By noon I had gladly relinquished my duties to an Army provost colonel, one of the many colonels I saw wandering around. Rork, Law, and I headed up into the hills away from the confusion. In the later afternoon, my tired little band—minus Fortuna, whom I had sent to check back in with General Castillo—found the camp of the 1st Volunteer Cavalry. We were greeted by Theodore, who was full of vim.
They’d found a little open area of scrub between the thick jungle and a stagnant pool of putrid water. Theodore reported the pond contained an excellent specimen of Crocodylus rhombifer, the small but very dangerous Cuban caiman, adding with disdain that he disliked all reptiles, especially the kind with teeth. Then he beckoned us to gather around the campfire and share their meal.
Wood was at a regimental commanders’ conference with General Young. Law and Rork politely declined Roosevelt’s offer, heading for another campfire. That allowed Theodore and me to eat in privacy.
“I apologize for the rather sorry state of our cuisine, Peter,” Roosevelt said with a chuckle. “We are reduced to some barely reconstituted beans with rice that appears to be of antique vintage. We also have a can of something purported to be a type of meat. The cook says it is tinned beef, but the consensus among the patrons of this august regimental establishment is that it’s a considerably smaller animal, one that barks.”
I examined the contents of the pot. He was right. The congealed mess was unappetizing, but I didn’t care. I wearily dropped to the ground and took the proffered tin plate from him. “It’s better than what the Cuban soldiers and my crew have been eating, Theodore. We were lucky to get some wild greens and a rotten sweet potato.”
Theodore was lost in reflection. “Ah, Peter, your diet brings to mind King Solomon’s Fifteenth Proverb, verse seventeen: ‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is about, than a fattened ox where hatred reigns therewith.’ And in all the years since that proverb was written, man has shown that the love of comradeship in the field of battle has no equal.”
I didn’t have the energy to reply, but it didn’t matter. He wasn’t done. Next he gave his opinion of the press coverage of the war. “The press has been focused on superficial matters. An army marches on its stomach! The lamentably meager provisions of your beloved Cuban Liberation Army have not generally been mentioned in the New York newspaper dispatches. Perhaps they should be. I will remind some of the correspondents accompanying us. I have a rapport with them, you know. Kindred scribes.”
“All help is appreciated, Theodore. The Cubans need it.”
“I fully concur, for I met some of your Cuban fellows today. What a sight they were. Brigand looking rather than soldierly. Really, a more ragged gang of tatterdemalions my eyes have never looked upon. More important, I found them armed with every type of dilapidated gun and blade, some as ancient as this so-called food. I suppose they might be good as scouts for our army, though. They do know the lay of the land.”
He meant no ill will, but I was tired of the condescending attitudes from almost every Army officer coming ashore that day. “They may not look like much, Theodore, but they’re pretty damn good at killing the enemy. They’ve been doing it in three wars over the past three decades. I just hope our troops turn out to be as good at it as the Cubans. Talk is cheap.”
He physically recoiled from my comment, realizing he’d given offense.
“My dear Peter, everyone knows of your sincere affection for the Cuban cause of freedom. My comments meant no disrespect to you or them. The fact remains, however, these seminaked peasants do not presently have the same arms, equipment, or training as do the Spanish, or any other modern army. The Cubans fight in a primitive bandit form. Thus they have remained at an impasse with the Spanish. Without our military might they shall have neither victory nor freedom.”
He was right, of course, damn him. The Cubans were in a stalemate. The Americans would have to shoulder the heaviest load of fighting to gain a decisive victory. “Time will tell on that score, Theodore.”
He yawned. “Yes, it always does. I only hope my courage does not fail when facing the proverbial elephant.”
“You’ll do fine. Just don’t do anything stupid and get killed. I’ll catch hell from both Edith and Maria.”
“I shall do my best! Though I am mighty fatigued right now, Peter, I need to stay conscious long enough to hear your latest observations about the enemy. How do we fight them? What is their weakness when in action?”
