Part 7 (2/2)

The second day's battle in front of Santiago consisted, generally speaking, of a series of attempts on the part of the Spaniards to drive our troops from the positions which they had taken by a.s.sault on Friday.

The firing continued throughout the day, and at times was very heavy; but just before sunset it died away to a faint sputter and crackle of rifles, and at dark ceased altogether. The moon rose in an unclouded sky over the dark tree-tops east of the camp; the crickets began to chirp in the thicket across the brook; sounds like the rapid shaking of a billiard-ball in a resonant wooden box came from nocturnal birds or tree-toads hidden in the depth of the forest; and the teeming life of the tropical wilderness, frightened into silence for a time by the uproar of battle, took courage from the stillness of night, and manifested its presence by chirps, croaks, and queer, unfamiliar cries in all parts of the encircling jungle.

About ten o'clock the stillness was broken by the boom of a heavy gun at the front, followed instantly by the crash and rattle of infantry fire, which grew heavier and heavier, and extended farther and farther to the north and south, until it seemed to come from all parts of our intrenched line on the crest of the San Juan ridge. For nearly half an hour the rattle and sputter of rifles, the drumming of machine-guns, and the intermittent thunder of artillery filled the air from the outskirts of Santiago to the hospital camp, drowning the murmur of the rippling brook, and silencing again the crickets, birds, and tree-toads in the jungle beyond it. Then the uproar ceased, almost as suddenly as it had begun; the stillness of night settled down again upon the lonely tropical wilderness; and if I had not been able to hear the voices of the surgeons as they consulted over an operating-table, and an occasional shot from a picket or a sharpshooter in the forest, I should not have imagined that there was an army or a battle-field within a hundred miles. From the wounded who came back from the firing line an hour or two later we learned that the enemy made an attempt, about ten o'clock, to recapture the San Juan heights, but were repulsed with heavy loss.

Sat.u.r.day's fighting did not materially change the relative positions of the combatants, but it proved conclusively that we could hold the San Juan ridge against any attacking force that the Spaniards could muster.

Why, after a demonstration of this fact, General Shafter should have been so discouraged as to ”seriously consider the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear,” I do not know. Our losses in the fighting at Caney and San Juan were only two hundred and thirty-nine men killed and thirteen hundred and sixty-three wounded, yet General Shafter was so disheartened that he not only thought of retreating to a position five miles in the rear, but seems to have been upon the point of surrendering the command of the army to General Breckenridge. Ill health, doubtless, had much to do with this feeling of discouragement. It certainly was not warranted by anything that one could see at the end of the second day's fight. We had taken every position that we had attacked; we had lost only ten per cent of our available force; and we were strongly intrenched on the crest of a high hill less than a mile and a half from the eastern boundary of the city.

After General Lawton's division and the brigade of General Bates had reinforced Generals Kent and Wheeler at San Juan, there was very little reason to fear that the Spaniards would drive us from our position.

The fighting of all our soldiers, both at Caney and at San Juan, was daring and gallant in the extreme; but I cannot refrain from calling particular attention to the splendid behavior of the colored troops. It is the testimony of all who saw them under fire that they fought with the utmost courage, coolness, and determination, and Colonel Roosevelt said to a squad of them in the trenches, in my presence, that he never expected to have, and could not ask to have, better men beside him in a hard fight. If soldiers come up to Colonel Roosevelt's standard of courage, their friends have no reason to feel ashamed of them. His commendation is equivalent to a medal of honor for conspicuous gallantry, because, in the slang of the camp, he himself is ”a fighter from 'way back.” I can testify, furthermore, from my own personal observation in the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps Sat.u.r.day and Sat.u.r.day night, that the colored regulars who were brought in there displayed extraordinary fort.i.tude and self-control. There were a great many of them, but I cannot remember to have heard a groan or a complaint from a single man. I asked one of them whether any of his comrades showed signs of fear when they went into action. ”No,” he replied, with a grin, ”not egzactly; two or three of 'em looked kindo' squandered just at first, but they mighty soon braced up.”

