the
left of the trail it shut off fields of high grass
blocked at every fifty yards with great barricades
of undergroAvth and tangled trees and chapparal.
On the other side of the trail there was not a
foot of free ground ; the bushes seemed abso
lutely impenetrable, as indeed they were later
found to be.
When we halted the men sat down beside the
trail and chewed the long blades of grass, or
fanned the air with their hats. They had no
knoAvledge of the situation such as their leaders
possessed, and their only emotion was one of sat
isfaction at the chance the halt gave them to rest
and to shift their packs. Wood again walked
141

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
down the trail with Capron and disappeared, and
one of the officers informed us that the scouts
had seen the outposts of the enemy. It did not
seem reasonable that the Spaniards, who had
failed to attack us when we landed at Baiquiri,
would oppose us until they could do so in force,
so, personally, I doubted that there were any
Spaniards nearer than Santiago. But we tied
our horses to the wire fence, and Capron's troop
knelt with carbines at the " ready," peering into
the bushes. We must have waited there, while
Wood reconnoitred, for over ten minutes. Then
he returned, and began deploying his troops out
at either side of the trail. Capron he sent
on down the trail itself. G Troop was ordered
to beat into the bushes on the right, and K and
A were sent over the ridge on which Ave stood
down into the hollow to connect with General
Young's column on the opposite side of the val
ley. F and E Troops were deployed out in
skirmish-line on the other side of the wire fence.
Wood had discovered the enemy a feAv hundred
yards from Avhere he expected to find him, and
so far from being " surprised," he had time, as I
have just described, to get five of his troops into
position before a shot was fired. The firing,
when it came, started suddenly on our light. It
142

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
sounded so close that — still believing we were
acting on a false alarm, and that there were no
Spaniards ahead of us — I guessed it was Capron's
men firing at random to disclose the enemy's po
sition. I ran after G Troop under Captain Lle
wellyn, and found them breaking their way

The Place Where the Guasimas Fight Began.
through the bushes in the direction from which
the volleys came. It was like forcing the walls
of a maze. If each trooper had not kept in touch
with the man on either hand he would have been
lost in the thicket. At one moment the under
brush seemed swarming with troopers, and the
next, except that you heard the twigs breaking,
and the heavy breathing of the men, or a crash
143

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
as a vine pulled someone down, there was not a
sign of a human being anywhere. In a few min
utes they all broke through into a little open
place in front of a dark curtain of vines, and the
men fell on one knee and began returning the fire
that came from it.
The enemy's fire was exceedingly heavy, and
the aim was low. Whether the Spaniards saw
us or not we could not tell; we certainly saw
nothing of the Spaniards, except a few on the
ridge across the valley. The fire against us Avas
not more than fifty to eighty yards aAvay, and so
hot that our men could only lie flat in the grass
and fire in that position. It was at this moment
that the men believed they were being fired on
by Capron's troop, which they imagined must
have swung to the right, and having lost its bear
ings and hearing them advancing through the
underbrush, had mistaken them for the enemy.
They accordingly ceased firing and began shouting
in order to warn Capron that he was shooting at
his friends. This is the foundation for the state
ment which was frequently made that the Rough
Riders had fired on each other, which they did
not do then or at any other time. Later we ex
amined the relative position of the trail which
Capron held, and the position of G Troop, and
144

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
they were at right angles to one another. Ca
pron could not possibly have fired into us at any
time, unless he had turned directly around in his
tracks and aimed up the very trail he had just
descended. Advancing, he could no more have
hit us than he could have seen us out of the back
of his head. When we found many hundred
spent cartridges of the Spaniards a hundred yards
in front of G Troop's position, the question as to
who did the firing was answered.
It was an exceedingly hot corner. The whole
troop was gathered in the little open place blocked
by the network of grape-vines and tangled bushes
before it. They could not see twenty feet on
three sides of them, but on the right hand lay the
valley, and across it came the sound of Young's
brigade, who were apparently heavily engaged.
The enemy's fire was so close that the men could
not hear the word of command, and Captain
Llewellyn, by word of voice, and Lieutenant
Greenway, unable to get their attention, ran
among them, batting them with their sombreros
to make them cease firing. Lieutenant-Colonel
Roosevelt ran up just then, bringing with him
Lieutenant Woodbury Kane and ten troopers
from K Troop. Roosevelt lay down in the grass
beside Llewellyn and consulted with him eagerly.
145

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
Kane was smiling with the charming content
of a perfectly happy man, exactly as though it
were a polo match and his side had scored.
When Captain Llewellyn told him his men were
not needed, and to rejoin his troop, he led his
detail over the edge of the hill on which we lay,
although the bullets were passing three feet high.
As he disappeared below the crest, walking quite
erect, he was still smiling. Roosevelt pointed
out that it was impossible to advance farther on
account of the network of wild grape-vines that
masked the Spaniards from us, and that we must
cross the trail and make to the left. The shouts
the men had raised to warn Capron had estab
lished our position to the enemy, and the firing
was now fearfully accurate. Sergeant Russell,
who in his day had been a colonel on a gov
ernor's staff, was killed, and the other sergeant
was shot through the wrist. In the space of three
minutes nine men were lying on their backs help
less. The men drew off slowly to the left, drag
ging the wounded with them. Owing to the low
aim of the enemy, they were forced to move on
their knees and crawl on their stomachs. Even
then they were hit. One man near me was shot
through the head. Returning two hours later to
locate the body, I found that the buzzards had
146

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
torn off his lips and his eyes. This mutilation
by these hideous birds is, no doubt, what Admi
ral Sampson mistook for the work of the Span
iards, when the bodies of the marines at Guanta-
namo were found disfigured in the same fashion.
K Troop had meantime deployed into the valley

Siboney, from the Hill Over which the Wounded Rough Riders
Retired After the Fight.
under the fire from the enemy on the ridge. It
had been ordered to establish communication
with General Young's column, and while advanc
ing and firing on the ridge, Captain Jenkins sent
the guidon-bearer back to climb the hill and
wave his red and white banner where Young's
men could see it. The guidon-bearer had once
147

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
run for Congress on the gold ticket in Arizona,
and, as someone said, was naturally the man who
should have been selected for a forlorn hope.
His flag brought him instantly under a heavy
fire, but he continued waving it until the Tenth
Cavalry on the other side of the valley ansAvered,
and the two columns were connected by a skir
mish-line composed of K Troop and A, under
Captain "Bucky" O'Neill.
G Troop meanwhile had hurried over to the
left, and passing through the opening in the Avire-
fence had spread out into open order. It fol
lowed doAvn after Captain Luna's troop and D
and E Troops, which were well already in ad
vance. Roosevelt ran forward and took com
mand of the extreme left of this line. Wood
was walking up and doAvn along it, leading his
horse, which he thought might be of use in case
he had to move quickly to alter his original for
mation — at present his plan was to spread out
his men so that they would join Young on the
right, and on the left swing around until they
flanked the enemy. K and A Troops had already
succeeded in joining hands with Young's column
across the valley, and as they were capable of
taking care of themselves, Wood Avas bending his
efforts to keep his remaining four companies in
148

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
a straight line and revolving them around the
enemy's " end." It was in no way an easy thing
to do. The men were at times wholly hidden
from each other, and from him ; probably at no
one time did he see more than two of his troops
together. It Avas only by the firing that he could
tell where his men lay, and that they were al
ways steadily advancing.
The advances were made in quick, desperate
rushes — sometimes the ground gained was no
more than a man covers in sliding for a base.
At other times half a troop would rise and race
forward and then burroAV deep in the hot grass
and fire. On this side of the line there was an
occasional glimpse of the enemy. But for a
great part of the time the men shot at the places
from where the enemy's fire seemed to come,
aiming low and answering in steady volleys.
The fire discipline was excellent. The prophets
of evil of the Tampa Bay Hotel had foretold
that the cowboys would shoot as they chose, and,
in the field, would act independently of their
officers. As it turned out, the cowboys were the
very men who waited most patiently for the
officers to give the word of command. At all
times the movement was without rest, breathless
and fierce, like a cane-rush, or a street-fight.
149

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
After the first three minutes every man had
stripped as though for a wrestling-match, throw
ing off all his impedimenta but his cartridge-belt
and canteen. Even then the sun handicapped
their strength cruelly. The enemy were hidden
in the shade of the jungle, while they had to
fight in the open for every thicket they gained,
crawling through grass which was as hot as a
steam bath, and with their flesh and clothing
torn by thorns and the sword-like blade of the
Spanish "bayonet." The glare of the sun was
full in their eyes and as fierce as a limelight.
When G Troop passed on across the trail to the
left I stopped at the place where the column had
first halted — it had been converted into a dressing
station and the wounded of G troop were left
there in the care of the hospital stewards. A tall,
gaunt young man Avith a cross on his arm was
just coming back up the trail. His head was
bent, and by some surgeon's trick he was advanc
ing rapidly with great strides, and at the same
time carrying a wounded man much heavier than
himself across his shoulders. As I stepped out
of the trail he raised his head, and smiled and
nodded, and left me wondering where I had seen
him before, smilingin the same cheery, confident
way and moving in that same position. I knew
150

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
it could not have been under the same conditions,
and yet he was certainly associated with another
time of excitement and rush and heat, and then
I remembered him. He had been covered with
blood and dirt and perspiration as he was now,
only then he wore a canvas jacket and the man
he carried on his shoulders was trying to hold
him back from a white-washed line. And I
recognized the young doctor with the blood bath
ing his breeches as " Bob " Church, of Princeton.
That was only one of four badly wounded men he
carried on his shoulders that day over a half-mile
of trail that stretched from the firing-line back to
the dressing station under an unceasing fire. And
as the senior surgeon was absent he had chief
responsibility that day for all the wounded, and
that so few of them died is greatly due to this
young man who went down into the firing-line
and pulled them from it, and bore them out of
danger. Some of the comic paragraphers who I
wrote of the members of the Knickerbocker Club
and the college swells of the Rough Riders organ-/
ization, and of their imaginary valets and golf I
clubs, ought, in decency, since the fight at Guasi-j
mas to go out and hang themselves with remorse.j
For the same spirit that once sent these men
down a white-washed field against their oppo-
151

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
nents' rush-line was the spirit that sent Church,
Channing, Devereux, Ronalds, Wrenn, Cash, Bull,
Earned, Goodrich, Greenway, Dudley Dean, and

K

Sergeant Tiffany. l.t. Woodbury Kane. Major Dunn. Captain Jenkins. Lt. H. K. Devereux.

A Group of Rough Riders.

\ a dozen others through the high hot grass at Gua
simas, not shouting, as their friends the cowboys
; did, but each with his mouth tightly shut, with
his eyes on the ball, and moving in obedience to

152

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
the captain's signals. Judging from the sound,
our firing-line now seemed to be half a mile in ad
vance of the place where the head of the column
had first halted. This showed that the Spaniards
had been driven back at least three hundred yards
from their original position. It was impossible to
see any of our men in the field, so I ran down the
trail with the idea that it Avould lead me back to
the troop I had left when I had stopped at the
dressing station. The walk down that trail pre
sented one of the most grewsome and saddest pict
ures of the war. It narrowed as it descended ; it
was for that reason the enemy had selected that
part of it for the attack, and the vines and bushes
interlaced so closely above it that the sun could
not come through.
The rocks on either side were spattered with
blood and the rank grass was matted with it.
Blanket-rolls, haversacks, carbines, and canteens
had been abandoned all along its length, so that
the trail looked as though a retreating army had
fled along it, rather than that one company had
fought its way through it to the front. Except
for the clatter of the land-crabs, those hideous
orchid-colored monsters that haunt the places of
the dead, and the whistling of the bullets in the
trees, the place was as silent as a grave. For the
153

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
wounded lying along its length were as still as
the dead beside them. The noise of the loose
stones rolling under my feet brought a hospital
steward out of the brush, and he called after me :
" Lieutenant Thomas is badly wounded in here,
and we can't move him. We want to carry him
out of the sun some place, where there is shade
and a breeze." Thomas was the first lieutenant
of Capron's troop. He is a young man, large and
powerfully built. He was shot through the leg
just below the trunk, and I found him lying on a
blanket half naked and covered Avith blood, and
Avith his leg bound in tourniquets made of twigs
and pocket-handkerchiefs. It gave one a thrill
of awe and wonder to see how these cowboy-sur
geons, with a stick that one would use to light
a pipe and with the gaudy 'kerchiefs they had
taken from their necks, were holding death at
bay. The young officer was in great pain and
tossing and raving Avildly. When we gathered
up the corners of his blanket and lifted him, he
tried to sit upright, and cried out, " You're tak
ing me to the front, aren't you? You said you
would. They've killed my captain — do you un
derstand ? They've killed Captain Capron. The
 Mexicans ! They've killed my captain."
The troopers assured him they were carrying
154

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
him to the firing-line, but he was not satisfied.
We stumbled over the stones and vines, bumping
his wounded body against the ground and leaving
a black streak in the grass behind us, but it
seemed to hurt us, more than it did him, for he
sat up again seizing the men by the wrists im
ploringly with his bloody hands.
" For God's sake, take me to the front," he
begged. "Do you hear me, I order you; damn
you, I order — We must give them hell; do you
hear? we must give them hell. They've killed
Capron. They've killed my captain."
The loss of blood and the heat at last merci
fully silenced him, and when we had reached the
trail he had fainted and I left them kneeling
around him, their grave boyish faces filled with
sympathy and concern.
Only fifty feet from him and farther down the
trail I passed his captain, with his body propped
against Church's knee and with his head fallen
on the surgeon's shoulder. Capron was always a
handsome, soldierly looking man — some said that
he was the most soldierly looking of any of the
young officers in the army — and as I saw him then
death had given him a great dignity and noble
ness. He was only twenty-eight years old, the
age when life has just begun, but he rested his
155

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
head on the surgeon's shoulder like a man who
knew he was already through with it and that,
l though they might peck and mend at the body,
| he had received his final orders. His breast and
i shoulders were bare, and as the surgeon cut the
tunic from him the sight of his great chest and
the skin, as white as a girl's, and the black open
wound against it made the yellow stripes and the
brass insignia of rank seem strangely mean and
tawdry. Fifty yards farther on, around a turn in the
trail, behind a rock, a boy was lying with a bul
let-wound between his eyes. His chest was heav
ing with short, hoarse noises Avhich I guessed
were due to some muscular action entirely, and
that he was virtually dead. I lifted him and
gave him some water, but it would not pass
through his fixed teeth. In the pocket of his
blouse was a New Testament with the name
Fielder Dawson, Mo., scribbled in it in pencil.
While I was writing it down for identification, a
boy as young as himself came from behind me
down the trail.
" It is no use," he said, " the surgeon has seen
him ; he says he is just the same as dead. He is
my bunkie ; Ave only met two weeks ago at San
Antonio ; but he and me had got to be such good
166

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
friends — But there's nothing I can do now."
He threw himself down on the rock beside his
bunkie, who was still breathing with that hoarse
inhuman rattle, and I left them, the one who had
been spared looking down helplessly with the
tears creeping across his cheeks.
The firing was quite close now, and as I contin
ued the trail was no longer filled with blanket-
rolls and haversacks, nor did pitiful, prostrate
figures lie in wait behind each rock. I guessed
this must mean that I was noAv well in advance of
the farthest point to which Capron's troop had
moved before it had deployed to the left, and I
was running forward feeling confident that I
must be close on our men when I saw far in ad
vance the body of a sergeant blocking the trail
and stretched at full length across it. Its posi
tion was a hundred yards in advance of that of
any of the others — it was apparently the body
of the first man killed. After death the bodies of
some men seem to shrink almost instantly within
themselves ; they become limp and shapeless, and
their uniforms hang upon them strangely. But
this man, who was a giant in life, remained a
giant in death — his very attitude was one of at
tack; his fists were clinched, his jaw set, and his
eyes, which were still human, seemed fixed with
159

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
resolve. He was dead, but he Avas not defeated.
And so Sergeant Fish died as he had lived — defi
antly, running into the very face of the enemy,
standing squarely upright on his legs instead of
crouching, as the others called to him to do, un
til he fell like a column across the trail. " God
gives," was the motto on the watch I took from
his blouse, and God could not haAre given him a
nobler end ; to die, in the forefront of the first
fight of the war, quickly, painlessly, Avith a bullet
through the heart, Avith his regiment behind him,
and facing the enemies of his country.
The line at this time Avas divided by the trail
into two Avings. The right AATing, composed of K
and A Troops, Avas advancing through the valley,
returning the fire from the ridge as it did so,
and the left wing, Avhich Avas much the longer
of the two, Avas swinging around on the enemy's
right flank, with its own right resting on the
barbed-wire fence. I borrowed a carbine from a
wounded man, and joined the remnant of L Troop
Avhich was close to the trail.
This troop Avas then commanded by Second
Lieutenant Day, Avho on account of his conduct
that morning and at the battle of San Juan later,
when he was shot through the arm, was promoted
to be captain of L Troop, or, as it is now officially
160

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
designated, Capron's troop. He was walking up
and down the line as unconcernedly as though
we were at target-practice, and an English ser
geant, Byrne, was assisting him by keeping up a
continuous flow of comments and criticisms that
showed the keenest enjoyment of the situation.
Byrne was the only man I noticed who seemed to
regard the fight as in any way humorous. I sus
pect Byrne was Irish. I saw no one who was in
the least alarmed, for at Guasimas no one had
time to pose, or to be flippant, or to exhibit any
signs of braggadocio. It was for all of them,
from the moment it started, through the hot, ex
hausting hour and a half that it lasted, a most
serious proposition. The .conditions were excep
tional. The men had made a night march the
evening before, had been given but three hours
troubled sleep on the wet ground, and had then
been marched in full equipment up hill and
under a cruelly hot sun, right into action. Not
one man in the regiment had ever fired a Krag-
Jorgensen carbine until he fired it at a Spaniard,
for their arms had been issued to them so soon
before sailing that they had only drilled with them
without using cartridges, and perhaps eighty per
cent, of them had never been under fire before. To
this handicap was also added the nature of the
161

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
ground and the fact that our men could not see
their opponents. Their own men fell or rolled
over on every side, shot down by an invisible
enemy, with no one to retaliate upon in return,
with no sign that the attack might not go on in
definitely. Yet they never once took a step back
ward, but advanced grimly, cleaning a bush or
thicket of its occupants before charging it, and
securing its cover for themselves, and answering
each volley with one that sounded like an echo
of the first. The men were panting for breath ;
the sweat ran so readily into their eyes that
they could not see the sights of their guns;
then limbs unused to such exertion after seven
days of cramped idleness on the troop-ship
trembled with weakness and the sun blinded and
dazzled them ; but time after time they rose and
staggered forward through the high grass, or beat
their way with their carbines against the tangle
of vines and creepers. A mile and a half of ter
ritory was gained foot by foot in this brave
fashion, the three Spanish positions carried in
that distance being marked by the thousands of
Mauser cartridges that lay shining and glittering
in the grass and behind the barricades of bushes.
But this distance had not been gained without
many losses, for everyone in the regiment was
162

