THE BATTLES OF CANEY AND SAN JUAN
GeneralShafter went to the front to take personal command of the army on Wednesday, June 29. At that time the divisions of Generals Kent, Wheeler, and Lawton were encamped on the Siboney-Santiago road, between the high ridge of Sevilla, from which I had seen the city two days before, and a half-ruined house and plantation, two or three miles farther on, known as El Pozo. Most of the troops were in the valley of a small stream which rises on the western slope of the Sevilla watershed, runs for a short distance in the direction of Santiago, and then, after receiving a number of tributaries, turns southward, just beyond the Pozo farm-house, and falls into the sea through the notch in the rampart at Aguadores. Although the bottom of this valley, in general, was densely wooded, there was a series of grassy openings, or glades, on the northern side of the stream just east of El Pozo, and in one of these openings General Lawton, who led the advance, had established his headquarters.
About three miles due north from El Pozo, and between three and four miles in a northeasterly direction from Santiago, there was a small village called Caney,[4]which, onaccount of its geographical position, was regarded as a place of considerable strategic importance. It was connected by roads or practicable trails with Santiago on the west, Guantanamo on the east, and El Pozo on the south; and an enemy holding it would not only outflank us on that side as soon as we should pass the Pozo farm-house, but, by means of a rapid cross-march in our rear, might cut or seriously imperil our only line of communication with our base of supplies at Siboney. The fact was well known, furthermore, that there was a strong division of Spanish regulars (about six thousand men) at Guantanamo; and if this division should undertake to reinforce the garrison at Santiago, Caney would be directly on its line of march. In view of these considerations, General Shafter, after a survey of the country from the summit of the hill at El Pozo, determined to seize Caney, and, having thus cut off reinforcements from Guantanamo and protected himself from a flanking movement on the right, advance directly upon the city. The plan was good enough, as far as it went; but General Shafter had made no reconnaissance on the Siboney-Santiago road beyond El Pozo, and was wholly ignorant not only of the strength of the enemy's position there, but of the nature of the country to be traversed. It is true that he had superficially looked over the ground, once, from the top of the Pozo hill; but he could get, in that way, very little accurate knowledge of the topography of the region, and still less of the Spaniards' defensive strength.
Our only possible line of advance, in the center, was the Siboney-Santiago road, which ran, through a dense jungle, down the valley of the Aguadores River, crossed a small stream flowing into that river from the north, then crossedthe San Juan River, another tributary of the Aguadores, and finally emerged from the forest directly in front of the San Juan heights. The enemy, of course, knew exactly where this road lay, and where it came out of the woods into the open country; and they had so disposed their batteries and rifle-pits that they could not only concentrate their fire upon the lower stretches and the mouth of the road, but sweep with a hail-storm of projectiles the whole margin of the forest where we should have to deploy and form our attacking line. General Shafter had not ascertained these facts by means of a reconnaissance, nor had he, apparently, considered such a state of affairs as a contingency to be guarded against; but Mr. Richard Harding Davis asserts that General Chaffee, commander of a brigade in General Lawton's division, anticipated precisely this situation, and predicted, five days before the battle, that if our men marched down this trail into the open country they would be "piled up so high that they would block the road." He thought that it would be much better to keep away from the road altogether; cut trails parallel with the entire front of the forest and hidden by it, with innumerable little trails leading into the open; and then march the whole army out upon the hills through these trails at the same moment. Whether this suggestion was ever made to the commanding general or not, I do not know; but if it was, it failed to commend itself to his judgment. I refer now—perhaps prematurely—to a state of affairs in our immediate front which was not fully disclosed until much later; but I do so because knowledge of it is absolutely essential to a clear understanding of the way in which the battle of San Juan was fought.
General Shafter's plan of operations, as outlined by Captain Lee, British military attaché, was substantially as follows: General Lawton's division was to attack Caney at daylight, July 1, and was expected to drive the enemy quicklyout of that post, which then menaced our right flank. Meanwhile the remainder of the Fifth Corps was to advance along the main trail toward Santiago, pushing back the Spanish outposts, and occupy the line of the San Juan River. There it was to deploy and await Lawton, who, having taken Caney, was to wheel to his left and form up on the right of the main line. All these movements were to be completed by the evening of the 1st, and then the whole army would combine for the assault of San Juan on the 2d.
The advance began on the afternoon of Thursday, June 30. General Lawton's division, accompanied by Capron's battery of four field-guns, marched out on the Caney road, without meeting any opposition, and bivouacked for the night behind a ridge, or hill, about a mile southeast of the village. At the same time the remainder of the corps, consisting of General Wheeler's cavalry division, the division of General Kent, and three batteries of light artillery, moved down the Siboney-Santiago road, and went into camp near the Pozo farm-house. At daybreak on Friday, July 1, both columns were in position, within striking distance of the enemy's intrenched line. As the fighting at Caney was wholly independent of the fighting at San Juan, it will be more convenient to regard the two engagements as separate battles, although they were carried on simultaneously. I shall not attempt, however, to do more than describe the tactics on the two widely separated fields, and briefly state the results.
The defenses of Caney consisted of a strong stone fort on a steep conical hill at the southeastern corner of the village, and four or five substantial log blockhouses, so placed as to command every possible, or at least every practicable, avenue of approach. The blockhouses were connected one with another by deep, narrow trenches; the stone fort was surrounded by a network of outlying rifle-pits; there was a barbed-wire entanglement along the whole eastern front ofthe enemy's position; and the large trees in the village, as well as the houses and the old stone church, were full of sharp-shooters. The garrison of the place, not including the inhabitants, who, of course, participated to a greater or less extent in the fighting, consisted of three companies of infantry belonging to the San Luis brigade and forty-seven guerrillas—a total force of five hundred and fourteen men. The regulars were armed with the Mauser magazine-rifle, while the guerrillas used a .45-caliber Remington, carrying a large and very destructive brass-jacketed ball. They had neither artillery nor machine-guns, and relied wholly upon their small arms, their rifle-pits, and the great natural strength of their position. The officer in command was Brigadier-General Joaquin Vara del Rey. The attacking force, under direction of General Lawton, consisted of four brigades, numbering about forty-five hundred men, and was made up wholly of regulars with the exception of the Second Massachusetts.
