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RICHARD HARDING DAVIS:
The Battle of San Juan Hill
After the Guasimas fight on June 24, the army was advanced along the
single trail which leads from Siboney on the coast to Santiago. Two
streams of excellent water run parallel with this trail for short
distances, and some eight miles from the coast crossed it in two
places. Our outposts were stationed at the first of these fords, the
Cuban outposts a mile and a half farther on at the ford nearer
Santiago, where the stream made a sharp turn at a place called El
Poso. Another mile and a half of trail extended from El Poso to the
trenches of San Juan. The reader should remember El Poso, as it
marked an important starting-point against San Juan on the eventful
first of July.
For six days the army was encamped on either side of the trail for
three miles back from the outposts. The regimental camps touched
each other, and all day long the pack-trains carrying the day's
rations passed up and down between them. The trail was a sunken
wagon road, where it was possible, in a few places, for two wagons to
pass at one time, but the greater distances were so narrow that there
was but just room for a wagon, or a loaded mule-train, to make its
way. The banks of the trail were three or four feet high, and when
it rained it was converted into a huge gutter, with sides of mud, and
with a liquid mud a foot deep between them. The camps were pitched
along the trail as near the parallel stream as possible, and in the
occasional places where there was rich, high grass. At night the men
slept in dog tents, open at the front and back, and during the day
spent their time under the shade of trees along the trail, or on the
banks of the stream. Sentries were placed at every few feet along
these streams to guard them from any possible pollution. For six
days the army rested in this way, for as an army moves and acts only
on its belly, and as the belly of this army was three miles long, it
could advance but slowly.
This week of rest, after the cramped life of the troop-ship, was not
ungrateful, although the rations were scarce and there was no
tobacco, which was as necessary to the health of the men as their
food.
During this week of waiting, the chief excitement was to walk out a
mile and a half beyond the outposts to the hill of El Poso, and look
across the basin that lay in the great valley which leads to
Santiago. The left of the valley was the hills which hide the sea.
The right of the valley was the hills in which nestle the village of
El Caney. Below El Poso, in the basin, the dense green forest
stretched a mile and a half to the hills of San Juan. These hills
looked so quiet and sunny and well kept that they reminded one of a
New England orchard. There was a blue bungalow on a hill to the
right, a red bungalow higher up on the right, and in the centre the
block-house of San Juan, which looked like a Chinese pagoda. Three-
quarters of a mile behind them, with a dip between, were the long
white walls of the hospital and barracks of Santiago, wearing
thirteen Red Cross flags, and, as was pointed out to the foreign
attaches later, two six-inch guns a hundred yards in advance of the
Red Cross flags.
It was so quiet, so fair, and so prosperous looking that it breathed
of peace. It seemed as though one might, without accident, walk in
and take dinner at the Venus Restaurant, or loll on the benches in
the Plaza, or rock in one of the great bent-wood chairs around the
patio of the Don Carlos Club.
But, on the 27th of June, a long, yellow pit opened in the hill-side
of San Juan, and in it we could see straw sombreros rising and
bobbing up and down, and under the shade of the blockhouse, blue-
coated Spaniards strolling leisurely about or riding forth on little
white ponies to scamper over the hills. Officers of every regiment,
attaches of foreign countries, correspondents, and staff officers
daily reported the fact that the rifle-pits were growing in length
and in number, and that in plain sight from the hill of El Poso the
enemy was intrenching himself at San Juan, and at the little village
of El Caney to the right, where he was marching through the streets.
But no artillery was sent to El Poso hill to drop a shell among the
busy men at work among the trenches, or to interrupt the street
parades in El Caney. For four days before the American soldiers
captured the same rifle-pits at El Caney and San Juan, with a loss of
two thousand men, they watched these men diligently preparing for
their coming, and wondered why there was no order to embarrass or to
end these preparations.
On the afternoon of June 30, Captain Mills rode up to the tent of
Colonel Wood, and told him that on account of illness, General
Wheeler and General Young had relinquished their commands, and that
General Sumner would take charge of the Cavalry Division; that he,
Colonel Wood, would take command of General Young's brigade, and
Colonel Carroll, of General Sumner's brigade.
"You will break camp and move forward at four o'clock," he said. It
was then three o'clock, and apparently the order to move forward at
four had been given to each regiment at nearly the same time, for
they all struck their tents and stepped down into the trail together.
It was as though fifteen regiments were encamped along the sidewalks
of Fifth Avenue and were all ordered at the same moment to move into
it and march downtown. If Fifth Avenue were ten feet wide, one can
imagine the confusion.
