THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN (Continued)
When, on June 14, General Shafter’s
army sailed for the southeastern coast of Cuba, without
adequate facilities for disembarkation, and without
a sufficient number of mules, packers, teamsters, and
army wagons to insure its proper equipment, subsistence,
and maintenance in the field, it was, ipso facto,
predestined to serious embarrassment and difficulty,
if not to great suffering and peril. No amount
of zeal, energy, and ability on the part of quartermasters
and commissaries, after the army had reached its destination,
could possibly make up for deficiencies that should
have had attention before the army sailed. Boats,
mules, and wagons were not to be had at Siboney, and
when the urgent need of them became apparent it was
too late to procure them from the United States.
General Shafter cabled the War Department for lighters
and steam-tugs almost as soon as he reached the Cuban
coast, and General Miles telegraphed for more draft-animals
before he had been in Siboney twenty-four hours; but
neither the boats nor the mules came in time to be
of any avail. Cuban fever waits for no man, and
before the boats that should have landed more supplies
and the mules that should have carried them to the
front reached Siboney, seventy-five per cent. of General
Shafter’s command had been prostrated by disease,
due, as he himself admits, to insufficient food, “without
change of clothes, and without any shelter whatever."
But the lack of adequate land and
water transportation was not the only deficiency in
the equipment of the Fifth Army-Corps when it sailed
from Tampa. It was also ill provided with medical
stores and the facilities and appliances needed in
caring for sick and wounded soldiers. Dr. Nicholas
Senn, chief of the operating staff of the army, says
that “ambulances in great number had been sent
to Tampa, but they were not unloaded and sent to the
front.” I myself passed a whole train-load
of ambulances near Tampa in May, but I never saw more
than three in use at the front, and, according to
the official report of Dr. Guy C. Godfrey, commanding
officer of the hospital-corps company of the First
Division, Fifth Army-Corps, “the number of ambulances
for the entire army was limited to three, and it was
impossible to expect them to convey the total number
of wounded from the collecting-stations to the First
Division hospital."
Lieutenant-Colonel Jacobs of the quartermaster’s
department, who was assistant to General Humphreys
in Cuba, testified before the Investigating Commission
on November 16 that he had fifty ambulances at Tampa,
and that he was about to load them on one of the transports
when General Shafter appeared and ordered them left
behind.
The surgeon-general declared, in a
letter to the “Medical Record,” dated
August 6, that “General Shafter’s army
at Tampa was thoroughly well supplied with the necessary
medicines, dressings, etc., for field-service;
but, owing to insufficient transportation, he left
behind at Tampa his reserve medical supplies and ambulance
corps.”
General Shafter himself admits that
he had not enough medical supplies, but seems to assert,
by implication, that he was not to blame for the deficiency.
In a telegram to Adjutant-General Corbin, dated “Santiago,
August 3,” he said: “From the day
this expedition left Tampa until to-day there has
never been sufficient medical attendance or medicines
for the daily wants of the command, and three times
within that time the command has been almost totally
out of medicines. I say this on the word of the
medical directors, who have in each instance reported
the matter to me, the last time yesterday, when the
proposition was made to me to take medicines away
from the Spanish hospital.... The surgeons have
worked as well as any men that ever lived, and their
complaint has been universal of lack of means and
facilities. I do not complain of this, for no
one could have foreseen all that would be required;
but I will not quietly submit to having the onus laid
on me for the lack of these hospital facilities.”
The state of affairs disclosed by
these official reports and telegrams seems to me as
melancholy and humiliating as anything of the kind
ever recorded in the history of American wars.
