Part 8 (1/2)

The second difficulty, namely, that of transportation to the front, might have been avoided by taking to Cuba a larger number of wagons and mules. Our army before Santiago suffered for want of a great many things that the soldiers had with them on the transports, but that were not landed and carried promptly forward. Among such things were large tents, rubber blankets, camp-kettles, and large cooking-utensils generally.

”What's the use of telling us to drink only boiled water,” said an officer of the Seventh Infantry to me, ”when we haven't anything bigger than a coffee-cup or an old tomato-can to boil it in, or to keep it in after it has been boiled? They tell us also that we must sleep in hammocks, not get wet if we can help it, and change our underclothes whenever we do get wet. That's all very well, but there isn't a hammock in my company. I haven't any rubber blanket or spare underclothes myself, and I don't believe any of my soldiers have. They made us leave at Tampa everything that we could possibly dispense with, and then, when we got here, they didn't land and send with us even the indispensable things that we had on the transports.”

The complaint of the officer was a perfectly just one, and I heard many more like it. The insufficient and inadequate provision for the care and feeding of the wounded at the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps, which I have tried to describe in the preceding chapter, was due largely to the inability of General Shafter's commissaries and quartermasters to cope successfully with the two great difficulties above indicated, namely, landing from the steamers and transportation to the front. The hospital corps had supplies on the vessels at Siboney, but as everything could not possibly be landed and carried forward at once, preference was given to ammunition and rations for able-bodied soldiers rather than to tents, blankets, and invalid food for the wounded. I do not mean to be understood as saying that the hospital-corps men had even on the transports everything that they needed in order to enable them to take proper care of the eight hundred or one thousand wounded who were thrown on their hands in the course of forty-eight hours. I do not know whether they had or not. Neither do I mean to say that the commissaries and quartermasters did not do all that they possibly could to land and forward supplies of all kinds. I mean only that, as a result of our inability to surmount difficulties promptly, our army at the front was not properly equipped and our wounded were not adequately cared for.

The hospital corps and quartermaster's and commissary departments of the army, however, were not alone in their failure to antic.i.p.ate and fully provide for these difficulties. The Red Cross itself was in no better case. There was perhaps more excuse for us, because when we fitted out we did not know where the army was going nor what it proposed to do, and we had been a.s.sured by the surgeon-general and by General Shafter that, so far as the care of sick and wounded soldiers was concerned, our services would not be required. We expected, however, that they would be, and could we have known in what field and under what conditions our army was going to move and fight, we should probably have had, in some directions, a better, or at least a more suitable, equipment. If we had had at Siboney on June 26 half a dozen army wagons, an equal number of saddle-horses, and forty or fifty mules of our own, we should have been in much better condition than we were to cope with the difficulties of the situation. But for the a.s.sistance of the army, which helped us out with transportation, notwithstanding its own limited resources, we should not have been able to establish a Red Cross station at the front in time to cooperate with the hospital corps after the battle of July 1-2, nor should we have been able to send food to the fifteen thousand refugees from Santiago who fled, hungry and dest.i.tute, to the right wing of our army at Caney when General Shafter threatened to bombard the city. For the opportunity to get into the field we were indebted to the general in command, to his hospital corps, and to the officers of his army; and we desire most gratefully to acknowledge and thank them for the helping hand that they extended to us when we had virtually no transportation whatever of our own.