General Chaffee was at General Lawton's head-quarters, and they stood
apart whispering together about the march they were to take to El
Caney. Just over their heads the balloon was ascending for the first
time and its great glistening bulk hung just above the tree tops, and
the men in different regiments, picking their way along the trail,
gazed up at it open-mouthed. The head-quarters camp was crowded.
After a week of inaction the army, at a moment's notice, was moving
forward, and every one had ridden in haste to learn why.
There were attaches, in strange uniforms, self-important Cuban
generals, officers from the flagship New York, and an army of
photographers. At the side of the camp, double lines of soldiers
passed slowly along the two paths of the muddy road, while, between
them, aides dashed up and down, splashing them with dirty water, and
shouting, "You will come up at once, sir." "You will not attempt to
enter the trail yet, sir." "General Sumner's compliments, and why
are you not in your place?"
Twelve thousand men, with their eyes fixed on a balloon, and treading
on each other's heels in three inches of mud, move slowly, and after
three hours, it seemed as though every man in the United States was
under arms and stumbling and slipping down that trail. The lines
passed until the moon rose. They seemed endless, interminable; there
were cavalry mounted and dismounted, artillery with cracking whips
and cursing drivers, Rough Riders in brown, and regulars, both black
and white, in blue. Midnight came, and they were still stumbling and
slipping forward.
General Sumner's head-quarters tent was pitched to the right of El
Poso hill. Below us lay the basin a mile and a half in length, and a
mile and a half wide, from which a white mist was rising. Near us,
drowned under the mist, seven thousand men were sleeping, and,
farther to the right, General Chaffee's five thousand were lying
under the bushes along the trails to El Caney, waiting to march on it
and eat it up before breakfast.
The place hardly needs a map to explain it. The trails were like a
pitchfork, with its prongs touching the hills of San Juan. The long
handle of the pitchfork was the trail over which we had just come,
the joining of the handle and the prongs were El Poso. El Caney lay
half-way along the right prong, the left one was the trail down
which, in the morning, the troops were to be hurled upon San Juan.
It was as yet an utterly undiscovered country. Three miles away,
across the basin of mist, we could see the street lamps of Santiago
shining over the San Juan hills. Above us, the tropical moon hung
white and clear in the dark purple sky, pierced with millions of
white stars. As we turned in, there was just a little something in
the air which made saying "good-night" a gentle farce, for no one
went to sleep immediately, but lay looking up at the stars, and after
a long silence, and much restless turning on the blanket which we
shared together, the second lieutenant said: "So, if anything
happens to me, to-morrow, you'll see she gets them, won't you?"
Before the moon rose again, every sixth man who had slept in the mist
that night was either killed or wounded; but the second lieutenant
was sitting on the edge of a Spanish rifle-pit, dirty, sweaty, and
weak for food, but victorious, and the unknown she did not get them.
El Caney had not yet thrown off her blanket of mist before Capron's
battery opened on it from a ridge two miles in the rear. The plan
for the day was that El Caney should fall in an hour. The plan for
the day is interesting chiefly because it is so different from what
happened. According to the plan the army was to advance in two
divisions along the two trails. Incidentally, General Lawton's
division was to pick up El Caney, and when El Caney was eliminated,
his division was to continue forward and join hands on the right with
the divisions of General Sumner and General Kent. The army was then
to rest for that night in the woods, half a mile from San Juan.
On the following morning it was to attack San Juan on the two flanks,
under cover of artillery. The objection to this plan, which did not
apparently suggest itself to General Shafter, was that an army of
twelve thousand men, sleeping within five hundred yards of the
enemy's rifle-pits, might not unreasonably be expected to pass a bad
night. As we discovered the next day, not only the five hundred
yards, but the whole basin was covered by the fire from the rifle-
pits. Even by daylight, when it was possible to seek some slight
shelter, the army could not remain in the woods, but according to the
plan it was expected to bivouac for the night in those woods, and in
the morning to manoeuvre and deploy and march through them to the two
flanks of San Juan. How the enemy was to be hypnotized while this
was going forward it is difficult to understand.
According to this programme, Capron's battery opened on El Caney and
Grimes's battery opened on the pagoda-like block-house of San Juan.