Three ambulances for a whole corps of sixteen thousand
men; an army “almost totally out of medicines”
three times in seven weeks; and a proposition to make
up our own deficiencies by seizing and confiscating
the medical supplies of a Spanish hospital! I
do not wonder that General Shafter wishes to escape
responsibility for such a manifestation of negligence
or incompetence; but I do not see how he can be allowed
to do so. It is just as much the business of
a commanding general to know that he has medicines
and ambulances enough as it is to know that he has
food and ammunition enough. He is the man who
plans the campaign, and, to a certain extent, predetermines
the number of sick and wounded; he is the man who makes
requisition upon the War Department for transports,
mules, and wagons enough to carry the army and its
equipment to the field where it is to operate; and
he is the man who should consider all contingencies
and emergencies likely to arise as a result of climatic
or other local conditions, and who should see that
ample provision is made for them. General Shafter
says that “no one could have foreseen all that
would be required.” That is probably true;
but any one, it seems to me, could have foreseen that
an army of sixteen thousand men, which was expected
to attack intrenched positions, would need more than
three ambulances for the transportation of the wounded,
to say nothing of the sick. The same remark applies
to medicines and medical supplies. Every one knew
that our army was going to a very unhealthful region,
and it was not difficult to foresee that it would
require perhaps two or three times the quantity of
medical supplies that would be needed in a temperate
climate and a more healthful environment. The
very reason assigned for General Shafter’s hurried
advance toward Santiago is that he knew his army would
soon be disabled by disease, and wished to strike a
decisive blow while his men were still able to fight.
If he anticipated the wrecking of his army by sickness
that could not be averted nor long delayed, why did
he not make sure, before he left Tampa, that he had
medical supplies and hospital facilities enough to
meet the inevitable emergency? His telegram to
Adjutant-General Corbin seems to indicate that he
was not only unprepared for an emergency, but unprepared
to meet even the ordinary demands of an army in the
field, inasmuch as he declares, without limitation
or qualification, that from June 14 to August 3 he
never had medicines enough for the daily wants of his
command.
It may be thought that the view here
taken of the responsibility of the commanding general
for everything that pertains to the well-being and
the fighting efficiency of his command is too extreme
and exacting, and that he ought not to be held personally
accountable for the mistakes or the incompetence of
his staff-officers. Waiving a discussion of this
question on its merits, it need only be said that,
inasmuch as General Shafter has officially recommended
all of his staff-officers for promotion on account
of “faithful and meritorious services throughout
the campaign,” he is estopped from saying now
that they did not do their duty, or that they made
errors of judgment so serious as to imperil the lives
of men, if not the success of the expedition.
The responsibility for the lack of medical supplies
and hospital facilities, therefore, as well as the
responsibility for the lack of boats, mules, and wagons,
must rest either upon the War Department or upon the
general in command. If the latter made timely
requisition for them, and for transports enough to
carry them to the Cuban coast, and failed to obtain
either or both, the War Department must be held accountable;
while, on the other hand, if General Shafter did not
ask for medical supplies enough to meet the probable
wants of his army in a tropical climate and an unhealthful
environment, he must shoulder the responsibility for
his own negligence or want of foresight.
I shall now try to show how this lack
of boats, mules, wagons, and medical supplies affected
General Shafter’s command in the field.
II. The landing at Daiquiri and Siboney.
The points selected for the disembarkation
of the army and the landing of supplies were the best,
perhaps, that could be found between Santiago harbor
and Guantanamo Bay; but they were little more, nevertheless,
than shallow notches in the coast-line, which afforded
neither anchorage nor shelter from the prevailing
wind. There was one small pier erected by the
Spanish-American Iron Company at Daiquiri, but at Siboney
there were no landing facilities whatever, and the
strip of beach at the bottom of the wedge-shaped notch
in the precipitous wall of the coast was hardly more
than one hundred yards in length. The water deepened
so suddenly and abruptly at a distance of fifty yards
from the shore that there was practically no anchorage,
and General Shafter’s fleet of more than thirty
transports had to lie in what was virtually an open
roadstead and drift back and forth with the currents
and tides. The prevailing winds were from the
east and southeast, and the long swell which rolled
in from the Caribbean Sea broke in heavy and at times
dangerous surf upon the narrow strip of unsheltered
beach where the army had to land. All of these
local conditions were known, or might have been known,
to General Shafter before he left Tampa; but when
he arrived off the coast they seemed to take him wholly
by surprise. He had brought with him neither
surf-boats, nor steam-launches, nor suitable lighters,
nor materials with which to construct a pier.
