Chapter 9 EL CANEY AND SAN JUAN.

For a few days after the battle of Las Guasimas no great event took place. There was no fighting. The other troops were making their way up from the coast, but the roads were so narrow and so bad that progress was slow. The army wagons had great trouble to get on, and many supplies were left at the coast or on the boats, because there was no proper way of taking them forward. The heavy cannon were hauled a few miles from the coast and then most of them were left, though they would have been a great help to our Army, and should have been taken to the front.

It was soon found that many of the doctors' supplies-the things needed in taking care of the sick and wounded-had not been taken off the ships that brought the men from Florida. It was thought by some of our men that now more effort should be made to clear roads through the woods and thick bushes, but not much was done. A great deal of fault has been found with the way things were managed at this time. It seems as if some of the officers were very much to blame. There need not have been so many men killed in the battles that followed, or so much suffering and sickness in our Army, if all our officers had done their duty. Meanwhile, the Spaniards went on improving their forts on the hills a few miles away.

Nearly two thousand more of our soldiers landed in Cuba about this time, and more were expected soon.

But I must tell you about another Army that arrived in this part of Cuba during these days-a very small one beside General Shafter's Army, but one that did mighty work. Have you ever heard of the Red Cross Society? This is a society that nurses the sick and wounded. It has members in all parts of the world. Its chief officer is Miss Clara Barton, whose work has been so great and noble that it has made the whole world better. The badge, or flag of the Red Cross Army is a red cross on a white ground.

Miss Clara Barton.

The Red Cross Army takes no part in war except to help those who need help. It does not know the difference between friend and foe. Its work is a work of love and mercy. No soldiers with any honor would ever fire upon a tent that has the Red Cross flag floating over it, or harm any person wearing the Red Cross badge. Yet, to the awful disgrace of the Spaniards, it is known that some of them, hidden in trees and bushes, fired upon doctors and nurses who were taking care of the wounded on the battlefields near Santiago.

This was the new Army, whose soldiers wear the sign of the Red Cross, that reached this part of Cuba now, and put up a large tent. In this tent all help that could be given was given, to Spaniards, Cubans and Americans. There were also "floating hospitals"-ships fitted up as hospitals. They proved to be great blessings to our Army and Navy.

You will remember that the Red Cross Society took great quantities of supplies to the suffering Cubans in the early part of 1898. Its work in Cuba was just well-established when hostilities broke out between the United States and Spain, and while the members who were on the ground wanted to stay and carry on the work of relief, General Blanco told them it was best for them to leave the island. They did so reluctantly, after doing all they could to insure the proper distribution of the supplies they left behind them. The result was that the food and medicines intended for the Cubans were used to sustain the Spanish army.

When the blockade of Cuban ports was instituted, the Red Cross Society was asked by the Government to take charge of the steamship State of Texas which had been loaded with provisions, clothing, medical and hospital supplies by the generous people of the United States. Miss Clara Barton instantly responded, but the ship was not allowed to go to Cuba under a flag of truce, because Acting Rear-Admiral Sampson would not allow it. He said he was afraid the supplies would fall into the hands of the Spanish army. But the Red Cross Society would not give up its errand of mercy, and when the United States army invaded Cuba, the State of Texas followed the transports and so got to Cuba after all, and anchored at a little place called Siboney, where the nurses immediately began to care for the wounded on the hospital ship Solace.

There had been so much mismanagement about the landing of the troops and the supplies, that General Shafter's army was without medicines or shelter for his wounded men. When he learned that the Red Cross ship had arrived, he sent word to Miss Barton to seize any empty army wagons and send him a load of hospital supplies and medical stores. She did this, although there were no boats obtainable to convey the supplies to the shore. There were only two old scows which had been thrown away as useless, but the Red Cross men patched them up as best they could, and then loaded them with the material asked for. They worked all night, and just as the sun rose in the morning, they managed to get them to the shore. It was the hardest kind of work unloading the scows in the surf, but they did it, and loaded some wagons with the precious supplies. Then the women nurses, who had been drenched to the skin in the surf, mounted on top of the load and started on a terrible ride over a roadless country. They reached the army, and the whole world knows the splendid work they did there. It was no fault of the surgeon-general of the United States that they were able to accomplish it, though, for he was opposed to female nurses and his action sadly hampered the work.