The range from El Poso was exactly 2,400 yards, and the firing, as
was discovered later, was not very effective. The battery used black
powder, and, as a result, after each explosion the curtain of smoke
hung over the gun for fully a minute before the gunners could see the
San Juan trenches, which was chiefly important because for a full
minute it gave a mark to the enemy. The hill on which the battery
stood was like a sugar-loaf. Behind it was the farm-house of El
Poso, the only building in sight within a radius of a mile, and in it
were Cuban soldiers and other non-combatants. The Rough Riders had
been ordered to halt in the yard of the farm-house and the artillery
horses were drawn up in it, under the lee of the hill. The First and
Tenth dismounted Cavalry were encamped a hundred yards from the
battery along the ridge. They might as sensibly have been ordered to
paint the rings in a target while a company was firing at the bull's-
eye. To our first twenty shots the enemy made no reply; when they
did it was impossible, owing to their using smokeless powder, to
locate their guns. Their third shell fell in among the Cubans in the
block-house and among the Rough Riders and the men of the First and
Tenth Cavalry, killing some and wounding many. These casualties were
utterly unnecessary and were due to the stupidity of whoever placed
the men within fifty yards of guns in action.
A quarter of an hour after the firing began from El Poso one of
General Shafter's aides directed General Sumner to advance with his
division down the Santiago trail, and to halt at the edge of the
woods.
"What am I to do then?" asked General Sumner.
"You are to await further orders," the aide answered.
As a matter of fact and history this was probably the last order
General Sumner received from General Shafter, until the troops of his
division had taken the San Juan hills, as it became impossible to get
word to General Shafter, the trail leading to his head-quarters tent,
three miles in the rear, being blocked by the soldiers of the First
and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and later, by Lawton's division.
General Sumner led the Sixth, Third, and Ninth Cavalry and the Rough
Riders down the trail, with instructions for the First and Tenth to
follow. The trail, virgin as yet from the foot of an American
soldier, was as wide as its narrowest part, which was some ten feet
across. At places it was as wide as Broadway, but only for such
short distances that it was necessary for the men to advance in
column, in double file. A maze of underbrush and trees on either
side was all but impenetrable, and when the officers and men had once
assembled into the basin, they could only guess as to what lay before
them, or on either flank. At the end of a mile the country became
more open, and General Sumner saw the Spaniards intrenched a half-
mile away on the sloping hills. A stream, called the San Juan River,
ran across the trail at this point, and another stream crossed it
again two hundred yards farther on. The troops were halted at this
first stream, some crossing it, and others deploying in single file
to the right. Some were on the banks of the stream, others at the
edge of the woods in the bushes. Others lay in the high grass which
was so high that it stopped the wind, and so hot that it almost
choked and suffocated those who lay in it.
The enemy saw the advance and began firing with pitiless accuracy
into the jammed and crowded trail and along the whole border of the
woods. There was not a single yard of ground for a mile to the rear
which was not inside the zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to
return the fire but to lie still and wait for further orders. Some
of them could see the rifle-pits of the enemy quite clearly and the
men in them, but many saw nothing but the bushes under which they
lay, and the high grass which seemed to burn when they pressed
against it. It was during this period of waiting that the greater
number of our men were killed. For one hour they lay on their rifles
staring at the waving green stuff around them, while the bullets
drove past incessantly, with savage insistence, cutting the grass
again and again in hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang from
the ground and sank back again with a groan, or rolled to one side
clinging silently to an arm or shoulder. Behind the lines hospital
stewards passed continually, drawing the wounded back to the streams,
where they laid them in long rows, their feet touching the water's
edge and their bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up and down the
lines, and through the fords of the streams, mounted aides drove
their horses at a gallop, as conspicuous a target as the steeple on a
church, and one after another paid the price of his position and fell
from his horse wounded or dead. Captain Mills fell as he was giving
an order, shot through the forehead behind both eyes; Captain
O'Neill, of the Rough Riders, as he said, "There is no Spanish bullet
made that can kill me." Steel, Swift, Henry, each of them was shot
out of his saddle.
Hidden in the trees above the streams, and above the trail, sharp-
shooters and guerillas added a fresh terror to the wounded. There
was no hiding from them. Their bullets came from every side. Their
invisible smoke helped to keep their hiding-places secret, and in the
incessant shriek of shrapnel and the spit of the Mausers, it was
difficult to locate the reports of their rifles. They spared neither
the wounded nor recognized the Red Cross; they killed the surgeons
and the stewards carrying the litters, and killed the wounded men on
the litters. A guerilla in a tree above us shot one of the Rough
Riders in the breast while I was helping him carry Captain Morton
Henry to the dressing-station, the ball passing down through him, and
a second shot, from the same tree, barely missed Henry as he lay on
the ground where we had dropped him. He was already twice wounded
and so covered with blood that no one could have mistaken his
condition. The surgeons at work along the stream dressed the wounds
with one eye cast aloft at the trees. It was not the Mauser bullets
they feared, though they passed continuously, but too high to do
their patients further harm, but the bullets of the sharp-shooters
which struck fairly in among them, splashing in the water and
scattering the pebbles. The sounds of the two bullets were as
different as is the sharp pop of a soda-water bottle from the buzzing
of an angry wasp.