How he ever would have disembarked his command without
the assistance of the navy, I do not know. I doubt
whether a landing could have been effected at all.
Fortunately, the navy was at hand, and its small boats
and steam-launches, manned by officers and sailors
from the fleet, landed the whole army through the surf
with the loss of only two men. The navy then
retired from the scene of action, and General Shafter
was left to his own devices and deplorably
weak and ineffective they proved to be.
The engineer corps found near the
railroad at Siboney a few sticks of heavy timber belonging
to the Iron Company, out of which they improvised
a small, narrow pier; but it was soon undermined and
knocked to pieces by the surf. The chief quartermaster
discovered on or near the beach three or four old
lighters, also belonging to the Iron Company, which
he used to supplement the service rendered by the
single scow attached to the expedition; but as he
put them in charge of soldiers, who had had no experience
in handling boats in broken water, they were soon stove
against the corners of the pier, or swamped in the
heavy surf that swept the beach. All that could
be done then was to land supplies as fast as possible
in the small rowboats of the transports. If General
Shafter had had competent and experienced officers
to put in command of these boats, and steam-launches
to tow them back and forth in strings or lines of
half a dozen each, and if he had made provision for
communication with the captains of the steamers by
means of wigwag flag-signals, so as to be able to
give them orders and control their movements, he might
have landed supplies in this way with some success.
But none of the difficulties of the situation had
been foreseen, and no arrangements had been made to
cope with them. The captains of the transports
put their vessels wherever they chose, and when a
steamer that lay four or five miles at sea was wanted
closer inshore, there was no means of sending orders
to her except by rowboat. The captains, as a rule,
did not put officers in charge of their boats, and
the sailors who manned them, having no competent direction,
acted upon their own judgment. Finally, boats
which could have made a round trip between the transports
and the shore in half an hour if towed by a steam-launch
often used up the greater part of two hours in toiling
back and forth through a heavy sea under oars.
It is not a matter for surprise that,
with such facilities and under such conditions, General
Shafter found it almost impossible to land even food
and ammunition enough to keep his army properly supplied.
In his official report of the campaign he says:
“It was not until nearly two weeks after the
army landed that it was possible to place on shore
three days’ supplies in excess of those required
for daily consumption.”
In addition to all the unnecessary
difficulties and embarrassments above described, there
was another, almost, if not quite, as serious, arising
from the manner in which the transports had been loaded
at Tampa. Stores were put into the steamers apparently
without any reference to the circumstances under which
they would be taken out, and without any regard to
the order in which they would be needed at the point
of destination. Medical supplies, for example,
instead of being put all together in a single transport,
were scattered among twenty or more vessels, so that
in order to get all of them it was necessary either
to bring twenty steamers close to shore, one after
another, and take a little out of each, or send rowboats
around to them all where they lay at distances ranging
from one mile to five. Articles of equipment that
would be required as soon as the army landed were often
buried in the holds of the vessels under hundreds of
tons of stuff that would not be needed in a week,
and the army went forward without them, simply because
they could not be quickly got at. Finally, I am
inclined to believe, from what I saw and heard of
the landing of supplies at Siboney, that there was
not such a thing as a bill of lading, manifest, or
cargo list in existence, and that the chief quartermaster
had no other guide to the location of a particular
article than that furnished by his own memory or the
memory of some first mate. I do not assert this
as a fact; I merely infer it from the difficulty that
there seemed to be in finding and getting ashore quickly
a particular kind of stores for which there happened
to be an immediate and urgent demand. After the
fight of the Rough Riders at Guasimas, for example,
General Wood found himself short of ammunition for
his Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns. He sent Lieutenant
Kilbourne back to General Shafter at Siboney with a
request that a fresh supply be forwarded at the earliest
possible moment. General Shafter said that he
had no idea where that particular kind of ammunition
was to be found, and referred the applicant to Quartermaster
Jacobs at Daiquiri. Lieutenant Kilbourne walked
seven miles to Daiquiri, only to find that the quartermaster
had no more idea where that ammunition was than the
commanding general had. He thereupon returned
to Guasimas, after a march of more than twenty miles,
and reported to General Wood that ammunition for the
rapid-fire guns could not be had, because nobody knew
where it was. If the commanding general and the
quartermaster could not put their hands on ammunition
when it was needed, they could hardly be expected
to find, and forward promptly, articles of less vital
importance, such as camp-kettles, hospital tents,
clothing, and spare blankets.