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
engaged. Even those who, on account of the
heat had dropped out along the trail, as soon as
the sound of the fight reached them, came limp
ing to the front — and plunged into the firing-line.
It was the only place they could go — there was no
other line. With the exception of Church's dress
ing station and its wounded there were no reserves.
Among the first to be wounded was the corre
spondent, Edward Marshall, of the New York
Journal, who was on the firing-line to the left.
He was shot through the body near the spine,
and when I saw him he was suffering the most
terrible agonies, and passing through a succession
of convulsions. He nevertheless, in his brief
moments of comparative peace, bore himself with
the utmost calm, and was so much a soldier to
duty that he continued writing his account of the
fight until the fight itself was ended. His cour
age was the admiration of all the troopers, and
he was highly commended by Colonel Wood in
the official account of the engagement.
Nothing so well illustrated how desperately
each man was needed, and how little was his de
sire to withdraw, as the fact that the wounded
lay where they fell until the hospital stewards
found them. Their comrades did not seek that
excuse to go to the rear. 163

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
The fight had now lasted an hour, and the line
had reached a more open country, Avith a slight
incline upAvard toward a wood, on the edge of
which was a ruined house. This house was a
former distillery for aguardiente, and was now
occupied in force by the enemy. Lieutenant-
Colonel Roosevelt on the far left Avas moving up
his men Avith the intention of taking this house
on the flank; Wood, who Avas all over the line,
had the same objective point in his mind. The
troop commanders had a general idea that the
distillery Avas the key to the enemy's position,
and Avere all working in that direction. It was ex
tremely difficult for Wood and Roosevelt to com
municate Avith the captains, and after the first gen
eral orders had been given them they relied upon
the latter's intelligence to pull them through. I do
not suppose Wood saAV more than thirty of his men
out of the five hundred engaged at any one time.
When he had passed one troop, except for the noise
of its volley firing, it was immediately lost to him
in the brush, and it was so with the next. Still,
so excellent was the intelligence of the officers,
and so ready the spirit of the men, that they kept
an almost perfect alignment, as was shown when
the final order came to charge in the open fields.
The advance upon the ruined building was made
164

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
in stubborn, short rushes, sometimes in silence,
and sometimes firing as we ran. The order to
fire at will was seldom given, the men waiting
patiently for the officers' signal, and then answer
ing in volleys. Some of the men who were twice
Day's age begged him to let them take the
enemy's impromptu fort on the run, but he an
swered them tolerantly like spoiled children, and
held them down until there was a lull in the
enemy's fire, when he would lead them forward,
always taking the advance himself. It was easy
to tell which men Avere used to hunting big game
in the West and which were not, by the way they
made these rushes. The Eastern men broke at'
the word, and ran for the cover they were di-;
rected to take like men trying to get out of the
rain, and fell panting on their faces, while the
Western trappers and hunters slipped and
wriggled through the grass like Indians; dodg
ing from tree-trunk to tree-trunk, and from one
bush to another. They always fell into line at
the same time with the others, but they had not ,
exposed themselves once while doing so. Some
of the escapes were little short of miraculous.
The man on my right, Champneys Marshall, of
Washington, had one bullet pass through his
sleeve, and another pass through his shirt, where
165

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
it was pulled close to his spine. The holes where
the ball entered and went out again were clearly
cut. Another man's skin was slightly burned
by three bullets in three distinct lines, as though
it had been touched for an instant by the lighted
end of a cigar. Greenway was shot through his
shirt across the breast, and Roosevelt was so
close to one bullet, when it struck a tree, that
it filled his eyes and ears with tiny splinters.
Major Brodie and Lieutenant Thomas were both
wounded within a few feet of Colonel Wood,
and his color-sergeant, Wright, who followed
close at his heels, was clipped three times in the
head and neck, and four bullets passed through
the folds of the flag he carried. One trooper,
Rowland, of Deming, was shot through the lower
ribs; he was ordered by Roosevelt to fall back
to the dressing station, but there Church told
him there was nothing he could do for him then,
and directed him to sit down until he could be
taken to the hospital at Siboney. Rowland sat
still for a short time, and then remarked, rest
lessly, " I don't seem to be doing much good
here," and picking up his carbine, returned to the
front. There Roosevelt found him.
" I thought I ordered you to the rear," he de
manded. 166

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
" Yes, sir, you did," Rowland said, " but there
didn't seem to be much doing back there."
He was sent to Siboney with the rest of the
wounded, and two days later he appeared in
camp. He had marched from Siboney, a distance
of six miles, and up hill all the way, carrying his
carbine, canteen, and cartridge-belt.
" I thought you were in hospital," Wood
said. " I was," Rowland answered, sheepishly, " but
I didn't seem to be doing any good there."
They gave him up as hopeless after that, and
he continued his duties and went into the fight
of the San Juan hills with the hole still through
his ribs. Another cowboy named Heffner, when
shot through the body, asked to be propped up
against a tree with his canteen and cartridge-belt
beside him, and the last his troop saw of him he
was seated alone grimly firing over their heads
in the direction of the enemy. Church told of
another young man shot through the chest. The
entrance to his wound was so small that Church
could not insert enough of the gauze-packing to
stop the floAv of blood.
" I'm afraid I'll have to make this hole larger,"
he said to the boy, " or you'll bleed to death."
"All right," the trooper answered, "I guess
167

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
you know best, only you'd better hurry." The
boy stretched out on his back and lay perfectly
quiet while Church, with a pair of curved scis
sors, cut away the edges of the wound. His
patient neither whimpered nor swore, but stared
up at the sun in silence. The bullets were fail
ing on every side of them, and the operation was
a hasty one, but the trooper made no comment
until Church said, " We'd better get out of this ;
can you stand being carried ? "
" Do you think you can carry me ? " the troop
er asked.
"Yes."" Well, I guess you know," the boy answered,
holding up his arms.
Another of the Rough Riders was brought to
the dressing-station Avith a shattered ankle, and
Church, after bandaging it, gave him his choice
of riding down to Siboney on a mule, or of being
carried a day later, on a litter.
"If you think you can manage to ride the
mule with that broken foot," he said, "you can
start at once, but if you Avait until to-morrow,
when I can spare the men, you can be carried all
the way."
The cowboy preferred to start at once, so six
hospital steAvards lifted him up and dropped him
168

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
on the mule, and into a huge Mexican saddle.
He stuck his wounded ankle into one stirrup,
and his untouched one into the other, and gath
ered up the reins.
"Does it pain you? Do you think you can
stand it ? " Church asked, anxiously. The cow
boy turned and smiled down upon him with
supreme disdain.
" What, stand this ? " he cried. " Why, this is
just like getting money from home."
Toward the last, the firing from the enemy
sounded less near, and the bullets passed much
higher. Roosevelt, who had picked up a carbine
and was firing occasionally to give the direction
to the others, determined upon a charge. Wood,
at the other end of the line, decided at the same
time upon the same manoeuvre. It was called
" Wood's bluff " afterward, for he had nothing to
back it with ; while to the enemy it looked as
though his whole force was but the skirmish-line
in advance of a regiment. The Spaniards nat
urally could not believe that this thin line which
suddenly broke out of the bushes and from be
hind trees and came cheering out into the hot
sunlight in full view, was the entire fighting
force against it. They supposed the regiment
was coming close on its heels, and as they hate
169

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
being rushed as a cat hates water, they fired a
few parting volleys and broke and ran. The
cheering had the same invigorating effect on our
own side as a cold shower ; it was what first told
half the men where the other half were, and it
made every individual man feel better. As we
knew it was only a bluff, the first cheer was
wavering, but the sound of our own voices was
so comforting that the second cheer was a howl
of triumph. As it was, the Spaniards thought
the Rough Riders had already disregarded all
the rules of war.
" When Ave fired a volley," one of the prisoners
said later, " instead of falling back they came
forward. That is not the way to fight, to come
closer at every volley." And so, when instead of
retreating on each volley, the Rough Riders
rushed at them, cheering and filling the hot air
I with wild cowboy yells, the dismayed enemy re
treated upon Santiago, where he announced he
had been attacked by the entire American Army.
One of the residents of Santiago asked one of
the soldiers if those Americans fought Avell.
" Well ! " he replied, " they tried to catch us
with their hands ! "
I have not attempted to give any account of
General Young's fight on our right, which was
170

THE GUASIMAS FIGHT
equally desperate, and, owing to the courage of
the colored troops of the Tenth in storming a
ridge, equally worthy of praise. But it has
seemed better not to try and tell of anything I
did not see, but to limit myself to the work of
the Rough Riders, to whom, after all, the victory (
was due, as it was owing to Colonel Wood's
charge, which took the Spaniards in flank, that
General Wheeler and General Young were able
to advance, their own stubborn attack in front
having failed to dislodge the enemy from his
rifle-pits. According to the statement of the enemy, who
had every reason not to exaggerate the size of
his own force, 4,000 Spaniards were engaged in
this action. The Rough Riders numbered 534,
of whom 8 were killed and 34 wounded, and Gen
eral Young's force numbered 464, of which there
Avere 8 killed and 18 wounded. The American
troops accordingly attacked a force over four
times their own number intrenched behind rifle-
pits and bushes in a mountain -pass. In spite of
the smokeless powder used by the Spaniards,
Avhich hid their position, the Rough Riders routed
them out of it, and drove them back from three
different barricades until they made their last
stand in the ruined distillery, whence they finally
171

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
drove them by assault. The eager spirit in which
all was done is best described in the Spanish
soldier's answer to the inquiring civilian, "They
tried to catch us with their hands." It should
be the Rough Riders' motto.

172

CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
AFTER the Guasimas fight on June 24th, at
Guasimas, the army was advanced along the
single trail which leads from Siboney on the coast
to Santiago. Two streams of excellent water run
parallel with this trail for short distances, and
some eight miles from the coast crossed it in two
places. Our outposts were stationed at the first
of these fords, the Cuban outposts a mile and a
half farther on at the ford nearer Santiago, where
the stream made a sharp turn at a place called
El Poso. Another mile and a half of trail ex
tended from El Poso to the trenches of San Juan.
The reader should remember El Poso, as it marked
an important starting-point against San Juan on
the eventful first of July.
For six days the army was encamped on either
side of the trail for three miles back from the
outposts. The regimental camps touched each
other, and all day long the pack-trains passed up
and down between them, carrying the day's ra-
173

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
tions. The trail was a sunken wagon road, where
it was possible, in a few places, for two wagons
to pass at one time, but the greater distances were

5o>^

. """> t'l p" 0 Jn^a^ -jp-^rA^.

jm^i BoKCa»

Map of the Country Before San Juan.
This map is reproduced to show how inadequate was the information furnished the commanding
generals, concerning the nature of the country before San Juan. It is a copy made by Mr. Davis of
the only map issued to General Sumner, the night before the battle. His aides copied this copy and
had no other information by which to direct and manoeuvre all the regiments of the Cavalry division.
so narrow that there was but just room for a
wagon, or a loaded mule-train, to make its way.
The banks of the trail were three or four feet
high, and when it rained it was converted into a
174

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
huge gutter, with sides of mud, and with a liquid
mud a foot deep between them. The camps were
pitched along the trail as near the parallel stream
as possible, and in the occasional places where
there was rich, high grass. At night the men
slept in dog tents, open at the front and back,
and during the day spent their time under the
shade of trees along the trail, or on the banks
of the stream. Sentries were placed at every few
feet along these streams to guard them from any
possible pollution. For six days the army rested
in this way, for as an army moves and acts only
on its belly, and as the belly of this army was
three miles long, it could advance but slowly.
This week of rest, after the cramped life of the
troop-ship, was not ungrateful, although the ra
tions were scarce and there was no tobacco, which
was as necessary to the health of the men as their
food. Tobacco to many people is a luxury, to men
who smoke it is a necessity. The men before
Santiago, Avho were forced to go without their
stimulant for four days, suffered just as greatly
as a dipsomaniac who is cut off from alcohol.
When I said this before in a cable from Santiago,
an army officer wrote to some paper and ridiculed
the idea, and asked if we were to believe the
American soldiers were hysterical, nervous girls.
175

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

They are not that, of course, but these men before
San Juan actually suffered as much for tobacco
as they did for food.
With a pipe the sol
dier can kill hunger,
he can forget that he
is wet and exhausted
and sick with the heat,
he can steady his
nerves against the roof
of bullets Avhen they
pass continually over
head, as they did on
the 2d of July. After
leaving Siboney, the
regulars paid two dol
lars for a plug of to
bacco which usually
costs them eight cents.
Those avIio could not
get tobacco at all
smoked dried grass,
roots, and diy manure.
For several nights the
nerves of some of them were so unstrung for
the need of the stimulant that they could not
sleep. That is a condition of the nerves to be
176

General Chaffee in the Field.

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
avoided if possible when men are going into a
battle. The transports carried all the tobacco needed,
but in the mind of some commissary officers to
bacco is in the class with canned peaches, jellies,
and lime-juice, a sort of luxury to be issued after
the bacon and coffee and hard-tack have been sent
to the front. This should really be considered
equally important with the coffee, which the sol
dier needs three times a day. His tobacco he
must have every hour of the day.
But in spite of the lack of tobacco and food,
the six days ashore were interesting and busy.
The men scoured the woods and hills for mangoes
and cocoa-nuts and loafed in the shade beside the
beautiful streams, and their officers reconnoitred
the hills above them. But I cannot find out that
anyone reconnoitred the wooded basin which lies
before San Juan. I know a man who says he
knows another man who told him he did so, but
of thorough reconnoissance there was absolutely
none. The temper of the young officers was keen
for just such adventure, any number of them were
eager to scout, to make actual surveys of the trails
leading to Santiago, to discover the best cover
and the open places, where the fords crossed the
streams, and the trails which flanked the Spanish
177

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
trenches. But their services were not required.
Major-General Chaffee seems to have been the
only officer who acquainted himself with that mile
and a half of unknown country into which, on
the 1st of July, the men were driven as cattle are
chased into the chutes of the Chicago cattle-pen.
His rank permitted him to take such excursions
on his own responsibility, but there were hundreds
of other officers who would have been glad of a
like opportunity, and there were, in the Rough
Riders' Regiment alone, several hundred men who
for years had been engaged in just that work,
scouting and trailing. But the only reconnois
sance the officers were permitted to make was to
walk out a mile and a half beyond the outposts
to the hill of El Poso, and to look across the basin
that lay in the great valley which leads to San
tiago. The left of the valley was the hills which
hide the sea. The right of the valley was the
hills in which nestle the village of El Caney. Be
low El Poso, in the basin, the dense green forest
stretched a mile and a half to the hills of San
Juan. These hills looked so quiet and sunny and
well kept that they reminded one of a New Eng
land orchard. There was a blue bungalow on a
hill to the right, a red bungalow higher up on
the right, and in the centre the block-house of
178

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
San Juan, which looked like a Chinese pagoda.
Three-quarters of a mile behind them, Avith a dip
between, were the long white Avails of the hospital
and barracks of Santiago, wearing thirteen. Red
Cross flags, and, as was pointed out to the foreign

The Farm House Below EI Poso Hill, where Many of the Rough Riders
were Wounded by the Third Spanish Shell.

attaches later, two six-inch guns a hundred yards
in advance, of the Red Cross flags.
It was so quiet, so fair, and so prosperous look
ing, that it breathed of peace. It seemed as
though one might, without accident, walk in and
take dinner at the Venus Restaurant, or loll on
the benches in the Plaza, or rock in one of the<*
179

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
great bent-wood chairs around the patio of the
Don Carlos Club.
But, on the 27th of June, a long, yellow pit
opened in the hillside of San Juan, and in it we
could see straw sombreros rising and bobbing up
and down, and under the shade of the block
house, blue-coated Spaniards strolling leisurely
about or riding forth on little Avhite ponies to
scamper over the hills. Officers of every regi
ment, attaches of foreign countries, correspondents
and staff officers, daily reported the fact that the
rifle-pits were growing in length and in number,
and that in plain sight from the hill of El Poso,
the enemy Avas intrenching himself at San Juan,
and at the little village of El Caney to the right,
where he was marching through the streets. But
no artillery Avas sent to El Poso hill to drop a
shell among the busy men at work among the
trenches, or to interrupt the street parades in El
Caney. For four days before the American sol
diers captured the same rifle-pits at El Caney and
San Juan, with a loss of two thousand men, they
watched these men diligently preparing for their
coming, and wondered why there Avas no order
to embarrass or to end these preparations.
It is not a difficult task to criticise the conduct
"*f a campaign when it is finished, to show how
180

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
Santiago should have been taken after it has been
taken ; but long before the army moved there
were general officers who saw how the approach
on the city should be made, and who did not
wait until after the 1st of July to explain what
should be avoided.