For a time it seemed as though every second man was either killed or
wounded; one came upon them lying behind the bush, under which they
had crawled with some strange idea that it would protect them, or
crouched under the bank of the stream, or lying on their stomachs and
lapping up the water with the eagerness of thirsty dogs. As to their
suffering, the wounded were magnificently silent, they neither
complained nor groaned nor cursed.
"I've got a punctured tire," was their grim answer to inquiries.
White men and colored men, veterans and recruits and volunteers, each
lay waiting for the battle to begin or to end so that he might be
carried away to safety, for the wounded were in as great danger after
they were hit as though they were in the firing line, but none
questioned nor complained.
I came across Lieutenant Roberts, of the Tenth Cavalry, lying under
the roots of a tree beside the stream with three of his colored
troopers stretched around him. He was shot through the intestines,
and each of the three men with him was shot in the arm or leg. They
had been overlooked or forgotten, and we stumbled upon them only by
the accident of losing our way. They had no knowledge as to how the
battle was going or where their comrades were or where the enemy was.
At any moment, for all they knew, the Spaniards might break through
the bushes about them. It was a most lonely picture, the young
lieutenant, half naked, and wet with his own blood, sitting upright
beside the empty stream, and his three followers crouching at his
feet like three faithful watch-dogs, each wearing his red badge of
courage, with his black skin tanned to a haggard gray, and with his
eyes fixed patiently on the white lips of his officer. When the
white soldiers with me offered to carry him back to the dressing-
station, the negroes resented it stiffly. "If the Lieutenant had
been able to move, we would have carried him away long ago," said the
sergeant, quite overlooking the fact that his arm was shattered.
"Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me," Roberts added, cheerfully.
"They must be very busy. I can wait."
As yet, with all these killed and wounded, we had accomplished
nothing--except to obey orders--which was to await further orders.
The observation balloon hastened the end. It came blundering down
the trail, and stopped the advance of the First and Tenth Cavalry,
and was sent up directly over the heads of our men to observe what
should have been observed a week before by scouts and reconnoitring
parties. A balloon, two miles to the rear, and high enough in the
air to be out of range of the enemy's fire may some day prove itself
to be of use and value. But a balloon on the advance line, and only
fifty feet above the tops of the trees, was merely an invitation to
the enemy to kill everything beneath it. And the enemy responded to
the invitation. A Spaniard might question if he could hit a man, or
a number of men, hidden in the bushes, but had no doubt at all as to
his ability to hit a mammoth glistening ball only six hundred yards
distant, and so all the trenches fired at it at once, and the men of
the First and Tenth, packed together directly behind it, received the
full force of the bullets. The men lying directly below it received
the shrapnel which was timed to hit it, and which at last,
fortunately, did hit it. This was endured for an hour, an hour of
such hell of fire and heat, that the heat in itself, had there been
no bullets, would have been remembered for its cruelty. Men gasped
on their backs, like fishes in the bottom of a boat, their heads
burning inside and out, their limbs too heavy to move. They had been
rushed here and rushed there wet with sweat and wet with fording the
streams, under a sun that would have made moving a fan an effort, and
they lay prostrate, gasping at the hot air, with faces aflame, and
their tongues sticking out, and their eyes rolling. All through this
the volleys from the rifle-pits sputtered and rattled, and the
bullets sang continuously like the wind through the rigging in a
gale, shrapnel whined and broke, and still no order came from General
Shafter.
Captain Howse, of General Sumner's staff, rode down the trail to
learn what had delayed the First and Tenth, and was hailed by Colonel
Derby, who was just descending from the shattered balloon.
"I saw men up there on those hills," Colonel Derby shouted; "they are
firing at our troops." That was part of the information contributed
by the balloon. Captain Howse's reply is lost to history.
General Kent's division, which, according to the plan, was to have
been held in reserve, had been rushed up in the rear of the First and
Tenth, and the Tenth had deployed in skirmish order to the right.
The trail was now completely blocked by Kent's division. Lawton's
division, which was to have re-enforced on the right, had not
appeared, but incessant firing from the direction of El Caney showed
that he and Chaffee were fighting mightily. The situation was
desperate. Our troops could not retreat, as the trail for two miles
behind them was wedged with men. They could not remain where they
were, for they were being shot to pieces. There was only one thing
they could do--go forward and take the San Juan hills by assault. It
was as desperate as the situation itself. To charge earthworks held
by men with modern rifles, and using modern artillery, until after
the earthworks have been shaken by artillery, and to attack them in
advance and not in the flanks, are both impossible military
propositions. But this campaign had not been conducted according to
military rules, and a series of military blunders had brought seven
thousand American soldiers into a chute of death from which there was
no escape except by taking the enemy who held it by the throat and
driving him out and beating him down. So the generals of divisions
and brigades stepped back and relinquished their command to the
regimental officers and the enlisted men.