But now I must tell you about the next hard work that our soldiers had to do. On the last day of June, General Shafter gave orders that the whole Army was to move on toward Santiago the next day. General Shafter was sick, and stayed at headquarters in his tent, two miles away. Before Santiago could be reached, El Caney and San Juan had to be taken. So, on the first of July, early in the morning, six thousand of our troops, under brave officers, marched to attack El Caney. General Shafter thought this place could be taken in about an hour.

Church at El Caney, Wrecked by American Shells.

The town of El Caney, four miles northeast of Santiago, lies in a broad valley. Beyond it, on the Santiago side, is a high, level piece of country. The houses in the town are built of stone, and have thick walls. The town was protected by a stone fort on a hill, and also by log forts, trenches, and covered places, where the Spaniards could stay under shelter while they fired. The stone fort on the hill was first attacked by our men, and if they had had more heavy cannon the work might have been easy. As it was, more than half the day passed, and, in spite of the hard work of our men, the fort still stood. Our men had no smokeless powder, and their firing made a big black cloud around them all the time, so that they could not see clearly. At last the stone walls of the fort began to weaken, and then our men were ordered to "storm." They ran along the valley, broke through fences of barbed wire, and went up the hill with such a rush that the Spaniards could not meet them, but fled down into the town. The other forts kept up firing for a while, but our men, now having the fort on the hill, forced the Spaniards farther and farther, and, by four o'clock, our men held the town. The whole place was strewn with dead Spaniards, and our own loss was heavy. Both sides had fought bravely, and the struggle had lasted nearly nine hours.

General Henry W. Lawton.

At El Caney the Spaniards made the strongest resistance that the American army met in Cuba. One of the foremost figures in this battle was Brigadier-General Henry W. Lawton. I must tell you something about him. Lawton was but seventeen years old when the Civil War in this country broke out. He enlisted at once and was made a sergeant in an Indiana regiment. When his term of service expired he re-enlisted and fought gallantly throughout the remainder of the war. After the war was over Lawton enlisted in the regular army and was sent to the frontier, where he developed into one of the best Indian fighters in the army. When our country went to war with Spain, Lawton was holding an important position in the War Department at Washington. His splendid services were remembered and he was promoted to be a brigadier-general of volunteers and sent to Cuba. After the war with Spain was over, Lawton was again promoted, and in 1899 was sent to the Philippines to assist in putting down the Filipino insurrection.

Battle of El Caney.

Meanwhile, our other regiments had been ordered to attack San Juan, a village on steep heights, less than a mile east of Santiago. Our men went to the place by two different roads, and had to go through woods, wade through streams, and wind along narrow paths. A number of men from each regiment went before, with tools, and cut the fences of barbed wire. Fences of barbed wire had been put, like a network, all around Santiago, to keep our men away.

Assault of San Juan Hill.

San Juan was protected by trenches and forts, and from these places Spanish bullets rained down upon our men. During the early hours of the morning there was much confusion among our troops. They were looking for further orders from headquarters, but none came. So, at last, the captains and colonels took things into their own hands and did what seemed best. Again there was need of more heavy cannon, and again our men were troubled by having powder that made a thick black smoke. Just as it was at El Caney, so it was at San Juan; not having cannon enough to destroy the forts, our men had to take the place by storm. Colonel Roosevelt led his "Rough Riders" in one of the finest charges ever made. The other troops, nearly all "Regulars," did noble work. With bullets pouring down upon them, our men made a wild rush up the heights, and the Spaniards fled. The struggle to take San Juan had lasted more than five hours, and cost many lives.

Though our men were worn and weary, they took no rest that night. They buried the dead, they repaired the forts and trenches. Our men knew that the Spaniards would try to win back the heights of San Juan, the last stronghold on the outskirts of Santiago.