1)

?

iSSffi^B
'
»fp
. ¦
>' .
Stone Breastwork with Palm-leaf Roof at South Side of El Caney.
Five days before the battle of San Juan Gen
eral Chaffee, in my hearing, explained the whole
situation, and told what should be done and fore
told what eventually happened if certain things
were left undone. It was impossible, he said,
for the army, without great loss, to debouch from
the two trails which left the woods and opened
on the country before the San Juan hills. He
181
THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
suggested then that it would be well to cut trails
parallel with the entire front of the wood and
hidden by it, and with innumerable little trails
leading into the open, so that the whole army
could be marched out upon the hills at the same
moment. " Of course, the enemy knows where those two
trails leave the wood," he said ; " they have their
guns trained on the openings. If our men leave
the cover and reach the plain from those trails
alone they will be piled up so high that they will
block the road." This is exactly what happened,
except that instead of being led to the sacrifice
through both trails the men were sent down only
one of them, and the loss was even greater in
consequence. This is recorded here because even
if the general in command did not know what to
do, it is satisfactory to remember that we had
other commanders there Avho did, with less politi
cal influence, but with greater military intelli
gence. It is quite safe to say that there is not the
least doubt in the minds of any of the officers of
the Fifth Army Corps, that had the attack on
Santiago been planned by Generals Chaffee, Kent,
or Lawton it would have been conducted as ad
mirably as was the Porto Rican campaign, under
Generals Miles, Schwan, Henry, and Wilson, and
182

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
with the loss of one-fourth- the number of men
who were sacrificed. General Shafter saw the
field of battle only once before the fight took
place. That was on June 29th, when he rode
out to El Poso hill and surveyed the plain be
low. He was about the last officer in his army
corps to climb that hill and make this survey,
and he did not again go eA^en that far to the
front until the night after the battle, and he did
not see the trenches for days after the battle
had taken place. His trip to El Poso, which
was three miles distant from his head-quarters,
was apparently too much for his strength, and
the heat during the ride prostrated him so
greatly that he was forced to take to his cot,
where he spent the greater part of his stay in
Cuba before the surrender. On the day after the
battle of San Juan he said, hopelessly, to a foreign
attache : " I am prostrate in body and mind." He
could confess this to a stranger, and yet, so great
was the obstinacy, so great the vanity and self-
confidence of the man, that, although he held the
lives and health of 13,000 soldiers in his care,
he did not ask to be relieved of his command.
I do not think his not coming to the front was
due to personal timidity, although in their anger
and exasperation at his absence his officers freely
183

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
accused him of allowing his personal safety to
stand in the way of his duty, and so little regard
had they for him that I have heard a colonel
countermand his orders in the presence of other

Men of the Twelfth Infantry on the Firing Line at El Caney.
generals. His remaining in the rear was undoubt
edly due to physical disability, and to the fact
that he was ill and in pain.
There are some people who claim that the very
fact of Shaffer's retaining command when he was
suffering showed his bull-dog pluck and courage,
184

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
but I cannot accept that point of view. A man
who could not survive a ride of three miles on
horseback, when his men were tramping many
miles on foot with packs and arms, and under a
tropical sun ; who was so occupied and concerned
with a gouty foot that he could not consider a
plan of battle, and who sent seven thousand men
down a trail he had never seen, should resist the
temptation to accept responsibilities his political
friends thrust upon him, responsibilities he knows
he cannot bear. This is the offence that I impute
to Shafter : that while he was not even able to rise
and look at the city he had been sent to capture,
he still clung to his authority. His self-confidence
was untouched. His self-complacency was so
great that in spite of blunder after blunder, folly
upon folly, and mistake upon mistake, he still
believed himself infallible, still bullied his infe
rior officers, and still cursed from his cot. He
quarrelled with Admiral Sampson ; he quarrelled
with General Garcia ; he refused to allow Colonel
Greenleaf, Surgeon-in-Chief of the army, to de
stroy the pest-houses in Siboney, and he disobeyed
the two orders sent him by General Miles from
Tampa and again from Washington, directing
him not to allow our soldiers to occupy the Cu
ban houses. 185

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
The obvious answer which is invariably made
to every criticism on General Shafter is that,
after all, he was justified in the end, for he did
succeed ; he was sent to Cuba to take Santiago
and he took Santiago. He did not take Santiago.
His troops, without the aid they should have
received from him of proper reconnoissance and
sufficient artillery, devotedly sacrificed themselves
and took the hills above Santiago with their bare
hands, and it was Admiral Cervera who, in with
drawing his guns which covered the city, made a
present of it to the American Army. It must not
be forgotten that the departure of Cervera's fleet
removed Santiago's chief defence, and the cause
of Shaffer's coming to Cuba as well. The Ameri
can people cannot have forgotten Shaffer's panic-
stricken telegram of July 2d, Avhen he said that
our lines were so thin that he feared he might
have to withdraw from the position his men had
taken. It came like a slap in the face to every
one who believed Santiago was already ours.
Nor can they have forgotten that on the very
next day Cervera, having preferred to take a
desperate chance to save his fleet, rather than
remain on guard before the city, and having with
drawn, Shafter no longer cabled of retreat, but
demanded surrender. 186

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
Shaffer's demand for surrender was sent in on
the morning of the 3d, Cervera did not leave
until the afternoon, so the admirers of Shafter

Lieut. Harmon (wounded at Santiago). Lieut. Gallagher. Lieut. Shorts.

Captain Howse.

Brigadier- General Sumner who Commanded the Cavalry Division at
the Battle of San Juan.

claim that Cervera would not have left the harbor
at all if Shafter had not arrived and captured the
hills above the city. The truth, however, is that
it was not on account of Shafter, but in spite of
Shafter, that the hills, were taken. I now shall
187

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
try to make clear how his plan of attacking the
city not only failed, but, before it was abandoned,
caused needless loss of life ; how it finally was
disregarded by the generals at the front, and how
the battle was won without him, for he did not
see the battle of San Juan, nor direct the battle of
San Juan, nor was he consulted by those who did.
On the afternoon of June 30th, Captain Mills
rode up to the tent of Colonel Wood, and told
him that on account of illness, General Wheeler
and General Young had relinquished their com
mands, and that General Sumner would take
charge of the Cavalry Division ; that he, Col6nel
Wood, would take command of General Young's
brigade, and Colonel Carroll, of General Sumner's
brigade. " You Avill break camp and move forward at
four o'clock," he said. It was then three o'clock,
and apparently the order to move forward at four
had been given to each regiment at nearly the
same time, for they all struck their tents and
stepped down into the trail together. It was as
though fifteen regiments were encamped along the
sidewalks of Fifth Avenue and were all ordered
at the same moment to move into it and march
down town. If Fifth AArenue were ten feet wide,
one can imagine the confusion. 188

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
General Chaffee was at General Lawton's head
quarters, and they stood apart whispering to
gether about the march they were to take to El
Caney. Just over their heads the balloon was
ascending for the first time and its great glisten-

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flaHBi
11-
1 ' lIli
" rif'
The War Balloon Making its First Ascension, on the Day Before the
Battle of San Juan.
ing bulk hung just above the tree-tops, and the
men in the different regiments, picking their way
along the trail, gazed up at it open-mouthed.
The head-quarters camp was crowded. After a
week of inaction the army, at a moment's notice,
was moving forward, and everyone had ridden in
haste to learn why. 189
THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
There were attaches, in strange uniforms, self-
important Cuban generals, officers from the flag
ship New York, and an army of photographers.
At the side of the camp, double lines of soldiers
passed slowly along the two paths of the muddy
road, while, between them, aides dashed up and
down, splashing them with dirty Avater, and
shouting, "You will come up at once, sir."
" You will not attempt to enter the trail yet, sir."
" General Sumner's compliments, and Avhy are
you not in your place ? "
Twelve thousand men, Avith their eyes fixed on
a balloon, and treading on each other's heels in
three inches of mud, move slowly, and after three
hours, it seemed as though every man in the
United States was under arms and stumbling and
slipping doAvn that trail. The lines passed until
the moon rose. They seemed endless, intermin
able; there Avere caA^alry mounted and dismount
ed, artillery Avith cracking Avhips and cursing
drivers, Rough Riders in brown, and regulars,
both black and white, in blue. Midnight came,
and they were still slipping forward.
General Sumner's head-quarters tent was pitched
to the right of El Poso hill. Below us lay the
basin a mile and a half in length, and a mile and
a half Avide, from which a white mist was rising.
190

¦fl

Capron's Battery in Action at El Caney.

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
Near us, drowned under the mist, seven thousand
men were sleeping, and, farther to the right, Gen
eral Chaffee's five thousand were lying under the
bushes along the trails to El Caney, waiting to
inarch on it and eat it up before breakfast.
The place hardly needs a map to explain it.
The trails were like a pitchfork, with its prongs
touching the hills of San Juan. The long handle
of the pitchfork was the trail over which we had
just come, the joining of the handle and the
prongs were El Poso. El Caney lay half way
along the right prong, the left one was the trail
clown which, in the morning, the troops were to
be hurled upon San Juan. It was as yet an ut
terly undiscovered country. Three miles away,
across the basin of mist, we could see the street-
lamps of Santiago shining over the San Juan
hills. Above us, the tropical moon hung white
and clear in the dark purple sky, pierced with
millions of white stars. As we turned in, there
was just a little something in the air which made
saying " good-night " a gentle farce, for no one
went to sleep immediately, but lay looking up at
the stars, and after a long silence, and much rest
less turning on the blanket which we shared to
gether, the second lieutenant said : " So, if any
thing happens to me, to-morrow, you'll see she
193

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
gets them, won't you ? " Before the moon rose
again, every sixth man who had slept in the mist
that night was either killed or wounded; but
the second lieutenant was sitting on the edge of
a Spanish rifle-pit, dirty, sweaty, and weak for
food, but victorious, and the unknown she did
not get them.
El Caney had not yet throAvn off her blanket
of mist before Capron's battery opened on it
from a ridge two miles in the rear. The plan for
the day Avas that El Caney should fall in an hour.
The plan for the clay is interesting chiefly be
cause it is so different from Avhat happened.
According to the plan the army was to advance
in two divisions, along the tAvo trails. Incident
ally, General Lawton's division was to pick up
El Caney, and when El Caney was eliminated, his
division was to continue forward and join hands
on the right with the divisions of General Sum
ner and General Kent. The army was then to
rest for that night in the woods, half a mile from
San Juan.
On the following morning it was to attack San
Juan on the two flanks, under cover of artillery.
The objection to this plan, which did not appar
ently suggest itself to General Shafter, Avas that
an army of twelve thousand men, sleeping within
194

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
five hundred yards of the enemy's rifle-pits might
not unreasonably be expected to pass a bad night.
We discovered the next day that not only the
five hundred yards but the whole basin was cov
ered by the fire from the rifle-pits. The army
could not remain in the woods even by daylight

Gun No. 1 of Grimes's Battery, the First Gun Fired at San Juan
Block-House, July 1st.
when it was possible to seek some slight shel
ter, but according to the plan it was expected to
bivouac for the night in these woods, and in the
morning to manceuvre and deploy and march
through them out to the two flanks of San Juan.
How the enemy was to be hypnotized while this
was going forward it is difficult to explain.
195

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
According to this programme, Capron's battery
opened on El Caney and Grimes's battery opened
on the pagoda-like block-house of San Juan.
The range from El Poso was exactly 2,400 yards,
and the firing, as was discovered later, was not
very effective. The battery used black powder,
and, as a result, after each explosion the curtain
of smoke hung over the gun for fully a minute
before the gunners could see the San Juan
trenches, which was chiefly important because
for a full minute it gave a mark to the enemy.
The hill on which the battery stood was like a
sugar-loaf. Behind it was the farm-house of El
Poso, the only building in sight within a radius
of a mile, and in it were Cuban soldiers and other
non-combatants. The Rough Riders had been
ordered to halt in the yard of the farm-house and
the artillery horses were drawn up in it, under
the lee of the hill. The First and Tenth dis
mounted Cavalry were encamped a hundred
yards from the battery along the ridge. Later
I took pains to find out by whose order these
troops were placed within such close proximity
to a battery, and was informed, by the general in
command of the division, that his men had been
put in that exact spot by the order of the Com
manding General. They might as sensibly have
196

Artillery Coming Up El Poso Hill.

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
been ordered to paint the rings in a target while
a company was firing at the bull's eye. For the
first twenty shots the enemy made no reply, when
they did it was impossible, owing to their using
smokeless powder, to locate their guns. The
third shell fell in among the Cubans in the
block-house and among the Rough Riders and
the men of the First and Tenth Cavalry, killing
some and wounding many. These casualties
were utterly unnecessary and were due to the
stupidity of whoever placed the men within fifty
yards of guns in action. Until after the trenches
of San Juan were taken by the infantry the artil
lery's part in the attack on Santiago was of little
value. The hills of San Juan and the fort at El
Caney were finally taken by assault and with but
little aid from the heavier arm. There were only
sixteen three -inch guns with this expedition,
which set forth with the known purpose of be
sieging a city. Military experts say that the
sixty guns left behind in Tampa would have
been few enough for the work they had to do.
It was like going to a fire with a hook and lad
der company and leaving the hose and the steam-
engines in the engine-house. If the guns which
were left at Tampa, and the siege-guns which
were left on the transports at Baiquiri had first
199

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
played on the San Juan hills, and put out the
fire there, so many men of the hook and ladder
contingent would not have been sacrificed.
A quarter of an hour after the firing began
from El Poso one of General Shaffer's aides di
rected General Sumner to advance with his divis-

El Poso, Immediately After the Spanish Fire Ceased. A shell entered,
killing Cubans inside.
ion down the Santiago trail, and to halt at the
edge of the woods.
" What am I to do then ? " asked General
Sumner. " You are to await further orders," the aide
answered. As a matter of fact and history this was prob-
200

Grimes's Battery at El Poso.
The third Spanish shell fell in among the Cubans in the block-house and among the Rough Riders.

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
ably the last order General Sumner received from
General Shafter, until the troops of his division
had taken the San Juan hills, as it became impos
sible to get Avord to General Shafter, the trail lead
ing to his head-quarters tent, three miles in the
rear, being blocked by the soldiers of the First
and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and later, by
Lawton's division. General Sumner led the Sixth,
Third, and Ninth Cavalry, and the Rough Riders
down the trail, with instructions for the First and
Tenth to folloAV. The trail, virgin as yet from
the foot of an American soldier, was as wide as
its narrowest part, which was some ten feet
across. At places it was as wide as Broadway,
but only for such short distances that it was
necessary for the men to advance in column, in
double file. A maze of underbrush and trees on
either side was all but impenetrable, and when
the officers and men had once assembled into the
basin, they could only guess as to what lay before
them, or on either flank. At the end of a mile
the country became more open, and General Sum
ner saw the Spaniards intrenched a half mile
away on the sloping hills. A stream, called the
San Juan River, ran across the trail at this point,
and another stream crossed it again two hundred
yards farther on. The troops were halted at this
203

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
first stream, some crossing it, and others deploy
ing in single file to the right. Some were on the
banks of the stream, others at the edge of the
woods in the bushes. Others lay in the high
grass which was so high that it stopped the wind,
and so hot that it almost choked and suffocated
those who lay in it.
The enemy saw the advance and began firing
with pitiless accuracy into the jammed and
crowded trail, and along the whole border of the
woods. There was not a single yard of ground
for a mile to the rear, which was not inside the
zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to return
the fire but to lie still and wait for further orders.
Some of them could see the rifle-pits of the enemy
quite clearly and the men in them, but many saw
nothing but the bushes under which they lay, and
the high grass which seemed to burn Avhen they
pressed against it. It was during this period of
waiting that the greater number of our men were
killed. For one hour they lay on their rifles star
ing at the waving green stuff around them, while
the bullets drove past incessantly, with savage
insistence, cutting the grass again and again in
hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang
from the ground and sank back again with a
groan, or rolled to one side clinging silently to an
204

Fording a Stream on the Way to the Front.

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
arm or shoulder. Behind the lines hospital stew
ards passed continually, drawing the wounded
back to the streams, Avhere they laid them in long
rows, their feet touching the Avater's edge and their
bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up and
down the lines, and through the fords of the

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Mule Train Carrying Ammunition from Siboney to San Juan.
streams, mounted aides drove their horses at a
gallop, as conspicuous a target as the steeple on
a church, and one after another paid the price of
his position and fell from his horse wounded or
dead. Captain Mills fell as he Avas giving an
order, shot through the forehead behind both
eyes ; Captain O'Neill of the Rough Riders, as he
207
THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
said, " There is no Spanish bullet made that can
kill me." Steel, Swift, Henry, each of them was
shot out of his saddle.
Hidden in the trees above the streams, and
above the trail, sharpshooters and guerillas added
a fresh terror to the wounded. There was no
hiding from them. Their bullets came from every
side. Their invisible smoke helped to keep their
hiding-places secret, and in the incessant shriek of
shrapnel and the spit of the Mausers, it was diffi
cult to locate the reports of their rifles. They
spared neither the wounded nor recognized the
Red Cross, they killed the surgeons and the
stewards carrying the litters, and killed the
wounded men on the litters. A guerilla in a tree
above us shot one of the Rough Riders in the
breast, Avhile I was helping him carry Captain
Morton Henry to the dressing-station, the ball
passing down through him, and a second shot
from the same tree, barely missed Henry as he
lay on the ground where we had dropped him.
He Avas already twice Avounded and so covered
with blood that no one could have mistaken his
condition. The surgeons at work along the
stream dressed the wounds with one eye cast
aloft at the trees. It Avas not the Mauser bullets
they feared, though they passed continuously, but
208

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
too high to do their patients further harm, but
the bullets of the sharpshooters which struck
fairly in among them, splashing in the water and
scattering the pebbles. The sounds of the two
bullets were as different as is the sharp pop of a
soda-water bottle from the buzzing of an angry
wasp. For a time it seemed as though every second
man was either killed or wounded, one came upon
them lying behind the bush, under which they
had crawled with some strange idea that it would
protect them, or crouched under the bank of
the stream, or lying on their stomachs and lap
ping up the water with the eagerness of thirsty
dogs. As to their suffering, the wounded were
magnificently silent, they neither complained nor
groaned, nor cursed.
" I've got a punctured tire," was their grim
answer to inquiries. White men and colored
men, veterans and recruits and volunteers, each
lay Avaiting for the battle to begin or to end so
that he might be carried away to safety, for the
wounded were in as great danger after they were
hit as though they were in the firing line, but
none questioned nor complained.
I came across Lieutenant Roberts, of the Tenth
Cavalry, lying under the roots of a tree beside
209

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
the stream with three of his colored troopers
stretched around him. He was shot through the
intestines, and each of the three men with him
was shot in the arm or leg. They had been over
looked or forgotten, and we stumbled upon them

General Hospital of the First Division.
only by the accident of losing our Avay. They
had no knowledge as to how the battle was going
or where their comrades were, or where the ene
my was. At any moment, for all they knew, the
Spaniards might break through the bushes about
them. It was a most lonely picture, the young
210

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
lieutenant, half naked, and wet with his own
blood, sitting upright beside the empty stream,
and his three followers crouching at his feet like
three faithful watch-dogs, each wearing his red
badge of courage, with his black skin tanned to
a haggard gray, and with his eyes fixed patiently
on the white lips of his officer. When the white
soldiers with me offered to carry him back to the
dressing-station, the negroes resented it stiffly.
" If the Lieutenant had been able to move, we
would have carried him away long ago," said the
sergeant, quite overlooking the fact that his arm
was shattered.
" Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me,"
Roberts added, cheerfully. " They must be very
busy. I can wait."
As yet, with all these killed and wounded,
we had accomplished nothing — except to obey
orders — -which was to await further orders. The
observation balloon hastened the end. It came
blundering down the trail, and stopped the ad
vance of the First and Tenth Cavalry, and was
sent up directly over the heads of our men to
observe what should have been observed a week
before by scouts and reconnoitring parties. A
balloon, two miles to the rear, and high enough
in the air to be out of range of the enemy's fire,
211

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
may some .day prove itself to be of use and Aralue.
But a balloon on the advance line, and only fifty
feet above the tops of the trees, was merely an
invitation to the enemy to kill everything be
neath it. And the enemy responded to the invi
tation. A Spaniard might question if he could
hit a man, or a number of men, hidden in the
bushes, but had no doubt at all as to his ability
to hit a mammoth glistening ball only six hun
dred yards distant, and so all the trenches fired
at it at once, and the men of the First and Tenth,
packed together directly behind it, received the
full force of the bullets. The men lying directly
beloAV it received the shrapnel which Avas timed
to hit it, and which at last, fortunately, did hit
it. This was endured for an hour, an hour of
such hell of fire and heat, that the heat in itself,
had there been no bullets, would have been re
membered for its cruelty. Men gasped on their
backs, like fishes in the bottom of a boat, their
heads burning inside and out, their limbs too
heavy to move. They had been rushed here and
rushed there wet with sweat and wet with ford
ing the streams, under a sun that would have
made moving a fan an effort, and they lay pros
trate, gasping at the hot air, Avith faces aflame,
and their tongues sticking out, and their eyes
212

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
rolling. All through this the volleys from the
rifle-pits sputtered and rattled, and the bullets
sang continuously like the wind through the rig
ging in a gale, shrapnel whined and broke, and
still no order came from General Shafter.
Captain Howse, of General Sumner's staff,
rode down the trail to learn what had delayed
the First and Tenth, and was hailed by Colonel
Derby, who was just descending from the shat
tered balloon.
" I saw men up there on those hills," Colonel
Derby shouted ; " they are firing at our troops."
That was part of the information contributed by
the balloon. Captain Howse's reply is lost to
history. General Kent's division, which was to have
been held in reserve, according to the plan, had
been rushed up in the rear of the First and
Tenth, and the Tenth had deployed in skirmish
order to the right. The trail was now complete
ly blocked by Kent's Division. Lawton's Divis
ion, which was to have reinforced on the right,
had not appeared, but incessant firing from the
direction of El Caney showed that he and Chaf
fee were fighting mightily. The situation was
desperate. Our troops could not retreat, as the
trail for two miles behind them was wedged with
213

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
men. They could not remain where they were
for they were being shot to pieces. There was
only one thing they could do — go forward and
take the San Juan hills by assault. It was as
desperate as the situation itself. To charge
earthworks held by men with modern rifles, and
using modern artillery, until after the earthworks
have been shaken by artillery, and to attack
the'm-in advance and not in the flanks, are both
impossible military propositions. But this cam
paign had not been conducted according to mil
itary rules, and a series of military blunders
had brought seven thousand American soldiers
into a chute of death, from which there was no
escape except by taking the enemy who held
it by the throat, and driving him out and beat
ing him down. So the generals of divisions and
brigades stepped back and relinquished their
command to the regimental officers and the en
listed men.
" We can do nothing more," they virtually said.
" There is the enemy."
Colonel Roosevelt, on horseback, broke from
the woods behind the line of the Ninth, and find
ing its men lying in his way, shouted : " If you
don't Avish to go forward, let my men pass, please."
The junior officers of the Ninth, with their ne-
214

The Fight at the San Juan Block-house, July 1st.

