The Land Fight at Santiago

The story of the siege of Santiago by the regulars and volunteers is one of heroic endurance of dangers more terrible than the ordinary perils of battle. Tropical heat and rain-storms, miasma in the moist air, hordes of repulsive land-crabs and creeping things in the reeking vegetation, wet clothing and scanty food--these were the trials our inexperienced soldiers had to withstand, stimulated as they were to reckless bravery by the ring of the Spanish bullets that kept hailing on them from the bewildering distance where the enemy fired with smokeless powder. Our ships were pouring shells into the enemy's centre while three grand assaults were being made by the forces under General Shafter. The right wing was under General Lawton, who met his death two years later in the Philippines. The centre was near El Caney, under Generals Wheeler and Kent. Its purpose was to capture the high hill of San Juan, not far from Santiago city. From the conflicting accounts, as to details, of those fierce struggles, it is certain that the Spanish resistance was stronger than General Shafter had counted on. His plan of a sharp, quick attack and victory had to be changed before the successful tactics of the brave enemy, whose concealed sharpshooters laid low many a soldier whose life might have been saved under more cautious tactics. At the "bloody bend" of San Juan, where our raw fighting men received that deadly baptism of fire, there quickly fell Colonel Wikoff and Lieutenant-Colonels Worth and Liscum, the former killed, the last two wounded--three commanding officers down in ten minutes. It was a critical military situation, and for the Americans a deadly one. Then Brigadier-General Hawkins advanced up the hill with the Sixth and Sixteenth regiments, as the brigade under Colonel Ewers came up on another track. Hawkins led the charge. The Spaniards were driven from the trenches, but at a severe cost to our forces. At another point Roosevelt, heading the Rough Riders, asked and got the consent of General Wheeler to charge up the hill. Aided by some of the Twenty-first Infantry and the Ninth and Tenth (black) Cavalry, the Rough Riders tore ahead up that first hill and then up another one, capturing the deserted intrenchment.

Meantime General Lawton was attacking El Caney, on the top of a near-by hill. General Chaffee, Colonel Miles and General Ludlow were in the fight, backed by the field-guns operated by Capron. After a long, desperate struggle, the fort was captured at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Its defenders had made a brave stand. The scene of carnage was dreadful when our men entered. The town remained to be captured. The struggle was even fiercer here. Our force suffered severely, but conquered before nightfall of that terrible 1st of July. Our men were 5,000 against 8,000 at San Juan, well placed for defence, and we numbered about as many at El Caney. Generals Shafter and Wheeler had been incapacitated for several days by the heat and malaria, from which they recovered sufficiently to earn their full share of the glory of a famous campaign. Our selection is taken from the graphic address delivered by General Shafter in the Armory of the First Illinois Volunteers at Chicago, during the Peace Jubilee.]

WE were twice embarked and twice taken back to Tampa and disembarked. On the first occasion the cause was the appearance of Admiral Cervera's fleet, it requiring the entire navy that was disposable to go after that fleet; and the second time by a report that afterwards turned out to be incorrect, that in the Nicholas channel, through which we would have to go, some Spanish cruisers had been seen.

When ordered to Tampa to command the first Cuban expedition, I took the troops that I thought best fitted and prepared for that service. There were some magnificent regiments of volunteers, but to part of them I had issued arms only two or three days before. They were not properly equipped, and lacked experience. As I had the choice, I took all of the regulars that were there, and with them three regiments of volunteers. They were magnificent men, as perfect as men could be, as you who served in '61 know, poorly prepared to take care of themselves at first. You recollect it was months before we were prepared, and we made numerous mistakes that led to sickness and death. The same things have occurred again, and they always will continue with troops that are not used to the field, and in this campaign men were taken directly from their camps immediately after being mustered in, and put into the most difficult campaign of modern military history.

I had practically the entire regular army of the United States, twenty of the twenty-five regiments of infantry, five of the ten regiments of cavalry, and five batteries of artillery, with three regiments of volunteers, the Seventy-first New York, the Second Massachusetts, and the regiment known as Roosevelt's rough riders. The last were practically seasoned soldiers. They were men from the frontier, men who had been accustomed for years to taking a little sack of corn-meal on their saddles, and a blanket, and used to sleeping out of doors for a week or a month at a time. Of course, they knew how to care for themselves in camp.