When we returned to the _State of Texas_ on July 9, the situation, so far as Red Cross relief-work on the southeastern coast of Cuba is concerned, was briefly as follows: We had a station in the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps at the front, and a hospital of our own in Siboney, with twenty-five beds attended by six trained nurses under direction of Dr. Lesser. We also had entire charge of one ward of thirty beds in the general hospital directed by General Lagarde. We were feeding refugees at several points on a line extending east and west nearly sixty miles from the right wing of our army at Caney to the naval station at Guantanamo Bay, and at the latter place we had landed fifteen thousand rations to be distributed under the general direction of Captain McCalla, of the cruiser _Marblehead_, and General Perez, commanding the Cuban forces in the Guantanamo district. To the refugees from Santiago at Caney--about fifteen thousand in number and mostly women and children--we had forwarded, chiefly in army wagons furnished by General Shafter, six or eight tons of food, and were sending more as fast as we could land it in lighters through the surf. Mr. Elwell, of Miss Barton's staff, was taking care of two or three thousand refugees at Firmeza, a small village in the hills back of Siboney, and we hoped soon to enter the harbor of Santiago, discharge the cargo of the _State of Texas_ at a pier, a.s.sort it in a warehouse, and prosecute the work of relief upon a more extensive scale. Our sanguine antic.i.p.ations, however, were not to be realized as soon as we hoped they would be, and our relief-work was practically suspended on July 10, as the result of an outbreak of yellow fever.

The circ.u.mstances in which this fever first made its appearance were as follows: When the army landed at Siboney it found there a dirty little Cuban village of from twelve to twenty deserted houses, situated at the bottom of a wedge-shaped cleft in the long, rocky rampart which forms the coast-line between Siboney and Morro Castle, and at the mouth of a low, swampy, malarious ravine or valley extending back into the foot-hills, and opening upon the sea through the notch. The site of the village, from a sanitary point of view, was a very bad one, not only because it was low and confined, but because in the valley immediately back of it there were a number of stagnant, foul-smelling ponds and pools, half overgrown with rank tropical vegetation, and so full of decaying organic matter that when I pa.s.sed them for the first time on my way to the front I instinctively held my breath as much as possible because the very air from them seemed poisonous. The houses of the village, as a result of long neglect, had become as objectionable from a sanitary point of view as the location in which they stood. They were rather large, well-built, one-story frame houses with zinc roofs, and were erected, if I mistake not, by the Spanish-American Iron Company for the accommodation of its native employees. Originally they must have been very commodious and comfortable buildings, but through the neglect and untidiness of their later occupants they had become so dirty that no self-respecting human being would be willing to live in them.

Such were the village and the houses of Siboney when the army landed there on June 23. In view of the nature of the Cuban climate during the rainy season, and the danger of infection from abandoned houses whose history was entirely unknown, and within whose walls there might have been yellow fever, it was obviously somebody's duty not only to clean up the place as far as possible, but to decide whether the houses should be burned to the ground as probable sources of infection, or, on the other hand, washed out, fumigated, and used. The surgeons of the blockading fleet recommended that the buildings be destroyed, for the reason that if Siboney were to be the army's base of supplies it would be imprudent to run the risk of infection by allowing them to be used. Instead of acting upon this advice, however, the army officers in command at Siboney not only allowed the houses to be occupied from the very first, but put men into them without either disinfecting them or cleaning their dirty floors. Chlorid of lime was not used anywhere, and the foul privies immediately back of and adjoining the houses were permitted to stand in the condition in which they were found, so that the daily rains washed the excrement from them down under the floors to saturate further the already contaminated soil.

When we returned from the front on July 9, we found the condition of the village worse than ever. No attempt, apparently, had been made to clean or disinfect it; no sanitary precautions had been taken or health regulations enforced; hundreds of incredibly dirty and ragged Cubans--some of them employed in discharging the government transports and some of them merely loafers, camp-followers, and thieves--thronged the beach, evacuating their bowels in the bushes and throwing remnants of food about on the ground to rot in the hot suns.h.i.+ne; there was a dead and decomposing mule in one of the stagnant pools behind the village, and the whole place stank. If, under such conditions, an epidemic of fever had not broken out, it would have been so strange as to border on the miraculous. Nature alone would probably have brought it about, but when nature and man cooperated the result was certain. On July 8 the army surgeons reported three cases of yellow fever among the sick in the abandoned Spanish houses on sh.o.r.e. On the 10th the number of cases had increased to thirty, and included Dr. Lesser, chief surgeon of the Red Cross, and his wife, two Red Cross nurses, and Mrs. Trumbull White, wife of the correspondent of the Chicago ”Record,” who had been working as a nurse in the Red Cross hospital.

On the 11th General Miles arrived from Was.h.i.+ngton, and on ascertaining the state of affairs ordered the burning of every house in the village.

I doubt very much whether this step was necessary or judicious, for the reason that it was taken too late. If there was any reason to believe, when the army first began to disembark at Siboney, that the houses of the village were likely to become sources of infection, they should have been burned or fumigated at once. To burn them after they had set yellow fever afloat in that malarious and polluted atmosphere was like locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen. But it is very questionable whether they should have been burned at any time. In a country like eastern Cuba, where at intervals of two or three days throughout the wet season there is a tropical downpour of rain which deluges the ground and beats through the most closely woven tent, a house with a tight zinc roof and a dry floor is a most valuable possession, and it should not be destroyed if there is any way of disinfecting it and making it a safe place of human habitation. All the evidence obtainable in Santiago was to the effect that these houses were not infected with yellow fever; but even if they had been, it was quite possible, I think, to save them and make them useful. If, when the army landed, the best of the buildings had been thoroughly cleaned and then fumigated by shutting them up tightly and burning sulphur and other suitable chemical substances in them, the disease-germs that they contained might have been destroyed. Convict barges saturated with the germs of smallpox, typhus, dysentery, and all sorts of infectious and contagious diseases are treated in this way in Siberia, and there is no reason why houses should not be so purified in Cuba. General Miles and his chief surgeon decided, however, that the whole village should be burned, and burned it was. The postal, telegraph, and signal-service officers were turned out of their quarters and put into tents; a yellow-fever camp was established in the hills about two miles north of Siboney; more hospital tents and tent-flies were pitched along the sea-coast west of the notch; and as fast as sick and wounded soldiers could be removed from the condemned houses and put under canvas or sent to the yellow-fever camp, the houses were destroyed.

In view of the fact that yellow fever had made its appearance in the army before Santiago as well as at Siboney, Miss Barton, acting under the advice and direction of Major Wood, chief surgeon of the First Division hospital, abandoned the Red Cross station at the front, brought all its equipment and supplies back to the sea-coast, and put them again on board the _State of Texas_. She also decided not to allow fever-stricken employees of the Red Cross to be cared for on board the steamer, and Dr. and Mrs. Lesser and two nurses were therefore carried on their cots to a railroad-train and transported to the yellow-fever camp two miles away. I went through the fever hospital where they lay just before they were removed, and made up my mind--very ignorantly and presumptuously, perhaps--that neither they nor any of the patients whom I saw had yellow fever, either in a mild form or in any form whatever.

They seemed to me to have nothing more than calenture, brought on by overwork, a malarious atmosphere, and a bad sanitary environment. Mrs.

White, who was also said to have yellow fever, recovered in three days, just in time to escape being sent to the yellow-fever camp with Dr. and Mrs. Lesser. I have no doubt that there were some yellow-fever cases among the sick who were sent to the camp at the time when the village of Siboney was burned, but I did not happen to see any of them, and it is the opinion of many persons who are far better qualified to judge than I, that yellow-fever cases and calenture cases were lumped together without much discrimination, and that the latter greatly outnumbered the former.

On July 15 the number of so-called yellow-fever cases exceeded one hundred, and the most energetic measures were being taken by the medical authorities on sh.o.r.e to prevent the further spread of the disease.

Everything that could possibly hold or transmit infection was burned, including my blankets, mackintosh-cape, etc., which I had accidentally left in the post-office overnight, as well as all the baggage and personal effects of the postal clerks. Mr. Brewer, the postmaster, died of the fever, Mr. Kempner, the a.s.sistant postmaster, was reduced to sleeping in a camp-chair out of doors without overcoat or blanket, and the telegraph and telephone operators worked night and day in a damp, badly ventilated tent, with their feet literally in pools of mud and water.