The battle began at half-past six o'clock in the morning. General Chaffee's brigade took up a position six or eight hundred yards from the fort on the eastern side of the village; Ludlow's brigade marched around on the western side, so as to seize the Caney-Santiago road and thus cut off the enemy's escape; while the brigade of General Miles closed in on the south. Capron's battery, from the summit of a hill a little more than a mile southeast of the fort, fired the first shot at 6:35A. M.Our infantry on General Chaffee's side then opened fire; the Spaniards replied from their fort, blockhouses, and rifle-pits; and the engagement soon became general. For the next three or four hours the battle was little more than a rifle duel at about six hundred yards' range. Capron's battery, from the top of the distant hill, continued to bombard the fort and the village at intervals, but its fire was slow and not very effective. Our infantry, meanwhile,were suffering far more loss than they were able to inflict, for the reason that they could find little or no shelter, while the Spaniards were protected by loopholed walls and deep rifle-pits, and were firing at ranges which had been previously measured and were therefore accurately known. In spite of their losses, however, our men continued to creep forward, and about eleven o'clock General Chaffee's brigade reached and occupied the crest of a low ridge not more than three hundred yards from the northeastern side of the village. The fire of the Spanish sharp-shooters, at this short range, was very close and accurate, and before noon more than one hundred of General Chaffee's men lay dead or wounded in a sunken road about fifty yards back of the firing line. The losses in the brigades of Generals Ludlow and Miles, on the western and southern sides of the village, were almost as great, and at 1:30P. M.the attacking force seemed to be barely holding its own. At this critical moment, when the chances of success or defeat seemed to be almost evenly balanced, General Lawton received an order from General Shafter to abandon the attack on Caney and hurry to the relief of Generals Kent and Sumner, who were hotly engaged in front of the San Juan heights. Believing that a retreat at this juncture would be disastrous, and that the demoralizing effect of a repulse at Caney would more than counterbalance the support that he could give the center of the line in front of San Juan, General Lawton disregarded this order and pressed the attack with renewed vigor. Capron's battery, about this time, got the range of the stone fort, shot away its flagstaff, amid vociferous cheers from our men, and soon began to make great breaches in its massive walls. General Chaffee, who had been directed to make a final assault on the fort when, in his judgment, the proper time had come, then gave the order to charge; and the Twelfth Infantry, closely followed by several regiments from General Miles'sbrigade, and the brigade of General Bates, which had just arrived from Siboney, swarmed up the steep slope of the hill, drove the Spaniards out of their rifle-pits, and took the fort by storm. The first man inside its walls was Mr. James Creelman, a war correspondent, who was shot through the shoulder while recovering the Spanish flag. Although the fire from the village and the blockhouses still continued, it gradually slackened, and in less than half an hour the Spaniards who remained alive gave up the struggle and retreated by the northern Santiago road, suffering considerable loss from the fire of General Ludlow's brigade as they passed. At 4P. M.village, fort, and blockhouses were all in undisputed possession of General Lawton's gallant division. The battle had lasted about nine hours, and in that time seven hundred men had been killed or wounded. Our own loss was four officers and eighty-four men killed, and twenty-four officers and three hundred and thirty-two men wounded; total, four hundred and forty-four. The loss of the Spaniards, as reported by themselves, was two hundred and forty-eight,—about one half their entire strength,—not including inhabitants of the village killed in their houses and in the streets. General Vara del Rey, their commander, was shot through both legs as he stood in the square opposite the village church after the storming of the fort, and then, as his men were placing him on a stretcher, he was instantly killed by a bullet through the head. Our loss, in this obstinately fought battle, was numerically much greater than that of the Spaniards; but their percentage of loss, based on the number of men engaged, was nearly five times as great as ours. When they retreated, they left forty-eight per cent. of their whole force dead or wounded in the intrenchments that they had so gallantly defended, and Lieutenant-Colonel Punet was able to collect and take back to Santiago that night only one hundred and three of the five hundredand fourteen officers and men who originally composed the garrison.
The loss on our side in this engagement was far greater than it probably would have been if General Lawton had had artillery enough to destroy the fort and blockhouses and drive the Spaniards out of their rifle-pits before he pushed forward his infantry; but it was not expected, of course, that the taking of a small and comparatively insignificant village would be so serious and difficult a matter; and as General Shafter had only sixteen light field-guns in all, he doubtless thought that he could not spare more than four for the attack on Caney.
The moral effect of this battle was to give each of the combatants a feeling of sincere respect for the bravery of the other. Our men never doubted, after July 1, that the Spaniards would fight stubbornly—at least, behind intrenchments; while the Spaniards, in turn, were greatly impressed by the dash, impetuosity, and unflinching courage of General Lawton's regulars. A staff-officer of General Vara del Rey said to a correspondent after the battle: "I have never seen anything to equal the courage and dash of those Americans, who, stripped to the waist, offering their naked breasts to our murderous fire, literally threw themselves on our trenches—on the very muzzles of our guns. We had the advantage in position, and mowed them down by the hundreds; but they never retreated or fell back an inch. As one man fell, shot through the heart, another would take his place, with grim determination and unflinching devotion to duty in every line of his face. Their gallantry was heroic." There could hardly be a more generous or a better deserved encomium.
The battle on the Siboney-Santiago road, in the center of our line, began nearly two hours later than the battle at Caney. Grimes's battery, which had taken position on a hill near the Pozo farm-house, opened fire on the heights of SanJuan about eight o'clock. A few moments later the Spaniards, who evidently had the range of the Pozo hill perfectly from the beginning, returned the fire with shrapnel, killing two men and wounding a number of others at the first shot, striking the house at the third, and driving from the hill in disorder some of the soldiers of the cavalry division who had been stationed there, as well as a few war correspondents and non-combatants who had gathered to witness the bombardment. For three quarters of an hour, or an hour, there was an artillery duel between Grimes's battery on the Pozo hill and a Spanish battery situated somewhere on the heights to the westward. In this interchange of shots the enemy had all the advantage, for the reason that the smoke from Grimes's black powder revealed the position of his guns, while the smokeless powder of the Spaniards gave no clue to the location of theirs.
About nine o'clock the order was given to advance; and the divisions of Generals Kent and Wheeler began to move down the narrow, jungle-skirted trail, toward the open country which was supposed to lie beyond the crossing of the second stream, under the heights of San Juan. General Kent's orders were to move ahead to a green knoll on the western side of the San Juan River (the second stream), and there deploy to the left in what was believed to be the margin of the dense forest which covered the bottom of the valley. At the same time the cavalry division, which, owing to the illness of General Wheeler, was temporarily under command of General Sumner, was directed to advance along the same trail, cross the San Juan River, deploy to the right in the margin of the woods, and there await further orders. The attempt of two divisions to march simultaneously down a forest trail which in places was not more than twelve feet wide resulted, naturally, in crowding, disorder, and delay; and when the head of the column, after crossingthe first stream, came within the zone of the enemy's fire, the confusion was greatly increased. The Spaniards, as General Chaffee predicted, had taken the bearing and range of the road, between the first stream and the western edge of the forest, and before the cavalry division reached the ford of the San Juan, on the other side of which it was to deploy and await orders, it was receiving a heavy fire, not only from the batteries and rifle-pits on the San Juan heights, but from hundreds of trees along the trail, in which the enemy had posted sharp-shooters.
So far as I know, riflemen had never before been posted in trees to check the advance of an army through a broken and forest-clad country; but the scheme was a good one, and it was carried out with thoughtful attention to every detail. The sharp-shooters were generally hidden in carefully prepared nests of leaves; some of them had tunics of fresh palm-leaves tied around their bodies from the shoulders down, so that at a little distance they could not be distinguished from the foliage of the trees in which they were concealed; and in a few cases that were reported to me they wore under their leafy tunics double canvas jackets filled with sand and carefully quilted, as a partial protection from bullets. This swarm of tree-men formed the Spanish skirmish-line, and a most dangerous and effective line it was, for the reason that it could be neither seen, driven in, nor dislodged. The hidden marksmen used Mauser rifles with smokeless powder, and although our men heard the reports and were killed or disabled by the projectiles, they had no guide or clue whatever to the location of their assailants. A skirmish-line in thickets or clumps of chaparral on the ground might have been driven back as our army advanced, and thus our rear would have been all the time secure from attack; but a skirmish-line hidden in tree-tops was as dangerous to the rear as to the front, and a soldier pressing forward toward what he supposed to be the enemy's position was just as likely to get a Mauser bullet in his back as in his breast. Scores of wounded men who were brought into the First Division field-hospital on Friday and Saturday had never seen a Spanish intrenchment, or had even so much as a glimpse of a Spanish soldier.
In spite of the deadly fire to which they were subjected from front, sides, and rear, our troops pushed on, as rapidly as the congested state of the trail would permit, toward the ford of the San Juan River. The loss which our advance sustained at this point was greatly increased by the sending up of an observation balloon, which hung over the road, just above the trees, and not only attracted the fire of the Spaniards in front, but served their artillerymen as a target and a range-finder. It was an even better firing guide than the sheets of iron or zinc roofing which they had put up in some of the openings through which the trail ran; and until it was finally torn by shrapnel so that it slowly sank into the forest, the men under and behind it were exactly in the focus of the converging streams of bullets which it attracted from all parts of the San Juan heights. The only useful discovery made by it was the fact that there was a second or branch trail leading to a lower ford of the San Juan River which General Kent's division might take, and thus relieve the crowding on the main road.