At daybreak the next morning the Spaniards attacked our troops, and the fighting went on all day. A sharp attack was made in the evening, but our men still held the place. Yet they did not feel secure. The Spanish Army in Santiago was a large one, and might force our men back. Our men, though weary from marching and fighting and digging, hungry, for food was scarce, wanted to hold the heights that had been so dearly won.

The attack upon the Spanish defenses of Santiago began early in the morning of July 1st, as I have told you, and I wish I could tell you the one hundredth part of the brave and gallant deeds that were done by our brave soldiers on that and the next day.

Lieutenant John H. Parker.

Battery A, of the Second United States Artillery, fired the first shot of the engagement known as the battle of El Caney. The Spaniards replied, after it had sent five shells among them. The Spanish forces were much stronger than our men thought they were, and it took General Lawton nearly all day to gain possession of El Caney. Early in the day, Lieutenant Parker's battery of four Gatling guns began to hurl bullets into the Spanish trenches, and so well did it keep up the work that it played a very important part in the battle and a great deal of the credit of the victory is due to Lieutenant Parker. Afterwards, Lieutenant Parker, in speaking of these wonderful machine guns, said:

"We trained the guns on the top of the hill. They were fired above the heads of the slowly advancing line of blue which had started up the slope. I ordered the men to work the Gatlings as fast as they could. The result was astounding. With each of the four guns firing at the rate of eight hundred shots a minute, the bullets formed a canopy over the heads of the men at the foot of the hill. A Gatling gun in action is a sight to remember; so thick and fast do the bullets fly that one can actually see the stream of lead leaving the gun and, as if handling a hose, train it on any desired point.

"I remember one incident of the first day which showed how deadly was the fire of these machine guns. Away off, across the valley, we saw a clump of Spanish cavalrymen. I ordered the guns turned on them. They were so far away we had to use glasses to find them accurately, but when the little wheels began to turn, those who stood in the front line of the clump fell as grass falls before a mower, and it didn't take the rest of those Spaniards long to get behind something.

"As the day wore on, and the troops kept climbing up the hill, Colonel Roosevelt, who had been watching the work of the Gatlings, came along and placed his light battery of two Colt machine guns and one dynamite gun in my command."

You can get an idea of the deadly work of the Gatlings when I tell you that the fire of one of these guns is equal to that of one hundred and eighty riflemen, each discharging thirteen shots per minute.

The dynamite gun is the latest development in light artillery. One of them had been supplied to Roosevelt's Rough Riders, or "Teddy's Terrors," as they were often called, but none of them wanted to handle it.

Sergeant Borrowe Working the Dynamite Gun.

They were willing to face Spanish bullets, but they were afraid of the dynamite gun. They thought it was just as dangerous at one end as at the other. It is an odd looking piece of artillery, having two tubes, or barrels, one above the other. It throws a long cartridge or shell, similar in shape, but not so large as those used on the Vesuvius, about which I have told you. One day Sergeant Borrowe volunteered to manage the gun that the rest of the men were afraid of. They let him have it, and he did splendid work with it.

Another famous gun in the fighting before Santiago was gun No. 2, of Captain Capron's battery. Captain Capron was the father of the young man who was killed in the battle of Las Guasimas. No guns did more effective work than his, unless it was Parker's Gatlings, and one shot from this No. 2 is said to have killed sixteen Spaniards at one time. After the battery returned to the United States, Lieutenant Henly, after saying that the battery was in every battle on Cuban soil except that at Las Guasimas, continued:

"We were peculiarly fortunate in escaping the bullets. The only man killed in our battery was a horse-I suppose we can count him as a man. At El Caney, we were directed to support the infantry in an attack on several blockhouses and a stone fort. We were twenty-four hundred yards away and soon got the range. The first shot was fired by Corporal Williams. Corporal Neff fired the shot that brought down the Spanish flag. We pounded a hole in the fort and the infantry went through it."

A young soldier who was wounded at San Juan told this story:

"My company got mixed up in the charge, and I pushed on with the Thirteenth Regulars. When we reached the top of the hill, some of us took shelter in a blockhouse and began firing from there at the opposite hills. There wasn't one of the enemy in sight unless you count dead ones, so we blazed away at nothing at all, for awhile. But they had us dead in range, and it was no dream the way their bullets played around us.