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
groes, instantly sprang into line with the Rough
Riders, and charged at the blue block-house on
the right.
I speak of Roosevelt first because, with Gen
eral Hawkins, who led Kent's Division, notably
the Sixth and Sixteenth Regulars, he was, without
doubt, the most conspicuous figure in the charge.
General Hawkins, with hair as white as snow,
and yet far in advance of men thirty years his
junior, was so noble a sight that you felt inclined
to pray for his safety ; on the other hand, Roose
velt, mounted high on horseback, and charging
the rifle-pits at a gallop and quite alone, made
you feel that you would like to cheer. He wore
on his sombrero a blue polka-dot handkerchief, a
la Havelock, which, as he advanced, floated out
straight behind his head, like a guidon. After
ward, the men of his regiment who followed this
flag, adopted a polka-dot handkerchief as the
badge of the Rough Riders. These two officers
were notably conspicuous in the charge, but no
one can claim that any two men, or any one man,
was more brave or more daring, or showed great
er courage in that slow, stubborn advance than
did any of the others. Someone asked one of
the officers if he had any difficulty in making his
men follow him. " No," he answered, " I had
217

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
some difficulty in keeping up with them." As one
of the Brigade Generals said : " San Juan was
won by the regimental officers and men. We
had as little to do as the referee at a prize-fight
who calls ' time.' We called ' time ' and they
did the fighting."
I have seen many illustrations and pictures of
this charge on the San Juan hills, but none of
them seem to show it just as I remember it. In
the picture-papers the men are running up hill
swiftly and gallantly, in regular formation, rank
after rank, with flags flying, their eyes aflame,
and their hair streaming, their bayonets fixed, in
long, brilliant lines, an invincible, overpowering
weight of numbers. Instead of which I think
the thing which impressed one the most, when
our men started from cover, was that they were
so few. It seemed as if someone had made an
awful and terrible mistake. One's instinct Avas
to call to them to come back. You felt that
someone had blundered and that these few men
were blindly following out some madman's mad
order. It was not heroic then, it seemed merely
terribly pathetic. The pity of it, the folly of
such a sacrifice was Avhat held you.
They had no glittering bayonets, they were
not massed in regular array. There were a few
218

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
men in advance, bunched together, and creeping
up a steep, sunny hill, the tops of which roared
and flashed with flame. The men held their guns

San Juan Block-house, Showing Marks of Shot.

pressed across their breasts and stepped heavily
as they climbed. Behind these first few, spread
ing out like a fan, were single lines of men, slip
ping and scrambling in the smooth grass, moving
forward with difficulty, as though they were wad-

219

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
ing waist high through water, moving slowly,
carefully, with strenuous effort. It was much
more wonderful than any swinging charge could
have been. They walked to greet death at every
step, many of them, as they advanced, sinking
suddenly or pitching forward and disappearing
in the high grass, but the others waded on, stub
bornly, forming a thin blue line that kept creep
ing higher and higher up the hill. It was as in
evitable as the rising tide. It was a miracle of
self-sacrifice, a triumph of bull-dog courage, which
one watched breathless with wonder. The fire of
the Spanish riflemen, who still stuck bravely to
their posts, doubled and trebled in fierceness, the
crests of the hills crackled and burst in amazed
roars, and rippled with waves of tiny flame. But
the blue line crept steadily up and on, and then,
near the top, the broken fragments gathered to
gether with a sudden burst of speed, the Spaniards
appeared for a moment outlined against the sky
and poised for instant flight, fired a last volley
and fled before the swift-moving wave that leaped
and sprang up after them.
The men of the Ninth and the Rough Riders
rushed to the block-house together, the men of the
Sixth, of the Third, of the Tenth Cavalry, of the
Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry, fell on their faces
220

The San Juan Hill, Showing General Wheeler's Camp.

THE BATTLE OF SAN JUAN
along the crest of the hills beyond, and opened
upon the vanishing enemy. They drove the yel
low silk flags of the cavalry and the Stars and
Stripes of their country into the soft earth of the
trenches, and then sank down and looked back at
the road they had climbed and swung their hats
in the air. And from far overhead, from these
few figures perched on the Spanish rifle-pits, with
their flags planted among the empty cartridges
of the enemy, and overlooking the walls of San-/
tiago, came, faintly, the sound of a tired, broken
cheer.

223

CHAPTER VII
IN THE RIFLE-PITS
THE position of the regulars immediately after
they had taken the San Juan hills was
painfully suggestive of Humpty-Dumpty on the
wall. They did not suggest Humpty-Dumpty
at the time, but now one sees that their attitude
then Avas quite as precarious as his and almost
as absurd.
Along the top of each hill were tiny groups of
not more than from a dozen to fifteen soldiers.
They were sprawling on their backs, panting for
breath, or sitting with their elbows on their
knees and panting for breath. By some miracle
they had arrived at this supreme elevation, and
they found themselves suddenly in complete pos
session of several block-houses and rows and rows
of abandoned rifle-pits. Three hundred yards
below them, in the valley that stretched between
the city of Santiago and the hills on which they
crouched, thousands of Spanish rifles were splut
tering furiously and shrieking with rage and dis-
224

United States Troops in the Trenches Before Santiago.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
appointment, making the crest of hills behind
which our men lay absolutely untenable. At
their feet were the sunny slopes up which they
had just climbed, and which were still swept by
fierce and sudden showers of falling bullets.
They could neither retreat nor advance, and they
were so few that to one coming up the hill they
suggested Sunday groups of workmen picnicking
on the hills of a city park. They were so few in
number, so utterly inadequate to the extent of
hills they had captured and which they were
supposed to hold, that their position was like that
of a man clinging to a church steeple and unable,
without breaking his neck, to slip down on any
side ; but who still proclaimed to the air about him,
" See how I hold this steeple ! " Their own point
of view and sense of relief and surprise were thus
best expressed in the words of Stephen Crane's
trooper, who sank upon the crest of the hill,
panting, bleeding, and sweating, and cried :
" Well, hell, here we are ! "
I watched the cavalry take the hills they capt
ured from a place on the trail about three hun
dred yards behind them, near a ford of the San
Juan stream, which was later picturesquely
called the Bloody Bend, because so many men
were hurt there, and because it was used as a
227

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
dressing station for the wounded. General
Wheeler was seated at this ford at the foot of a
great tree, and gathered about him were differ
ent members of his staff — his son, and Captain
William Astor Chanler, and Captain Hardie, who
was, much to his disgust, in command of the
General's body-guard, and so could not storm the

Making Observations while Under Heavy Spanish Fire.
hill with his regiment. I told General Wheeler
that the cavalry had just reached the top of the
hill, and I think from his answer that this was
the first information that he had received'of the
fact that the hills were captured. At the same
moment an aide rode up and said, " General
Wheeler, Ave have taken the San Juan block
house. It is now possible for you to come up to
228

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
the front." General Wheeler at once rose and
walked on up the three hundred yards of trail to
the hill ; but about half an hour before he
reached it I saw General Sumner riding over
the hills with his aides : Captain Howse, Lieuten
ant Harmon, who was wounded, but who still sat
in his saddle, and Lieutenant Andrews of Troop
G, Third Cavalry, whose horse had been shot,
but who trotted along beside Sumner on foot. I
mention this, because in General Shaffer's general
order congratulating the troops on the victory of
San Juan, he gave the entire credit for the work
of the cavalry division to General Wheeler, speak
ing of him as leading the dismounted cavalry at
the front. He did not mention General Sumner
at all. As a matter of history, General Sumner
bore the heat and brunt of the day, and was
in command of the cavalry division long after
the hills were taken, until about four o'clock,
when General Wheeler reassumed command.
General Wheeler has won so many laurels in the
Civil War, and again in this last war, that he
does not need honors which belong to another.
General Kent, who was also mentioned in the
same general order for the good work of his in
fantry, was most magnanimous, and at the time
of the fight gave the credit of the advance to his
229

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
brigade commander, General Hawkins. In the
minds of the army of the rifle-pits this disclaimer
on his part did not so much help General Haw
kins, who had distinguished himself before the
eyes of all, as it added to the great popularity of
General Kent. Later General Shafter corrected
his original error, and in his final report states
that Sumner, and not Wheeler, commanded the
cavalry at the battle of San Juan.
During the days while the armies camped in
the rifle-pits it was necessary to pass frequently
over the trail from the Bloody Bend to the foot
of the hill on which stood the San Juan block
house, and I hoav know that the distance between
those two points is not over three hundred yards.
But on the morning of the first of July, when
Mr. Floyd Campbell, the Herald artist, and I
followed on the footsteps of the regulars it seemed
to stretch for many weary miles. It Avas so long
that morning that at about every fifty feet we
found it necessary to sit down and rest. We
were generally overcome with fatigue wherever
there was a tree. There were few trees large
enough for our purpose, and they were all occu
pied. Everyone had been under fire for five hours ;
but at no place nor time during the entire war did
the fire of the enemy seem so unpleasant as it was
230

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
that morning along that trail. Bullets passed
without giving a moment's respite at several dif
ferent heights, and while doing so made a most
demoralizing amount of noise. They struck the
trees overhead, the ground underfoot, and cut
holes in the air on every side. Sometimes a
shrapnel shell burst and tore the men it hit into
ribbons of flesh. Dead horses and the bodies of
the regulars lay all along the trail, and no one
who Avas not wounded, or supporting wounded,
passed down it from the front. It was interesting
to observe the pressure which men put upon their
nerves suddenly slip from them, and to see them
flying panic-stricken for a tree, or dropping on
their knees and sliding along the ground. It
showed that a man when he is alone can only
bear a certain amount of danger, as he can only
stand a certain amount of physical fatigue. You
Avould see a soldier walking along the trail quite
boldly for a little way, and then a bullet would
come too close to his head, or too many of them
would whistle by at the same moment, and his
nerves would refuse to support the strain any
longer, and he would jump for the bushes and
would sit there breathing heavily until he mus
tered up sufficient will-power to carry him farther
on. It was hardest for the wounded who had
231

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
just fallen during the charge up the hill. They
had paid their dues, and felt that they deserved
a respite ; but the bullets pursued them cruelly
all the way down the trail, following them like
live things, and driving them as with whips to
efforts far beyond their strength. There was one
big tree which everyone who was at San Juan
will remember, and which stood on the left of the
trail just between the two streams. It was the
rest-house for many men that morning, and it
served them well apparently, for a few days later
we counted forty-two bullet holes in its trunk.
Two officers who were making maps on little
boards which' hung from their shoulders like a
peddler's tray, made for this tree, and three regu
lars and Campbell and I joined them. It was as
though we were seeking shelter from a storm.
One of the regulars was crowded out to one
side, and he suddenly rolled over on top of us,
crying, "I've got it, I've got it," in such a cheer
ful tone of delight that we did not believe him,
and told him to sit still and not spoil our forma
tion. But he showed us where the bullet had en
tered his shoulder. We might have been under
that tree yet had not General Kent ridden by at
a gallop, sitting up very stiff in his saddle and,
as it were, looking the bullets straight in the eye.
232

Looking Toward Santiago from the Trenches of the Colored Troops.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
He made the group behind the tree feel uncom
fortable, so the officers with the drawing-boards
and the rest of us scrambled to our feet and went
up after them. We found our men lying on
their backs along the hills just below the crest.
They were still panting after their climb, and were
not at that time making any effort to return the
fire of the enemy. To have done so would have
been inviting death, for bullets from machine
guns and Mausers were clipping the crest of the
hills unceasingly. During this time the corre
spondents, as usual, shared whatever danger there
was with the soldiers, and while the hills were
still swept with the enemy's fire Stephen Crane
and John Hare, of Collier's, came up them, and
later John Fox, of Harper's, and James Whig-
ham, the golf champion, who was acting as the
correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, and Sir
Bryan Leighton, a correspondent of the New
York Journal. These were the only correspond
ents I saw that far up on that day, although
several others who had been in the Caney fight
arrived later.
Campbell had an insane sense of duty which
forced him to take a photograph of Santiago from
the crest of the hill, and I had to go where he did.
I obtained a very hurried view of the city, and
235

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
looked at it only long enough to enable me to say
truthfully that I had seen it, but not long enough
to enable me to recognize it if I saw it again.
The artillery under Major Dillenback had just
taken up a position on the crest. It remained in
position about three minutes. The men loaded
the guns lying on their backs and rising on one
elbow to open the breech. When the infantry
saw them coming up the hill, lashing their horses
and bumping the guns into trees and over rocks,
with their red blankets and red guidons flashing
in the sun, the sight was so inspiring that the
tired men cheered and forgot that as yet the ar
tillery had done but little to aid them. The guns
came up the hill so fast that it looked as though
we would be in Santiago in a few hours, instead
of which within the next three minutes the guns
were charging just as fast down the hill again,
abandoning the infantry and dismounted cavalry
to the Spaniards. It is one of the first rules of
tactics, I believe, that artillery must be the last
arm of the service to leave the field, as the moral
effect of its withdrawal upon the infantry is
naturally demoralizing. It can be said for the
artillery, that it was an absurd proposition
to send it to the crest of the hill, where it
was exposed to modern rifle-fire at very short
236

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
range ; but still it might have withdrawn in bet
ter order.
To reach the crest of the hill I had to pass
through a company of infantry which had been
sent up in skirmish order to support the artil
lery during the three minutes in which it was
engaged. These men were lying on their faces
about fifty feet below the crest, and as I passed
among them on my way back I noticed that
they wore in their hats the silver badge of the
Seventy-first New York and I supposed the regi
ment below in the block-house from which I
had just seen these men detached was the remain
der of the Seventy-first. In my despatch to the
Herald, which I wrote immediately, I mentioned
the fact that the Seventy-first was at that writing
holding the crest of the San Juan hill. In this I
was mistaken, for the company I had seen, with
one other, were the only companies of the regi
ment that took part in the charge. I believe the
one on the hill was Company F, under the com
mand of Captain Rafferty. When the newspa
pers arrived from New York, it appeared from
their accounts of the battle that the hills of San
Juan had been taken by the Rough Riders and
the Seventy-first New York. One paper even
said, " Inspired by the example of the Rough
237

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
\ Riders, the Sixth and Ninth Regulars charged
the hill with undaunted courage." This injudi
cious praise was as distasteful to the Rough Rid
ers as it was unfair to the regulars. The Rough
Riders were no better than the regulars, although
they behaved just as well; but when Colonel
Roosevelt, in his letter to the Secretary of War,
, boasted that they were five times as good as any
other regiment of volunteers, he was in my opin
ion far too modest. They were many times as
good as any other volunteer regiment that I ever
saw in action and out of action, which is also the
same as saying that any regiment of regulars is
many times better than any regiment of volun
teers. The inside story of the Seventy-first New
York is well known to everyone who was pres
ent at the fight. The regiment did not run away,
but it certainly did not behave well. The fault
was entirely that of some of the officers. They
funked the fight and, as General Kent describes
in his report, refused to leave the bushes, and as
a result the men either funked it too, or, as was
the case with a dozen from each company, fell in
with the regulars of Kent's division, and so
reached the crest of the hill with them and led
by their officers. It was the first time these vol
unteers had been under fire, and the fact that
238

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
they at first hung back is chiefly interesting be
cause their doing so was another argument against
the use of amateurs in time of war. The fulsome
praise given to this regiment was a most serious
injustice to the men of the regular army who on
that day did their full duty, which these volun
teers did not. It also strengthens the hands of
those politicians who support for their own ends
that national menace called the National Guard,
and those militia officers who forced their Con
gressmen to defeat the Hull bill. The militia
Colonel can now point to the " gallant Seventy-
first " as an example of the bravery and of the
value of volunteers in action, when what the
country needs to know now is that in actual war
fare the volunteer is a nuisance, that it always
takes one regular to offset his mistakes, to help
him cook his rations, and to teach him to shelter
himself and to keep himself clean. The only cor
respondent who thought it wise to tell the truth
concerning the officers of the Seventy-first at the
time of the fight was the correspondent of the
World ; but as soon as his paper learned that
the truth was not what the friends of the Sev
enty-first desired, it gave them what they desired,
and stultified itself by saying that its correspond
ent had lied. There is one story which was told in
241

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
the trenches and which illustrates the feeling that
existed there toward the officers of this volunteer

Digging Trenches Before Santiago, about July 10, 1898.
regiment. One of these men was lying hidden
in the grass when the order was given to charge
the hills. An officer of the regular army in run
ning forward did not see him, and stepped with
his heel in the small of the other man's back.
The indignant volunteer yelled after him, " Where
in hell are you going ? "
"To the front," the regular replied, cheerfully.
" Where in hell are you going ? "
242

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
After the withdrawal of the artillery General
Wheeler came up and established his head
quarters at the turn of the trail, in a cut between
two of the hills. He remained there, and never
left the rifle-pits until Santiago fell.
It was now about four o'clock in the afternoon,
and our men were by this time greatly in need
of food, and especially of water, for a battle is