Parts of the divisions of Generals Kent and Sumner crossed the San Juan shortly after noon, and made an attempt to deploy on its western bank and form in line of battle; but the jungle was so dense, and the fire which swept the whole margin of the forest between them and the heights of San Juan was so destructive, that they could do little more than seek such cover as could be had and await orders. So far as I have been able to ascertain, no orders were received at this critical time by either of the division commanders. The narrow road, for a distance of a mile back of the firing line,was crowded with troops pressing forward to the San Juan ford; General Shafter, at his headquarters two miles in the rear, had little knowledge of the situation, and no adequate means of getting orders to his subordinates at the front; and meanwhile our advanced line, almost lost in the jungle, was being decimated by a fire which the men could not effectively return, and which it was impossible long to endure. Exactly what happened at this turning-point of the battle, who took the lead, and what orders were given, I do not certainly know; but the troops nearest the edge of the forest, including the Rough Riders, two regiments of General Hawkins's brigade (the Sixth and Sixteenth), a few men from the Seventy-first New York under Captain Rafferty, and perhaps squads or fragments of three or four other commands, suddenly broke from cover, as if moved by a general spontaneous impulse, and, with Colonel Roosevelt and General Hawkins as their most conspicuous, if not their foremost, leaders, charged "Kettle Hill" and the heights of San Juan. The advancing line, at first, looked very weak and thin; but it was equal to its task. In less than fifteen minutes it had reached the crest, and was driving the Spaniards along it toward the blockhouse, and down the slope behind it into the next valley. With the aid of the Ninth, Thirteenth, and Twenty-fourth Infantry, and the Gatling-gun battery of Lieutenant Parker, which supported the charging line by enfilading the enemy's trenches from a position on the left, the summit of the long ridge was soon cleared, the blockhouse captured, and the battle won before two o'clock in the afternoon.
Whether General Sumner or General Kent directly and personally ordered this charge or not, I cannot say; but from statements made to me by officers and men who participated in it, I am inclined to believe that it really was—as it has since been called—a "great popular movement," the creditfor which belongs chiefly to the regimental and company officers and their men. That General Shafter had nothing to do with it is evident. He might have ordered it if he had been there; but he was not there. One of the wounded men in the field-hospital told me a story of a sergeant in one of the colored regiments, who was lying, with his comrades, in the woods, under the hot fire from the San Juan heights. Getting no order to advance, and tiring of the inaction, he finally sprang to his feet and rushed out into the open, shouting to the men of his company: "Come on, boys! Let's knock h—l out of the blankety-blanks!" whereupon the whole regiment rose like a single man, and started, at a dead run, for the hill. The story is doubtless apocryphal, but it will serve as an illustration of the way in which the charge up the slope of San Juan may have originated. Our men in the edge of the woods, in the bushes, and in the grain-fields had perhaps become so tired of inaction, and so exasperated by the deadly fire which was picking them off, one by one, as they lay, that they were ready for any desperate venture; and when somebody—no matter who—started forward, or said, "Come on, boys!" they simply rose en masse and charged. I cannot find, in the official reports of the engagement, any record of a definite order by any general officer to storm the heights; but the men were just in the mood for such a movement, and either with orders or without orders they charged up the hill, in the face of a tremendous fire from batteries, trenches, and blockhouses, and, in the words of an English officer, quoted by General Breckenridge in his testimony before the Investigating Commission, they not only covered themselves with glory, but extricated their corps commander "from a devil of a fix."
When the divisions of Generals Kent and Wheeler had been distributed along the crest of the San Juan ridge, the line looked too weak and thin to hold the position; but Skobeleffonce said that a position carried by attack can be held, even if seventy-five per cent. of the attacking force have perished; and there was no doubt in the minds of the regulars and the Rough Riders that there were enough of them left not only to hold San Juan, but to take the city. Mr. Ramsden, British consul in Santiago, says, in his diary, that the Spaniards were so disheartened by their defeat that "if the Americans had followed up their advantage and rushed the town, they would have carried it." But our men were too much exhausted by the heat, and by their floundering in the jungle, to fight another battle that day. When the firing ceased they had to pick up the wounded and bury the dead, and then they spent a large part of the night in erecting breastworks, digging trenches, and making preparations for a counter-attack.
THE FIELD-HOSPITAL
Onthe morning of Friday, July 1, Dr. Egan and I, with three Cuban soldiers put at our service by General Castillo, set out on foot for the front, carrying on our backs or in our hands such medicines and hospital supplies as we thought would be most needed by the wounded, as well as hammocks, blankets, cooking-utensils, and four or five days' rations for ourselves. The march was a long and tiresome one, and it was after noon before we reached the glade, or opening, near the Pozo house which had been selected as the site for the first and only field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps. We reported at once to Major Wood, chief surgeon of the First Division, who gave us a hearty welcome and at once granted our request to be set at work. The second day's battle was then in progress; the booming of cannon and the rattle of Krag-Jorgensens could be plainly heard a short distance in advance, and wounded men by the score were coming back in army wagons from the firing line.
The First Division hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps was established in the field, about three miles east of Santiago, Wednesday, June 29. At that time it was in advance of the whole army, and had no other protection than a line of pickets thrown out toward the enemy's intrenchments. The site of the camp was a large, partly open glade, or field, on the floorof a wooded valley, which was bounded on the northeast, at a distance of three miles, by a range of mountains, and which extended to within a mile of Santiago. Through this valley ran the Siboney-Santiago road, nearly parallel with a brook which had its source in the mountains to the northward, and after being joined by a number of other brooks coming from the same direction, fell into the sea through a notch in the coast rampart three or four miles east of Morro Castle. The glade, or field, in which the hospital camp stood was one of a series of similar glades stretching away to the northeast toward the base of the mountains, and resembling a little in outline and topographical arrangement the openings known as "barrens" in the forests of Nova Scotia. In every other direction except the one taken by this line of glades the camp was bounded by a dense tropical jungle through which the Siboney-Santiago road had been cut. The opening occupied by the hospital camp was covered with a dense growth of high wild grass, shaded here and there by small clumps of piñon-bushes, with a few larger trees of kinds to me unknown. South and southwest of the camp lay a tropical forest which I did not undertake to explore, but which our pickets said was so wild and so tangled with vines and creepers as to be almost impenetrable. The site of the camp between the road and the brook was well chosen, and it was, perhaps, as satisfactory a place for a hospital as could have been found in that vicinity.
The hospital, when I arrived, consisted of three large tents for operating-tables, pharmacy, dispensary, etc.; another of similar dimensions for wounded officers; half a dozen small wall-tents for wounded soldiers; and a lot of "dog-kennels," or low shelter-tents, for the hospital stewards, litter-bearers, and other attendants. I do not know how many ambulances the hospital had for the transportation of wounded from the battle-line, but I saw only two, and was informed by Dr. Godfrey that only three had been brought from Tampa. Fifty or more had been sent to that port for the use of the Fifth Army-Corps, but had been left there, by direct order of General Shafter, when the expedition sailed.
The hospital staff at the beginning of the first day's battle consisted of five surgeons: namely, Major M. W. Wood, chief surgeon of the First Division; Major R. W. Johnson, in command of the First Division hospital; Dr. Guy C. Godfrey, Dr. H. P. Jones, and Dr. F. J. Combe.
The resources and supplies of the hospital, outside of instruments, operating-tables, and medicines, were very limited. There was tent-shelter for only about one hundred wounded men; there were no cots, hammocks, mattresses, rubber blankets, or pillows for sick or injured soldiers; the supply of woolen army blankets was very short and was soon exhausted; and there was no clothing at all except two or three dozen shirts. In the form of hospital food for sick or wounded men there was nothing except a few jars of beef extract, malted milk, etc., bought in the United States by Major Wood, taken to the field in his own private baggage, and held in reserve for desperate cases.
Such was the equipment of the only field-hospital in Cuba when the attack on Santiago began. That it was wretchedly incomplete and inadequate I hardly need say, but the responsibility for the incompleteness and inadequacy cannot be laid upon the field force. They took to the hospital camp from the steamers everything that they could possibly get transportation for. There was only one line of very bad road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front, and along that line had to be carried, with an utterly insufficient train of mules and wagons, all the food and ammunition needed by an advancing army of more than sixteen thousand men. In loading the mules and wagons preference was given to stores and supplies that could be used in killing Spanish soldiersrather than to stores and supplies that would be needed in caring for our own, and the result was the dreadful and heartrending state of affairs in that hospital at the end of the second day's fight. If there was anything more terrible in our Civil War, I am glad that I was not there to see it.
The battle before Santiago began very early on Friday morning, July 1, and the wounded, most of whom had received first aid at bandaging-stations just back of the firing line, reached the hospital in small numbers as early as nine o'clock. As the hot tropical day advanced, the numbers constantly and rapidly increased until, at nightfall, long rows of wounded were lying on the grass in front of the operating-tents, without awnings or shelter, awaiting examination and treatment. The small force of field-surgeons worked heroically and with a devotion that I have never seen surpassed; but they were completely overwhelmed by the great bloody wave of human agony that rolled back in ever-increasing volume from the battle-line. They stood at the operating-tables, wholly without sleep, and almost without rest or food, for twenty-one consecutive hours; and yet, in spite of their tremendous exertions, hundreds of seriously or dangerously wounded men lay on the ground for hours, many of them half naked, and nearly all without shelter from the blazing tropical sun in the daytime, or the damp, chilly dew at night. No organized or systematic provision had been made for feeding them or giving them drink, and many a poor fellow had not tasted food or water for twelve hours, and had been exposed during all that time to the almost intolerable glare of the sun. I saw a soldier of the Tenth Cavalry, who had been shot through the body, lie on the ground in front of the operating-tent for at least three hours, naked to the waist, and exposed to sunshine in which I could hardly hold my hand. I speak of this particular soldier, not because he was an exception, but rather because he exhibited such magnificent fortitude and self-control. Although he must have been suffering terrible agony, he lay there for three hours without a murmur or a complaint, and, so far as I could see, without change of countenance, until his turn came and he was lifted upon the operating-table.
At sunset the five surgeons had operated upon and dressed the wounds of one hundred and fifty-four men. As night advanced and the wounded came in more rapidly, no count or record of the operations was made or attempted. Late in the evening of Friday, division and regimental surgeons began to come back to the hospital from the front, and the operating force was increased to ten. More tables were set out in front of the tents, and the surgeons worked at them all night, partly by moonlight and partly by the dim light of flaring candles held in the hands of stewards and attendants. Fortunately, the weather was clear and still, and the moon nearly full. There were no lanterns, apparently, in the camp,—at least, I saw none in use outside of the operating-tent,—and if the night had been dark, windy, or rainy, four fifths of the wounded would have had no help or surgical treatment whatever until the next day. All the operations outside of a single tent were performed by the dim light of one unsheltered and flaring candle, or at most two. More than once even the candles were extinguished for fear that they would draw the fire of Spanish sharp-shooters who were posted in trees south of the camp, and who exchanged shots with our pickets at intervals throughout the night. These cold-blooded and merciless guerrillas fired all day Friday at our ambulances and at our wounded as they were brought back from the battle-line, and killed two of our Red Cross men. There was good reason to fear, therefore, that they would fire into the hospital. It required some nerve on the part of our surgeons to stand beside operating-tables all night with their backs to a dark tropical jungle out of whichcame at intervals the sharp reports of guerrillas' rifles. But there was not a sign of hesitation or fear. Finding that they could not work satisfactorily by moonlight, brilliant although it was, they relighted their candles and took the risk. Before daybreak on Saturday morning they had performed more than three hundred operations, and then, as the wounded had ceased to come in, and all cases requiring immediate attention had been disposed of, they retired to their tents for a little rest. The five men who composed the original hospital force had worked incessantly for twenty-one hours.
Of course the wounded who had been operated upon, or the greater part of them, had to lie out all night on the water-soaked ground; and in order to appreciate the suffering they endured the reader must try to imagine the conditions and the environment. It rained in torrents there almost every afternoon for a period of from ten minutes to half an hour, and the ground, therefore, was usually water-soaked and soft. All the time that it did not rain the sun shone with a fierceness of heat that I have seldom seen equaled, and yet at night it grew cool and damp so rapidly as to necessitate the putting on of thicker clothing or a light overcoat. Many of the wounded soldiers, who were brought to the hospital from a distance of three miles in a jolting ambulance or army wagon, had lost their upper clothing at the bandaging-stations just back of the battle-line, where the field-surgeons had stripped them in order to examine or treat their wounds. They arrived there, consequently, half naked and without either rubber or woolen blankets; and as the very limited hospital supply of shirts and blankets had been exhausted, there was nothing to clothe or cover them with. The tents set apart for wounded soldiers were already full to overflowing, and all that a litter-squad could do with a man when they lifted him from the operating-table on Fridaynight was to carry him away and lay him down, half naked as he was, on the water-soaked ground under the stars. Weak and shaken from agony under the surgeon's knife and probe, there he had to lie in the high, wet grass, with no one to look after him, no one to give him food and water if he needed them, no blanket over him, and no pillow under his head. What he suffered in the long hours of the damp, chilly night I know because I saw him, and scores more like him; but the reader, who can get an idea of it only through the medium of words, can hardly imagine it.
When the sun rose Saturday morning, the sufferings of the wounded who had lain out all night in the grass were intensified rather than relieved, because with sunshine came intense heat, thirst, and surgical fever. An attempt was made to protect some of them by making awnings and thatched roofs of bushes and poles; but about seven o'clock ambulances and wagons loaded with wounded began again to arrive from the battle-line, and the whole hospital force turned its attention to them, leaving the suffering men in the grass to the care of the camp cooks and a few slightly wounded soldiers, who, although in pain themselves, could still hobble about carrying hard bread and water to their completely disabled and gasping comrades.
The scenes of Saturday were like those of the previous day, but with added details of misery and horror. Many of the wounded, brought in from the extreme right flank of the army at Caney, had had nothing to eat or drink in more than twenty-four hours, and were in a state of extreme exhaustion. Some, who had been shot through the mouth or neck, were unable to swallow, and we had to push a rubber tube down through the bloody froth that filled their throats, and pour water into their stomachs through that; some lay on the ground with swollen bellies, suffering acutely from stricture of the urinary passage and distention of the bladder caused by a gunshotwound; some were paralyzed from the neck down or the waist down as a result of injury to the spine; some were delirious from thirst, fever, and exposure to the sun; and some were in a state of unconsciousness, coma, or collapse, and made no reply or sign of life when I offered them water or bread. They were all placed on the ground in a long, closely packed row as they came in; a few pieces of shelter-tenting were stretched over them to protect them a little from the sun, and there they lay for two, three, and sometimes four hours before the surgeons could even examine their injuries. A more splendid exhibition of patient, uncomplaining fortitude and heroic self-control than that presented by these wounded men the world has never seen. Many of them, as appeared from their chalky faces, gasping breath, and bloody vomiting, were in the last extremity of mortal agony; but I did not hear a groan, a murmur, or a complaint once an hour. Occasionally a trooper under the knife of the surgeon would swear, or a beardless Cuban boy would shriek and cry, "Oh, my mother, my mother!" as the surgeons reduced a compound fracture of the femur and put his leg in splints; but from the long row of wounded on the ground there came no sound or sign of weakness. They were suffering,—some of them were dying,—but they were strong. Many a man whose mouth was so dry and parched with thirst that he could hardly articulate would insist on my giving water first, not to him, when it was his turn, but to some comrade who was more badly hurt or had suffered longer. Intense pain and the fear of impending death are supposed to bring out the selfish, animal characteristics of man; but they do not in the higher type of man. Not a single American soldier, in all my experience in that hospital, ever asked to be examined or treated out of his regular turn on account of the severity, painful nature, or critical state of his wound. On the contrary, they repeatedly gave way to one another, saying:"Take this one first—he's shot through the body. I've only got a smashed foot, and I can wait." Even the courtesies of life were not forgotten or neglected in that valley of the shadow of death. If a man could speak at all, he always said, "Thank you," or "I thank you very much," when I gave him hard bread or water. One beardless youth who had been shot through the throat, and who told me in a husky whisper that he had had no water in thirty-six hours, tried to take a swallow when I lifted his head. He strangled, coughed up a little bloody froth, and then whispered: "It's no use; I can't. Never mind!" Our Dr. Egan afterward gave him water through a stomach-tube. If there was any weakness or selfishness, or behavior not up to the highest level of heroic manhood, among the wounded American soldiers in that hospital during those three terrible days, I failed to see it. As one of the army surgeons said to me, with the tears very near his eyes: "When I look at those fellows and see what they stand, I am proud of being an American, and I glory in the stock. The world has nothing finer."
It was the splendid courage and fortitude of the men that made their suffering so hard to see. As the row of prostrate bodies on the ground grew longer and longer Saturday afternoon and evening, the emotional strain of the situation became almost unbearable, and I would have exchanged all the knowledge and ability I possessed for the knowledge and skill even of a hospital steward, so that I might do something more than carry around food and water to those suffering, uncomplaining American soldiers.
Late Saturday afternoon there was a heavy tropical shower, which drenched not only the wounded who were awaiting examination in front of the operating-tents, but also the men who had been operated upon and carried away into the long grass. I doubt, however, whether it made theircondition any worse—at least for a time. Most of them had been exposed for hours to a tropical sun, and the rain must have given them, at first, a feeling of coolness and relief.
As the sun set and darkness settled down upon the camp after the short tropical twilight, candles were again lighted around the operating-tables, and the surgeons worked on without intermission and without rest. The rattle of rifles and machine-guns and the booming of artillery along the line of battle died away into an occasional sputter after dark; the full moon rose into a cloudless sky, and the stillness of the jungle south of the camp was broken only by an occasional shot from a sentry or from a Spanish sharp-shooter hidden in a tree. Around the operating-tables there was a sound of half-audible conversation as the surgeons gave directions to their assistants or discussed the injuries of the men upon whom they were at work, and now and then a peremptory call for "Litter-squad here!" showed that another man was about to be brought to the operating-table, or carried from it into the field and laid on the ground.
At midnight Saturday the number of wounded men that had been brought into the hospital camp was about eight hundred. All that could walk, after their wounds had been dressed, and all that could bear transportation to the sea-coast in an army wagon, were sent to Siboney to be put on board the hospital steamers and transports. There remained in the camp several hundred who were so severely injured that they could not possibly be moved, and these were carried to the eastern end of the field and laid on the ground in the high, wet grass. I cannot imagine anything more cruelly barbarous than to bring a severely wounded man back four or five miles to the hospital in a crowded, jolting army wagon, let him lie from two to four hours with hardly any protection from the blazing sunshine in the daytime or the drenching dew at night, rack him with agony on the operating-table,and then carry him away, weak and helpless, put him on the water-soaked ground, without shelter, blanket, pillow, food, or drink, and leave him there to suffer alone all night. And yet I saw this done with scores, if not hundreds, of men as brave and heroic as any that ever stood in a battle-line. It might not have been so,—it ought not to have been so,—but so it was; and in that hospital there were no means whatever of preventing it. The force of surgeons and hospital stewards immediately available was altogether too small to attend properly to the great number of wounded thrown suddenly upon their hands, and no men could be spared to look after the wretched and suffering soldiers in the grass whose wounds had been treated, when there were a hundred more who had not even been looked at in twenty-four hours, and who were lying in a long, closely packed row on the ground, awaiting their turns at the operating-tables. When a litter-squad had carried a man away into the bushes, they had to leave him there and hurry back to put another sufferer on a table or bring another from an ambulance or army wagon to the operating-line. Instead of the force of five surgeons and about twenty stewards and attendants with which the hospital began work on Friday, there should have been a force of fifty surgeons and at least two hundred stewards, attendants, and stretcher-bearers, so that they might have been divided into two watches, or reliefs, working and resting alternately. As it was on Friday, five surgeons and twenty attendants had to take care of the wounded from three whole divisions. They were reinforced by five more surgeons and perhaps twenty more attendants Friday evening, but even this force was so insufficient and inadequate that at midnight on Saturday one of the highest medical officers in the camp said to me: "This department is in a state of complete collapse."
In nothing were the weakness and imperfect equipment of the hospital more apparent than in the provision made—orrather the lack of provision—for the care of wounded after their wounds had been dressed. It seems to have been expected that, when injured men were brought back from the battle-line, their blankets, canteens, and rations would be brought with them; but in seventy-five per cent. of the cases this was not done, and it was unreasonable under the circumstances to expect that it would be done. The men did not go into action carrying their blankets and rations; on the contrary, most of them left all unnecessary impedimenta in their camps and went into the fight as lightly clad as possible, often stripped naked to the waist. When they were shot, their comrades picked them up and carried them to the rear just as they were. There was no time to inquire for their personal belongings or to send to their camps for their blankets; and they came back to the hospital not only without blankets or ponchos, but often hatless, shirtless, and in trousers ripped up by surgeon's scissors. Some of them had empty canteens, but I did not see one who had food. Ample provision should have been made in this hospital for clothing, feeding, and supplying the wants of wounded men brought back in this destitute condition; but such provision as was made proved to be wholly inadequate. The few dozen shirts and blankets that the hospital contained were soon distributed, and then the wounded men were taken from the operating-tables and laid on the ground in the outskirts of the camp in the same state, as regards clothing and bedding, that they were in when picked up on the battle-field. For feeding them no arrangements whatever had been made, and, indeed, there was no food in the hospital suited to their requirements. Our Red Cross surgeon, Dr. Egan, and I brought in a few bottles of malted milk, maltine, beef extract, limes, etc., but as we could not get transportation for a single pound of stuff and had to march in twelve miles over a bad road, we could not bring much, and our limitedsupply of invalid food, although administered only in desperate cases, was exhausted in two or three hours.
Major Wood, who superintended the bringing in and disposition of the wounded, did everything that was possible to make them comfortable, and worked day and night with tireless energy and devotion; but there was very little that could be done with the resources at his command.
The second day's battle in front of Santiago consisted, generally speaking, of a series of attempts on the part of the Spaniards to drive our troops from the positions which they had taken by assault on Friday. The firing continued throughout the day, and at times was very heavy; but just before sunset it died away to a faint sputter and crackle of rifles, and at dark ceased altogether. The moon rose in an unclouded sky over the dark tree-tops east of the camp; the crickets began to chirp in the thicket across the brook; sounds like the rapid shaking of a billiard-ball in a resonant wooden box came from nocturnal birds or tree-toads hidden in the depth of the forest; and the teeming life of the tropical wilderness, frightened into silence for a time by the uproar of battle, took courage from the stillness of night, and manifested its presence by chirps, croaks, and queer, unfamiliar cries in all parts of the encircling jungle.
About ten o'clock the stillness was broken by the boom of a heavy gun at the front, followed instantly by the crash and rattle of infantry fire, which grew heavier and heavier, and extended farther and farther to the north and south, until it seemed to come from all parts of our intrenched line on the crest of the San Juan ridge. For nearly half an hour the rattle and sputter of rifles, the drumming of machine-guns, and the intermittent thunder of artillery filled the air from the outskirts of Santiago to the hospital camp, drowning the murmur of the rippling brook, and silencing again the crickets, birds, and tree-toads in the jungle beyond it. Then the uproar ceased, almost as suddenly as it hadbegun; the stillness of night settled down again upon the lonely tropical wilderness; and if I had not been able to hear the voices of the surgeons as they consulted over an operating-table, and an occasional shot from a picket or a sharpshooter in the forest, I should not have imagined that there was an army or a battle-field within a hundred miles. From the wounded who came back from the firing line an hour or two later we learned that the enemy made an attempt, about ten o'clock, to recapture the San Juan heights, but were repulsed with heavy loss.
Saturday's fighting did not materially change the relative positions of the combatants, but it proved conclusively that we could hold the San Juan ridge against any attacking force that the Spaniards could muster. Why, after a demonstration of this fact, General Shafter should have been so discouraged as to "seriously consider the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear," I do not know. Our losses in the fighting at Caney and San Juan were only two hundred and thirty-nine men killed and thirteen hundred and sixty-three wounded, yet General Shafter was so disheartened that he not only thought of retreating to a position five miles in the rear, but seems to have been upon the point of surrendering the command of the army to General Breckenridge. Ill health, doubtless, had much to do with this feeling of discouragement. It certainly was not warranted by anything that one could see at the end of the second day's fight. We had taken every position that we had attacked; we had lost only ten per cent of our available force; and we were strongly intrenched on the crest of a high hill less than a mile and a half from the eastern boundary of the city. After General Lawton's division and the brigade of General Bates had reinforced Generals Kent and Wheeler at San Juan, there was very little reason to fear that the Spaniards would drive us from our position.
The fighting of all our soldiers, both at Caney and at SanJuan, was daring and gallant in the extreme; but I cannot refrain from calling particular attention to the splendid behavior of the colored troops. It is the testimony of all who saw them under fire that they fought with the utmost courage, coolness, and determination, and Colonel Roosevelt said to a squad of them in the trenches, in my presence, that he never expected to have, and could not ask to have, better men beside him in a hard fight. If soldiers come up to Colonel Roosevelt's standard of courage, their friends have no reason to feel ashamed of them. His commendation is equivalent to a medal of honor for conspicuous gallantry, because, in the slang of the camp, he himself is "a fighter from 'way back." I can testify, furthermore, from my own personal observation in the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps Saturday and Saturday night, that the colored regulars who were brought in there displayed extraordinary fortitude and self-control. There were a great many of them, but I cannot remember to have heard a groan or a complaint from a single man. I asked one of them whether any of his comrades showed signs of fear when they went into action. "No," he replied, with a grin, "not egzactly; two or three of 'em looked kindo' squandered just at first, but they mighty soon braced up."
Among the volunteer regiments that were hotly engaged and lost heavily in Friday's battle were the Seventy-first New York and the Second Massachusetts. Both were armed with Springfield rifles, and this put them at a great disadvantage as compared with the regulars, all of whom used Krag-Jorgensen rifles or carbines with smokeless powder. In a wooded and chaparral-covered country like that around Santiago, where it was so easy to find concealment and so difficult to see troops at a distance, the use of smokeless powder was of the utmost possible importance. A body of men might be perfectly hidden in woods or chaparral within five hundred yards of the enemy's intrenchments, and if they used smokeless powder they might fire from there for half an hour without being seen or getting a return shot; but if they were armed with Springfields, the smoke from their very first volley revealed to the enemy their exact position, and the chaparral that concealed them was torn to pieces by a hail-storm of projectiles from Mausers and machine-guns. It was cruel and unreasonable to ask men to go into action, in such a field, with rifles that could be used only with common powder. Our men might as well have been required to hoist above the bushes and chaparral a big flag emblazoned with the words, "Here we are!" Dr. Hitchcock, surgeon of the Second Massachusetts, told me that again and again, when they were lying concealed in dense scrub beside a regiment of regulars, the latter would fire for twenty minutes without attracting a single return shot from the enemy's line; but the moment the men of the Second Massachusetts began to use their Springfields, and the smoke rose above the bushes, the Spaniards would concentrate their fire upon the spot, and kill or wound a dozen men in as many minutes. It is to be hoped that our government will not send any more troops abroad with these antiquated guns. They were good enough in their day, but they are peculiarly unsuited to the conditions of warfare in a tropical field.
Wounded men from the front continued to come into the hospital camp on Saturday until long after midnight, and the exhausted surgeons worked at the operating-tables by candlelight until 3A. M.I noticed, carrying stretchers and looking after the wounded, two or three volunteer assistants from civil life, among them Mr. Brewer of Pittsburg, who died of yellow fever a few days later at Siboney.
Worn out by sleeplessness, fatigue, and the emotional strain of two nights and a day of field-hospital experience, I stretched my hammock between two trees, about three o'clockin the morning, crawled into it, and slept, for two or three hours, the dead, dreamless sleep of complete exhaustion. Dr. Egan, I think, did not lie down at all. After all the other surgeons had gone to their tents, he wandered about the camp, looking after the wounded who lay shivering here and there on the bare, wet ground, and giving them, with medicines, stomach-tube, and catheter, such relief as he could. Soon after sunrise I awoke, and after a hasty breakfast began carrying around food and water. I shall not attempt to describe fully the terrible and heartrending experience of that morning; but two or three of the scenes that I was compelled to witness seem, even now, to be etched on my memory in lines of blood. About nine o'clock, for example, I went into a small wall-tent which sheltered a dozen or more dangerously wounded Spaniards and Cuban insurgents. Everything that I saw there was shocking. On the right-hand side of the tent, face downward and partly buried in the water-soaked, oozy ground, lay a half-naked Cuban boy, nineteen or twenty years of age, who had died in the night. He had been wounded in the head and at some time during the long hours of darkness between sunset and dawn the bandage had partly slipped off, and hemorrhage had begun. The blood had run down on his neck and shoulders, coagulating and stiffening as it flowed, until it had formed a large, red, spongy mass around his neck and on his naked back between the shoulder-blades. This, with the coal-black hair, the chalky face partly buried in mud, and the distorted, agonized attitude of the half-nude body, made one of the most ghastly pictures I had ever seen. There was already a stench of decomposition in the hot air of the tent, and the coagulated blood on the half-naked corpse, as well as the bloody bandage around its head, was swarming with noisy flies. Just beyond this terrible object, and looking directly at it, was another young Cuban who had been shot through the body, and whowas half crouching, half kneeling, on the ground, with his hands pressed to his loins. He was deadly pale, had evidently been in torment all night, and was crying, over and over again, in a low, agonized tone, "Oh, my mother, my mother, my mother!" as he looked with distracted eyes at the bloody, half-naked body of his dead comrade and saw in it his own impending fate. The stench, the buzzing flies, the half-dried blood, the groans, and the cries of "O, mi madre!" "O Jesu!" from the half-naked wretches lying in two rows on the bare, muddy ground, came as near making an inferno as anything one is ever likely to see.
