An Honorable War

by Robert N. Macomber

  “Very well. Anything else?”

  My watch showed five-forty-four. Twenty minutes until sunrise. The sky, as is typical in the tropics, was getting lighter fast and a pinkish glow was spreading among the clouds to the east. From the vantage of the bridge deck, I could see out over the village and the lone road leading into it. With every minute more detail could be seen.

  The place looked just as dismal as it had been in January. But now the scene was worsened by another sense—the acrid smell of burning ships, and the nauseating odor of scorched flesh. I knew that by noon the stench would be unbearable. By the next day we’d all be used to it.

  “Captain, once the town is searched and the perimeter is secured, have a detail of men recover the bodies from the gunboats, along with any personal effects. We will bury the bodies in the middle of the town with full naval honors. I will preside. We will send the personal effects to the Spanish Navy for the families.

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “You did very well, Captain. So did every officer and man in the squadron.”

  “The drills paid off, sir.”

  “Yes, they did. We also had good luck the Spanish didn’t really defend the place. But we’ve only begun this mission, and the Spanish will come. Chief Rork and I are going ashore for a quick look around at defense possibilities. And don’t look so worried, James, we’ll be well armed. Make sure the battalion doesn’t dawdle in getting ashore.”

  “Commodore leaving the bridge,” announced the petty officer of the watch as Rork and I descended the ladder. Both of us had our pistols, and Rork carried two shotguns with sling straps, his in his hands and mine slung on his left shoulder.

  46

  Assuming the Worst

  Isabela, Cuba

  Thursday morning

  28 April 1898

  The place was empty of people. Walking south along the shoreline past the large cane warehouse, I then headed to the left, through an alleyway between some shacks. Crossing the railroad track, we emerged from the alley at the wide and very dusty main street of the place.

  We both carried our shotguns at the ready by this point. Our reconnaissance was done in silence, for Rork and I don’t need to speak, just a glance or a gesture to warn of potential dangers.

  Returning to the railroad track, we followed it southwest to the very end of the town. Twenty feet beyond was an abrupt wall of mangrove forest, with roots intertwined for a height of two feet above ground and the branches interwoven for another ten feet up. The only opening through this tangle was the straight road, beside its companion railroad track, out of Isabela to Sagua Grande.

  We came upon Lieutenant Yeats and Bosun Mack. Their men were searching the shacks to make sure no Spanish forces or Cuban civilians lingered. The lieutenant didn’t look pleased to see his commodore show up unannounced, an understandable reaction.

  “See any sign of Spanish soldiers having been here, Mr. Yeats?” I asked.

  “None, sir. Nobody at all. The civilians must’ve left in a hurry, because there’s still food cooking on their stoves. So much for the locals welcoming us as their liberators.”

  “They’s just poor folks, Mr. Yeats, and don’t trust nobody in a uniform, sir,” offered Mack. “They’ll come back when all the fightin’s done.”

  Mack was too young to have been a slave, but I could imagine his father telling him what the war was like for the South’s blacks thirty-three years earlier. I remembered them staying out of sight during those battles too.

  “Good,” I said. “We don’t need them getting in the way when the Spanish army eventually gets here. Carry on with your work, Lieutenant. Chief Rork and I will be looking around the area for a bit.”

  Yeats detailed two of his men to stay out in front of us as Rork and I walked over to the middle of the road and surveyed the inhospitable landscape.

  “So what do you think?” I asked Rork in a hushed tone.

  “Nothin’ good, sir. Them civilians’ve already told the enemy at Sagua what happened here. An’ after what we did to their gunboats, those Spaniardo navy grandees’ll be lookin’ for revenge, sure as hell is hot. Navy, army, militia—they’ll all want a piece o’ the yanqui barbarians that did that. Methinks we best be settin’ up some serious defenses directly, cause me achin’ bones’re tellin’ me it’s gonna get damned ugly ‘round here real soon.”

  Bitter experience has taught me to always pay attention when Rork’s bones start aching.