Generals Wheeler, Chaffee, and Lawton in Consultation.
the most thirst-creating of all experiences. There
was, however, no food of any sort, and the water
could only be secured at great risk to the men
243

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
who left the shelter of the hills to go after it.
About the same hour the ammunition wagons
came up and halted above General Wheeler's
head-quarters, and men from the hills were sent
to bring back cartridges. The colored regulars
of the Tenth were the first to come down after
the ammunition, and seemed overjoyed at the
fact that the wagons held cartridges and not, as
some supposed, rations. The web belts of most
of them were empty, and in no one belt were
there more than half-a-dozen or ten of the one
hundred and fifty cartridges with which the men
had begun the day. The negro soldiers estab
lished themselves as fighting men that morning,
and the chuckles they gave as they shoved the
cartridges into their belts showed that, though
they did not have food or water, so long as they
had ammunition they were content. About 5
o'clock the Spaniards rallied and poured in a
furious fire, which it is now believed was intended
to cover the retreat of a large number of their
comrades in the direction of Santiago. When
the sun sank that night the situation was not
encouraging. The enemy was still firing with
unabated enthusiasm, and our men were return
ing his fire Avith equal desperation. They were
still scattered 'far apart along the hills. They
244

Outside Trenches of the Second Infantry.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
were seldom more than a company at any one
spot, and there were bare spaces from 100 to 200
yards apart held by only a dozen men. That
night our soldiers did not sleep, as all of them
were under fire, and many were kept at work
enlarging the rifle-pits and digging fresh defences
or standing guard. This work was inspired by
General Wheeler, who sent to the rear for
entrenching tools, and encouraged the brigade
generals to make every effort to strengthen the
position already won. In the morning Lawton's
division, after a cruel night march from beyond
El Caney, arrived at the rifle-pits and capped
those hills farthest to the right. The firing con
tinued viciously all that day ; but our losses
were small, while, as we learned later, the
enemy's losses were exceedingly heavy. One of
the Spanish prisoners said they amounted to
over 1,000 in killed and wounded. When our
men advanced up the trail on the morning of
the battle they had been ordered to put their
blanket rolls and haversacks in different places
along the line of march, and details Avere left
behind to guard these belongings. But a few
hours later, when the wounded came straggling
to the rear, the surgeons ordered these men who
were on guard to help carry the wounded to the
247

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
field hospitals, and so the two miles of ponchos
and blankets and rations were abandoned along
the trail, and everyone who passed up and down
it helped himself to whatever he happened to
need, and the Cubans to as much as they could
carry. The result was that on the 2d of July
the greater number of the men were still Avith
out shelter of any sort, and with almost nothing
to eat.
That evening the now celebrated conference
of the Generals was held at El Poso. The
moonlight and the random firing which punctu
ated the silence of the night gaA^e the meeting a
dramatic and picturesque interest. Shafter lay
on a door which had been taken from the El
Poso farmhouse, and the other Generals stood
around him whispering together. At some dis
tance from them were their aides, and still
farther removed Avere the men of General Shaf
fer's cavalry escort, leaning with their elbows on
their saddles, and wondering, as we all did, as
to what the conference might bring forth. Those
who took a part in it noAV say that the question
of retreating from the position on the hills was
discussed that night, but not seriously consid
ered; but if it was not considered then, it was
the one topic of the following morning.
248

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
The situation in the rifle-pits on the morning of
the 3d was really most critical. One smelt disas
ter in the air. The alarmists were out in strong
force and were in the majority. The enlisted men

Trench to Right of San Juan Block-house Occupied by American
Troops. These troops are under a constant fire but reserving
their ammunition.

had been without a night's sleep since 4 o'clock
of June 30th. For the greater part of that
time they had been under a constant fire. They
had not been fed. They had no tobacco, which
is much more necessary to the nerve than is food
to the stomach. To avoid the enemy's fire they
249

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
were forced to move about on their hands and
knees. Their clothing was as wet as constant
perspiration and dew and rain and the fording of
the streams could make it. Through sitting bent
double in the trenches their limbs and backs
were stiff and cramped, and they were weakened
by a fierce tropical sun. They were hanging to
the crest of the San Juan hills by their teeth and
finger-nails, and it seemed as though at any mo
ment their hold would relax and they would fall.
The Generals of division and of brigade Avere
unanimous in declaring that the situation was
most desperate, and that the Commanding-Gen
eral must show himself at the front or ask to be
relieved of his command. One of them said :
" It does not matter so much which one of us
is in command, so long as someone is. But we
can't go on this way, with no one in authority."
After a tour of the rifle-pits, AAdiere I learned
what the different commanding officers thought
of the situation, I wrote a long despatch to the
Herald in which was set forth the serious nature
of our position. This despatch was criticised
later, on the ground that it had given informa
tion of our condition to the enemy. The same
criticism could be made Avith equal justice of the
despatch of the Commanding-General, who cabled
250

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
on the 2d that his lines were so thin that he feared
he might be forced to fall back — if that is not
giving information to the enemy and of a most
agreeable character, it has no meaning whatso
ever. It was stated that my despatch which ap
peared on July 7th in the New York Herald had
been recabled to the Paris Herald, that from Paris
it was forwarded to Madrid, and that on the next
day, July 8th, the authorities in Madrid com
municated its contents to General Toral — so giv
ing the garrison in Santiago increased confidence
and hope, and encouraging it to hold out long
er against us. It was even suggested that the
writer should be shot for treason. It is most un
pleasant to be accused of treason, and perhaps I
may be allowed to point out now that on July
8th the garrison at Santiago offered to surrender.
Hence, if the despatch ever reached Santiago, so
far from giving the garrison hope and confidence
and inspiring it with a desire to hold out longer,
it either had no result whatsoever, or a result ex
actly opposite from the one it was suggested it
would produce.
After Cervera's fleet was destroyed on the 3d
the strain was perceptibly relaxed, the firing
ceased, and we entered into a more cheerful state
of existence under the white flag of truce. The
251

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
rifle-pits from this time on were divided against
themselves into two parties, one of which, with
out meaning to reflect upon it in any way, might
be called the faction of the Alarmists. These
gentlemen were peace-at-any-price men, and at
one time their anxiety to finish off the campaign
was so great that they seriously threatened the
honor of the army and of the country by Avishing
to accept the original terms of General Toral's
offer of evacuation. President McKinley's mes
sage, ordering them to accept nothing less than
unconditional surrender, came to them like a
sharp slap in the face, and filled the hearts of the
younger officers and men Avith the greatest possi
ble amusement and relief. The greater number
of the alarmists were camped in a hollow between
two hills, and the malarial nature of the low
ground they occupied and the fact that they
were constantly sleeping in a swamp seemed to
prey upon their spirits and to give them a
gloomy point of view. One of them, Avho was a
constant prophet of eAul, came up to General
Lawton just as he arrived at the trenches after
the long night march from El Caney, and in the
hearing of the men pointed in great excitement
to a distant hill and cried : " Do you see that
hill, General Lawton ? There is a battery of
252

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
Spanish artillery hidden on that hill, and it en
filades all of your trenches. If it should open
fire noAv, you would not have a man left alive."
Lawton's men had fought all the day before
and marched all the previous night, and such
statements from a colonel did not tend to improve
their nerves. They looked at Lawton with anx
ious eyes, and he with charming readiness pre
tended to entirely misunderstand.
" Well, I cannot help it," he said, pulling off
his gauntlets. " My men are too tired to capture
that battery now, and I won't order them to do
it ; in an hour perhaps, when they are rested, I'll
go over and take it, but there is no hurry."
The men turned away perfectly satisfied, and
the alarmist is still wondering how General Law-
ton came to misunderstand.
The days that followed July 3d were filled
with innumerable visits to the Spanish lines un
der flags of truce. To the men in the pits, who
knew nothing of the exigencies of diplomacy,
these virgin flags were as offensive as those of red
are to the bull. The men had placed their own
flags along the entire line of trenches ; and though
they afforded the enemy a perfect target and
fixed our position as clearly as buoys mark out
a race-course, the men wanted the flags there, and
255

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
felt better at seeing them there, and so there they
remained. The trenches formed a horseshoe curve
five miles in length, and the entire line was defi
antly decorated with our flags. When they flut
tered in the wind at full length and the sun kissed
their colors, they made one of the most inspiring
and beautiful pictures of the war. The men
would crouch for hours in the pits with these
flags rustling above them, and felt well repaid
for their service; but when they saw crawling
across the valley below the long white flag of
truce, their watchfulness seemed Avasted, their
vigilance became a farce, and they mocked and
scoffed at the white flag bitterly. These flags
were sent in so frequently that the men compared
them to the different war extras of a daily paper,
and Avould ask, "Has that ten o'clock edition
gone in yet ? " and, " Is this the base-ball edition
coming out now, or is it an extry ? "
One of the regulars said to me in great per
plexity, " I can't make out this flag of truce gag.
It reminds me of two kids in a street fight, stop
ping after every punch to ask the other fellow if
he's had enough. Why don't we keep at it until
somebody gets hurted ? "
One of the coAvboys of the Rough Riders ex
pressed the same idea in professional phraseology :
250

IN THE RIFLE-PITS

" Now that Ave got those Mexicans corraled," he
said, " Avhy don't we brand them ? "
It really did seem as though we were a little
too anxious, and our frequent attempts to feel the

Looking to the Left Down the Trench of the Second Infantry.
pulse of General Toral's courage by notes of hand
instead of by gunpowder gave him more confi
dence than Avas good for him or for us. The
navy would drop a few shells into Santiago, and
at once an officer would be rushed into Toral's lines
with a note inquiring whether he was not terribly
257

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
frightened, and assuring him that that was noth
ing to what the navy could do if it tried, and
did he not think he had better act nicely
about it and surrender ? To which Toral would
reply airily that, on the contrary, he was far from
frightened ; that he knew our troops were suffer
ing from fever while his own were acclimated,
and that he was prepared to hold out against us
indefinitely. So the next day we would fire a
few cannon shots at him and rush in another flag
of truce to inquire how he liked that, warning
him that if he did not at once behave like a good
boy we Avould eat him up at 10 o'clock the next
morning. That was our ultimatum. But at 10
o'clock the next morning we would send in another
flag to say that we would " extend his time " a few
days longer, and that then we really would eat
him up.
We extended Toral's time so frequently that it
reminded Major- General Breckinridge of a story.
General Breckinridge, as Inspector-General, held
no active command. He represented the Com
mander-in-Chief at Washington, and his duty
was just to sit around on a box of rations and
make himself pleasant, and to observe things and
report upon them later. He Avas a most charm
ingly inconsequent person, and the only one in the
258

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
army who was never ruffled or bored or indignant,
but, instead, was always politely amused and
content. He told many stories, and told them
exceedingly well. The stories were good in
themselves, and it was invariably the case that
you discovered later that they had summed up
the situation in a line.
"A drunken man," so General Breckinridge
related, "once considered himself insulted by
John L. Sullivan, and, without recognizing who
Sullivan was, gave him three minutes in which to
apologize. Sullivan appreciated his opponent's
condition and said, ' I don't need three minutes, I
apologize now. What more will you have to
drink?' and departed. When he had gone the
barkeeper said to the man, 'Do you know who
that was you wanted to fight just now? '
" The drunken man said he did not know, nor
did he care.
" ' Well, that was John L. Sullivan,' said the
barkeeper, 'the champion pugilist of the world.
Now what would you have done if he hadn't
apologized in three minutes? '
"The drunken man gave the question a few
moments' brief consideration. ' I guess I would
have extended his time,' he said."
I lived in the rifle-pits from July 3d to 15th,
261

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
after both sides had appointed Peace Commis
sioners and the surrender was a fact. At head
quarters they were just as uncomfortable as we
were in the trenches and in much greater danger,
as it was much easier to keep out of range on the
hills than when approaching or leaving them along
the trail. But the life in the rifle-pits was much
more interesting than was that at head-quarters.
We Avere in constant sight of the enemy, who was
not more than three hundred yards distant ; we
could keep in better touch with our own men, and
the different parleys and peace negotiations took
place under our eyes.
The most interesting event which passed in
view of the rifle-pits was the return of Lieu
tenant Hobson. Hobson had been a prisoner
for six weeks. On some days we were told he
Avas dead, but at last we were assured he was
alive. From our pits we could see the walls of
his jail ; and he could see our five miles of flut
tering flags crowding closer and closer to him
every evening, and signalling him silent messages
of hope and encouragement. Between his iron
bars he could watch our men, moving along the
yellow trenches or peering toAvard him through a
field-glass, and the pickets — those tall gaunt regu
lars who had taken the hills with their blood and
262

The Spanish Prisoners being Escorted to the Lines to be Exchanged for Hobson and his Merrimac Crew.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
who were now creeping up on him by night
nearer and nearer, winning the ground between
him and themselves by the sweat of their brows.
And one day, with the rifle-pits behind him
filled with thousands of the enemy, with the rifle-
pits before him filled with thousands of his
friends, Hobson and his seven comrades rode out
into the welcoming arms of the American army
and into their inheritance.
The trail up Avhich they came was a broad one
between high banks, with great trees meeting in
an arch overhead. For hours before they came
officers and men who were not on duty in the
rifle-pits had been waiting on these banks, broil
ing in the sun and crowded together as closely as
men on the bleaching-boards of a base-ball field.
Hobson's coming was one of the most dramatic
pictures of the war. The sun was setting behind
the trail, and as he came up over the crest he
was outlined against it under this triumphal arch
of palms. The soldiers saw a young man in
the uniform of the navy, his face white with the
prison pallor, and strangely in contrast with the
fierce tan of their own, and with serious eyes,
who looked down at them steadily.
For a moment he sat motionless, and then the
waiting band struck up " The Star-Spangled
265

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
Banner." No one cheered or shouted or gave
an order, but every one rose to his feet slowly,
took off hat slowly, and stood so, looking up at
Hobson in absolute silence.
It was one of the most impressive things one
could imagine. No noise, nor blare, nor shouted
tribute could have touched the meaning or the
depths of feeling there was in that silence.
And then a red-headed, red-faced trooper
leaped doAvn into the trail and shouted, " Three
cheers for Hobson ; " and the mob rushed at him
Avith a roar of ecstasy, with a Avild welcome of
friendly cheers. Few men, certainly very few
young men, have ever tasted such a triumph.
These men who had made it possible for him to
leave his cell and to breathe fresh air again were
not of his branch of the service, they were not
even brother officers, their attitude toward him
was one of attention and salute, they were the
men who had been gathered from every point of
the Union to be drilled and hammered and fash
ioned into the thing called a regular. They were
without local or political friends or conditions,
they had no staff of artists and reporters at their
heels to make them heroes in spite of themselves;
but they Avere the backbone of the war — the pro
fessional fighting-machines, the grumbling, self-
266

Another View of the Spanish Prisoners on the way to be Exchanged.
Copyright, 1898 by J. C. Hemment.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
respecting, working regulars. As brave men
they honored a brave man ; and this sun- tanned,
dirty, half-starved, fever-racked mob of regulars
danced about the educated, clever engineer as
though the moment was his, and forgot that at
the risk of their lives they had set him free, that
the ground he rode over had been splashed with
their blood.
There is always something humorous about a
sailor ashore, and after the serious, earnest face
of Hobson it was a comic relief to see six obsti
nate mules dragging an ambulance loaded with
seven clean, smart blue-jackets, grinning and
shouting and rolling over each other in glee.
Everyone who had started to run after Hobson
stopped to cheer them; but they refused to be
lionized, and turned aside the cheers of the en
listed men by shouting : " Say, but you fellers
didn't do a thing to them the other night ! "
" Say, we heard you," they yelled, drowning out
the cheers of the troopers. " Your shells fell
right into our hospital yard. Say, but we wished
we was with you, we did."
" They come in dead in carts."
" You couldn't see the street for them."
It was no time for choosing similes. Men were
dancing up and down on the trenches and the
269

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
hills, waving hats and shrieking. Officers were
shouting Hobson's name. Photographers were
leaping about, perpetuating a moment.
It was the same story all the way to Siboney.
Every little group of soldiers we came across
stood at attention at the unusual sight of a navy
uniform. When they recognized the man they
Avaved their hats and cheered.
Hobson was the first officer I had seen saluted
in six clays. Everyone had been too busy to
salute. When he came to where the Seventy-
first New York was mending a road, the men
gave a yell and rushed Avaist-high through the
river and stopped the cavalcade while they
mobbed him, shaking both his hands and crowd
ing so close that his horse could not move.
It was the most wonderful ride a young man
of twenty-eight has ever undertaken — to ride
through the enemy's country guarded by your
OAvn countrymen ; on every side to hear cheers
and approval ; at every step to learn that your
work Avas done, and well done; to know the
Aveary days in jail Avere over; to feel the fresh
air and see the great mountain-peaks and royal
palms bending benediction under a soft blue sky.
But best of all, perhaps, Avas Avhen he rode
through the twilight and reached the coast and
270

Blindfolded Spanish Prisoners on the way to the Meeting- place between the Lines.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
saw again in the offing the lights of the flag-ship,
his floating home, and heard from across the
Avater the jubilant cheers of the blue-jackets, Avho
could not even see him, who did not know he had
already arrived, but who cheered because they
had heard he was coming, because he Avas free.
The kind and the degree of discomfort which
our men endured in the rifle-pits was variously
understood by those at home. These latter appre
ciated the conditions which existed on the San
Juan hills according to whether they themselves
had ever roughed it on hunting trips or in camp.
Some said, airily, that such hardships were the
lot of every soldier; others, with less experience
and with hearts more tender, regarded the life on
the hills as a month of torture. One mother in
Richmond refused to leave that city during the
heat of the summer because she could not bear to
think that she was cool and comfortable while
her son was sweating in the tropics ; and you heard
of others who fasted from the good things of the
table because some relative before Santiago Avas
without them. In Philadelphia a group of
wealthy young women, each Avith a husband or
brother at the front, stoically gave each other
luncheons composed of bacon and hardtack, for
getting that the sauce of appetite and life in the
273

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

open air makes bacon and hardtack as palatable
as White Mountain cake. As was developed
later, when the fever raged in every regiment, the
life on the hills was not a healthy one ; but the
constant excitement and the unusual nature of

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our surroundings at the time made up for many
things. The men themselves grumbled at this
but little ; and Avhen they did grumble, it Avas
not that their condition was so hard, but at the
fact that so many of the evils of that condition
were quite unnecessary. Of the necessaries of
life, or Avhat seemed necessaries when at home,
274
Hobson's Merrimac Crew Arriving within the American Lines, just After the Exchange.
Copyright, 1898, by J. C. Hemment.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
both officers and men were quite destitute. They
were like so many Robinson Crusoes on a desert
island. The Spanish rifle-pits in front and the
devastated country in the rear afforded them as
few comforts as a stretch of ocean. For three
years the land back of us toward Siboney had
been successively swept by Cuban insurgents and
Spanish columns. There was, in consequence, not
a cow to give milk, nor even a stray hen to giA'e
eggs. The village of Se villa, which one of the
Boston papers described as having been taken by
our troops with no loss of life, consisted of the
two ruined walls of one house. The rest of the
village was on the ground, buried under trailing
branches and vines. There was not even a for
gotten patch of potatoes or of corn. Mangoes
(which the men fried, or ate raw, and by so doing
made themselves very ill), limes, and running
water was all that the country itself contributed
to our support. Money had no significance what
soever. For a Cuban pony, which in time of
peace one can buy for fifteen dollars in gold, I
offered one hundred and fifty dollars a week
rent, promising to return the pony when the
campaign was finished, and to throw in a McClel-
lan saddle as well ; and though this offer was
made many times to many Cubans, I could not
277