On July 15 we heard at Siboney that Santiago had surrendered, and on the following day we steamed down to the mouth of Santiago harbor, with a faint hope that we might be permitted to enter. Admiral Sampson, however, informed us that the surrender, although agreed upon, had not yet taken place, and that it would be impossible for us to enter the harbor until after Morro Castle and the sh.o.r.e batteries had been evacuated. We then sailed for Guantanamo Bay, with the intention of landing more supplies for the refugees in that district; but inasmuch as we had been lying in the fever-infected port of Siboney, Captain McCalla, who came out to the mouth of the bay in a steam-launch to meet us, refused to take the supplies, and would not let us communicate with the sh.o.r.e. On the night of July 16, therefore, we returned to Siboney, and at noon on the 17th we were again off Morro Castle, waiting for an opportunity to enter the harbor.

CHAPTER XIV

ENTERING SANTIAGO HARBOR

As soon as possible after our return from Guantanamo, Miss Barton sent a note to Admiral Sampson, on board the flags.h.i.+p _New York,_ saying that, as the inhabitants of the city were reported to be in a starving condition, she hoped that food would be allowed to go in with the forces. The admiral promptly replied: ”The food shall enter in advance of the forces; you may go in this afternoon.” Almost any other naval commander, after destroying a hostile fleet and reducing all the batteries that defended a hostile city, would have wished to crown his victory and enjoy his triumph by entering the harbor in advance of all other vessels and on one of his own s.h.i.+ps of war; but Admiral Sampson, with the modesty and generosity characteristic of a great and n.o.ble nature, waived his right to be the first to enter the city, and sent in the _State of Texas_, flying the flag of the Red Cross and carrying food and relief for the wounded, the starving, and the dying.

An officer from the _New York_ had been at work all day locating and removing the submarine mines in the narrow part of the channel just north of Morro Castle; but there were still four that had not been exploded. As they were electrical mines, however, and as the cables connecting them with the sh.o.r.e had been cut, they were no longer dangerous, and there was nothing to prevent the entrance of the _State of Texas_ except the narrowness of the un.o.bstructed part of the channel.

The collier _Merrimac_, sunk by Lieutenant Hobson and his men, was not in a position to interfere seriously with navigation. Cervera's fleet ran out without any serious trouble on the western side of her, and there was no reason why Admiral Sampson, if he decided to force an entrance, should not run in, following the same course. In order to prevent this, the Spaniards, on the night of July 4, attempted to sink the old war-s.h.i.+p _Reina Mercedes_ in such a position that she would close the channel at a point where it is very narrow, between the _Merrimac_ and the entrance to the harbor. The s.h.i.+ps of the blockading fleet, however, saw her coming out about midnight, turned their big guns upon her, and sank her with six-and eight-inch projectiles before she could get into position. She drifted around parallel with the sh.o.r.e, and lay half submerged on the eastern side of the channel, about one hundred and fifty yards from the entrance and three hundred or three hundred and fifty yards from the _Merrimac_.

At four o'clock Admiral Sampson sent Lieutenant Capehart on board the _State of Texas_ to give Captain Young all necessary information with regard to the channel and the mines, and a few moments later, under the guidance of a Cuban pilot, we steamed slowly in under the gray, frowning battlements of Morro Castle. As we approached it I had an opportunity to see, for the first time, the nature and extent of the damage done to it by the guns of Admiral Sampson's fleet, and I was glad to find that, although it had been somewhat battered on its southern or sea face, its architectural picturesqueness had not been destroyed or even seriously impaired. To an observer looking at it from the south, it has, in general outline, the appearance of three huge cubes or rectangular ma.s.ses of gray masonry, put together in such a way that the largest cube occupies the crest of the bold, almost precipitous bluff which forms the eastern side of the entrance to the harbor, while the other two descend from it in colossal steps of diminis.h.i.+ng size toward an escarpment in the hillside seventy-five or a hundred feet below, where appear five or six square, grated doors, leading, apparently, to a row of subterranean ammunition-vaults. Underneath the escarpment is a zigzag flight of steps, screened at exposed points by what seem to be comparatively recent walls, or curtains of masonry, much lighter in color than the walls of the castle itself. Still lower down, at the base of the bluff, are two or three huge, dark caves into which the swell of the Caribbean Sea rolls with a dull, reverberating roar. The height of the castle above the water appears to be one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet. There are very few embrasures, or port-holes, in the gray, lichen-stained walls of the old fortification, and, so far as I could see, it had no armament whatever except two or three guns mounted en barbette on the parapet of the uppermost cube, or bastion.