The Famous No. 2 Gun.

"One of the bravest things I saw in the war happened right here. An officer came up-he was a major of regulars-I don't know his regiment-and he saw that we didn't know what to aim at, and were getting a little rattled. So what did he do but quickly walk out in front of the blockhouse where the bullets were coming thickest, and proceed to study the hills with his field-glass, just as unconcerned as you please. And every now and then he would call to us who were inside, 'Men, sight at eight hundred yards and sweep the grass on the ridge of the hill'; or, again: 'Men, I can see the Spaniards over there; try a thousand-yard range and see if you can't get some of them. Fire low!' I never saw such nerve as that officer had; he'd have stirred courage in everybody."

"Didn't he get hit?" he was asked.

"I'll tell you about that in a minute; but while he was out there shaking hands with death, you might say, I was witness to a little incident in the blockhouse that is worth telling about: A lot of us were in there from different regiments-some from the Thirteenth, some from the Sixteenth, and some colored boys from the Twenty-fourth. We were all blazing away through the firing-openings in the walls.

Bringing Up Captain Capron's Battery.

"Just beside me was a big negro, who didn't seem more than half interested in what he was doing. I saw him pull a dead Spaniard out of the door with a listless movement, and then pick up his rifle as if he thought the whole thing a bore. Suddenly, a bullet came in with a zip along the underside of his gun barrel, glanced against the strap, and took the skin off the negro's knuckles as if they'd been scraped with a knife. And then you should see the change! He wasn't scared-not a bit; but he was mad enough to have charged the whole Spanish army alone. How he did talk-not loud, just quietly to himself-and how he did grab his cartridges and begin to shoot.

"Speaking of cartridges, some of the boys ran short because they had thrown away a lot in their haversacks; but I had put two beltfuls in a pair of socks and pinned them inside my shirt with safety pins, so I had plenty, and I was peppering away from behind a brick chimney, when one of the Thirteenth lads called out to me: 'Come over here, Seventy-one; I've got a fine shot for you.'

"I looked around and saw him standing by a window that was barred with iron, but had no sash to it. He was kneeling on the floor, just showing his head over the sill, and looking at the Spanish line. He was a nice looking lad, not a day over twenty-one, and his face was as smooth as a girl's. 'All right,' said I, going over to him, 'Where's your shot?'

"'There,' said he, pointing to one of the hills: 'nobody's fired at that one yet, but I'm sure the dagos are there. Set your sights at six hundred yards and we'll try it together!'

"So I fixed my sights, and we both fired out of the window with our rifles resting on the ledge. As I drew back I saw there was something queer with the boy, and noticed a splash of red on the lobe of his ear, just like a coral bead.

"'Did they wing you?' I asked. And even as I spoke, he staggered against the wall and turned round so that I saw him full in the face. There was a hole in the other side, just at the cheek bone, that I could have put my finger in. He had been shot clear through the head.

"'Poor chap,' I said, and lifted him over behind the chimney, where I had been. He didn't speak. I left him there and went to the door, thinking that I might see a Red Cross nurse somewhere about, and sure enough, there was one bending over a man stretched on the ground. It was the major who had been giving us the ranges.

"'Is he hurt bad?' I asked.

"The Red Cross man had the major's shirt open, looking at his wound. 'He's shot through the heart,' he said.

"'Can you come in here a minute, when you get through with him? There's a Thirteenth boy just been hit.'

"'Hit where?'

"'In the head.'

"'Hold him by the jowls,' he said, 'until I come,' So I held him by the jowls, and then he spoke for the first time, and what he said was this: 'Say, Seventy-one, I done my duty, didn't I?'

"I told him that he did.

"'I had my face toward 'em when they got me, didn't I?

"'Sure, you did.'

"'Well,' he went on, quite cheerful like, 'I may get through this, and if I do, I'll have another crack at 'em. But if I don't, why I aint got no kick comin', for there'll be others to stay here with me.'