  “I agree on the Spanish and the defenses,” I said. “They’ll push hard to get as many men here as fast as they can to try to nip this in the bud. Major Barida will have to get his exile Cubans moving quickly to get down the road and linked up with General Lacret’s people before the Spanish block the way out.”

  “Aye on that, sir. Those exile lads don’t stand a chance against regular Spanish troops, especially once they’re out o’ range o’ Kestrel’s covering guns.”

  “Yes, well, that’s another thing I just noticed during our little stroll, Rork.”

  I pointed behind us to the town. “Look over there. Kestrel’s guns are masked by the cane warehouse, and they can’t elevate enough to lob over them. They can hit the area on the left side of the road, looking south, but not the road itself, the railroad track, or anything to the right of it. And the warehouses are too stout to cut down rapidly with the manpower we have available.”

  He let out a blue streak of language of the type only a navy chief petty officer can utter. It ended in, “And the squadron’s other ships’re too bleedin’ far from shore to be within effective range to hit the road down here.”

  “Yes, that’s about it. Look, Barida knows the terrain and what he has to do, so he’ll push his men hard to get clear of the area today. At the latest, the Spanish will hit us at sunrise tomorrow. They’ll come right up this road, in regulation skirmish order out front, and main formations directly behind. We’ll be outnumbered at least seven to one in the initial assault, twice that if they can get their entire regiment here by then.”

  Rork’s face tightened. “Aye, sir, an’ they’ll be proper soldiers that know the area, carryin’ them damned smokeless Mauser rifles, an’ lots o’ ammunition.”

  “We’ve got to outsmart them, Rork. They’re combat veterans, but they’re also conscripts who’ve never run into well-armed men. Not to mention, you and I know tricks they’ve never run into before.”

  “That we do! Something loud an’ nasty an’ messy—that’ll give `em the terrors.”

  I swept my hand over the landscape outside of the town. “Exactly, Rork. I’m thinking of laying out some surprises for them to funnel their attack toward a killing ground of our choice. Remember back in eighty-one, in Peru? Looked pretty bad for us there at first. The Chileans outnumbered the Peruvians ten to one and thought they were winning, but they ended up in a Peruvian trap. Same concept here.”

  He nodded pensively. “Do indeed, sir. Those Peruviano blokes prepared the ground well. Let’s peruse this piece o’ ground an’ see what we can conjure up.”

  The road was sandy, rutted, and about thirty feet wide, with grass extending for another twenty feet on the left, or east, side. On the west side, a fifteen-foot wide, shallow ditch separated the road from the railroad track bed, which rose two feet above the flat surrounding grade. A hundred feet down the track, an empty flatbed train car sat by itself on the track. Thirty feet on the other side of the track bed was the never ending wall of mangrove jungle. The entire width of the attack area was a little over two-hundred-fifty feet.

  A quarter mile south, the cleared area was wider. At that point, the road and track passed a stubbled cane field on the left, then curved to the left and proceeded straight south, the cleared area closing back in.

  We started heading down the road. I thought aloud as we walked. “The Spanish will have a narrow line of advance with little room to maneuver laterall
y. It’ll be almost impossible for them to flank us in these dense mangroves. A few might get through, but not without making enough noise to alert our flank guards. Therefore, our small defense force will face their whole attack right here, across the road and track. We’ve got to give them obvious choices to go exactly where we want them.”

  “False retreat,” said Rork cheerfully. “Always fun.”

  “Yes, a wonderful opportunity for a little theatrics from the boys. Let the Spanish see us retreat from an observation post up there south of the curve. They’ll think they’re winning. Our sailors will fire some rounds, then shriek and start running like hell back to town, dropping equipment as they go. That’ll get the enemy over-confident and sloppy.”

  As we approached the cane field, I said, “Good, it’s just as I remembered from January. Let’s look over there.”