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
get the pony. Later, when everybody began to
steal everything that the owner was not sitting
upon at the time and guarding with a gun, it was
possible to buy a horse for less money. In the
trenches a match was so precious a possession
that, when you saw a man light his pipe with one
instead of at the cooks' fire, you felt as though
you had seen him strike a child. Postage-stamps
were, of course, unknown ; and those who could
not Avrite "soldier's letter" on their envelopes
had to give up corresponding. Writing-paper at
one time became so scarce that orders and requisi
tion papers were made out on the margins of
newspapers and on scraps torn from note-books
and on the insides of old envelopes.
The comic paragraphers found much to delight
them in my cabled suggestions that the officers
and men were suffering from want of a place to
bathe and for clean clothes. Of course, bathing
is an effeminate and unmanly practice, and the
American paragrapher is right to discourage
cleanliness wherever he finds it; but cleanliness
is an evil, nevertheless, which obtains in our
army, and those of the officers Avho were forced
to wear the same clothes by night and by day for
three weeks were so weak as to complain. One
officer said, "I do not at all mind other men's
278

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
clothes being offensive to me, but when I cannot
go to sleep on account of my own it grows seri
ous." This is not a pleasant detail, but it de
scribes a condition which existed. The personal
belongings of the officers had been left behind on
the transports, and, as the pack-trains were sorely

San Juan Block-house — American Troops in Trenches.
needed to bring up the rations, they never saw
razors and fresh linen again until they purchased
them in Santiago. A tooth-brush was the only
article of toilet to which all seemed to cling, and
each of the men carried one stuck in his hat-band,
until they appeared to be a part of the uniform.
Nothing seemed so much to impress the foreign
279

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
attaches as the passing of company after com
pany of regulars, each with a tooth-brush twisted
in his hat-band.
I lost my saddle-bags for three days, but they
Avere found and returned to me by the surgeon of
the Rough Riders. " There was nothing in the
saddle-bags to identify you as the owner," he
said, " but somebody told me you had lost yours,
so I brought these over." His blue shirt hap
pened to be unbuttoned as he spoke, and on the
undershirt he wore I read " R. H. Davis." I
pointed out this strange fact. " Davis," he cried,
beseechingly, "there was fifty dollars of yours in
those saddle bags and bacon and quinine, and we
never touched them. We gave them all back,
but that clean shirt I had to have. I'm only
human. I will part with my life before I give
you back that shirt." There Avas another story
which illustrates the value of tobacco when it has
ceased to exist. General Sumner owned a box of
very bad Jamaica cigars. He was the only man
in the Fifth Army Corps, except young Wheeler,
who had any, so he was a marked man. In
those days no one wore much insignia of rank ;
one of General Wheeler's stars was cut out of a
tin cup, and Roosevelt's acorns were hammered
from a leaden spoon. On the 30th of June,
280

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
Sumner was sitting by the trail without his
blouse, in a blue shirt, and with no sign of rank
about him, but he was smoking. He spoke
rather sharply to a line of regulars who were
hurrying forward.
" Who was that man spoke to you?" one of
them asked the other over his shoulder.
" I dunno," said the regular. " But he's a
general, for sure. He was smoking a cigar."
When it rained the water ran doAvn the hills
in broad streams, overflowing the tent-trenches
and leaping merrily over the bodies of the men.
It was not at all an unusual experience to sleep
through the greater part of the night with the
head lifted just clear of the water and the shoul
der and one-half of the body clown in it. Mr.
Whigham, who lived at Shaffer's head-quarters,
and young Dr. Greenleaf, who visited them, told
me of seeing the fever patients there lying in a
hollow where the water ran over them in a con
tinuous stream. During the week we were
camped below El Poso, whenever it rained dur
ing the day both officers and men used to stow
their clothes under the dog-tent in a rubber pon
cho and stand about naked until the sun came out
again. I have a photograph of one of the officers
of the Rough Riders digging his rain-trench while
281

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
dressed in a gold chain and locket. General
Miles was very much amused and startled when
he visited the camp of the volunteers from Wash
ington, D. C, to see several hundred of them
standing naked at attention and saluting him as
he passed. Quinine Avas very scarce, even be
fore the fever set in, and boys, whose rich fathers
in New York were spending many dollars in
sending cables to inquire as to their safety and
health, were going about begging for one quinine
pill for a comrade.
During those days there was constant danger
that a storm might set in and drive the trans
ports out to sea and destroy the trails and cause
the streams to overflow their banks, and so cut
off the army from its base of supplies. There
was a bridge across each of the two streams near
the hills; but one was only an old gate which
someone had found and thrown across the
stream from bank to bank, and the other bridge
was made of bamboo. The story Avas that Avhen
a Michigan regiment arrived at this stream on its
way to the front, one of the volunteers who was a
lumberman offered to throw a bridge across it in
order to save the regiment from the wetting which
would ensue if the men waded across it, as every
one else had been doing for a week. This bridge
282

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
of the lumberman was considered to be rather
a joke on the Engineers, but they denied the
truth of the story and claimed that they had
built the bridge themselves. But as for seven
days they had neglected to build any bridge
0Arer this stream, which was not more than ten
feet wide, it does not much matter who did
bridge it eventually. The absence of a bridge
at this stream was very important, because ford
ing it kept the men in a constant state of damp
ness, which helped bring on the fevers which
followed later. The heavy storm on the morn
ing of the 13th swept away the gate and the
bamboo bridge, and the swollen stream over
flowed its banks, delaying the pack-train with
the rations and Captain Treat's artillery, and
cutting off all direct communication with the
transports. I am positive that there was no
bridge until the 7th of July, for it was being
built late on the afternoon of the 6th when we
rode with Hobson to Siboney. The men work
ing on it then told him it was not yet strong
enough to bear the weight of his horse.
So much has been written about the Rough
Riders that one approaches them with some hesi
tation, and in spite of the fact, and not on ac
count of the fact, that they formed the most pict-
283

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
uresque regiment in the army. They started in
at the beginning of the war very heavily handi
capped by too much advertising, and they had to
live that down before the public would believe
in them. But the notoriety the advertising gave

Trenches of the First Cavalry Before Santiago.
them made each man feel a sense of responsibil
ity and esprit de corps, a feeling which existed to
the same degree in no other regiment. This sen-
jtiment Avas encouraged by the officers, and among
the men there was a most brotherly exhibition of
loyalty and good-will and unselfishness. The
hardest part of a campaign is, of course, not the
284

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
fighting, but the inaction of the camp and the dig
ging of drains and ditches, the standing guard over
nothing in the sun or in the rain, and having to
sleep in three inches of water or to make fires out I
of damp wood. It was the cheery spirit with j
which the Rough Riders performed these duties |
that distinguished them from the volunteers, i
While others grumbled and protested mutinously
that they had volunteered to fight Spaniards and
not to dig roads, the Rough Riders went about !
whatever duty was assigned to them promptly and
in a cheerful spirit, and by binding a laurel to the
plough made all manner of unpleasant duties a
service of patriotism. They were just as much a
source of interest to the regulars of the army be
fore Santiago as the}'' were later, on their return,
to the civilians of Broadway, and to the gener
als the regiment was the enfant terrible of the
trenches. The alarmists were in constant dis- |
tress as to what they might do next, and actually 1
feared that some bright morning this unique or- 1
ganization would slip its collar and charge the
Spanish lines, alone and unsupported. As it was,
they pushed their rifle-pits forward every night, i
and their redan held the men who were nearest
to the enemy. On the 10th, when there was a
brief bombardment, the dynamite gun which was
285

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
attached to the Rough Riders' regiment upsetTa
six-inch gun in the Spanish lines, and the Rough
Riders leaped up on the trenches, and cheered,
and gave their piercing cowboy yells. The noise
was heard at Wheeler's head- quarters, and pro
duced a momentary panic there, lest the noise
meant that the cow-punchers and college boys
had started on a run for Santiago. On the night
that the First Illinois arrived at the front they
Avere so anxious to get into action that as soon as
darkness fell they began firing at everything that
moved, and among other things at the pickets
in front of the pits of the Rough Riders. The
Captain in charge of the outpost sent back Avord
to the Colonel of the First Illinois that, if his
men shot at his detail again, he would be under
the painful necessity of capturing the Colonel's
trenches. While writing of the Rough Riders I wish to
speak of one of them whom I knew but slightly,
but whom I saAV constantly about the camp and
on the march, and whom I admired more as a sol
dier than almost any other man in the regiment.
This was Sergeant Tiffany, who, by tradition and
previous environment, was apparently the least
suited of men to perform the work he was ordered
to do. But he played the part given him as well
286

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
as it could have been played. He was the ideal
Sergeant, strict in discipline to himself and to
others, doing more than his share of the day's
work sooner than leave the work ill-done, never
stooping to curry favor from his men, but winning

gfPPir
Lieutenant William Tiffany.
it by force of example, and smiling with the same
cheerful indifference when an intrenching tool
made his hands run with blood, or a Spanish
bullet passed through his hat, as one did when
he charged the hill at San Juan. He stood
at salute and took his orders from men with
287

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
whom for many years he had been a college-mate
and a club-mate, recognizing in them only his su
perior officers ; and there was not a mule-skinner
or cow-puncher in the regiment that did not rec
ognize in him something of himself and something
finer and better than himself. When Roosevelt
promoted him to a lieutenancy for bravery at the
battle of San Juan, I heard him say :
" Tiffany, I am especially glad to give you this
step, because you are about the only man who
has never by sign or word acted as though he
thought he deserved promotion. There are some
who are always very busy Avhenever I pass, and
who look at me as though they meant to say,
' See how humble I am, and how strictly I attend
to my duties. You who knoAv how important a
person I am at home will surely recognize this
and make me an officer.' But you have never
acted as though you expected to be anything but
a Sergeant all your life, and you have done your
work as though you had been a Sergeant all your
life, and so I am glad of this chance to make you
a Lieutenant. Death, which had so often stepped back to let
Tiffany pass forward with his men, touched him
Avhen it came with that same courtesy which he had
always shown to others, taking him when those
288

Raising the Flag Over Santiago.
Drawn by F. C. Yohn from photographs and sketches made during the ceremony by Mr. Archibald. Showing the squadron of Second United States Cavalry
and Ninth United States Infantry and the group of general officers and their staffs.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
nearest to him in heart were near him in person.
But his life was given to his country as much as
though he had lost it in the cactus of Guasimas,
or on the hill of San Juan, or in the rifle-pits
when he stood for hours behind his quick-firing
gun. He was a gentle and brave man, an obe
dient sergeant and a masterful officer, a soldier
Avho never "shirked a duty, nor sought an honor."
I did not see the ceremony of the raising of our
flag over Santiago. The surrender itself had be-
come an accomplished fact, and, as the campaign
in Porto Rico promised better things, I left the
rifle-pits when General Miles sailed for Juanica,
and landed with our troops at that first port.
The life in the rifle-pits was a most interesting
and curious experience, and one full of sad and
fine and humorous moments, but on looking back
at it now the moments which one remembers best,
and which one will remember the longest are, I
think, those which came at sunset when the band
played the national anthem. The men would be
bending over the fires cooking supper or lying at
length under the bomb-proofs stretching limbs
cramped with two hours' watch in the pits, the
officers would be seated together on a row of
wooden boxes, and beyond the mountains the
setting sun lit the sky with a broad red curtain
291

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
of flame ; and then to these tired, harassed, and
hungry men would come the notes of the " Star-
Spangled Banner," which bore with it something of
a call to arms and something of a call to prayer.
Those who have heard it and who have cheered
it in the hot crowded theatres, in the noisy city
streets, cannot really know or understand it.
They must hear it very far away from home, with
great palm-trees giving it an unfamiliar back
ground, with a listening enemy a few hundred
yards distant, with the sense of how few of your
own people are about you, and how cut off they
are, and how dependent upon one another. As
the instruments beat out the notes each night
the little discomforts of the clay cease to exist, the
murmurs of the rifle-pits, Avhich Avere like the
hum of a great bazaar, were suddenly silent, and
the men before the fires rose stiffly from their
knees, and those in the gravelike trenches stood
upright, and the officers stepped from their tents
into the sight of the regiment. On every hill, as
far as one could see, rows and rows of motionless
figures stood facing the direction from which the
music came, Avith heads uncovered and Avith eyes
fixed on the flags that rose above the hills where
their hands had placed them.
When the music had ceased, the men pulled on
292

The Trenches of the Rough Riders on San Juan Hill.
Sergeant Tiffany's Colt gun may be seen, to the left, under the Rough Riders' flag. The flag on the right belongs to the Tenth
Colored Regulars. The Spanish block-house seen above the trench was only three hundred yards distant.

IN THE RIFLE-PITS
their hats again and once more began to fry a
piece of hardtack in a layer of grease and fat ;
but for a moment they had seen the meaning of
it all, they had been taken outside of themselves
and carried back many miles to the country for
Avhich they fought, and they were inspired Avith
fresh courage and with fresh resolve.

John Fox, Jr., War Correspondent.

290

CHAPTER VIII

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN

Seal of the Corporation of the
City of Ponce after the
Occupation of the United
States. The original seal
contained the arms of
Ponce, a lion on a bridge.

WHEN the men who accom
panied our army to Porto
Rico returned to their own people
again, they found that at home
the Porto Rican campaign was
regarded as something in the way
of a successful military picnic, a
sort of comic-opera war, a mag
nified field-day at Van Cortlaudt
Park. This point of view was hardly fair, either
to the army in Porto Rico or to the people at
home. It cheated the latter of their just right
to feel proud.
In comparison to the Santiago nightmare, the
Porto Rican expedition Avas a, fete des fleurs / but
the reason for this, apart from the fact that the
country, unlike Cuba, had not been devastated
and that the Porto Ricans, unlike the Cubans,
were most friendly, was one which should make
all Americans pleased with themselves and with
296

The Gloucester Bombarding Juanica, Porto Rico.
Copyright by E. C. Rost, New York.

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
their army. It should give them such confidence
in the army and its generals as we like to honest
ly feel when we boast of anything to which we
can prefix the possessive pronoun, Avhether it be
our local base-ball nine, our express trains or ele
vators, or our army and navy.
Porto Rico was a picnic because the command
ing generals would not permit the enemy to
make it otherwise. The Spaniards were willing
to make it another nightmare — they were just as
ready to kill in Porto Rico as in Cuba — but our
commanding General in Porto Rico was able to
prevent their doing so. A performance of any
sort always appears the most easy when we see it
well done by an expert — even golf looks possible
as Whigham plays it. All he does is to hit a
ball with a stick. But you might go out and hit
the same ball with the same stick for a year, and
no one would think of giving you silver cups.
Anyone who has seen a really great matador face
a bull in a bull-ring has certainly thought that the
man had gained his reputation easily. He walks
about as unconcernedly as you walk about your
room ; and when he is quite ready he waits for
the bull, takes a short step to one side, thrusts
his sword into the bull's neck, and the bull is
dead. The reason the Spanish bull gored our
299

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
men in Cuba and failed to touch them in Porto
Rico Avas entirely due to the fact that Miles was
an expert matador; so it is hardly fair to the
commanding General and the gentlemen under
him to send the Porto Rican campaign down
into history as a picnic.
This is not saying that it was not a picnic, but
explaining why it was so. A general who can
make an affair of letting blood so amusing to his
men that they regard it as a picnic is an ex
cellent general.
One of the lesser evils of the Cuban campaign
was that it gave our friends, the enemy in Eu
rope, the idea that the way in Avhich that partic
ular expedition was conducted was typical of the
way every other expedition AArould be conducted
which we might send OATer sea. But should they
act seriously on that idea, they would find them
selves abruptly and painfully undeceived. The
European can say, to our discredit, that Ave failed
to feed our soldiers in the field, and to care for
them when they were wounded and ill; but they
cannot say that the soldiers did not do their
share, even though republics were ungrateful and
political officials incompetent.
Even our own people had just cause to be
alarmed at the bungling and waste of life in
300

General Miles in Launch of Massachusetts Towing Pontoons, at Juanica, Porto Rico.

Copyright by E. C. Rost, New York.

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
Cuba. So it might be well, both at home and
abroad, to emphasize at once the fact that we
have other generals in the field.
That the people do not know more concerning
the Porto Rican expedition is partly due to the
fact that the majority of newspaper correspond
ents were detained in Cuba by sickness and quar
antine, and that those who reached the island
were too few in number to give the expedition
there the acclaim it deserved. For three days
there were only two correspondents Avith the army
in Porto Rico, and never more at any time than
eighteen. In Cuba there Avere more than a hun
dred. Moreover, the campaign was nipped by
peace almost before it could show its strength ;
but from the start it was one with which any
of the great military powers would have been
pleased and satisfied. And this in spite of the
fact that the regiments engaged, with but three
exceptions, were composed of volunteers.
The army in Porto Rico advanced with the
precision of a set of chessmen; its moves were
carefully considered and followed to success ; its
generals, acting independently and yet along
routes reconnoitered by General Roy Stone and
Major Flagler, and selected by General Miles,
never missed a point nor needlessly lost a man,
303

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

—»^

nor retreated from a foot of land over Avhich they
had advanced. And two months before the army
had reached the island
Captain Whitney, at the
greatest personal risk a
man can run, had careful
ly studied out the entire
island, its roads and har
bors, so that not only the
army, but the navy also,
relied upon and used his
drawings and notes. Ev
ery day the four different
columns swept the Span
iards before them in a
net, capturing town after toAvn and company after
company. Their fights were but skirmishes, but
the skirmishes Avere as carefully thought out, and
the enemy was as scientifically surrounded, at
tacked, and captured, as though great battles had
been fought and thousands of lives lost in accom
plishing the same end. There Avas more careful
preparation and forethought exhibited in the ad-
\Tances Avhich our generals made upon the little
towns that they captured in Porto Rico, than Avas
shown in the entire campaign against the city of
General Chaffee's reconnoissance and
304

Captain Henry H. Whitney.