"That was the last I saw of him, for the Red Cross man came in then, and I went back to the firing. He was a game boy, though, wasn't he?"

The "Red Cross" in the Field.

What would have become of the wounded if the Red Cross nurses had not been on the field to help them, nobody knows, except that thousands of "mothers' boys" were saved, who in a few hours more would have been beyond mortal aid. No wonder bearded men wept like babies and blessed the angels of mercy as they passed. The boys went into the fight hungry, lay for two days in trenches, almost without food; and when they were wounded, were ordered to make their way to the rear as best they could. Men with desperate wounds had to walk or crawl perhaps a mile; perhaps five or six miles, over the wild, rough country, those who were least injured, assisting their comrades, and hundreds dying by the wayside. Had the Red Cross been allowed its way in the beginning, many of these horrors would have been avoided. The few army surgeons did all in their power, but nearly everything they-needed to allay suffering was lacking, and so insufficient was the force that many of the wounded lay for days before their turn came. Men taken from the operating table, perhaps having just had a leg or arm cut off, or with bodies torn by bullets, were laid naked on the rain-soaked ground, without shelter, and in the majority of cases without even blankets. And there they lay through two long days and nights. All honor to the Red Cross Society which finally forced its way to the spot and knew exactly what to do.

Captain "Buckey" O'Neill.

Some time after the return of the "Rough Riders" to the United States, Colonel Roosevelt told some interesting experiences:

"I recollect, as I was sitting, I gave a command to one of my orderlies, and he rose up and saluted and fell right forward across my knees dead. The man upon whom I had most to rely-I relied upon all of those gallant men, but the man upon whom I most relied, Buckey O'Neill-was standing up, walking up and down in front of his men, wanting to show them by his example that they must not get nervous, and to reassure them.

"Somebody said, 'Captain-Captain O'Neill! You will be struck by a bullet as sure as fate; lie down! lie down!' and he laughed, and said, 'Why, the Spanish bullet is not made that will kill me!' And the next minute a bullet struck him in the mouth and came out the back of his head and he was killed right there.

"Captain Jenkins crept up beside one of his sharpshooters and said to him, 'I see a Spaniard over in that tree, give me your rifle for a moment.' He fired two or three shots and then turned around and handed the rifle back to the man, and the man was dead-had been killed without making a sign or sound as he stood beside him.

"I was talking to a gallant young officer, asking him questions, and he was answering. I turned around and he had been shot through the stomach."

But General Shafter, still at headquarters some miles away, did not know how the men felt, and thought they ought to retreat to some safer point, and wait for more troops from the United States. Early the next morning-Sunday, July 3d-General Shafter sent a telegram to the War Office at Washington, saying that he thought of withdrawing his forces from the neighborhood of Santiago. An answer was sent to him, asking him to try to hold his present place, and more troops started for Cuba.

General Joseph Wheeler.

Fortunately, there were brave commanders in the American army who did not think as General Shafter did.-They had been doing the fighting, while he hadn't, and they had no idea of giving up an inch of the ground they had gained. One of the most prominent of them was General Joseph Wheeler. He had a splendid record in the Civil War, fighting on the side of the Confederacy. He was a bold and tireless fighter, and before he was thirty years old he was the commander of all the Confederate cavalry. His sabre had flashed in the thickest of many fights and he had led his splendid horsemen in many a furious charge.

When the war with Spain broke out, General Wheeler offered his services to the Government and was sent to Cuba, and when there began to be talk of retreat after those terrible days of fighting before Santiago, the splendid old Confederate counselled holding the army where it was, and fighting the Spaniards again, if necessary. He said, "American prestige would suffer irretrievably if we gave up an inch; we must stand firm!"

The message from General Shafter flew through the United States, and caused great anxiety. It was sad to think that our troops had drawn near the place they had been striving to reach, had had great labor, had borne much suffering, and that now, after all, they might have to retreat because there were not enough of them to finish the work-not enough to take Santiago.

But that very Sunday something took place that changed the whole color of the scene.

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