"We can do nothing more," they virtually said. "There is the enemy."
Colonel Roosevelt, on horseback, broke from the woods behind the line
of the Ninth, and finding its men lying in his way, shouted: "If you
don't wish to go forward, let my men pass." The junior officers of
the Ninth, with their negroes, instantly sprang into line with the
Rough Riders, and charged at the blue block-house on the right.
I speak of Roosevelt first because, with General Hawkins, who led
Kent's division, notably the Sixth and Sixteenth Regulars, he was,
without doubt, the most conspicuous figure in the charge. General
Hawkins, with hair as white as snow, and yet far in advance of men
thirty years his junior, was so noble a sight that you felt inclined
to pray for his safety; on the other hand, Roosevelt, mounted high on
horseback, and charging the rifle-pits at a gallop and quite alone,
made you feel that you would like to cheer. He wore on his sombrero
a blue polka-dot handkerchief, a la Havelock, which, as he advanced,
floated out straight behind his head, like a guidon. Afterward, the
men of his regiment who followed this flag, adopted a polka-dot
handkerchief as the badge of the Rough Riders. These two officers
were notably conspicuous in the charge, but no one can claim that any
two men, or any one man, was more brave or more daring, or showed
greater courage in that slow, stubborn advance, than did any of the
others. Some one asked one of the officers if he had any difficulty
in making his men follow him. "No," he answered, "I had some
difficulty in keeping up with them." As one of the brigade generals
said: "San Juan was won by the regimental officers and men. We had
as little to do as the referee at a prize-fight who calls 'time.' We
called 'time' and they did the fighting."
I have seen many illustrations and pictures of this charge on the San
Juan hills, but none of them seem to show it just as I remember it.
In the picture-papers the men are running uphill swiftly and
gallantly, in regular formation, rank after rank, with flags flying,
their eyes aflame, and their hair streaming, their bayonets fixed, in
long, brilliant lines, an invincible, overpowering weight of numbers.
Instead of which I think the thing which impressed one the most, when
our men started from cover, was that they were so few. It seemed as
if some one had made an awful and terrible mistake. One's instinct
was to call to them to come back. You felt that some one had
blundered and that these few men were blindly following out some
madman's mad order. It was not heroic then, it seemed merely
absurdly pathetic. The pity of it, the folly of such a sacrifice was
what held you.
They had no glittering bayonets, they were not massed in regular
array. There were a few men in advance, bunched together, and
creeping up a steep, sunny hill, the tops of which roared and flashed
with flame. The men held their guns pressed across their chests and
stepped heavily as they climbed. Behind these first few, spreading
out like a fan, were single lines of men, slipping and scrambling in
the smooth grass, moving forward with difficulty, as though they were
wading waist high through water, moving slowly, carefully, with
strenuous effort. It was much more wonderful than any swinging
charge could have been. They walked to greet death at every step,
many of them, as they advanced, sinking suddenly or pitching forward
and disappearing in the high grass, but the others waded on,
stubbornly, forming a thin blue line that kept creeping higher and
higher up the hill. It was as inevitable as the rising tide. It was
a miracle of self-sacrifice, a triumph of bull-dog courage, which one
watched breathless with wonder. The fire of the Spanish riflemen,
who still stuck bravely to their posts, doubled and trebled in
fierceness, the crests of the hills crackled and burst in amazed
roars, and rippled with waves of tiny flame. But the blue line crept
steadily up and on, and then, near the top, the broken fragments
gathered together with a sudden burst of speed, the Spaniards
appeared for a moment outlined against the sky and poised for instant
flight, fired a last volley, and fled before the swift-moving wave
that leaped and sprang after them.
The men of the Ninth and the Rough Riders rushed to the block-house
together, the men of the Sixth, of the Third, of the Tenth Cavalry,
of the Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry, fell on their faces along the
crest of the hills beyond, and opened upon the vanishing enemy. They
drove the yellow silk flags of the cavalry and the flag of their
country into the soft earth of the trenches, and then sank down and
looked back at the road they had climbed and swung their hats in the
air. And from far overhead, from these few figures perched on the
Spanish rifle-pits, with their flags planted among the empty
cartridges of the enemy, and overlooking the walls of Santiago, came,
faintly, the sound of a tired, broken cheer.
From Notes of a War Correspondent, 1905.
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