  As is normal in Cuba and Florida, the cane field had been burned after harvesting, to clear it for the next crop. The new crop was starting to peek out of the soot-covered ground. We crossed the field to the far side, where I spied a faint trail from the edge of the field. Rork and I followed it, our sailor guards remaining at the cane field. The trail wound through the mangroves to emerge at the Sagua Grande River, the sluggish stream we’d seen in the middle of that distant town.

  I looked up at the sky and said, “Thank you, Lord.”

  After we returned to the edge of the field, I gestured broadly toward the road a hundred yards away. The pair of sailors wandered closer to hear.

  “The Spanish skirmishers will be in good spirits chasing our boys. We’ll let them pass by here and will wait until the main formation is just opposite this place. Then we’ll engage with sniper fire—I’m thinking four, maybe five, of our best marksmen—against their mounted officers in a long-range ambush. That will start their troops toward the first prepared killing ground on the opposite side of the road, where we’ll hit them with overwhelming force of an improvised kind.”

  Rork held up a hand. “But wait, sir. They’re professionals, trained to rush ambushers, while also flankin’ them. They’ll lay down heavy fire an’ start runnin’ right across the field at our lads here. It’ll get chancy as hell.”

  “Correct, Rork. That’s what they are trained to do. But when they respond to their training and try to rush the ambush, they’ll hit trip wires on the road side of the field and see mines in the field.”

  “We’ve no mines, sir.”

  “True. But we can make Quaker mines. The enemy won’t know the difference.”

  “Damned good idea, sir!”

  “Thank you. Plus, it’s a hundred yards of open ground from the road to the far edge of the field. Any officer in the lead will get hit by our sharpshooters. Right about then, with their officers down and seeing mines all over the field, the ditch on the other side of the road will look like the best place for those leaderless soldiers to take cover temporarily. They’ll wait there for orders. Remember, European conscript soldiers aren’t trained to think on their own. Once they run into something they’re not familiar with, they stop and wait to be told what to do.”

  “Damned true, sir. Same as we saw in Indochina, Africa, and Samoa. How do we overwhelm `em in the ditch?”

  “Fougasse in the ditch. Mechanical tipping device for the accelerant and long fuse for the ignition. Trip wires on either side of our ambushers will slow down the skirmishers that come back down the road, and any Spanish flankers from the main formation. During the ensuing chaos after the fougasse goes off, our snipers will simply disappear, leaving the ambush site by this trail to a boat on the bank. Then they head down the river to the town and rejoin our lines there.”

  “Bloody friggin’ brilliant, Commodore. That’ll put a nettle in their nickers.”

  The two sailors were startled by seeing Rork slap my shoulder in excitement, an open breach of naval discipline. Nearly everyone in the squadron knew of our long friendship, but few actually ever saw signs of it, for Rork and I were careful to maintain decorum when aboard warships.

  “Thank you, Rork,” I replied. “I consider that a high compliment indeed, coming from such a fertilely demented mind as yours. But we dare not rest on our fougassean laurels, for the Spanish will have lots more men for us to deal with. Their colonel will be doubly incensed by then, which is good, for his judgment will be impaired. His next attack will be a rapid, overwhelming charge, straight up the road at what he thinks is our main defense line, which will appear quite weak. We are, after all, only ignorant sailors. Our earlier success will be put down to mere luck.”

  “Time for some caltrops, chevals de frises, an’ trou de loups.”

  “Precisely. Just as they think they’re overrunning our final defense line we’ll funnel the enemy into another killing ground on their left flank, in front of the flatbed railcar, which is seemingly empty. But under the railcar we’ll put that big molasses tank we saw back in town. Packed tight with guncotton and shrapnel, with the seam rivets loosened on the road side, and ignited by mechanical device on a percussion shell, it’ll blast out along the road.”

  “An old-fashioned Rains bomb from the Rebs back in the war. Nasty piece o’ work, that was.”

  “Yes, just like that Confederate general’s bomb device, but on a slightly larger scale. One of our Colt machine guns firing from the road in town will complete their panic. The Spanish will withdraw and wait for reinforcements and artillery. I figure that’ll take half a day.”