“It’s much like what I told you in Tampa. Their soldiers wait to be told what to do. Strike fast, and their reaction time will be slow. Their average marksmanship is relatively poor, with rounds going high and a little to the right, so stay low to the ground. They usually fire in volleys. They also don’t like to fight close in. Try to quickly flank them and come in on them from the side or rear. Frontal assaults won’t work; the Spanish are too heavily armed. Some of their local loyalist militia units—they’re called guerillas—have sharpshooters. One of their favorite tactics is to hide in up trees until you go by, then shoot you from behind. So always have a man looking up in the trees as you advance. Hit them in the trees with volley fire the moment you see them.”
“Thank you for the practical suggestions, Peter. I will pass them along to Leonard. We’ll be ready when we meet the enemy.” He yawned again, stretching his arms. Taking off his spectacles and carefully stowing them in a top pocket, he said, “You know, I brought along no less than five pairs of these indispensable little items. I wonder how many I’ll lose on this campaign? Probably all of them!”
Amused by his self-deprecation, Theodore laid his blanket roll beside the fire. I remained seated, Indian-style, poking the coals.
“I fear I must allow slumber to override hospitality, old friend,” he said as he slapped a mosquito on his neck. “It’s not the company, I assure you, but today’s exertion in the face of daunting incompetence has tired me. But despair has no hold on me, for at long last we are here, in Cuba! We are warriors actually in the arena and actively daring great things. Like Lafayette and von Steuben, we are in the midst of the great liberation of a people! Come what may, you and I will always have that, for the rest of our lives.”
In response to the typically romantic Roosevelt hyperbole, I simply said, “Goodnight, Theodore. Sleep well. You’ll get your wish about seeing the damned elephant in the arena soon enough.”
His reply was a blissful snore.
18
The Grand Strategy
Siboney, Cuba
Thursday, 23 June 1898
EARLY THE NEXT DAY, the twenty-third of June, the Army started landing troops at Siboney. This was done in a state of bedlam similar to that at Daiquiri, but fortunately the safety of this second landing was once again guaranteed by the Cuban Army’s forcible ejection of the Spanish from the area. That, combined with a naval bombardment of the Spanish fort and an American advance guard coming overland from Daiquiri on the Spanish rear, soon secured the area. Equally fortunate, the Cuban troops were not subjected to accidental U.S. naval gunfire.
An American general headquarters of sorts was quickly established at Siboney—without General Shafter, who chose to remain comfortably on board his ship for the next several days between periodic visits ashore. By that first afternoon at Siboney, troops and heavy supplies were coming ashore slowly but steadily onto the pier or directly over the beach. Fortunately, the weather, something I’d worried about, stayed benign, for this would be the main landing place for the American troops and supplies.
The march toward Santiago began that same afternoon, though it did not follow the original plan, or even any coordinated movement. The advance resulted from an impromptu race to see which American outfit could shoot a Spaniard first. The winner turned out to be the dismounted cavalry division, which had forged ahead of Lawton’s infantry division on the six-mile march from Daiquiri to Siboney.
The plan had called for everyone, including the cavalry brigades, to rest and regroup upon reaching Siboney. Instead, t
he cavalry continued onward, taking a hard right turn at Siboney onto the inland road to Santiago. That right turn proved fateful. The first real contact with the enemy took place three miles up the road near a nondescript place called Las Guasimas in the hilly green jungle behind the coast.
The unit to achieve this distinction was the division’s 2nd Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General Young. It consisted of the 1st Cavalry Regiment (white regulars); the 10th Cavalry Regiment (Negro regulars); and the 1st Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, the “Rough Riders,” led by Wood and Roosevelt. The opening encounter was an exchange of potshots between the adversaries’ scouts.
None of this, of course, was part of the methodical shoreline advance Major General Shafter had articulated so impressively two days prior at General García’s mountain camp. Shafter wanted his entire army to land, consolidate at Siboney, establish supply bases and transportation, and afterward move forward in a well-controlled mass toward the enemy. That grand strategy echoed Gen. George B. McClellan’s ponderous plan for the Army of the Potomac thirty-six years earlier in northern Virginia.