Santiago

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
capture of El Caney alone always excepted. The
courage of the men is not under discussion now ;
what we are considering here is a comparison of
good generalship with bad, and the American
reader, for his own satisfaction, should not be
little a clean-cut, scientific campaign by calling
it a picnic. He should remember that in Por
to Rico eight cities and towns, with 100,000 in
habitants, were won over to the United States at
the cost of very few men killed. Santiago, Avith
its 40,000 inhabitants, was won for the Cubans
at the cost of thousands of men killed and
wounded in battle and wrecked by fever. An
eye-witness of both campaigns must feel con
vinced that the great success of the one in Porto
Rico was not due to climatic advantages and the
co-operation of the natives, but to good manage
ment and good generalship.
Juanica is a pretty little harbor protected by
very high cliffs. The town is one street, which
runs back for a mile under the shade of crimson
trees, with houses of gay colors on either side of
it. Back of the one street are lanes crowded
with huts of palm-leaves. The Gloucester ran
into the harbor and fired a three-pounder at a
Spanish flag on a block-bouse. This was the first
intimation that anyone, except General Miles,
305

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
had received that the American troops were to
land on the south coast of Porto Rico. When
the news reached Washington the War De
partment was surprised, because it thought
that General Miles would land at Fajardo, in
the north ; the Spaniards were surprised as a
matter of course ; and the newspaper boats were
so overtaken with surprise that, with one ex
ception, none of them hove in sight for three
days. The first landing was made by the blue-jackets
of the Gloucester. They built a trocha of stones
and barbed wire across the one street, and called
it Fort Wainwright, and killed four Spaniards
with a Colt's quick-firing gun. Then they wig
wagged for reinforcements, and the regulars of
the artillery and the engineers under Lieutenant-
Colonel Black came in to give them countenance.
Meanwhile, the Gloucester fired at the ridges
about the harbor and a troop of cavalry on a hill,
and, as she was short-handed, the Paymaster and
the Surgeon helped to feed the guns. It can
be truly said that life on the Gloucester was sel
dom dull. When the Spaniards had fled, 2,000
volunteers from Massachusetts and Illinois, and
more regulars of the artillery, Avere put on shore,
and in a few hours Avere camped along the street ;
306

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN

United States Artillery Entering Ponce.
Photographed by the author.
and the inhabitants, who had fled to the hills
before the hideous bombardment of the Glouces
ter 's three-pounder, returned again to their homes.
The Porto Ricans showed their friendliness to
the conquerors by selling horses to the officers at
307

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
three times their value, and the volunteers made
themselves at home on the doorsteps of the vil
lage, and dandled the naked yellow babies on
their knees, and held marvellous conversations
with the natives for hours at a time, in a lan
guage entirely their own, but which seemed to
be entirely satisfactory. The next morning there
Avas an outpost skirmish, in Avhich the Sixth
Massachusetts behaved well, and the next even
ing there Avas a false alarm from the same regi
ment. This called out the artillery and the
Illinois regiment, and the picture made by the
shining brown guns as they bumped through the
only street in the moonlight was sinister and im
pressive. To those of us who had just come from
Santiago the sight of the Avomen sitting on
porches and rocking in bent-wood chairs, the
lighted swinging lamps with cut-glass pendants,
and the pictures and mirrors on the Avails which
we saAv that night through the open doors as we
rode out to the pickets, seemed a part of some
long-forgotten existence. We know now that
the women were dark of hue and stout, that the
pictures were chromos of the barber-shop school,
and that the swinging lamps were tawdry and
smoked horribly ; but at that moment, so soon
after the San Juan rifle-pits, the women of Jua-
308

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
nica were as beautiful as the moonlight, and their
household gods of the noblest and best.
The alarm turned out to be a false one, and,
except for the pleasure the spectacle had afford
ed the fat, brown ladies on the porches, the men
had lost half a night's sleep to no purpose.
Later, they lost the other half of the night be
cause our outposts on the hills would mistake
stray mules and cattle for Spaniards, and kept
up an unceasing fire about the camp until sun
rise. Some of their bullets hit the transport on
which General Miles was sleeping, and also the
ship carrying the Red Cross nurses, Avho were
delighted at being under fire, even though the
fire came from the Sixth Illinois. From remarks
made the next morning by General Miles, he did
not seem to share in their delight.
After three days, General Guy Henry moved
on to occupy Juaco, and General Miles proceeded
down the coast to the Port of Ponce. The city of
Ponce, which lies two miles back from the port,
surrendered officially and unofficially on four sep
arate occasions. It was possessed of the surrender
habit in a most aggravated form. Indeed, for
anyone in uniform it was most unsafe to enter
the town at any time, unless he came prepared to
accept its unconditional surrender. In the official
309

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
account sent to Washington by Captain Higgin-
son of the Massachusetts, the city of Ponce and
the port surrendered to Commander Davis of the
Dixie — so General Miles reported ; so history, as
it is written, will report. But, as a matter of fact,
the town first surrendered to Ensign Curtin of
the Wasp, then to three officers who strayed into
it by mistake, then to Commander Davis, and
finally to General Miles. Ensign Curtin is a
grandson of the war governor of Pennsylvania.
He is about the youngest-looking boy in the navy,
and he is short of stature, but in his methods he
is Napoleonic. He landed with a letter for the
military commander, Avhich demanded the sur
render of the port and city, and he wore his side-
arms and an expression in which there Avas no
trace of pity. The Captain of the Port informed
him that the military commander Avas at Ponce,
but that he might be persuaded to surrender if
the American naval officer would condescend to
drive up to Ponce and make his demands in per
son. The American officer fairly shook and
quivered with indignation. " Zounds," and " Gad-
zooks," and " Damme, sir," would have utterly
failed to express his astonishment. Had it come
to this, then, that an Ensign holding the Presi
dent's commission, and representing such a ship of
310

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¦SHOWING -LOCATION OF-
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Made by Lieutenant-Colonel S. Reber, United States Volunteer Signal Corf's.

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

terror as the Wasp, was to go to a mere Colonel,
commanding a district of 60,000 inhabitants ?
" How long will it take that military com
mander to get down here
if he hurries ? " demand
ed Ensign Curtin. The
trembling Captain of the
Port, the terrified foreign
consuls and the custom
house officials thought
that a swift-moving cab
might bring him to the
port in a half-hour.
" Have you a telephone
about the place ? " asked
the Napoleonic Curtin.
They had.
" Then call him up and
tell him that if he doesn't come down here in a
hack in thirty minutes and surrender, I shall
bombard Ponce ! "
This was the Ensign's ultimatum. He turned
his back on the terrified inhabitants and returned
to his gig. Four hacks started on a mad race for
Ponce and the central office of the telephone rang
with hurry-calls.
On his way out to the ship, Ensign Curtin met
312

Ensign Curtin of the IVa^p.

Troops Entering Ponce.
Drawn from a photograph taken by the author.

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
Commander Davis on his way to the shore. Com
mander Davis looked at his watch. " I shall ex-

General Miles and Staff in the Patio of the Hotel Francais 7
at Ponce

tend his time another half-hour," said Commander
Davis. Ensign Curtin saluted sternly, making
no criticism upon this weak generosity on the
part of his superior officer, but he could afford to

315

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
be magnanimous. He, at least, had upheld the
honor of the navy, and he will go down in the
history of the war as the middy who demanded
and obtained a surrender by telephone.
General Miles landed in the morning after
Curtin had taken the place, and Mr. Curtin came
ashore in the same boat with us. We asked him
if he had already landed, and he replied, modestly,
that he had ; but he spared the commanding Gen
eral's feelings by making no reference to his own
part in the surrender. In the boat with General
Miles were the tAA^o head-quarters flags of the com
manding General of the army, four officers of his
personal staff, Curtin, and four regulars. One of
these regulars spoke three languages, and as a
soldier of the Foreign Legion of France had car
ried the first French flag to the shore of Tonquin.
Although this was not known until later, one of
the head-quarters flags of the United States army
was handed to him to carry to the shore of Porto
Rico. When one remembers that there are 25,000
regulars in our army to whom it might have been
given, it was a curious coincidence that this par
ticular honor should have fallen to that partic
ular man. He was in no way unappreciative of
the honor. He stood up in the bow and waved the
heavy silk flag from one side to the other until the
316

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
boat rocked, and at the sight the several thousand
people who were waiting for General Miles on
the wharves and housetops and swamping the
small boats in the wake of his gig shouted " Vi
vas " and shrieked and cheered. Suddenly the
Franco-American soldier held up the flag as high
as he could place it, and in most excellent and
eloquent Spanish called upon the people of Porto
Rico to welcome the commanding General of the
United States. There was a momentary hush of
surprise that an American soldier should show
such knowledge of their own tongue, and then a
wilder burst of " Vivas," and another pause to
hear if there was more to follow. There was
much more to follow. From the bow of our
boat our self-elected orator assured them that
the coming of General Miles brought them lib
erty, fraternity, peace, happiness, and wealth.
He promised them no taxes, freedom of speech,
thought, and conscience, " three acres and a cow,"
plurality of wives, " one man, one vote," and to
every citizen a political office and a pension for
life. Before the gig had touched the landing-
steps the United States Government, in the per
son of that soldier, was pledged to give Porto
Rico everything in its power and beyond its power
to grant. So General Miles landed in triumph.
319

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
After that speech it is small wonder that Ameri
cans were popular in Porto Rico.
Later in the day, General Miles and General
Wilson, in full dress uniform, received the homage
of Ponce from the balcony of the Alcalde's pal-

Crossing the River Rio Bucana.
ace. Nothing could have been more enthusi-
astic or more successful than their open-air recep
tion. The fire companies paraded in their honor,
and ran over three of their own men, which gave
the local Red Cross people an opportunity to
appear on the scene, each man wearing four red
crosses, to carry away the wounded. This created
320

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
some confusion, as the firemen preferred to walk,
but the Red Cross people were adamant, and bore
them off on stretchers whether they would or no.
The only thing wanting to complete the picture
was an American flag. It was only a detail, but

American Soldier Showing a Rifle tq Spaniards.
the populace seemed to miss it. It was about the
only article with which the expedition was not
supplied. Frantic cabling to Washington repaired
the loss, and within a week flags were sent out
all over the island and raised upon the roof of
many a city hall. Ponce itself held more, foreign
flags than we had ever seen. Judging from their
321

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
number, one would have thought that the popula
tion was composed entirely of English, Germans,
French, and Swiss, and members of the Red Cross
Society. It was explained later that the Spanish
residents had been assured that the American sol
diers would loot their houses, and so for their better
protection they had invited all of their friends
who Avere subjects of foreign powers to come and
spend a few days and bring their flags with them.
On one very handsome house belonging to a very
rabid Spaniard, who apparently had a surfeit of
spare bedrooms, there Avere as many flags as there
are powers in the European concert. He was
taking no chances.
The first Aveek of the American occupation of
Ponce, when new conditions arose every hour,
was full of interest. There were financial ques
tions to be answered, as to the rate of exchange
and the collection of taxes and customs dues
—questions of local law as opposed to mar
tial law. There Avere Spanish volunteers swear
ing allegiance to the United States, and Porto
Ricans to be sworn in as judges and registrars.
The American post-office, opened for business,
telephone wires which had been cut for strategic
reasons were repaired for the public service, the
railroad was set in motion at the point of the
322

Unloading Army Supplies from the Transports at Port Ponce.

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
bayonet, and signs reading " English spoken
here " were hung outside of every second shop.
In the band-stand in the Plaza, where for many
years the Spanish military band had played
every Sunday and Thursday, the provost-guards
slept and cooked and banged on a hoarse rheu
matic piano. " Rosy O'Grady " and " The Banks
of the Wabash " superseded " The March of
Isabella " of the three nights previous, and an
American company reopened the opera-house
with a vaiiety performance ; a newspaper called
La Nueva Era was issued in twenty-four hours,
printed half in Spanish and half in English ;
and twenty miles out, at Coamo, where two roads
met, an energetic volunteer who combined enter
prise with patriotism nailed up a sign with a
hand pointing North and reading :
GO TO JAMES GETTS
i FOR CLOTHING,
: WARRINGTON, WIS. !

The people of Ponce were certainly the most
friendly souls in the world. Nothing could sur
pass their enthusiasm or shake their loyalty. If
a drunken soldier, of whom there were surpris-
325

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
ingly few, entered the shop or home of a Porto
Rican, the owner could not be persuaded to make
a charge against him. The natives gave our men
freely of everything; and the richer and better
class of Porto Ricans opened a Red Cross hos
pital at their OAvn expense and contributed
money, medicines, cots, and doctors for our sick
soldiers. They also placed two American Red
Cross nurses in charge, and allowed them absolute
authority. Peace came too soon to alloAV the different
generals who were making the ways straight to
show all that they could do aiid how well they
could do it. In view of this fact it was almost a
pity that peace did come sp soon. For with the
bungling at Santiago, and the scandal and shame
after the Avar of the treatment of our sick sol
diers on the transports and in the fever camps,
the successes Avhich Avould have followed the
advance of the different expeditions across Porto
Rico Avould have been a grateful relief. The
generals, with the exception of General Schwan,
were handicapped to a degree by the fact that
their commands Avere, for the greater part, com
posed of volunteers; but the personality of the
generals, each in his different Avay, made this
count for little, and they obtained as good ser-
326

City Troop Marching through the Town of Santa Isabel.

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
vice out of the men as the work that there was
to do demanded. Particularly good was the
service of Troop C of Brooklyn who for four
days held the farthest out-post at Aibonito where
they were under fire from quick -firing guns on the
hills above them, and of the First City Troop of
Philadelphia which well upheld the traditions
of an organization which dates from the days of
General Washington. It was not in the field
alone, where they were on their native heath,
that the generals distinguished themselves ; but
in governing and establishing order in the towns
which they captured, where their duties were
both peculiar and foreign to their experience,
they showed to the greatest advantage. They
went about the task of setting up the new empire
of the United States as though our army had
always been employed in seizing islands and
raising the flag over captured cities. They
played the conquerors with tact, with power,
and like gentlemen. They recognized the rights
of others and they forced others to recognize
their rights. Wherever it was possible to do so,
General Miles propitiated the people by employ
ing local labor. Within an hour after the firing
had ceased in Juanica, he was renting ox-carts
and oxen from the native ranch-owners and buy-
329

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

Arrest of a Spanish Spy in Ponce. The man is holding his hands
across his forehead in sign of surrender.
Drawn from a photograph taken by the author.
ing cattle outright. At Ponce he employed hun
dreds of local stevedores who had been out of
work for many days. He set them to unloading
the transports and coaling the war -ships; and
330

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
when he learned that the boss stevedores were
holding back part of the men's pay he corrected
the abuse at once, and saw that each man re
ceived what Avas due to him. General Wilson,
in his turn, as military governor of the city and
district of Ponce, was confronted with many
strange conditions. He had to invent oaths of
allegiance, to tranquillize the foreign consuls, to
protect rich Spaniards from too enthusiastic
Porto Ricans, to adopt a new seal for the city,
and a new rate of exchange ; to appoint new
officers in the courts, to set free political prison
ers, and to arrest and lock up political offenders
against the neAv regime.
But the work was not confined to the cities,
and soon each of the generals had changed the
magistrate's chair for the saddle. It was a beau
tiful military proposition, as General Miles laid it
down. Four columns Avere to traverse the island
from four different directions, and drive all the
enemy outside of San Juan back into that city,
so leaving none but friends on the flanks and in
the rear. By taking all the towns en route and
picking up every Spaniard it met on the way,
the army would surround San Juan Avith the
island already won. Then with the navy in
the harbor and the army camped about the city,
331

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
San Juan would, as a matter of common sense,
surrender. Peace interfered with the completion of this

City Troop on Road between Guayana and Ponce. Resting the
horses.
plan, but its inception and start were most brill
iant and successful. General Wilson was sent
doAvn the centre along the military road with
directions to follow it straight on to the capital.
332

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
On the right end of the rush-line, General Brooke
and General Hains were to swing around to take
Guayana and strike the military road back of
Cayey and Aibonito just as Wilson closed up on

General Wilson Entering Coamo.
Photographed by the author.
these towns from the south. General Roy Stone,
with a mixed command of Porto Ricans, United
States volunteers and regulars, was sent to Ad-
juntas to reconnoitre and clear the way. Gen
eral Guy Henry was sent out to follow the same
333

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
route and to take the city of Arecibo in the
north. On the extreme left, General Schwan,
with a splendid command composed entirely of
regulars, was given a sort of roving commis
sion to fight anything he saw, and then to
take Mayaguez and beat up toward Arecibo
to join Henry. As soon as those columns were
on the way, General Miles was to follow wher
ever his advice and presence would be of the
most ATalue.
The generals lost no time in getting to work.
Juana Dias was, in theatrical parlance, a one-
night stand, and it surrendered without a fight to
General Wilson, but the taking of Coamo, the
next city on his list, Avas one of the prettiest
skirmishes of the campaign.
General Hains meanwhile had taken Guayana
from four hundred Spaniards at the cost of one
officer and four men wounded, all of the Fourth
Ohio. On the 13th, General Schwan's regulars
found the Spaniards intrenched in force at Las
Marias and drove them back and out of Maya
guez, a city of 30,000 inhabitants. In this fight,
two privates were killed and fourteen enlisted
men and Lieutenant Byron were wounded. The
Spanish loss was thirty in killed and wounded,
and the Lieutenant-Colonel, with fifty privates,
334

City Troop Marching on Road between Ponce and Guayana.

