Read CHAPTER X of Campaigning in Cuba , free online book, by George Kennan, on ReadCentral.com.

SIBONEY ON THE EVE OF BATTLE

During my absence at the front on Monday, the auxiliary cruiser Yale, with two or three regiments of Michigan troops on board, arrived off Siboney, and when I went on deck on Tuesday morning these reinforcements were just beginning to go ashore in a long line of small boats, towed by a steam-launch from one of the war-ships of the blockading fleet.

The landing of troops and supplies on the Cuban coast was the first serious difficulty with which General Shafter had to contend. The little cove at Siboney was wholly unsheltered; there was no wharf or pier at which a steamer might lie; a gale, or even a fresh breeze, from the southeast raised a heavy surf on the strip of sand in front of the village; the water deepened so suddenly and abruptly, at a distance of fifty yards from the shore, that there was practically no anchorage; and all men and stores had to be landed by putting them into small boats and running them up on the beach through the breakers. At Daiquiri, where General Lawton’s division disembarked, the situation was a little better, for the reason that the Spanish-American Iron Company had built there a substantial pier, of which the army of invasion could make use. At that place, therefore, General Shafter disembarked a large part of his command, and unloaded all his wagons, siege-guns, light artillery, etc. The mules and horses were put ashore or rather pitched overboard with the expectation that they would swim ashore at Siboney; but, owing to unskilful management and lack of guidance, twelve per cent. of the mules fifty out of four hundred and fifteen perished. Some, instead of making for the shore, swam directly out to sea until they became exhausted and sank; while others attempted to land on the eastern side of the cove, where there was no beach, and were drowned under the rocks. Inasmuch as the total number of draft-and pack-animals loaded at Tampa was wholly inadequate to meet the necessities of such an expedition, the drowning of twelve per cent. of them, after they had reached their destination, was a serious and, it seems to me, unnecessary loss.

In the disembarkation of his troops, General Shafter had the assistance of skilled officers and well-drilled sailors from the blockading fleet, to say nothing of half a dozen steam-launches and fifty-two good boats; but when it came to unloading and landing stores, he had to rely on his own men and his own facilities, and it soon became painfully evident that they were not equal to the requirements of the situation. I watched the landing of supplies all day Tuesday, and formed the opinion that it was disorderly, unskilful, and unintelligent. In the first place, many of the steamers from which supplies were being taken lay too far from the beach; and there seemed to be no one who had authority or power enough to compel them to come nearer. As a result of this, the boats and lighters were unable to make as quick and frequent trips as they might have made if the transports had been within one hundred yards of the beach, instead of half a mile away.

In the second place, most of the boats and lighters seemed to be directed and handled by men who had had little experience in boating and no experience whatever in landing through heavy surf. As a result of this, boats were often stove against the timbers of the little pier which the engineer corps had hastily built; while the lighters, instead of being held by an anchor and stern-line as they went into the breakers, were allowed to swing around into the trough of the sea, where they either filled and sank, or drifted ashore, broadside to the beach, in such a position that fifty men could hardly turn them around and get them off.

Finally, the soldiers and Cubans who acted as stevedores, carrying the boxes from the boats and piling them on the pier, were not intelligently directed, and, consequently, labored without method or judgment getting in one another’s way; allowing the pier to become so blocked up with stuff that nobody could move on it, much less work; and wasting more energy in talking, shouting, and bossing one another than they utilized in doing the thing that was to be done.

If I had ever had any doubt with regard to the expediency of giving to the navy full and absolute control of the army and its supplies while at sea, such doubt would have been removed by one day’s observation at Siboney. Army officers, as a rule, know nothing of water transportation, and cannot reasonably be expected to know anything about it; and to put them in charge of transports, lighters, and surf-boats is almost as inconsiderate as to put a sailor in charge of a farm and expect him, without any previous training, to run reaping-, binding-, and threshing-machines, take proper care of his live stock, and get as much out of the soil as an agricultural expert would. Every man to his trade; and the landing of supplies from thirty or forty transports, in small boats, on an unsheltered, surf-beaten coast, is not the trade of an army quartermaster. Lieutenant-Colonel Humphrey and Major Jacobs undoubtedly did all that they could do, with their knowledge and experience, and with the limited facilities that General Shafter had provided for them, to get supplies ashore; but the results were not gratifying, either to observers at Siboney, or to soldiers at the front. If officers of the navy had directed the loading of stores on the transports at Tampa, and the unloading and landing of them at Daiquiri and Siboney, there would have been a properly equipped hospital at the latter place five days sooner than there was; there would have been forty or fifty more mules in the army’s pack-train; the beach would not have been strewn with the wrecks of mismanaged boats and lighters; and the transport-steamers Alamo, Breakwater, Iroquois, Vigilancia, and La Grande Duchesse would not have brought back to the United States hundreds of tons of supplies intended for, and urgently needed by, our soldiers at the front.

On the afternoon of Tuesday, June 28, one of the small vessels of the mosquito fleet arrived from Guantanamo Bay with a letter from Captain McCalla in which he said that General Perez had furnished a pack-train and an escort for the food that the Red Cross had promised to send to the Guantanamo refugees, and that he would like to have us return there as soon as possible and land five thousand rations. As our hospital work on shore was well under way, and Dr. Lesser and the nurses had been supplied with everything that they would need for a day or two, Miss Barton decided to fill Captain McCalla’s requisition at once. Late Tuesday evening, therefore, the State of Texas left Siboney, and after a quiet and peaceful run down the coast entered Guantanamo Bay about six o’clock Wednesday morning. At half-past six Captain McCalla came on board to make arrangements for the landing, and in less than two hours there was a large lighter alongside, with a steam-launch to tow it to the place where an officer of General Perez’s command was waiting for it with a pack-train and an escort. Before noon ten or fifteen thousand pounds of supplies, consisting principally of beans, rice, hard bread, and South American jerked beef, had been safely landed on the western side of the entrance to the lower harbor; and as we passed the point, on our return, we saw a large party of Cubans carrying the boxes and barrels up the bank.

We reached Siboney early that evening, drifted and rolled all night on a heavy swell, a mile or two off the coast, and at daybreak on the following morning ran close in to the beach and began landing supplies for several thousand destitute Cuban refugees who had assembled at the little village of Firmeza, three miles back of Siboney in the hills. In getting provisions ashore at Siboney, we encountered precisely the same difficulties that the army had to meet; but we fortunately had with us, as chief of transportation, a man who was familiar with boats and who had had large experience in handling them in circumstances and under conditions similar to those that prevailed on the Cuban coast. In proportion to our facilities, therefore, we got more stuff ashore in a given time than the army quartermasters did, and with fewer accidents. Mr. Warner, I think, was the first man to use, at Siboney, an anchor and a stern-line to prevent a boat or a lighter from broaching to in the surf. It was a simple enough expedient, but nobody, apparently, had thought of it. By dropping an anchor astern, just before the lighter reached the outer edge of the breakers, and then slacking off the line until the boat was near enough so that thirty Cubans could rush into the water, seize it, and run it up on the beach, a landing was effected without difficulty or risk. Then, when the supplies had been unloaded, the stern-anchor line could be used again as a means of pulling the lighter off through the surf into smooth water and preventing it from swinging around broadside to the sea while being launched. The best time for this work was between five and ten o’clock in the morning. After ten o’clock there was almost always a fresh breeze from the southeast, which raised such a surf on the beach that unless the landing of supplies was a matter of extreme urgency it had to be temporarily suspended. We succeeded in getting ashore on Wednesday food enough to satisfy the wants of the refugees at Firmeza, and Mr. Elwell was sent there to superintend its distribution.

Wednesday evening, as there seemed to be no prospect of an immediate engagement at the front, I decided to go to Port Antonio, Jamaica, with Mr. Trumbull White, on the Chicago “Record’s” despatch-boat Hercules, to post my letters and the letters that had been intrusted to me by Colonel Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, and to get some articles of camp equipment which I had ordered in New York, but which had failed to reach me before the State of Texas sailed from Key West.

We reached Port Antonio at eight o’clock on Thursday, spent the day there, and returned the next night to Siboney. Early Friday morning, as we were approaching the Cuban coast, the captain of the Hercules came down into the cabin with the astounding news that the blockading fleet had disappeared. “The jig is up, boys!” he exclaimed excitedly. “They’ve taken the city, and the fleet is inside the harbor. I can’t see a sign of a ship anywhere along the coast.”

We all rushed on deck and gazed with sinking hearts at the long black line of the rampart and the high blue mountains beyond it. If Santiago had been taken in our absence, it would be the cruelest blow that fortune had ever dealt us! Although the sun was still below the horizon, the atmosphere was crystal-clear, and we could see without a glass the step-like outline of Morro Castle, and even the hazy blue smoke rising from the camp-fires on-the beach at Siboney; but of the war-ships the New York, the Brooklyn, the Indiana, and the Texas there was not a sign. I do not know what Mr. White thought, he seemed to be as cool and imperturbable as ever, but when I fully realized that the fleet was not there, and drew from that fact the inevitable conclusion that the city had been captured, I was ready to anathematize the British West Indies, Port Antonio, the Hercules, and the cruel ill luck which had taken me a hundred miles away at the decisive moment of the Santiago campaign.

As the sun rose over the level plain of the Caribbean, and the swift ocean-going tug bore us nearer and nearer to the dark line of the still distant coast, the captain, who had been sweeping the base of the rampart with a long marine telescope, suddenly shouted: “Aha! I think I can see the Brooklyn, boys. It may be all right yet.” I looked eagerly toward the position that Commodore Schley’s flagship usually occupied on the western side of the harbor entrance, but could see nothing that even suggested the Brooklyn’s familiar outline. If there were any vessels of the blockading fleet between us and the land, they certainly were off their stations and very close in under the shadow of the land. But the captain’s eyesight was better than mine. In five minutes more he announced that he could see the Brooklyn, the New York, and the Iowa. “They’re all there,” he added after another look, “but some of them seem to be away out of position. The New York is off Aguadores, and the Brooklyn is half-way down to Aserraderos.”

In fifteen minutes more it became apparent to us all that the height of the rampart and the mountains back of it, together with the crystalline clearness of the atmosphere, had led us to underestimate the distance, and that, when we first took alarm at the apparent absence of the blockading fleet, the war-ships were at least fifteen miles away, although the coast did not seem to be five. At such a distance the dull gray hulls of the vessels could hardly be seen, even if they were not below our horizon. With much lighter hearts, but with a feeling, nevertheless, that something of importance had occurred or was about to occur, we ran down alongside the Iowa, hailed her through a megaphone, and asked if there was any news. “It’s reported that they are fighting over there,” replied the officer of the deck, waving his hand toward Santiago, “but we haven’t any particulars.” There was no smoke rising above the rampart in the direction of the city, we could hear no sound of cannonading, and I was more than half inclined to believe that the report of fighting at the front was premature; but whether this were so or not, the Iowa, the Texas, the New York, and all the warships near us were cleared for action; their officers seemed to be eagerly awaiting orders; Admiral Sampson’s flagship was exchanging wigwag flag-signals with a man on the beach beyond the mouth of the Aguadores ravine, and it was perfectly evident that something was expected to happen. Under such circumstances, the thing for us to do was to get back, as speedily as possible, to Siboney. Turning in a great circle around the Iowa, we steamed swiftly eastward along the coast, passing the New York, the Suwanee, and the Gloucester, which were lying, cleared for action, close under the walls of the Aguadores fort; exchanging greetings with the New York “Sun’s” graceful despatch-boat Kanapaha, which came hurrying westward as if bound for some important field of expected activity; and finally rounding to alongside the State of Texas in the Siboney cove.

There was nothing in the appearance of the village to indicate that a battle was in progress, or even in anticipation. Boats were going to and fro between the transports and the pier as usual; there was the usual crowd of Cuban ragamuffins and tatterdemalions on the beach, with a sprinkling of soldiers in the streets; everything seemed to be quiet on board the State of Texas, and I said to Mr. White, as I bade him good-by, that I did not believe we had missed anything after all.

We soon had evidence, however, that there was an engagement in progress off the coast, if not at the front. Between nine and ten o’clock in the morning heavy cannonading could be heard in the direction of Morro Castle, and great clouds of white smoke began to rise over a projecting point of the rampart which hid, from our point of view, the mouth of the Aguadores ravine. Anxious to see what was going on, I persuaded Miss Barton to let the State of Texas run out of the cove and take some position from which we might witness the bombardment. Getting under way at once, we steamed out four or five miles in a west-southwest direction to a point about three miles off Aguadores, from which we could see the whole line of the coast. A column of infantry the Thirty-third Michigan, I think, under command of General Duffield had moved westward along the railroad under the rampart to the mouth of the Aguadores ravine, and was apparently engaged in attacking the enemy’s position there under cover of Admiral Sampson’s guns. We could not clearly follow the movements of the troops, for the reason that they were hidden, or partially hidden, by the bushes and trees, but we could see every movement made and every shot fired by the war-ships. The Gloucester, on the western side of the notch, was knocking to pieces the old stone fort half-way up the hill; the New York, from a position directly in front of the railroad-bridge, was enfilading the ravine with four-and eight-inch shells; while the Suwanee, completely hidden most of the time in a great cloud of smoke, was close in to the mouth of the river, sweeping the whole adjacent region with a storm of projectiles from her rapid-fire and machine guns. I do not know whether the old Aguadores fort had any armament or not. Its sea face had been reduced to a heap of crumbled masonry before we reached the scene of action, and I did not afterward see a shot fired from it, nor a single soldier in or about it. Its offensive power if it ever had any was so completely destroyed, that I momentarily expected General Duffield’s troops to ford the river above the railroad-bridge and take undisputed possession of it. But the Michigan men were apparently prevented from doing so by the fire from some rifle-pits up the ravine, which the guns of the war-ships could not, or did not, wholly silence. We were not in a position, perhaps, to form a trustworthy judgment with regard to the strength of the Spaniards’ defense; but it seemed to me that if the attack had been vigorously made and persistently followed up, the enemy might have been driven from the ravine. Admiral Sampson, in his report of the engagement, says that the Spaniards had no artillery except one small field-piece, which they fired only four or five times, and that not more than fifteen or twenty of them could be seen, at any time, in or about the rifle-pits. General Duffield, on the other hand, reports that they numbered five hundred, and that their artillery shelled the railroad track and the woods where his troops were until 3 P.M. about five hours. That their fire was not very destructive sufficiently appears from the fact that, in half a day of more or less continuous skirmishing, General Duffield lost only two men killed and six wounded.

Between three and four o’clock in the afternoon the Michigan troops returned by rail to Siboney; the war-ships withdrew to their blockading stations; and the field, as well as the honors, remained in possession of the Spaniards. After the engagement the State of Texas ran close in to the shore, and we saw perhaps a dozen Spanish soldiers standing or walking on the hillside west of the ravine. There may have been more of them in the concealment of the woods; but my impression is that their force was very small, and that General Duffield, with the aid and support of the war-ships, should have been able to clear the ravine and take possession not only of the abandoned fort but of the commanding heights above it.

When we got back to Siboney, late in the afternoon, the village was full of rumors of heavy fighting in front of Santiago; and, an hour or two after dark, wounded men, some on foot and some in army wagons, began to arrive at the Siboney hospital from the distant field of battle. As they had all been disabled and sent to the rear in the early part of the day, they could give us no information with regard to the result of the engagement. Many of them had been wounded before they had seen a Spanish intrenchment, or even a Spanish soldier; and all they knew about the fight was that the army had moved forward at daybreak and they themselves had been shot in the woods by an enemy whom they could neither locate nor see.

The Siboney hospital, thanks to the devotion and unwearied energy of Major Lagarde and his assistants, was by this time in fairly good working order. There was a lack of blankets, pillows, and tentage, and the operating facilities, perhaps, were not as ample as they might have been; but in view of the extraordinary difficulties with which the surgeons had had to contend, the results were highly creditable to them, even if not wholly satisfactory to an observer. As fast as the wounded arrived, they walked, or were carried on stretchers, to two or three large tents, pitched end to end and opening into one another, where hospital stewards and nurses placed them on the tables, and the surgeons, some of them stripped naked to the waist, examined their injuries by candle-light, and performed such operations as were necessary to give them relief. They were then taken or led away, and, as far as possible, furnished with blankets and shelter; but as the supply of blankets was very short, and all the available houses and tents were soon filled, the wounded who came in after midnight were laid in a row on the ground and covered with a long strip of canvas. Fortunately, the night was clear, still, and warm, and a nearly full moon made it almost as light as day, so that it was not so cheerless and uncomfortable to lie out on the ground without a blanket as it would have been if the night had been dark and cold, or rainy; but it was bad enough.

Most of our Red Cross surgeons and nurses were assisting in the operating-tents, and I remained on shore until after three o’clock in the morning. There was little that I could do beyond looking up the wounded, who frequently came into the village on foot, after a painful march of ten or twelve miles, and were so weak, hungry, and exhausted that, instead of coming to the hospital, they lay down anywhere in the street or under the wall of a house. Some of these men I found, with the assistance of a friendly and sympathetic Cuban, and had them carried on litters to the operating-tents. All of the wounded who came back from the front that night ought to have had hot tea or coffee, and some such easily digested food as malted milk, as most of them had eaten nothing since the early morning and were worn out with pain and fatigue. But of course no provision had been made for supplying them even with hard bread and water, and when taken from the operating-tables they were simply laid on the ground, to get through the night as best they could without nourishment or drink. We all understand, of course, that, in the oft-quoted words of General Sherman, “war is hell”; but it might be made a little less hellish by adequate preparation for the reception and care of the wounded.

I went off to the State of Texas between three and four o’clock, and threw myself into my berth just as day was beginning to break over the hills east of the cove.