It would be easy to fill pages with
illustrations and proofs of the statements above made,
but I must limit myself to a typical case or two relating
to medical supplies, which seem to have been most neglected.
In a report to Surgeon-General Sternberg
dated July 29, Dr. Edward L. Munson, commander of
the reserve ambulance company, says that for two days
after his arrival at Siboney he was unable to get any
transportation whatever for medical supplies from the
ships to the shore. On the third day he was furnished
with one rowboat, but even this was taken away from
him, when it had made one trip, by direct order of
General Shafter, who wished to assign it to other duty.
Some days later, with the boats of the Olivette,
Cherokee, and Breakwater, he succeeded
in landing medical supplies from perhaps one third
of the transports composing the fleet. “I
appealed on several occasions,” he says, “for
the use of a lighter or small steamer to collect and
land medical supplies, but I was informed by the quartermaster’s
department that they could render no assistance in
that way.... At the time of my departure large
quantities of medical supplies, urgently needed on
shore, still remained on the transports, a number of
which were under orders to return to the United States.”
“In conclusion,” he adds, “it is
desired to emphasize the fact that the lamentable conditions
prevailing in the army before Santiago were due (1)
to the military necessity which threw troops on shore
and away from the possibility of supply, without medicines,
instruments, or hospital stores of any kind; and (2)
to the lack of foresight on the part of the quartermaster’s
department in sending out such an expedition without
fully anticipating its needs as regards temporary
wharfage, lighters, tugs, and despatch-boats.”
Dr. Frank Donaldson, assistant surgeon
attached to Colonel Roosevelt’s Rough Riders,
states in a letter to the Philadelphia “Medical
Journal,” dated July 12, that “a desperate
effort” was made to secure a few cots for the
sick and wounded in the field-hospitals at the front.
There were hundreds of these cots, he says, on one
of the transports off Siboney, but it proved to be
utterly impossible to get any of them landed.
Whether they were all carried back to the United States
or not I do not know; but large quantities of supplies,
intended for General Shafter’s army, were
carried back on the transports Alamo, Breakwater,
Vigilancia, and La Grande Duchesse.
I do not mean to throw any undeserved
blame upon the quartermasters and commissaries at
Siboney. Many of them worked day and night with
indefatigable energy to get supplies on shore and forward
them to the army; but they were hampered by conditions
over which they had no control, and for which, perhaps,
they were not in any way responsible; they were often
unable to obtain the assistance of steamer captains
and other officers upon whose cooeperation the success
of their own efforts depended, and they probably did
all that could be done by individuals acting as separate
units rather than as correlated parts of an organized
and intelligently directed whole. The trouble
at Siboney was the same trouble that became apparent
at Tampa. There was at the head of affairs no
controlling, directing, and energizing brain, capable
of grasping all the details of a complex situation
and making all the parts of a complicated mechanism
work harmoniously together for the accomplishment
of a definite purpose.
III. The strategic plan of campaign and its execution.
As this branch of the subject will
be discussed if it has not already been
discussed by better-equipped critics than
I can pretend to be, I shall limit myself to a brief
review of the campaign in its strategic aspect as
it appears from the standpoint of a civilian.
I understand, from officers who were
in a position to know the facts, that the original
plan of attack on the city of Santiago provided for
close and effective cooeperation of the army with the
navy, and for a joint assault by way of Aguadores
and Morro Castle. General Shafter was to move
along the line of the railroad from Siboney to Aguadores,
keeping close to the coast under cover of the guns
of the fleet, and, with the assistance of the latter,
was to capture the old Aguadores fort and such other
intrenchments as should be found at the mouth of the
Aguadores ravine. This, it was thought, might
be accomplished with very little loss, because the
fleet could shell the Spaniards out of their fortifications,
and thus make it possible for the army to occupy them
without much fighting. Having taken Aguadores,
General Shafter was to continue his march westward
along the coast, still under the protection of Admiral
Sampson’s guns, until he reached Morro.