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
were taken prisoners. General Stone engaged the
enemy in a night skirmish beyond Adjuntas and
drove the Spaniards back, carrying their killed

Third Wisconsin Entering Coamo.
Drawn from a photograph taken by the author.
and wounded with them. There was no loss
among his own men.
The city of Coamo was taken by the Sixteenth
Pennsylvania Volunteers, but it surrendered first
337

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
to four correspondents who had galloped into it
by mistake.
There was no reveille on the morning of the
day the Sixteenth Pennsylvania took Coamo. At
General Wilson's head-quarters a sentry shook
the flaps of the tents and told us it was time to
get up. He reminded one of a Pullman-car por
ter shaking the curtains of a berth and saying,
" Only twenty minutes to New York." It Avas
so unmilitary that everyone refused to Avake.
So General Wilson taught the officers of his
staff a lesson in punctuality by riding off with
out them, and they had to gallop three miles to
overtake him.
The road Avas better than any road outside
of the city parks in America, with a hard, slop
ing surface and rain-gutters at each side and
brick bridges over the streams. It Avas shaded
by pink and red trees and a few common or gar
den-trees of green, so that Ave might not think
we were passing beneath a succession of trium
phal arches. Sometimes on our right, above the
sugar-cane, Ave saw the sea and the white spray
breaking on the reefs.
As the cavalcade passed, the Porto Ricans
came out lazily to the roadside and peered at the
officers over the fences of cactus, and neglected,
338

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN

The Women of Coamo Receiving the American Soldiers.
Photographed by the author.
brown, naked children fell out of the doors and
bumped down the steps, howling dismally. The
white helmet of the general was still half a mile
ahead, and the sabre-tache of his aide was beat
ing his horse's flanks like a club. The hoofs of
339

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
our horses rang like hammers on the road, and
the swords and picket-pins clattered and jangled.
There were great hills to the left and right,
clothed with a hundred shades of green, and be
low them green lakes of sugar-cane, with the cor
rugated iron roofs and the tall chimneys of the
sugar-mills rising out of them, and looking like
turtle-back steamers pushing their way through
the fresh water lakes.
As we raced by we saw teams of six oxen
pulling long ploughs through chocolate-colored
earth. Small boys rode one of each yoke of oxen
and sang in chorus a drowsy, droning song, which
sounded like the song the Lascars sing on a P.
and O. steamer when they pull on a roj3e. The
morning was very still, for there are few birds
in Porto Rico, and only the hum of innumerable
insect-life answered the ring of the horses' hoofs.
The white helmet of the general halted next to
an open field of high, yellow grass, where four
brown guns pointed at a block-house on the hill
above Coamo. As we drew up one of the guns
roared and flashed, and a cloud of white smoke
rushed forward and stopped as though it had
struck a solid wall and then swept back again,
hiding the gun and the men about it in a curtain
of mist. The horses under the trees reared and
340

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
tugged at their bridles and danced, and terrified
human beings came running up the road carrying
their children and shying^like the horses when
ever a shot was fired. A few Mauser rifles an
swered the guns, but the bullets flew high and
did no harm.
The block-house smoked and crumbled and then
burst into red flames. The artillery limbered up
again and crawled off up a hill to the right, and
Troop C, of Brooklyn, moved off still farther to
the right and disappeared over a hill. All the
infantry started forward. It advanced in beau
tiful order, with scouts and skirmishers beating
through the high grass and creeping up behind
rocks and popping up suddenly from over the
crests of the hills. In the level plain at the left
of the road the regiments moved in blocks of
blue and brown.
The men in blue made a target just twice as
conspicuous as that made by the men in brown.
But there was no one at hand to fire on them.
On the other side of Coamo the Spaniards were
hurrying across the bridge and out into the white
road. On. the hills above them the Sixteenth
Regiment of Pennsylvania were waiting for them
and opened fire. The enemy had not thought of
an ambush. He had delayed until the first shot
341

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS

If

"Wt

Coionel Biddle, of General Wilson's Staff, Interrogating a Spanish
Prisoner. Other prisoners under guard in the background.
Drawn from a photograph taken by the author.
from the artillery had broken the stillness of the
morning, and then, feeling sure of an hour's start,
had fallen back rapidly toward Aibonito. The
Spaniards ran off the road into the rain gutters,
and these, with the cactus lining the road, served
342

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
as trenches. Their white hats were the mark at
which the volunteers fired.
The Spanish comandante seemed to wish to
die. He galloped out of the road and into the
meadoAV, where he was conspicuous from the top
of his head to the hoofs of his horse. At one
time he stood motionless, where there Avas a
break in the cactus hedge, holding his reins eas
ily and looking up at the firing line above.
After he was killed the men in the trench along
the road raised a Avhite handkerchief on a stick
and ceased firing.
Colonel Biddle, of the engineers, who had
acted as a scout for the volunteers, stood out on
the edge of the hill and held a rifle above his
head with both hands and let it fall. The Span
iards stepped into the road and repeated his mo
tions, raising the rifles and dropping them to
their feet. There were ten dead, ten wounded
and one hundred and sixty taken prisoners. Ten
of the Sixteenth were wounded.
The volleys had been heard on the other side
of the town, and the artillery fired three more
shots for moral effect only. The infantry, hurry
ing to the rescue, found that the bridge on the
Ponce road was destroyed and rushed clown a
steep ravine and across the fords in the river.
343

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
There were two aides of General Wilson, Cap
tain Breckinridge and Lieutenant Titus, who
were riding in the infantry skirmish line. Cap
tain Paget, the British naval attache, and four
correspondents — Millard, Root, Thompson, and
myself — Avere also with them, and we all forded
the river together. They had seen General Ernst
and his staff a half hour before hurrying toward
the town along the Ponce road, and they sup
posed he had already entered it. Moreover,
the road leading into the town was the short
est distance to the place from whence the firing
came, so we rode down it at a gallop in order
that we might still be in time to see Coamo
surrender. For a mile the road was quite empty, and the
houses on either side were either shut and barred
or open and deserted. A rifle-pit, also deserted,
stretched across the road, but the horses scrambled
around it and, turning with the road, brought us
into the main street of Coamo. General Ernst
was not in the street, nor were there any Span
iards. There was a man with a white flag in
the middle of it, and he seemed inclined to drop
it and run if needful.
The horses were racing now, and the clatter
they made in the empty street was impressive.
344

Third Wisconsin Volunteers Passing Spanish Rifle-pit Thrown Up
Across the Street in Coamo.
Drawn from a photograph taken by the author.

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
As we passed a few men crawled out from under
the porches and shouted, " Vivan los Ameri
canos ! " and then ran back again and hid. More
men Avith white flags peeped out from around
corners and shook the flags at us frantically.
It was like a horse race, with starters stretched
out all along the course. Barricades of iron pipes
across the street and more rifle-pits failed to dis
courage the horses. They were excited by the
shouts and by the flags, and they carried us, rac
ing neck and neck, to the other end of Coamo.
There we found, to our embarrassment, that it
was empty of American troops, and that, unwit
tingly and umvillingly, we had been offered its
surrender. Captain Breckinridge and Lieutenant Titus
looked at each other's shoulder-straps, and Lieu
tenant Titus congratulated his superior officer on
ha\Ting taken a town of five thousand inhabitants
with six men.
Then we borrowed a flag of truce, and with the
aid of Captain Paget's red silk handkerchief wig
wagged to the Sixteenth that it was perfectly
safe to come in.
I took the Spanish flag of the Alcalde, his staff
of office, his seals of the city and the key to the
cartel. The staff I left with him, the flag I
347

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
turned over to General Wilson, to whom it, of
course, belonged, and the key to the cartel I still
retain as a souvenir of the fact that once for
twenty minutes, I was mayor and military gover
nor and chief of police of Coamo.
The people were glad to see our troops, but

Main Road Between Ponce and Port Ponce.
there Avas a difference betAveen the reception they
gave them and the reception the people of Ponce
gave them, which Avas as marked as possible. At
first the people of Coamo were terrified, and car
ried brandy bottles Avith them as being possibly
a stronger means of protection than the flags of
truce. But as soon as they saAv no harm would
348

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
come to them they became more friendly, but not
so delirious as were the people of Ponce. The
Americans did not care. They sang, " Just tell
them that you saw us, and that we were doing
well." General Wilson had established himself in the
home of the Alcalde and was sending modest tele-
grams to the Commander-in-chief at Ponce and
receiving congratulations. The men Avere smok
ing the cigarettes and drinking the wine the peo
ple pressed upon them, and the officers SAvarmed
in the only hotel and fought the skirmish over
again. But someone always has to pay the reckoning,
and back of the negro quarter of the toAvn, at the
end of an avenue of palms, the men who had paid
the heaviest price were being buried in the Cath
olic graveyard. It Avas just after sunset, and the
place was damp and chilly and dark. Tavo hos
pital stewards, avIio had been keeping count of
the Spanish dead as they were put into the
graves, sat on a tombstone and checked off the
last foreign name on the list with a stub of a
pencil. " Well, that's all," said the hospital steward, as
he put on his blouse. " We can go now."
The grave-diggers gathered up their spades and
350

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
looked anxiously for their pay, and the keeper of
the graveyard stood at the iron gate and jangled
his keys against it as a sign to hurry and that his

Lieut. Browning. Capt. John C Groome. Lieut. McFadden.
Officers of First City Troop of Philadelphia.
supper was waiting. It seemed as though no one
had time nor thought to spare for the soldiers
who had just been hidden from sight forever.
Their Spanish friends in the town had not dared
to stand at their graves; their comrades were
351

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
marching to Coamo as prisoners, or were being
driven there wounded in the ambulances. It
seemed a pity that there was no priest nor firing-
squad nor bugler to sound " Lights out " and to
pay the soldiers the last tribute, which is the least
tribute a country can pay to the men who die for
her. With all the rumors of peace that there
were in the air, it seemed a pity that they should
have died at all.
The lives of a few Spanish officers would not
have counted to the American people, and they
probably counted for a great deal to someone
somewhere in Spain.
The hospital stewards stood looking at each
other doubtfully, as though they were trying to
think if there were anything still left to do.
And as they hesitated, there came faintly from
the other end of the town the throb and beat of
martial music advancing up the main street of
Coamo. The old keeper of the graveyard left
the gates to lock themselves and hobbled off in
pursuit, and from the centre of the town we
heard wild shouts of " Viva," and from the negro
quarters came the sound of bare feet pattering
down the road.
The people of Coamo Avere turning their backs
on the men who had ruled them for a hundred
352

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
years, and were running to greet their new mas
ters, Avho had been masters for only the last three
hours. The music grew louder and louder and
broke into the jubilant swing of a Sousa march.
It was the new step on the floor and the new
face at the door. The son and heir was coming
fast, blue-shirted, sunburned, girded with glisten
ing cartridges. He was sweeping before him the
last traces of a fallen Empire; the sons of the
young Republic were tearing down the royal
crowns and the double castles over the city halls,
opening the iron doors of the city jails and rais
ing the flag of the new Empire over the land of
the sugar-cane and the palm.
But the men in the graveyard stopped, and
looked back at the fresh earth over the graves
and half sheepishly raised their hands in salute,
and then walked on toward the town to greet the
conquerors. Three days later General Wilson advanced
toward Aibonito and found the Spaniards strong
ly intrenched with artillery and quick-firing guns
upon the high hills which protect that city.
An effort to dislodge the enemy was attempted
on the day before peace was declared. It was
made by the artillery, under Major Lancaster.
It advanced to within two thousand yards of the
353

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
enemy's intrenchments, and unlimbered in a field
to the left of the road under a terrific fire of
shrapnel, common shell, and Mauser bullets.
The Spaniards, fortunately, fired too high to
touch the artillery, but did much damage to our
infantry on the bluffs above. As a spectacle,
it Avas one of the most picturesque fights of the
Avar. Not only could the artillerymen see each
other's guns plainly Avithout the aid of a glass,
but they could see the men who served them
as Avell, and they ansAvered shell Avith shell and
with the speed of a ball volleyed across a tennis-
net. It Avas in this fight that a shrapnel-shell
struck the road Avithin ten inches of the foot of
the British naval attache, Captain Paget, and at
the same instant lifted fiAre Wisconsin volunteers
off their feet and knocked them doAvn. For a mo
ment, Paget was lost to vieAV in a cloud of dust
and smoke, from Avhich no one expected to see
him reappear alive, but he strode out of it un
touched, remarking, in a tone of extreme annoy
ance, " There was a shell in the Soudan once did
exactly that same thing to me." His tone seemed
to suggest that there Avas a limit to any man's
patience. A few minutes later a solitary tree
beneath Avhich he Avas sitting was struck by an
other shell, which killed two and wounded three
354

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
men. Major Woodbury, the surgeon-in-chief of
the command, who Avas under fire for the first
time, assisted the men to the ambulances, while
the Mauser bullets cut many holes in the air
above him : he behaved as cheerily as any man
I ever saw in a fight. Paget, who had been
in a dozen campaigns, took it all as a matter of
course, and assisted one of the wounded men out
of the range of the bullets from the side of a
steep and high hill. The sight did more to pop
ularize the Anglo-American alliance with the sol-
diers than could the weightiest argument of am
bassadors or statesmen.
Just as this fight ended, Lieutenant Hains,
whose gun occupied the most exposed position
in a turn of the road, and the one farthest in ad
vance, was shot through the body by a bullet.
It half turned him, and he staggered into the
arms of his sergeant, who caught him around the
waist and helped him to the ambulance. One
night on the transport, after we had shared a
very bad dinner, he had recklessly promised to
give me a good one " when we take San Juan,"
and I had reminded him of this promise fre
quently. When I came up to him after he was
shot, he raised his eyes and said, faintly, " I am
afraid I can't give you that dinner at San Juan."
355

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
I naturally pretended that I thought he was not
badly hurt, and said we would put off the dinner
until we met in New York.
" Very well," Hains said, closing his eyes. " If
it's just as convenient.to you, we'll wait until we
get to New York." A man who can joke about

Battery " A " under Captain Warburton Loading Lighter with Guns.
his dinner 'engagements when a bullet has just
passed through him from his shoulder to his hip
is a good man to keep in the army, and fortu
nately for the army Hains lived.
A day after the fight at Aibonito, Peace laid
her detaining hand on the shoulder of each gen
eral, and the operations closed for thirty days.
356

Troops Embarking for Home.

THE PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGN
Peace came differently to different men. One
major of volunteers who had already established
his nerve on polo-fields and as a most reckless

Sentries at Cavalry Outpost on Cayey Road, about two and a half
Miles from Guayana. Established after Protocol.
rider, without a moment's hesitation, threw his
hat high in the air and cried, " Thank God !
Now I won't get killed." On the other hand,
the artillerymen of Battery B of Pennsylvania,
359

THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN CAMPAIGNS
when they heard peace had come, swore and
hooted and groaned. They were behind a gun
pointed at the enemy, who was intrenched to the
left of Guayana. The shell was in the chamber,
the gunner had aimed the piece and had run
backward, but before it spoke, Lieutenant Mac-
Laughlin, of the Signal Corps, galloped upon the
scene, shrieking, " Cease firing, peace has been de
clared ! " Whereat the men swore.
Peace came with Porto Rico occupied by our
troops and with the Porto Ricans blessing our
flags, which must never leave the island. It is a
beautiful island, smiling with plenty and content.
It will bring us nothing but what is for good,
and it came to us willingly with open arms.
But had it been otherwise, it would have come to
us. The course of empire to-day takes its way
to all points of the compass — not only to the
West. If it move always as smoothly, as honor
ably, and as victoriously as it did in Porto Rico,
our army and our people need ask for no higher
measure of success.

360

A List of Books by
Richard Harding Davis
The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns
The King's Jackal Gallegher, and Other Stories
Soldiers of Fortune Cinderella, and Other Stories
Stories for Boys
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS
" Mr. Davis has vigorous ideals— he is in love
with strength and cleanness, with ' grit ' and re
source, with heroism and courage, in men; with
beauty and frankness, with freshness and youth, in
women; and, liking these qualities, he also likes
writing about them. Hence, to those who are of
Mr. Davis's mind (as I am for one), Mr. Davis's
books are always welcome." — The Academy.
THE CUBAN AND PORTO RICAN
CAMPAIGNS. With many illus
trations from photographs and draw
ings. Crown 8vo, $\.$0.
Mr. Davis's articles in Scribner's Magazine", which have
given a virtually continuous picture of the war and have at
tracted a great deal of attention, form the basis for a history
of the conflict which Mr. Davis has had in preparation from
the beginning. All the vivid and striking passages are re
tained ; but in addition the book has not only the value of
a skillful war correspondent's momentary impressions, but
of a carefully considered summing-up by an especially com
petent, serious student of the war.

THE KING'S JACKAL. With illus
trations and a cover-design by
C. D. Gibson. Twenty -fifth Thou
sand. l2mo, $1.00.
'• Mr. Davis has travelled long distances and has seen
many strange peoples, and it is therefore scarcely fair to
challenge the fidelity of his characters to life, especially in
the present instance, where we are introduced into Tangier,
and to a circle which includes such a variety of personages
as an exiled King of Messina, a disgraced German officer, a
retired croupier, a 'fallen angel,' one Prince Kalonay, 'a
fellow of the very best blood in Europe and with the very
worst morals ' ; an American correspondent of immense
daring, courage, and chivalry ; a brilliant woman of easy
virtue, and a young California girl with a great fortune, an
ardent admiration for brave men, a devotion for the Roman
Catholic Church, and an ingenuous character. From such
heterogeneous material, it is easy to see that sharp con
trasts and surprising complications might result. . . .
If we were asked to suggest a story which should keep one
for a couple of hours or more in a glow of pleasurable
anticipation, by its demands upon our sentiment, we could
hardjy do better than to name 'The King's Jackal.' "
— Philadelphia Bulletin.
SOLDIERS OF FORTUNE. With illus
trations and a cover-design by C D.
Gibson. Fifty-eighth Thousand.
Uniform with "The King's Jackal."
12mo, $1.50.
"Mr. Davis has produced a rousing tale of adventure,
with several tine fellows in it, and one woman whom we

are glad to know, and who has gone straight to our hearts
and made there for herself a corner that we will keep
warm, and to which we will turn with pleasure time and
again to love her for all her fine traits— most of all, per
haps, for her genius for camaraderie, which found so grace
ful a climax in the kiss she imprinted on the forehead of
the young Englishman who had been murdered by his own
treacherous troopers. ... It is not necessary to
commend this story. It has won its way already. But to
those who have not yet read it, wt can say, ' Do so at once.' "
— The Critic.
GALLEGHER, AND OTHER STORIES.
With cover-design by A. B. Frost.
Fortieth Thousand. Uniform with
"The King's Jackal" and "Soldiers
of Fortune." 12mo, paper, $0 cents;
cloth, $1.00.
Gallegher The Trailer for Room No. 8
A Walk up the Avenue The Cynical Miss Cather-
My Disreputable Friend, waight
Mr. Raegen Van Bibber and the Swan
The Other Woman Boats
There Were Ninety and Van Bibber's Burglar
Nine Van Bibber as Best Man
" Mr. Davis's stories are also of the people and for the
people; and their swift, concentrated style makes them
grateful reading. Mr. Davis's Fifth Avenue sketches are as
unaffected as those of Cherry Street; and while finding
them all among the best stories of the year, we confess to
a partiality for those which immortalize Van Bibber the
dandy, who goes rowing in Central Park with children
from the tenement-houses, and lends his aid to elopements
and to deserving burglars; never, even under the most
trying circumstances, losing the air of wearing an orchid in
his buttonhole." — New York Evening Post.

CINDERELLA, AND OTHER STO
RIES. With cover-design by A. B.
Wenzell. Thirteenth Thousand.
Uniform with "The King's Jackal."
12mo, $1.00.
Cinderella An Assisted Emigrant
Miss Delamar's Understudy The Reporter Who Made
The Editor's Story Himself King
" Mr. Davis's aptitude for work of this kind is too
well known to need commendation. There is a freshness
and brightness about this volume which is very attractive,
for he is one of the writers peculiar to the period, to whom
dullness would seem to be impossible. There are five
sketches in the book, and each is so good in its way that it
is not easy to say which is the best." — Public Opinion.
STORIES FOR BOYS. Illustrated,
12mo, $1.00.
" It is a fact, not generally known, but nevertheless a fact,
that Richard Harding Davis began his career as a weaver of
stories for boys, his first work appearing in St. Nicholas.
. . . These capital sketches have genuine interest of
plot, a hearty, breezy spirit of youth and adventuresomeness
which will captivate the special audience they are addressed
to and will also charm older people."— Hartford Courant.
" All the stories have a verve and fire and movement
which is just what boys like."— Boston Transcript.

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
153-157 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK