THE FIGHT AT GUANTANAMO
As the southeastern coast of Cuba
is high and bold, with deep water extending close
up to the line of surf, vessels going back and forth
between Santiago and Guantanamo run very near to the
land; and the ever-changing panorama of tropical forest
and cloud-capped mountain which presents itself to
the eye as the steamer glides swiftly past, within
a mile of the rock-terraced bluffs and headlands, is
a constant source of surprise and delight, even to
the most experienced voyager. It is an extremely
beautiful and varied coast. In the foreground,
only a rifle-shot away across the blue undulating
floor of the Caribbean, rises a long terraced mesa,
fronting on the sea, with its rocky base in a white
smother of foaming surf, and its level summit half
hidden by a drooping fringe of dark-green chaparral
and vines. Over the cyclopean wall of this mesa
appear the rounded tops of higher and more distant
foot-hills, densely clad in robes of perennial verdure,
while beyond and above them all, at a distance of
five or six miles, rise the aerial peaks of the splendid
Sierra del Cobre, with a few summer clouds
drifting across their higher slopes and casting soft
violet shadows into the misty blue of their intervening
valleys. Here and there the terraced mesa, which
forms the coast-line, is cut into picturesque castle-like
bluffs by a series of wedge-shaped clefts, or notches,
and through the openings thus made in the rocky wall
one may catch brief glimpses of deep, wild ravines
down which mountain torrents from the higher peaks
tumble to the sea under the dense concealing shade
of mango-and mimosa-trees, vines, flowering shrubs,
and the feathery foliage of cocoanut and royal palms.
Wild, beautiful, and picturesque,
however, as the coast appears to be, not a sign does
it anywhere show of a bay, an inlet, or a safe sheltered
harbor. For miles together the surf breaks almost
directly against the base of the terraced rampart
which forms the coast-line, and even where streams
have cut deep V-shaped notches in the rocky wall, the
strips of beach formed at their mouths are wholly
unsheltered and afford safe places of landing only
when the sea is smooth and the wind at rest.
Often, for days at a time, they are lashed by a heavy
and dangerous surf, which makes landing upon them
in small boats extremely difficult, if not absolutely
impracticable.
About thirty-five miles from Santiago
harbor, as one sails eastward, the wall-like mesa
on the left sinks from a height of two or three hundred
feet to a height of only twenty or thirty; the mountains
of the Sierra del Cobre come to an
end or recede from the coast, leaving only a few insignificant
hills; and through a blue, tremulous heat-haze one
looks far inland over the broad, shallow valley of
the Guantanamo River.
We entered the beautiful Bay of Guantanamo
about half-past five o’clock on Saturday afternoon,
and found it full of war-ships and transports.
The white hospital steamer Solace lay at anchor
over toward the western side of the harbor, and between
her and the eastern shore were the Dolphin,
the Eagle, the Resolute, the Marblehead,
and three or four large black colliers
from Key West. As we rounded the long, low point
on the western side of the entrance and steamed slowly
into the spacious bay, a small steam-launch came puffing
out to meet us, and, as soon as she was within hailing
distance, an officer in the white uniform of the navy
rose in the stern-sheets, put his hands to his mouth,
and shouted: “Captain McCalla presents
his compliments to the captain of the State of
Texas, and requests that you follow me and anchor
between the Marblehead and the Haitian cable-steamer.”
“All right,” replied Captain Young, from
the bridge.
“That sounds well,” I
said to one of the Red Cross men who was standing
near me. “It shows that things are not allowed
to go helter-skelter here.”
We followed the little launch into
the harbor and dropped anchor in the place indicated,
which was about one hundred yards from shore on the
eastern side of the channel, and just opposite the
intrenched camp of Colonel Huntington’s marines.
I was impatient to land and see the place where the
American flag had first been raised on Cuban soil;
but darkness came on soon, and it did not seem worth
while to leave the ship that night.
After breakfast on the following morning,
I took a small boat and went off to the Marblehead
to call upon Captain McCalla, who was in command of
the station. I had made his acquaintance in Washington,
when he was one of the members of a board appointed
to consider means of sending relief to the Greely
arctic expedition; but I had not seen him in many
years, and it is not surprising, perhaps, that I almost
failed to recognize him in his Cuban costume.
The morning was hot and oppressive, and I found him
clad in what was, in the strictest sense of the words,
an undress uniform, consisting of undershirt, canvas
trousers, and an old pair of slippers. Like the
sensible man I knew him to be, he made no apology
for his dress, but welcomed me heartily and introduced
me to Captain Philip of the battle-ship Texas,
who had just come into the harbor after a fresh supply
of coal. As I entered, Captain McCalla was telling
Captain Philip, with great glee, the story of his experience
off the Cuban coast between Morro Castle and Aguadores,
when his vessel, the Marblehead, was suddenly
attacked one night by the whole blockading fleet.
“They saw a railroad-train,”
he said, “running along the water’s edge
toward Siboney, and in the darkness mistook it for
a Spanish torpedo-boat. The train, of course,
soon disappeared; but I happened to be cruising close
inshore, just there, as it passed, and they all turned
their search-lights on me and opened fire.”
“All except the Iowa,”
corrected Captain Philip, with a smile.
“Yes, all except the Iowa,”
assented Captain McCalla, laughing heartily, as if
it were the funniest of jokes. “Even the
Texas didn’t show me any mercy; but Bob
Evans knew the difference between a railroad-train
and a torpedo-boat, and didn’t shoot. I
told him, the last time I saw him, that he was clearly
entitled to take a crack at me. Every other ship
in the fleet had had the privilege, and it was his
turn. I’m the only man in the navy,”
he said, with renewed laughter, “who has ever
sustained the fire of a whole fleet of battle-ships
and cruisers and got away alive.”
After Captain Philip had made his
call and taken his leave, I explained to Captain McCalla
the object of our coming to Guantanamo Bay, and asked
whether there were any Cuban refugees in the vicinity
who needed food and could be reached. He replied
unhesitatingly that there were. He was in almost
daily communication, he said, with General Perez, an
insurgent leader who was then besieging Guantanamo
city, and through that officer he thought he could
send food to a large number of people who had taken
refuge in the woods north of the bay and were in a
destitute and starving condition. He had already
sent to them all the food he himself could spare,
but it was not half enough to meet their wants.
With characteristic promptness and energy he called
his stenographer and dictated a letter to General
Perez, in which he said that Miss Clara Barton, president
of the American National Red Cross, had just reached
Guantanamo Bay in the steamer State of Texas,
with fourteen hundred tons of food intended for Cuban
reconcentrados, and asked whether he (Perez) could
furnish pack-animals and an escort for, say, five thousand
rations, if they could be landed on the western side
of the lower bay. This letter he sent to General
Perez by a special courier from the detachment of
Cubans then serving with the marines, and said that
he should probably receive a reply in the course of
two or three days. As nothing more could be done
at that time, I returned to the State of Texas,
reported progress to Miss Barton, and then went on
shore to send a telegram to Washington by the Haitian
cable, which had just been recovered and repaired,
and to take a look at the camp of the marines.
When, on May 26, Commodore Schley,
with the Flying Squadron, arrived off the entrance
to Santiago harbor, and began the blockade of that
port, the great need of his vessels was a safe and
sheltered coaling-station. The heavy swell raised
along the southern coast of Cuba by the prevailing
easterly winds makes it often dangerous and always
difficult to lay a collier alongside a battle-ship
in the open sea and transfer coal from one to the
other. Understanding and appreciating this difficulty,
Secretary Long telegraphed Admiral Sampson on May 28
to consider the question whether it would not be possible
to “seize Guantanamo and occupy it as a coaling-station.”
Sampson replied that he thought it might be done,
and immediately cabled Commodore Schley off Santiago
as follows: “Send a ship to examine Guantanamo
with a view to occupying it as a base, coaling one
heavy ship at a time.” The official correspondence
thus far published does not show whether Commodore
Schley received this order in time to act upon it
before Sampson arrived or not; but as soon as the
latter came he caused a reconnaissance of Guantanamo
Bay to be made, decided that the lower part of it might
be seized by a comparatively small land force if protected
by the guns of a few war-ships, and immediately sent
to Key West for the first battalion of marines, which
was the only available landing force at his command.
Meanwhile the auxiliary cruiser Yankee bombarded
and burned a Spanish blockhouse situated on a hill
near the entrance to the lower harbor of Guantanamo,
and on June 8 Captain McCalla, in the Marblehead,
seized and occupied as far as he could
do so without a landing force all that
part of the bay which lies between the entrance and
the narrow strait leading to the fortified post of
Caimanera.
The marines, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel
Huntington, arrived on the steamer Panther,
Friday, June 10, and proceeded at once to disembark.
The place selected for a landing was a low, rounded,
bush-covered hill on the right, or eastern, side of
the bay, about a quarter of a mile from the entrance.
On the summit of this hill the Spaniards had made
a little clearing in the chaparral and erected a small
square blockhouse; but inasmuch as this blockhouse
had already been destroyed and its garrison driven
to the woods by the fire of the Yankee, all
that the marines had to do was to occupy the abandoned
position and again fortify the hill. In some respects
this hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet
in height, made a strong and easily defended position;
but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the summit
with a dense growth of bushes and scrub, and was commanded
by a range of higher hills a little farther to the
eastward. The enemy, therefore, could not only
creep close up to the camp under cover of the dense
chaparral, but could fire down upon it from the higher
slopes of the wooded range which runs parallel with
the bay on its eastern side.
The landing was made, without opposition,
about two o’clock on the afternoon of Friday,
June 10. Under cover of the guns of the war-ships,
the marines disembarked on the strip of beach at the
foot of the hill; burned all the houses and huts left
by the Spaniards, so as to guard against the danger
of infection with yellow fever; and then deployed up
the hill, pitched their shelter-tents on its eastern
slope, and spent all the afternoon and a large part
of the next day in landing ammunition and stores,
establishing outposts, and making arrangements for
a permanent camp.
The Spaniards, who must have been
watching these operations from the concealment of
the bushes and from the slopes of the adjacent hills,
gave no sign, at first, of their presence; but seeing
that the marines were comparatively few in number,
they finally plucked up courage, and about five o’clock
Saturday afternoon began a desultory, skirmishing
attack which lasted the greater part of that day and
night, and, indeed, continued, with an occasional
intermission, for three or four days and nights.
Major Cochrane, who described the fight to me, said
that he slept only an hour and a half in four days,
and that many of his men became so exhausted that
they fell asleep standing on their feet with their
guns in their hands.
The strength of the marine battalion
at that time was between five and six hundred men.
They were armed with rifles of the Lee or Lee-Metford
pattern, and had, in addition, two automatic Colt machine-guns
and three rapid-fire Hotchkiss cannon of three-inch
caliber. The greatest disadvantage under which
they labored was that due to the tangled, almost impenetrable
nature of the chaparral that surrounded the camp,
and the facilities which it afforded the enemy for
concealment and stealthy approach. The gunboats
shelled the woods from time to time, drove the hidden
Spaniards back, and silenced their fire; but as soon
as night fell they would creep silently up through
the bushes until they were so near to the camp that
the pickets of the marines could smell the smoke of
their cigarettes, and yet could neither see them nor
hear them. Then the nocturnal skirmishing would
begin again. There were six successive attacks
from different directions on the night of the 11th,
and a still greater number on the night of the 12th,
with more or less desultory skirmishing during the
day, so that for a period of forty-eight hours the
gallant marines had no rest or sleep at all.
There was some danger, at first, that
the enemy, reinforced from Caimanera or Guantanamo
city, would assemble in force on the slopes of the
eastern hills, creep up through the scrub until they
were within a short distance of the camp, and then
overwhelm the marines in a sudden rush-assault.
They were known to have six thousand regulars at Guantanamo
city, only about fifteen miles away, and it was quite
within the bounds of possibility that they might detach
a large part of this force for offensive operations
on the eastern side of the lower bay. To provide
for this contingency, and to strengthen his defensive
position, Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington withdrew his
men from the eastern slope of the hill, where they
had first been stationed, and posted them on the crest
and upper part of the western slope, where they would
be nearer the fleet and better protected by its guns.
At the same time our small force, in the intervals
of fighting, dug a trench and erected a barricade
around the crest of the hill on the land side, so as
to enlarge the clearing, give more play to the automatic
and rapid-fire guns, and make it more difficult for
the enemy to approach unseen. When this had been
done, there was little probability that a rush-assault
would succeed. The best troops in the world, unless
they were in overwhelming force, could hardly hope
to cross a clearing that was swept by the fire of
six hundred rifles, two machine-guns, and three Hotchkiss
cannon hurling canister or shrapnel.
In the course of the first three days’
engagement the marines were joined by eighty or a
hundred Cuban insurgents; but opinions differ as to
the value of the latter’s cooeperation.
Some officers with whom I talked spoke favorably of
them, while others said that they became wildly excited,
fired recklessly and at random, and were of little
use except as guides and scouts. Captain Elliott,
who saw them under fire, reported that they were brave
enough, but that their efficiency as fighting men
was on a par with that of the enemy; while Captain
McCalla called attention officially to their devotion
to freedom, and said that one of them, who had been
shot through the heart, died on the field, crying
with his last breath: “Viva Cuba libre!”
At the end of the third day’s
fighting, all attacks of the Spaniards having been
repulsed, Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington determined
to take the offensive himself. About six miles
southeast of the camp, at a place called Cuzco, there
was a well from which the Spanish troops were said
to obtain all their drinking-water, and a heliograph
signal-station by means of which they maintained communication
with Caimanera. On the morning of June 14 Captain
Elliott, with two companies of marines and about fifty
Cuban volunteers, was sent to attack this place, drive
the Spaniards away, and destroy the well and signal-station.
The expeditionary force engaged the enemy, five hundred
strong, about eleven o’clock in the morning,
and fought with them until three in the afternoon,
driving them from their position and inflicting upon
them a loss of sixty men killed and one hundred and
fifty wounded. Then, after capturing the heliograph
outfit, burning the station, and filling up the well,
the heroic little detachment returned, exhausted but
triumphant, to its camp, with a loss of only two men
killed, six wounded, and twenty or thirty overcome
by heat.
On the fourth day of the long struggle
for the possession of Guantanamo Bay, the Spaniards
virtually gave up the contest and abandoned the field.
A few guerrillas still remained in the chaparral, firing
occasionally at long range either into the camp or
at the vessels of the fleet; but, finally, even this
desultory, long-range target practice ceased, and
the last of the enemy fled, either to the fort at Caimanera
or to Guantanamo city, leaving the plucky marines in
undisputed control of the whole eastern coast of the
lower bay. Our total loss in the series of engagements
was only six men killed and twelve or fifteen wounded;
but among the killed was the lamented Dr. Gibbs, acting
assistant surgeon, United States navy, who was shot
at one o’clock on the night of the 11th.
After the four days of fighting were
over, Captain McCalla, with the Marblehead,
the auxiliary cruiser St. Louis, and the battle-ship
Texas, steamed up the bay to the little village
of Caimanera, demolished the fort there with a few
well-directed shots, and drove the garrison back into
the woods. In the course of this expedition the
Marblehead and the Texas ran into a number
of submarine contact mines, or fouled them with their
screws; but, fortunately, none of them exploded.
The firing-pins had become so incrusted with barnacles
and other marine growths during their long immersion
that the force of the blow when the ships struck them
did not drive them in far enough to explode the charges.
When we reached Guantanamo in the State of Texas,
Captain McCalla’s boats and launches had thoroughly
explored and dragged the lower bay, and had taken
out safely no less than thirteen contact mines, each
containing about one hundred pounds of guncotton.
The upper bay was still in the possession of the Spaniards;
but its control was not a matter of any particular
importance. What Admiral Sampson wanted was a
safe and sheltered coaling-and repairing-station for
the vessels of his fleet, and this he obtained when
his war-ships and marines, after four days of almost
incessant fighting, drove the Spanish troops from
the whole eastern coast of the lower bay.