As a defensive work the Morro Castle of Santiago has no importance or significance whatever, and its complete destruction would not have made it any easier for Admiral Sampson to force an entrance to the harbor. It is the oldest Morro, however, in Cuba; and as a relic of the past, and an interesting and attractive feature in a landscape already picturesque, it has the highest possible value, and I am more than glad that it was not destroyed. There was no reason, really, for bombarding it at all, because it was perfectly harmless. The defenses of Santiago that were really dangerous and effective were the submarine mines in the channel and the earthwork batteries east and west of the entrance to the harbor. Morro was huge, formidable-looking, and impressive to the eye and the imagination, but the horizontal reddish streaks of freshly turned earth along the crests of the hills east and west of it had ten times its offensive power. I saw the last Spanish soldier leave the castle at noon on Sunday, and when we pa.s.sed it, soon after four o'clock, its flag was gone, its walls were deserted, and buzzards were soaring in circles about its little corner turrets.

About one hundred and fifty yards inside the entrance to the harbor we pa.s.sed the wreck of the _Reina Mercedes_, lying close to the sh.o.r.e, on the right-hand side of the channel, with her port rail under water and her masts sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees to the westward. Two bra.s.s-bound sea-chests and a pile of signal-flags were lying on her deck aft, and she had not been touched, apparently, since she was sunk by the guns of our battle-s.h.i.+ps on the night of July 4.

Three hundred or three hundred and fifty yards farther in we pa.s.sed what the sailors of the fleet call ”Hobson's choice,” the steam-collier _Merrimac_. She lay in deep water, about midway from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, and all that could be seen of her were the tops of her masts and about two feet of her smoke-stack. If the channel were narrow and were in the middle of the pa.s.sage, she would have blocked it completely; but apparently it is wider than her length, and vessels drawing twenty feet or more of water could go around her without touching bottom. It is a little remarkable that both combatants should have tried to obstruct this channel and that neither should have succeeded. The location chosen by the Spaniards seemed to me to be a better one than that selected by Hobson; but it is so near the mouth of the harbor that the chance of reaching it with a vessel in the glare of our search-lights and under the fire of our guns was a very slight one. The _Reina Mercedes_ reached it, but was disabled before she could get into position.[5]

Beyond the _Merrimac_ the entrance to the harbor widens a little, but the sh.o.r.es continue high and steep for a distance of a mile or more. At intervals of a few hundred yards, however, beautiful deep coves run back into the high land on either side, and at the head of every one the eye catches a glimpse of a little settlement of half a dozen houses with red-tiled roofs, or a country villa shaded by palms and half hidden in shrubbery and flowers. One does not often see, in the tropics or elsewhere, a harbor entrance that is more striking and picturesque than the watery gateway which leads from the ocean to the s.p.a.cious upper bay of Santiago. It does not look like an inlet of the sea, but suggests rather a tranquil, winding river, shut in by high, steep ramparts of greenery, with here and there an opening to a beautiful lateral cove, where the dark ma.s.ses of chaparral are relieved by clumps of graceful, white-stemmed palms and lighted up by the solid sheets of bright-red flowers which hide the foliage of the _flamboyam_, or flame-tree.

As ours was the first vessel that had entered the harbor in nearly two months, and as we were flying the Red Cross flag, our arrival naturally caused great excitement in all the little settlements and at all the villas along the sh.o.r.es. Men, women, and children ran down to the water's edge, waving their hats and handkerchiefs or brandis.h.i.+ng their arms in joyous welcome, and even old, gray-haired, and feeble women, who could not get as far as the sh.o.r.e, stood in front of their little houses, now gazing at us in half-incredulous amazement, and then crossing themselves devoutly with bowed heads, as if thanking G.o.d that siege and starvation were over and help and food at hand.