  “An’ when they do come at us again, their men will be scared o’ what sort o’ infernal hell awaits `em yet again.”

  I couldn’t help a certain smug tone. “But I fear the colonel will be rather disappointed. By then, we won’t be here anymore. We’ll be on Kestrel, steaming away . . .”

  Rork let out a whistle and turned to the awestruck sailors.

  “Boyos, you’ve learned a valuable lesson today. Old age an’ treachery still work every time—so study your history!”

  47

  They That Go Down to the Sea in Ships . . .

  Isabela, Cuba

  Thursday morning

  28 April 1898

  The exile Cuban battalion was unloading its equipment and forming up on the road when Rork and I returned for the funeral service. Isabela, so quiet before, was now a veritable beehive of activity. Barida came over to me and asked what we had seen in our reconnaissance. I briefed him on my defense plans.

  The funeral service for the Spanish sailors was held in the middle of town, just inland from the wharf. All naval activity ended and every American sailor on ship or wharf uncovered his head and stood facing the ceremony. Barida’s men lined up in ranks. The ceremony was short, but as dignified as we could make it, given the circumstances.

  With Cano translating everything into Spanish, I began.

  “We stand before brave Spanish sailors and honor them for their courage. They are no longer our enemies, but our brother seamen, who, like us, have known the perils of storm and battle on the water. We are certain they now rest in eternal peace in Heaven with God, where neither storm nor battle are ever felt.”

  I then read the 107th Psalm, starting at verse twenty-three, commonly known around the world as the sailor’s psalm.

  “They that go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business in great waters: these men see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. For at his word the stormy wind ariseth which lifteth up the waves thereof. They are carried up to the heaven, and down again into the deep: their souls melteth away because of the trouble. The reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end. So when they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, He delivereth them out of their distress. For He maketh the storm to cease so that the waves thereof are still. Then they are glad because they are at rest; and so He bringeth them unto the haven where they would be.”

  Captain Cano said a brief prayer in Spanish.
Rork called all hands to attention and called the salute. A Cuban drummer beat out the long roll and seven sailors fired three blank volleys. Then a navy bugler sounded taps, and it was over.

  Thirty seconds after the end of this sad business, the frenzy of war started up again. It was as if the reality of what they had just witnessed reinforced the will of every man there not be the honorees of the next such ceremony.

  The scene became a cacophony of motion and noise, from the soldiers unloading Norden and forming up the battalion, to the adjacent sailors manufacturing the weaponry needed for the perimeter defense. Shouted commands in Spanish and English, the hammering of nails, clanging of metal, grunting of men lifting impossible loads, and the ever present curses of petty officers, made Isabela sound alive and industrious. It was already eleven o’clock and the sun was broiling. Even so, a sense of urgent determination bordering on desperation drove everyone to maintain the pace despite the heat.

  The squadron’s ships had been stripped to the bare number of crew needed for the guns and engines. All others were ashore to assist in the defense at the perimeter and the preparations on the wharf. Thus, we had more than originally planned, but they were still not enough. Every sailor in sight was doing the work of two men.

  It was in this moment that I received two reports in my cabin, where I was composing a statement to Admiral Sampson about our progress to date.

  The first was from the bridge. Harrier had signaled she sighted a Spanish gunboat of the Mayari class three miles offshore of Cayo Maravillas, heading east past the entrance to the channel into the bay. Harrier’s Lieutenant Farmore further informed the flagship he had established a two-man lookout post at the vacant fisherman camp on Maravillas.

  This development was followed by a message from Lieutenant Yeats at our defense perimeter. He had a man there in a wagon by the name of Raul Gonzart who purported to be my acquaintance from a tobacco buying trip years ago. Yeats, thoroughly confused, thought him a Spanish spy and suggested we bring him in for interrogation and execution by hanging from the rigging, not wishing to waste a bullet. Gonzart’s identity as one of my agents needed to be protected, so I agreed with Yeats and directed the perfidious suspect be delivered to my cabin for an in-depth examination by myself and Rork.