The commanding generals in both those scenarios, however, had not taken into account the aggressive personalities of some of those involved. For George McClellan in 1862, that person was his brilliant enemy, Confederate general Robert E. Lee. For William Rufus Shafter in 1898, it was former Confederate major general Joseph “Fightin’ Joe” Wheeler, the commander of the cavalry division and second in command of the entire V Corps. There was nothing Shafter could do about his number two, appointed by the president for the political purpose of bringing Southerners into the war effort. This crucial factor made Wheeler untouchable and, for Shafter, barely controllable.
Even at sixty-one, the trim and bandy-legged Wheeler had the irrepressible soul of a true warrior. He acted and thought like a soldier. This was to be expected, for he’d been one since he was a seventeen-year-old reporting in at West Point in 1854. Two years after he graduated and was commissioned, the Civil War arrived. Wheeler took the side of his native South, and his service in the Confederate army was legendary. Wounded three times, with sixteen horses shot from under him, young Joe was regarded as personally fearless and tactically brilliant. Many thought him one of the top two Confederate cavalrymen.
Wheeler was the opposite of Shafter in more than appearance and regional accent. There wasn’t a cautious or calculated bone in his body. He was a cauldron of fire trapped inside a diminutive form. His flinty eyes, balding head of wispy white hair, and shaggy gray beard gave him a wildly dangerous appearance. A shrewd judge of men and situations, Wheeler’s coiled inner spring demanded similar energy from everyone around him. Theodore Roosevelt saw a kindred soul in Wheeler and loved him.
I wasn’t with any of these various worthies, for I was busy with my job as American liaison with the Cuban Liberation Army, which so far had been doing all the heavy but unsung work. Because of my assignment I was several miles out ahead of the American forces, and thus as unaware as Shafter of the Americans’ race to shoot Spaniards. Law, Rork, Fortuna, and I had tramped through the humid jungle along with some Cuban soldiers heading for Colonel Carlos González Clavel’s battalion, veterans of three years of hard fighting, which was keeping an eye on the closest enemy formations astride the road from Siboney to Santiago.
I respected Clavel, a no-nonsense commander in Brigadier General Castillo’s division, whom I’d last seen the morning of the American landing at Daiquiri. It had been Clavel’s men who had cleared Daiquiri and later Siboney. They also had formed the vanguard in front of the allied forces’ advance westbound from Daiquiri to Siboney and beyond.
“The Spanish are withdrawing their troops from the coastal area, Captain Wake,” the colonel advised me when I reached him at 2 a.m. on the twenty-fourth. “Come, sit over here while I describe the situation for you.”
We sat under a mango tree long since picked clean of its fruit. By the dim light of an oil lamp he unfolded a sketch map, then began briefing me. “The Spanish commander is General Antero Rubín, and he is no novice at combat. Rubín has a rear guard of almost nine hundred Puerto Rican loyalist soldiers along with some Spanish conscripts. They are all in good entrenchments along the high ground near Las Guasimas. We are now on the eastern side of the Spanish position”—he pointed to the map—“here. As you can see, we have spread out to the east from the road, which is on our left. American reconnaissance has just been seen coming up the road. They can join the left end of my battalion.”
I presumed the reconnaissance to be inland flank pickets of the coastal advance. “Can you get around that eastern flank and attack the Spanish rear, Colonel?” I asked.
He shook his head. “No, Captain. It would mean climbing a cliff in open sight, which would give away our intentions. The alternative is to march through the jungle to go around the mountain, but that would take too long. To make a frontal uphill attack on such entrenchments would be complete folly. That is exactly what the Spanish always want us to do, but I learned that lesson long ago. They outgun us, so we must outsmart them.”
“That leaves the Spanish blocking the road.”
“The Spanish will be removed, but not by force,” came the colonel’s surprising reply. “I think they will be withdrawing from the entrenchments soon. My scouts tell me the main body of the enemy is already gone, including two of their four Krupp field guns. Two more are still here, on that hill.” He pointed to a hill west of the Spanish position. “The Puerto Rican rear guard is packing up their equipment as we speak.”
“Why would they retreat?”