In another tent, a short distance away, I found a smooth-faced American soldier about thirty years of age, who had been shot in the head, and also wounded by a fragment of a shell in the body. He was naked to the waist, and his whole right side, from-the armpit to the hip, had turned a purplish-blue color from the bruising blow of the shell. Blood had run down from under the bandage around his head, and had then dried, completely covering his swollen face and closed eyelids with a dull-red mask. On this had settled a swarm of flies, which he was too weak to brush away, or in too much pain to notice. I thought, at first, that he was dead; but when I spoke to him and offered him water, he opened his bloodshot, fly-encircled eyes, looked at me for a moment in a dull, agonized way, and then closed them and faintly shook his head. Whether he lived or died, I do not know. When I next visited the tent he was gone.
As soon as possible after my arrival at the hospital I had obtained an order from Lieutenant-Colonel Pope, chief surgeon of the Fifth Army-Corps, for wagons, and on Saturday afternoon I telephoned Miss Barton from General Shafter's headquarters to send us blankets, clothing, malted milk, beef extract, tents, tent-flies, and such other things as were most urgently needed. Sunday afternoon, less than twenty-fourhours after my message reached her, she rode into the hospital camp in an army wagon, with Mrs. Gardner, Dr. Gardner, Dr. Hubbell, and Mr. McDowell. They brought with them a wagon-load of supplies, including everything necessary for a small Red Cross emergency station, and in less than two hours they were refreshing all the wounded men in the camp with corn-meal gruel, hot malted milk, beef extract, coffee, and a beverage known as "Red Cross cider," made by stewing dried apples or prunes in a large quantity of water, and then pouring off the water, adding to it the juice of half a dozen lemons or limes, and setting it into the brook in closed vessels to cool. After that time no sick or wounded man in the camp, I think, ever suffered for want of suitable food and drink.
On Monday Miss Barton and Dr. Hubbell went back to the steamer at Siboney for additional supplies, and in twenty-four hours more we had blankets, pillows, and hospital delicacies enough to meet all demands. We should have had them there before the battle began, if we could have obtained transportation for them from the sea-coast. As fast as possible the wounded were taken in army wagons from the field-hospital to Siboney, where they were put on board the transports, and at eight o'clock on Tuesday evening Major Johnson was able to report to Major Wood that every wounded man left in the hospital was in a tent, with a rubber poncho or tarpaulin under him and a blanket over him.
In spite of unfavorable conditions, the percentage of recoveries among the wounded treated in this hospital was much greater than in any other war in which the United States has ever been engaged. This was due partly to improved antiseptic methods of treatment, and partly to the nature of the wound made by the Mauser bullet. In most cases this wound was a small, clean perforation, with very little shattering or mangling, and required only antiseptic bandaging and care. All abdominal operations that were attempted in the field resulted in death, and none were performed after the first day, as the great heat and dampness, together with the difficulty of giving the patients proper nursing and care, made recovery next to impossible.
SIBONEY DURING THE ARMISTICE
Onthe morning of July 3, General Shafter, who had recovered confidence, demanded the immediate surrender of Santiago, threatening, in case of refusal, to bombard the city; and negotiations under a flag of truce continued thereafter for a period of ten days. Meanwhile, on the evening of Friday, July 8, Miss Barton, Dr. Egan, Dr. Hubbell, and I returned to theState of Texasto meet Mrs. J. Addison Porter, wife of the President's secretary, who had just arrived on the hospital steamerRelief, and to get some ice and other hospital supplies of which we were in need. We left the field-hospital in an army wagon about seven o'clock and reached Siboney soon after ten. The surf raised by a strong south-easterly wind was rolling so high on the strip of beach behind which the village stood that we could not get off on board theState of Texas, nor even communicate with her. It was extremely tantalizing to us, tired, hungry, and camp-soiled as we were, to see the lights of our steamer only a quarter of a mile away, to know that almost within reach were a cool bath, a good supper, a clean bed, and all the comforts, if not the luxuries, of life, and yet to feel that, so far as we were concerned, they were as unattainable as if the ship were in the Bay of San Francisco.
Siboney at that time was a wretched little hamlet containing only ten or fifteen abandoned and incredibly dirty Spanish houses, most of which were in use either as hospitals or for government offices. None of them contained sleeping accommodations, even of the most primitive kind; all of them were crowded; and if one arrived in the village, as we did, at a late hour of the night, there was nothing to be done but bivouac somewhere on the dirty, flea-infested floor of an open piazza, or lie out on the ground. One of the largest and most commodious buildings in the village, a one-story house with a high front stoop or porch, had been used, apparently, during the Spanish occupation of the place, as a store or shop. At the time of our return from the front it sheltered the "United States Post-Office, Military Station No. 1," which had been transferred from Daiquiri to Siboney two or three days before. In front of this building our army wagon stopped, and we men went in to inquire for mail and to see if we could find a decently clean place for Miss Barton to sleep. She was quite ready to bivouac in the army wagon; but we hoped to get something better for her. Mr. Brewer, the postmaster, whom I had met in one of my lecture trips through the West and more recently in the field, received us cordially, and at once offered Miss Barton his own cot, in a room that had not yet been cleaned or swept, back of the general delivery department. By the light of a single candle it seemed to be a gloomy, dirty, and barn-like apartment; but the cot was the only thing in the shape of a bed that I had seen in Siboney, outside of the hospitals, and we accepted it for Miss Barton with grateful hearts. The employees of the post-office were all sleeping in camp-chairs or on the counters and floors. Where Mr. Brewer went when he had given his own bed to Miss Barton, I do not know. I left her writing orders and telegrams by the light of a flaring, guttering candle at about eleven o'clock, and went out on the piazza totake a more careful survey of the premises and make up my mind where I would sleep.
Lying across the high stoop was a long white object, which appeared, in the darkness, to be a woman in her nightgown, with her head raised a little on the sill of a disused door. I stepped over her once in going down-stairs to the street, and wondered what calamity of war had reduced a woman to the necessity of sleeping in such a place and in circumstances of such hardship and privation. I was just discussing with Dr. Hubbell the possibility of getting the United States Signal Corps man in the telegraph office to signal our steamer for a boat, regardless of the high surf, when the long white figure on the floor rose, with an unmistakably masculine grunt, and remarked, with a slight English accent, that he did not think there was any possibility of getting off to a ship in a small boat, inasmuch as he had been trying for twenty-four hours to get on board of his own vessel and had not succeeded yet. The figure proved to be that of Lord Alfred Paget, naval observer for the British government, and what I had taken in the darkness for the white gown of a woman was his white-duck uniform. After discussing the situation for a few moments, and declaring discontentedly that our engineer corps had had time enough to build six piers and yet had not finished one, he lay down on the floor again, without blanket, pillow, or overcoat, rested his head on the sill of the disused door, and apparently went to sleep, while I debated in my mind the question whether I had better sleep with him on the floor of the piazza, and take the chance of getting yellow fever from a possibly infected building, or lie out on the ground, where I might be stepped on by prowling Cuban refugees, or run over by a mule-team coming in from the front. I finally decided that sleeping accommodations which were good enough for Lord Alfred were good enough for me, and, just as the moon was risingover the high, rocky rampart east of the village, I rolled myself up in my blanket and lay down on the floor against the piazza rail. Dr. Hubbell slept on the counter of the money-order division of the post-office, while Dr. Egan, without blanket or pillow, stretched himself out on the dirty planks below.