Among the volunteer regiments that were hotly engaged and lost heavily in Friday's battle were the Seventy-first New York and the Second Ma.s.sachusetts. Both were armed with Springfield rifles, and this put them at a great disadvantage as compared with the regulars, all of whom used Krag-Jorgensen rifles or carbines with smokeless powder. In a wooded and chaparral-covered country like that around Santiago, where it was so easy to find concealment and so difficult to see troops at a distance, the use of smokeless powder was of the utmost possible importance. A body of men might be perfectly hidden in woods or chaparral within five hundred yards of the enemy's intrenchments, and if they used smokeless powder they might fire from there for half an hour without being seen or getting a return shot; but if they were armed with Springfields, the smoke from their very first volley revealed to the enemy their exact position, and the chaparral that concealed them was torn to pieces by a hail-storm of projectiles from Mausers and machine-guns. It was cruel and unreasonable to ask men to go into action, in such a field, with rifles that could be used only with common powder. Our men might as well have been required to hoist above the bushes and chaparral a big flag emblazoned with the words, ”Here we are!” Dr. Hitchc.o.c.k, surgeon of the Second Ma.s.sachusetts, told me that again and again, when they were lying concealed in dense scrub beside a regiment of regulars, the latter would fire for twenty minutes without attracting a single return shot from the enemy's line; but the moment the men of the Second Ma.s.sachusetts began to use their Springfields, and the smoke rose above the bushes, the Spaniards would concentrate their fire upon the spot, and kill or wound a dozen men in as many minutes. It is to be hoped that our government will not send any more troops abroad with these antiquated guns. They were good enough in their day, but they are peculiarly unsuited to the conditions of warfare in a tropical field.

Wounded men from the front continued to come into the hospital camp on Sat.u.r.day until long after midnight, and the exhausted surgeons worked at the operating-tables by candlelight until 3 A. M. I noticed, carrying stretchers and looking after the wounded, two or three volunteer a.s.sistants from civil life, among them Mr. Brewer of Pittsburg, who died of yellow fever a few days later at Siboney.

Worn out by sleeplessness, fatigue, and the emotional strain of two nights and a day of field-hospital experience, I stretched my hammock between two trees, about three o'clock in the morning, crawled into it, and slept, for two or three hours, the dead, dreamless sleep of complete exhaustion. Dr. Egan, I think, did not lie down at all. After all the other surgeons had gone to their tents, he wandered about the camp, looking after the wounded who lay s.h.i.+vering here and there on the bare, wet ground, and giving them, with medicines, stomach-tube, and catheter, such relief as he could. Soon after sunrise I awoke, and after a hasty breakfast began carrying around food and water. I shall not attempt to describe fully the terrible and heartrending experience of that morning; but two or three of the scenes that I was compelled to witness seem, even now, to be etched on my memory in lines of blood. About nine o'clock, for example, I went into a small wall-tent which sheltered a dozen or more dangerously wounded Spaniards and Cuban insurgents.

Everything that I saw there was shocking. On the right-hand side of the tent, face downward and partly buried in the water-soaked, oozy ground, lay a half-naked Cuban boy, nineteen or twenty years of age, who had died in the night. He had been wounded in the head and at some time during the long hours of darkness between sunset and dawn the bandage had partly slipped off, and hemorrhage had begun. The blood had run down on his neck and shoulders, coagulating and stiffening as it flowed, until it had formed a large, red, spongy ma.s.s around his neck and on his naked back between the shoulder-blades. This, with the coal-black hair, the chalky face partly buried in mud, and the distorted, agonized att.i.tude of the half-nude body, made one of the most ghastly pictures I had ever seen. There was already a stench of decomposition in the hot air of the tent, and the coagulated blood on the half-naked corpse, as well as the b.l.o.o.d.y bandage around its head, was swarming with noisy flies. Just beyond this terrible object, and looking directly at it, was another young Cuban who had been shot through the body, and who was half crouching, half kneeling, on the ground, with his hands pressed to his loins. He was deadly pale, had evidently been in torment all night, and was crying, over and over again, in a low, agonized tone, ”Oh, my mother, my mother, my mother!” as he looked with distracted eyes at the b.l.o.o.d.y, half-naked body of his dead comrade and saw in it his own impending fate. The stench, the buzzing flies, the half-dried blood, the groans, and the cries of ”O, mi madre!” ”O Jesu!” from the half-naked wretches lying in two rows on the bare, muddy ground, came as near making an inferno as anything one is ever likely to see.

In another tent, a short distance away, I found a smooth-faced American soldier about thirty years of age, who had been shot in the head, and also wounded by a fragment of a sh.e.l.l in the body. He was naked to the waist, and his whole right side, from-the armpit to the hip, had turned a purplish-blue color from the bruising blow of the sh.e.l.l. Blood had run down from under the bandage around his head, and had then dried, completely covering his swollen face and closed eyelids with a dull-red mask. On this had settled a swarm of flies, which he was too weak to brush away, or in too much pain to notice. I thought, at first, that he was dead; but when I spoke to him and offered him water, he opened his bloodshot, fly-encircled eyes, looked at me for a moment in a dull, agonized way, and then closed them and faintly shook his head. Whether he lived or died, I do not know. When I next visited the tent he was gone.

As soon as possible after my arrival at the hospital I had obtained an order from Lieutenant-Colonel Pope, chief surgeon of the Fifth Army-Corps, for wagons, and on Sat.u.r.day afternoon I telephoned Miss Barton from General Shafter's headquarters to send us blankets, clothing, malted milk, beef extract, tents, tent-flies, and such other things as were most urgently needed. Sunday afternoon, less than twenty-four hours after my message reached her, she rode into the hospital camp in an army wagon, with Mrs. Gardner, Dr. Gardner, Dr.

Hubbell, and Mr. McDowell. They brought with them a wagon-load of supplies, including everything necessary for a small Red Cross emergency station, and in less than two hours they were refres.h.i.+ng all the wounded men in the camp with corn-meal gruel, hot malted milk, beef extract, coffee, and a beverage known as ”Red Cross cider,” made by stewing dried apples or prunes in a large quant.i.ty of water, and then pouring off the water, adding to it the juice of half a dozen lemons or limes, and setting it into the brook in closed vessels to cool. After that time no sick or wounded man in the camp, I think, ever suffered for want of suitable food and drink.

On Monday Miss Barton and Dr. Hubbell went back to the steamer at Siboney for additional supplies, and in twenty-four hours more we had blankets, pillows, and hospital delicacies enough to meet all demands.

We should have had them there before the battle began, if we could have obtained transportation for them from the sea-coast. As fast as possible the wounded were taken in army wagons from the field-hospital to Siboney, where they were put on board the transports, and at eight o'clock on Tuesday evening Major Johnson was able to report to Major Wood that every wounded man left in the hospital was in a tent, with a rubber poncho or tarpaulin under him and a blanket over him.

In spite of unfavorable conditions, the percentage of recoveries among the wounded treated in this hospital was much greater than in any other war in which the United States has ever been engaged. This was due partly to improved antiseptic methods of treatment, and partly to the nature of the wound made by the Mauser bullet. In most cases this wound was a small, clean perforation, with very little shattering or mangling, and required only antiseptic bandaging and care. All abdominal operations that were attempted in the field resulted in death, and none were performed after the first day, as the great heat and dampness, together with the difficulty of giving the patients proper nursing and care, made recovery next to impossible.