The usually serious man allowed a half-smile as he explained. “Simple. None of the Puerto Rican volunteers or the Spanish conscripts wants to be left behind in the jungle to face the Cuban Mambi and the Americans alone. They are also afraid of your naval guns.”
I didn’t tell him that this far inland—more than three miles—we were at the farthest edge of our guns’ effective range, or that no signal relay system to the coast and the Navy’s ships had been set up. The planned coastal route of advance would have allowed observers on the ships to see the battle conditions as they occurred, and therefore no relay system was needed. But direct observation would be impossible here.
Instead of telling him what the Americans couldn’t do, I asked, “When do you think the rear guard will leave?”
“Probably later today. They will march west along the main road and reform in even stronger positions closer to their main defenses along a plateau called San Juan, on the eastern approach to Santiago city.”
“So we just let them go?”
“Yes. I think it is far wiser to let them vacate their positions at Las Guasimas. But do not worry; once they are in open column on the road they will be vulnerable. Then we will attack. With the new reinforcements of Cuban soldiers who accompanied you here, I now have eight hundred men. They will be enough to conduct a successful ambuscade on the Spanish when they are exposed on the road.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” I replied with admiration for the Cuban officer’s smart tactics. “You’ll have a great victory over the Spanish and protect the right flank of the allied army’s advance along the coast.”
Since I knew Shafter wanted to consolidate his corps in the Siboney area before moving on Santiago, I was certain Colonel Clavel had time to wait for the Spanish to withdraw from the positions and then attack them. But of course I didn’t know that the plan would fall apart because Fightin’ Joe Wheeler and his “foot cavalry” had arrived on the scene.
19
The Jungle
Las Guasimas, Cuba
Friday, 24 June 1898
AN HOUR BEFORE DAWN, I resolved to personally report this new information about the Spanish positions back to American headquarters. Initially I was going to send Lieutenant Law with the message, but then I decided to return to the beachhead myself. I wanted to gauge the status of our troop and supply consolidation at Siboney. After ascertaining this information I would return i
nland the following morning, better able to advise the Cuban commanders on how to help the overall campaign.
The first light of day was beginning to filter through the trees as my men and I headed around to the west side of the Cuban positions. We followed an ancient, barefoot Mambi guide named Noveno along an animal path that trended to the southwest. He and Fortuna had worked together before and seemed to have an unspoken bond, much as Rork and I had.
Clad in odorous tatters that barely covered his bony frame, Noveno had dark brown skin that was wrinkled in deep furrows; his head lacked so much as a strand of hair. Born a slave seventy or more years earlier, Noveno knew the area intimately. He moved slowly but smoothly along the jungle path without making a sound. As his watery, yellowed eyes squinted through the jungle’s miasmic gloom, his head constantly swiveled to see, hear, and smell things far beyond our meager abilities to detect.
To evade Spanish patrols, we furtively crossed the badly rutted main road. Grandiosely called the Camino Real—the Royal Road—its deplorable condition was symbolic of the demise of Spanish public works in Cuba. Our path led down into a thickly tangled valley toward the side of a low ridge.
As we moved along the narrow track, Noveno’s impassive face showed a slight smile as he pointed out a Mambi trap just ahead. Fortuna explained it to us as we slowly edged our way around it. The trap was an anon tree right on the path. It had a dozen ripe green fruits hanging within easy reach, unusual in an area where most of the fruit trees had been stripped by soldiers desperate for food. Intertwined with this irresistible lure was a guao vine, Cuba’s version of poison ivy, and a pica-pica vine, whose tiny hairs also produced a rapid and terrible itching rash.
The immediate flailing and commotion that would result if anyone reached for the anon fruit and touched the vicious vines would then unleash the pièce de résistance—an artfully concealed hive of avispas tarantulas. Several of the two-inch-long black-and-red wasps, which prey on tarantulas and have stings among the most painful known to man, were crawling over the hive. The sight was unnerving. I had to force myself to ignore the instinct to flee. After this lesson in Mambi warfare I kept an especially watchful eye on where I trod.
Honoring the Enemy Page 11