Then, without attempting to storm or reduce the castle,
he was to go down through the ravine that leads to
the head of the Estrella cove, and seize the submarine-mine
station at the mouth of Santiago harbor. When
electrical connection between the station and the
mines had been destroyed, and the mines had thus been
rendered harmless, Admiral Sampson was to force an
entrance, fighting his way in past the batteries, and
the army and fleet were then to advance northward
toward the city along the eastern side of the bay.
This plan had many obvious advantages,
the most important of which was the aid and protection
that would be given to the army, at every stage of
its progress, by the guns of perhaps thirty or forty
ships of war. In the opinion of naval officers,
Admiral Sampson’s cruisers and battle-ships
could sweep the country ahead of our advance with such
a storm of shot and shell that the Spaniards would
not be able to hold any position within a mile of
the coast. All that the army would have to do,
therefore, would be to occupy the country as fast as
it was cleared by the fire of the fleet, and then
open the harbor to the latter by cutting communication
with the submarine mines which were the only effective
defense that the city had on the water side. General
Shafter’s army, moreover, would be all the time
on high, sea-breeze-swept land, and therefore comparatively
safe from malarial fever, and it would not only have
a railroad behind it for the transportation of its
supplies, but be constantly within easy reach of its
base by water.
Why this plan was eventually given
up I do not know. In abandoning it General Shafter
voluntarily deprived himself of the aid that might
have been rendered by three or four hundred high-powered
and rapid-fire guns, backed by a trained fighting
force of six or eight thousand men. I do not
know the exact strength of Sampson’s and Schley’s
combined fleets, but this seems to me to be a conservative
estimate. A prominent officer of the battle-ship
Iowa told me in Santiago, after the surrender,
that the fighting ships under Admiral Sampson’s
command, including the auxiliary cruisers and mosquito
fleet, could concentrate on any given field a fire
of about one hundred shells a second. This included,
of course, small projectiles from the rapid-fire and
one-pound machine guns. He did not think it possible
for Spanish infantry to live, much less fight, in
the field swept by such a fire, and this was his reason
for believing that the fleet could have cleared the
way for the army if the latter had advanced along
the coast instead of going back into the interior.
The plan of attack by way of Aguadores and Morro was
regarded by the foreign residents of Santiago as the
one most likely to succeed; and a gentleman who lived
eight years at Daiquiri, as manager of the Spanish-American
Iron Company, and who is familiar with the topography
of the whole region, writes me: “I have
always thought that the great mistake of the Santiago
campaign was that they assaulted the city at its most
impregnable point, instead of taking possession of
the heights at Aguadores, which would have been tantamount
to the fall of Morro, the possession of the harbor
entrance and of the harbor itself. The forces
of the Spaniards were not sufficient to maintain any
considerable number of men there, and it seems to
me that, with the help of the fleet shelling the heights,
they could have been reached very easily along the
Juragua Railroad. If General Duffield had pressed
on when he was there, it is probable that he would
have met with only a thin skirmish-line, or, if the
fleet had done its work, with no resistance at all.”
The reason assigned for General Shafter’s
advance through the valleys and over the foot-hills
of the interior, instead of along the high land of
the coast, is that he had been ordered to “capture
the garrison at Santiago and assist in capturing the
harbor and the fleet.” He did not believe,
it is said, that he could “capture the garrison”
without completely investing the city on the east
and north. If he attacked it from the southern
or Morro side, he might take the city, but the garrison
would escape by the Cobre or the San Luis road.
This seems like a valid and reasonable objection to
the original plan of campaign; but I doubt very much
whether the Spanish army would have tried to escape
in any event, for the reason that the surrounding
country was almost wholly destitute of food, and General
Linares, in the hurry and confusion of defeat, would
hardly have been able to organize a provision-train
for an army of eight or ten thousand men, even if
he had had provisions to carry. The only place
where he could hope to find food in any quantity was
Manzanillo, and to reach that port he would have had
to make a forced march of from twelve to fifteen days.
But the question whether the interior line of advance
or the coastline was the better must be left to strategists,
and I express no opinion with regard to it.
The operations and manoeuvers of our
army in front of Santiago have already been described
and commented upon by a number of expert observers,
and the only additional criticisms that I have to make
relate to General Shafter’s neglect of reconnaissances,
as a means of ascertaining the enemy’s strength
and position; his apparent loss of grip after the
battle of July 1-2; and his failure not only to prevent,
but to take any adequate steps to prevent, the reinforcement
of the Santiago garrison by a column of five thousand
regulars from Manzanillo under command of Colonel
Escarrio. If I am correctly informed, the
only reconnaissances made from the front of our
army, after it came within striking distance of the
enemy’s intrenched line, were made by General
Chaffee and a few other commanding officers upon their
own responsibility and for their own information.
General Shafter knew little more about the topography
of the country in front of his advance picket-line
than could be ascertained by mere inspection from the
top of a hill. He received information to the
effect that General Pando, with a strong column of
Spanish regulars, was approaching Santiago from the
direction of Manzanillo; but he never took any adequate
steps to ascertain where General Pando was, when and
by what road he might be expected to arrive, or how
many men he was bringing with him. In the course
of a single day July 3 General
Shafter sent three telegrams to the War Department
with regard to the whereabouts of Pando, in each of
which he located that officer in a different place.
In the first he says: “Pando has arrived
at Palma” (a village about twenty-five miles
northwest of Santiago on the Cobre road). In the
second he declares that Pando is “six miles
north of Santiago,” “near a break in the
[San Luis] railroad,” and that he thinks “he
will be stopped.” In the third he says:
“Pando, I find to-night, is some distance away
and will not get into Santiago.”
We know now and General
Shafter should have known then that the
column of reinforcements from Manzanillo was not led
by General Pando, but by Colonel Escarrio, and
that at the very time when Shafter, in successive
telegrams, was placing it “at Palma,” “six
miles north,” “near a break in the railroad,”
and “some distance away,” it was actually
in the Santiago intrenchments, ready for business.
I take this case as an illustration
on account of its extreme importance. A column
of five thousand Spanish regulars is not to be despised;
and when it is within a few days’, or perhaps
a few hours’, march, knowledge of its exact
location may be a matter of life and death to a thousand
men. Was there any reason why General Shafter
should not have informed himself accurately with regard
to the strength and the position of this column of
reinforcements? I think not. When Admiral
Sampson arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor,
it was of vital importance that he should know with
certainty the location of Cervera’s fleet.
He did not hastily telegraph the War Department that
it was reported at Cienfuegos; that it was said to
be in the Windward Passage; that it was five miles
north of Morro, or that it was near a reef in the
Este Channel and would be stopped. He sent Lieutenant
Victor Blue ashore to make a thorough and careful
reconnaissance. Lieutenant Blue made a difficult
and dangerous journey of seventy miles, on foot, around
the city of Santiago, saw personally every vessel in
the harbor, and then returned to the flagship, and
reported that Cervera’s fleet was all there.
I do not know whether this was good strategy on the
part of Admiral Sampson or not, but it was certainly
good common sense. Suppose that General Shafter
had asked General Wood to pick out from the Rough
Riders half a dozen experienced scouts and Indian fighters
to make a reconnaissance, with Cuban guides, in the
direction of Manzanillo, and ascertain exactly where
that column of reinforcements was, and when it might
be expected to arrive. Would not the men have
been forthcoming, and would not the desired information
have been obtained? I have confidence enough
in the Rough Riders to answer this question emphatically
in the affirmative. The capable men are not all
in the navy, and if General Shafter did not have full
information with regard to Colonel Escarrio’s
movements, it was simply because he did not ask any
of his officers or men to get it for him and
it was information well worth having. If that
column of five thousand Spanish regulars had reached
Santiago two days earlier the evening before
instead of the morning after the battle of July 1-2 I
doubt very much whether we should have taken either
Caney or San Juan Hill, and General Shafter might
have had better reason than he did have to “consider
the advisability of falling back to a position five
miles in the rear."
If General Shafter believed that these
Spanish reinforcements were “some distance away”
and that they would “not get into Santiago,”
it is difficult to understand why he should have so
far lost his grip, after the capture of Caney and
San Juan Hill, as to telegraph the War Department
that he was “seriously considering the advisability
of falling back to a position five miles in the rear.”
His troops had not been defeated, nor even repulsed;
they had been victorious at every point; and the Spaniards,
as we afterward learned in Santiago, were momentarily
expecting them to move another mile to the front, rather
than five miles to the rear. It is the belief
of many foreign residents of Santiago, including the
English cable-operators, who had the best possible
means of knowing the views of the Spanish commanders,
that if our army had continued the attack after capturing
Caney and San Juan Hill it might have entered the
city before dark. This may or may not be so;
but the chance if chance there was vanished
when Colonel Escarrio, on the morning after the
battle, marched around the head of the bay and into
the city with a reinforcing column of five thousand
regulars. General Shafter says, in his official
report, that “the arrival of General Escarrio
was not anticipated” because “it was not
believed that his troops could arrive so soon.”
The time when a reinforcing column of five thousand
men will reach the enemy ought not to be a matter of
vague belief it should be a matter of accurate
foreknowledge; and if General Shafter had sent a couple
of officers with a few Rough Riders out on the roads
leading into Santiago from Manzanillo, he might have
had information that would have made the arrival of
Colonel Escarrio less unexpected. But he
seems to have taken no steps either to ascertain the
movements of the latter or to prevent his junction
with Linares.
General O. O. Howard, in an interview
published in the New York “Tribune” of
September 14, 1898, explains the apparent indifference
of General Shafter to the approach of these reinforcements
as follows: “In regard to the Cubans allowing
the Spanish reinforcements to enter Santiago from
Manzanillo, I would say that I met General Shafter
on board the Vixen, and from my conversation
with him I infer that he intended to allow the Spaniards
to enter the city, so as to have them where he could
punish them more.”
It is to be hoped that General Howard
misunderstood General Shafter, because such strategy
as that indicated would suggest the tactics of the
pugnacious John Phoenix, who, in a fight in the editorial
room, put his nose into the mouth of his adversary
in order to hold the latter more securely.
The explanation of the entrance of
the Spanish reinforcements given by General Shafter
in his official report of the campaign is as follows:
“General Garcia, with between four and five thousand
Cubans, was intrusted with the duty of watching for
and intercepting the reinforcements expected.
This, however, he failed to do, and Escarrio
passed into the city along my extreme right and near
the bay.”
General Garcia himself, however, in
his report to his own government, states that he was
directed by General Shafter to occupy and hold a certain
position on the right wing of the army, and that, without
disobeying orders and leaving that position, he could
not possibly intercept the Manzanillo troops.
As it happened, Escarrio’s column
did not become a controlling or decisive factor in
the campaign, and the question why he was allowed to
reinforce the Santiago garrison has therefore only
a speculative interest. If, however, these reinforcements
had happened to arrive two days earlier in
time to take part in the battle of July 1-2 the
whole course of events might have been changed.
The Spanish garrison of the city, according to the
English cable-operators and the foreign residents,
consisted of three thousand regulars, one thousand
volunteers, and about one thousand sailors and marines
from Cervera’s fleet a force, all
together, of not more than five thousand men.
This comparatively small army, fighting in intrenchments
and in almost impregnable positions, came so near
repulsing our attack on July 1 that General Shafter
“seriously considered the advisability of falling
back to a position five miles in the rear.”
If the five thousand men in the Spanish blockhouses
and rifle-pits had been reinforced July 1 instead of
July 3 by the five thousand regulars from Manzanillo,
the Santiago campaign might have ended in a great
disaster. Fortunately for General Shafter, and
unfortunately for General Toral, “Socorro
de Espana o tarde o nunca” ("Spanish
reinforcements arrive late or never “).