CHAPTER XIII

SIBONEY DURING THE ARMISTICE

On the morning of July 3, General Shafter, who had recovered confidence, demanded the immediate surrender of Santiago, threatening, in case of refusal, to bombard the city; and negotiations under a flag of truce continued thereafter for a period of ten days. Meanwhile, on the evening of Friday, July 8, Miss Barton, Dr. Egan, Dr. Hubbell, and I returned to the _State of Texas_ to meet Mrs. J. Addison Porter, wife of the President's secretary, who had just arrived on the hospital steamer _Relief_, and to get some ice and other hospital supplies of which we were in need. We left the field-hospital in an army wagon about seven o'clock and reached Siboney soon after ten. The surf raised by a strong south-easterly wind was rolling so high on the strip of beach behind which the village stood that we could not get off on board the _State of Texas_, nor even communicate with her. It was extremely tantalizing to us, tired, hungry, and camp-soiled as we were, to see the lights of our steamer only a quarter of a mile away, to know that almost within reach were a cool bath, a good supper, a clean bed, and all the comforts, if not the luxuries, of life, and yet to feel that, so far as we were concerned, they were as unattainable as if the s.h.i.+p were in the Bay of San Francisco.

Siboney at that time was a wretched little hamlet containing only ten or fifteen abandoned and incredibly dirty Spanish houses, most of which were in use either as hospitals or for government offices. None of them contained sleeping accommodations, even of the most primitive kind; all of them were crowded; and if one arrived in the village, as we did, at a late hour of the night, there was nothing to be done but bivouac somewhere on the dirty, flea-infested floor of an open piazza, or lie out on the ground. One of the largest and most commodious buildings in the village, a one-story house with a high front stoop or porch, had been used, apparently, during the Spanish occupation of the place, as a store or shop. At the time of our return from the front it sheltered the ”United States Post-Office, Military Station No. 1,” which had been transferred from Daiquiri to Siboney two or three days before. In front of this building our army wagon stopped, and we men went in to inquire for mail and to see if we could find a decently clean place for Miss Barton to sleep. She was quite ready to bivouac in the army wagon; but we hoped to get something better for her. Mr. Brewer, the postmaster, whom I had met in one of my lecture trips through the West and more recently in the field, received us cordially, and at once offered Miss Barton his own cot, in a room that had not yet been cleaned or swept, back of the general delivery department. By the light of a single candle it seemed to be a gloomy, dirty, and barn-like apartment; but the cot was the only thing in the shape of a bed that I had seen in Siboney, outside of the hospitals, and we accepted it for Miss Barton with grateful hearts. The employees of the post-office were all sleeping in camp-chairs or on the counters and floors. Where Mr. Brewer went when he had given his own bed to Miss Barton, I do not know. I left her writing orders and telegrams by the light of a flaring, guttering candle at about eleven o'clock, and went out on the piazza to take a more careful survey of the premises and make up my mind where I would sleep.

Lying across the high stoop was a long white object, which appeared, in the darkness, to be a woman in her nightgown, with her head raised a little on the sill of a disused door. I stepped over her once in going down-stairs to the street, and wondered what calamity of war had reduced a woman to the necessity of sleeping in such a place and in circ.u.mstances of such hards.h.i.+p and privation. I was just discussing with Dr. Hubbell the possibility of getting the United States Signal Corps man in the telegraph office to signal our steamer for a boat, regardless of the high surf, when the long white figure on the floor rose, with an unmistakably masculine grunt, and remarked, with a slight English accent, that he did not think there was any possibility of getting off to a s.h.i.+p in a small boat, inasmuch as he had been trying for twenty-four hours to get on board of his own vessel and had not succeeded yet. The figure proved to be that of Lord Alfred Paget, naval observer for the British government, and what I had taken in the darkness for the white gown of a woman was his white-duck uniform. After discussing the situation for a few moments, and declaring discontentedly that our engineer corps had had time enough to build six piers and yet had not finished one, he lay down on the floor again, without blanket, pillow, or overcoat, rested his head on the sill of the disused door, and apparently went to sleep, while I debated in my mind the question whether I had better sleep with him on the floor of the piazza, and take the chance of getting yellow fever from a possibly infected building, or lie out on the ground, where I might be stepped on by prowling Cuban refugees, or run over by a mule-team coming in from the front. I finally decided that sleeping accommodations which were good enough for Lord Alfred were good enough for me, and, just as the moon was rising over the high, rocky rampart east of the village, I rolled myself up in my blanket and lay down on the floor against the piazza rail. Dr. Hubbell slept on the counter of the money-order division of the post-office, while Dr. Egan, without blanket or pillow, stretched himself out on the dirty planks below.