We were all up at daybreak, and making my toilet by tightening my belt and putting on my mud-spattered pith helmet, I went down to the water's edge to try to find some means of communicating with the ship. During my absence at the front there had evidently been strong winds and heavy seas, for the strip of beach was covered with the wrecks of lighters which had been smashed while trying to land supplies in the surf, and a large steam lighter-launch, loaded with twenty tons or more of hard bread, beans, etc., was lying on the bottom, half submerged, about fifty yards from shore, with the sea breaking over her. The small temporary pier at which I landed when I went to the front had been completely demolished and swept away, but another stronger one was in process of construction.
The most serious embarrassments with which the army of invasion had to contend after it reached the coast and began its march on Santiago were: first, the extreme difficulty of landing supplies in a place like Siboney, where there was neither pier nor shelter, and where the beach was lashed a large part of the time by a high and dangerous surf; and, second, the difficulty of getting such supplies to the front over a single line of very bad road, with an insufficient number of mules and army wagons. If these two difficulties had been foreseen and provided for there would not have been so many smashed lighters and launches on the beach, and the soldiers at the front would not have lived so much of the time on short rations, nor have been compelled to boil water and cook their rations in coffee-cups and tomato-cans, as they had to dothroughout the campaign. The difficulty of landing supplies on that exposed and surf-beaten coast might have been anticipated, it seems to me, and provided for. The warships of Sampson's and Schley's fleets were there long before General Shafter's army left Tampa, and their commanders must have seen, I think, that to get supplies ashore through the surf at any point between Santiago and Guantanamo Bay would be extremely difficult and hazardous, and would probably require the use of special engineering devices and appliances. The prevailing winds there are from the east and southeast, and from such winds the little indentations of the coast at Siboney and Daiquiri afforded no protection whatever. A strong breeze raised a sea which might amount to nothing outside, but which was very troublesome, if not dangerous, to loaded boats and lighters as soon as they reached the line where it began to break in surf. The water was very deep close to shore; it was difficult, therefore, to construct a pier of any great length; and even if there had been a long and solid pier, small boats and lighters could not have discharged cargo upon it with any safety while they were being tossed up and down and dashed against it by a heavy sea.
I do not pretend to be an expert in such matters, but in watching the landing of supplies here, both from our own steamer and from the army transports, it seemed to me that what is known, I believe, as a "cable hoist" might have been used to advantage if it had been provided in time. It is a contrivance resembling the cable and car employed by life-saving crews on our coasts to bring shipwrecked sailors ashore under similar conditions; or, to use a comparison that is more familiar, it is a reproduction on a large scale of the traveling cash-boxes on wires used in large department stores. If a suitable transport had been anchored outside the line of surf, fifty or seventy-five yards from the beach,and a steel cable stretched from it to a strong mast on shore, I do not see any reason why cargo might not have been carried over the cable in a suspended car or cars with much greater rapidity and safety than it was carried in lighters. Such devices are used, I think, at several points on the western coast of South America for putting guano and phosphates on board of vessels where communication with the shore is hazardous and uncertain on account of swell or surf.
The second difficulty, namely, that of transportation to the front, might have been avoided by taking to Cuba a larger number of wagons and mules. Our army before Santiago suffered for want of a great many things that the soldiers had with them on the transports, but that were not landed and carried promptly forward. Among such things were large tents, rubber blankets, camp-kettles, and large cooking-utensils generally. "What's the use of telling us to drink only boiled water," said an officer of the Seventh Infantry to me, "when we haven't anything bigger than a coffee-cup or an old tomato-can to boil it in, or to keep it in after it has been boiled? They tell us also that we must sleep in hammocks, not get wet if we can help it, and change our underclothes whenever we do get wet. That's all very well, but there isn't a hammock in my company. I haven't any rubber blanket or spare underclothes myself, and I don't believe any of my soldiers have. They made us leave at Tampa everything that we could possibly dispense with, and then, when we got here, they didn't land and send with us even the indispensable things that we had on the transports."
The complaint of the officer was a perfectly just one, and I heard many more like it. The insufficient and inadequate provision for the care and feeding of the wounded at the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps, which I have tried to describe in the preceding chapter, was due largely to the inability of General Shafter's commissaries and quartermastersto cope successfully with the two great difficulties above indicated, namely, landing from the steamers and transportation to the front. The hospital corps had supplies on the vessels at Siboney, but as everything could not possibly be landed and carried forward at once, preference was given to ammunition and rations for able-bodied soldiers rather than to tents, blankets, and invalid food for the wounded. I do not mean to be understood as saying that the hospital-corps men had even on the transports everything that they needed in order to enable them to take proper care of the eight hundred or one thousand wounded who were thrown on their hands in the course of forty-eight hours. I do not know whether they had or not. Neither do I mean to say that the commissaries and quartermasters did not do all that they possibly could to land and forward supplies of all kinds. I mean only that, as a result of our inability to surmount difficulties promptly, our army at the front was not properly equipped and our wounded were not adequately cared for.
The hospital corps and quartermaster's and commissary departments of the army, however, were not alone in their failure to anticipate and fully provide for these difficulties. The Red Cross itself was in no better case. There was perhaps more excuse for us, because when we fitted out we did not know where the army was going nor what it proposed to do, and we had been assured by the surgeon-general and by General Shafter that, so far as the care of sick and wounded soldiers was concerned, our services would not be required. We expected, however, that they would be, and could we have known in what field and under what conditions our army was going to move and fight, we should probably have had, in some directions, a better, or at least a more suitable, equipment. If we had had at Siboney on June 26 half a dozen army wagons, an equal number of saddle-horses, and forty or fifty mules of our own, we should have been in muchbetter condition than we were to cope with the difficulties of the situation. But for the assistance of the army, which helped us out with transportation, notwithstanding its own limited resources, we should not have been able to establish a Red Cross station at the front in time to coöperate with the hospital corps after the battle of July 1-2, nor should we have been able to send food to the fifteen thousand refugees from Santiago who fled, hungry and destitute, to the right wing of our army at Caney when General Shafter threatened to bombard the city. For the opportunity to get into the field we were indebted to the general in command, to his hospital corps, and to the officers of his army; and we desire most gratefully to acknowledge and thank them for the helping hand that they extended to us when we had virtually no transportation whatever of our own.
When we returned to theState of Texason July 9, the situation, so far as Red Cross relief-work on the southeastern coast of Cuba is concerned, was briefly as follows: We had a station in the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps at the front, and a hospital of our own in Siboney, with twenty-five beds attended by six trained nurses under direction of Dr. Lesser. We also had entire charge of one ward of thirty beds in the general hospital directed by General Lagarde. We were feeding refugees at several points on a line extending east and west nearly sixty miles from the right wing of our army at Caney to the naval station at Guantanamo Bay, and at the latter place we had landed fifteen thousand rations to be distributed under the general direction of Captain McCalla, of the cruiserMarblehead, and General Perez, commanding the Cuban forces in the Guantanamo district. To the refugees from Santiago at Caney—about fifteen thousand in number and mostly women and children—we had forwarded, chiefly in army wagons furnished by General Shafter, six or eight tons of food, and were sendingmore as fast as we could land it in lighters through the surf. Mr. Elwell, of Miss Barton's staff, was taking care of two or three thousand refugees at Firmeza, a small village in the hills back of Siboney, and we hoped soon to enter the harbor of Santiago, discharge the cargo of theState of Texasat a pier, assort it in a warehouse, and prosecute the work of relief upon a more extensive scale. Our sanguine anticipations, however, were not to be realized as soon as we hoped they would be, and our relief-work was practically suspended on July 10, as the result of an outbreak of yellow fever.