We were all up at daybreak, and making my toilet by tightening my belt and putting on my mud-spattered pith helmet, I went down to the water's edge to try to find some means of communicating with the s.h.i.+p. During my absence at the front there had evidently been strong winds and heavy seas, for the strip of beach was covered with the wrecks of lighters which had been smashed while trying to land supplies in the surf, and a large steam lighter-launch, loaded with twenty tons or more of hard bread, beans, etc., was lying on the bottom, half submerged, about fifty yards from sh.o.r.e, with the sea breaking over her. The small temporary pier at which I landed when I went to the front had been completely demolished and swept away, but another stronger one was in process of construction.

The most serious embarra.s.sments with which the army of invasion had to contend after it reached the coast and began its march on Santiago were: first, the extreme difficulty of landing supplies in a place like Siboney, where there was neither pier nor shelter, and where the beach was lashed a large part of the time by a high and dangerous surf; and, second, the difficulty of getting such supplies to the front over a single line of very bad road, with an insufficient number of mules and army wagons. If these two difficulties had been foreseen and provided for there would not have been so many smashed lighters and launches on the beach, and the soldiers at the front would not have lived so much of the time on short rations, nor have been compelled to boil water and cook their rations in coffee-cups and tomato-cans, as they had to do throughout the campaign. The difficulty of landing supplies on that exposed and surf-beaten coast might have been antic.i.p.ated, it seems to me, and provided for. The wars.h.i.+ps of Sampson's and Schley's fleets were there long before General Shafter's army left Tampa, and their commanders must have seen, I think, that to get supplies ash.o.r.e through the surf at any point between Santiago and Guantanamo Bay would be extremely difficult and hazardous, and would probably require the use of special engineering devices and appliances. The prevailing winds there are from the east and southeast, and from such winds the little indentations of the coast at Siboney and Daiquiri afforded no protection whatever. A strong breeze raised a sea which might amount to nothing outside, but which was very troublesome, if not dangerous, to loaded boats and lighters as soon as they reached the line where it began to break in surf. The water was very deep close to sh.o.r.e; it was difficult, therefore, to construct a pier of any great length; and even if there had been a long and solid pier, small boats and lighters could not have discharged cargo upon it with any safety while they were being tossed up and down and dashed against it by a heavy sea.

I do not pretend to be an expert in such matters, but in watching the landing of supplies here, both from our own steamer and from the army transports, it seemed to me that what is known, I believe, as a ”cable hoist” might have been used to advantage if it had been provided in time. It is a contrivance resembling the cable and car employed by life-saving crews on our coasts to bring s.h.i.+pwrecked sailors ash.o.r.e under similar conditions; or, to use a comparison that is more familiar, it is a reproduction on a large scale of the traveling cash-boxes on wires used in large department stores. If a suitable transport had been anch.o.r.ed outside the line of surf, fifty or seventy-five yards from the beach, and a steel cable stretched from it to a strong mast on sh.o.r.e, I do not see any reason why cargo might not have been carried over the cable in a suspended car or cars with much greater rapidity and safety than it was carried in lighters. Such devices are used, I think, at several points on the western coast of South America for putting guano and phosphates on board of vessels where communication with the sh.o.r.e is hazardous and uncertain on account of swell or surf.

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