Part 12 (2/2)

I do not mean to throw any undeserved blame upon the quartermasters and commissaries at Siboney. Many of them worked day and night with indefatigable energy to get supplies on sh.o.r.e and forward them to the army; but they were hampered by conditions over which they had no control, and for which, perhaps, they were not in any way responsible; they were often unable to obtain the a.s.sistance of steamer captains and other officers upon whose cooperation the success of their own efforts depended, and they probably did all that could be done by individuals acting as separate units rather than as correlated parts of an organized and intelligently directed whole. The trouble at Siboney was the same trouble that became apparent at Tampa. There was at the head of affairs no controlling, directing, and energizing brain, capable of grasping all the details of a complex situation and making all the parts of a complicated mechanism work harmoniously together for the accomplishment of a definite purpose.

III. The strategic plan of campaign and its execution.

As this branch of the subject will be discussed--if it has not already been discussed--by better-equipped critics than I can pretend to be, I shall limit myself to a brief review of the campaign in its strategic aspect as it appears from the standpoint of a civilian.

I understand, from officers who were in a position to know the facts, that the original plan of attack on the city of Santiago provided for close and effective cooperation of the army with the navy, and for a joint a.s.sault by way of Aguadores and Morro Castle. General Shafter was to move along the line of the railroad from Siboney to Aguadores, keeping close to the coast under cover of the guns of the fleet, and, with the a.s.sistance of the latter, was to capture the old Aguadores fort and such other intrenchments as should be found at the mouth of the Aguadores ravine. This, it was thought, might be accomplished with very little loss, because the fleet could sh.e.l.l the Spaniards out of their fortifications, and thus make it possible for the army to occupy them without much fighting. Having taken Aguadores, General Shafter was to continue his march westward along the coast, still under the protection of Admiral Sampson's guns, until he reached Morro. Then, without attempting to storm or reduce the castle, he was to go down through the ravine that leads to the head of the Estrella cove, and seize the submarine-mine station at the mouth of Santiago harbor. When electrical connection between the station and the mines had been destroyed, and the mines had thus been rendered harmless, Admiral Sampson was to force an entrance, fighting his way in past the batteries, and the army and fleet were then to advance northward toward the city along the eastern side of the bay.

This plan had many obvious advantages, the most important of which was the aid and protection that would be given to the army, at every stage of its progress, by the guns of perhaps thirty or forty s.h.i.+ps of war. In the opinion of naval officers, Admiral Sampson's cruisers and battle-s.h.i.+ps could sweep the country ahead of our advance with such a storm of shot and sh.e.l.l that the Spaniards would not be able to hold any position within a mile of the coast. All that the army would have to do, therefore, would be to occupy the country as fast as it was cleared by the fire of the fleet, and then open the harbor to the latter by cutting communication with the submarine mines which were the only effective defense that the city had on the water side. General Shafter's army, moreover, would be all the time on high, sea-breeze-swept land, and therefore comparatively safe from malarial fever, and it would not only have a railroad behind it for the transportation of its supplies, but be constantly within easy reach of its base by water.

Why this plan was eventually given up I do not know. In abandoning it General Shafter voluntarily deprived himself of the aid that might have been rendered by three or four hundred high-powered and rapid-fire guns, backed by a trained fighting force of six or eight thousand men. I do not know the exact strength of Sampson's and Schley's combined fleets, but this seems to me to be a conservative estimate. A prominent officer of the battle-s.h.i.+p _Iowa_ told me in Santiago, after the surrender, that the fighting s.h.i.+ps under Admiral Sampson's command, including the auxiliary cruisers and mosquito fleet, could concentrate on any given field a fire of about one hundred sh.e.l.ls a second. This included, of course, small projectiles from the rapid-fire and one-pound machine guns. He did not think it possible for Spanish infantry to live, much less fight, in the field swept by such a fire, and this was his reason for believing that the fleet could have cleared the way for the army if the latter had advanced along the coast instead of going back into the interior. The plan of attack by way of Aguadores and Morro was regarded by the foreign residents of Santiago as the one most likely to succeed; and a gentleman who lived eight years at Daiquiri, as manager of the Spanish-American Iron Company, and who is familiar with the topography of the whole region, writes me: ”I have always thought that the great mistake of the Santiago campaign was that they a.s.saulted the city at its most impregnable point, instead of taking possession of the heights at Aguadores, which would have been tantamount to the fall of Morro, the possession of the harbor entrance and of the harbor itself. The forces of the Spaniards were not sufficient to maintain any considerable number of men there, and it seems to me that, with the help of the fleet sh.e.l.ling the heights, they could have been reached very easily along the Juragua Railroad. If General Duffield had pressed on when he was there, it is probable that he would have met with only a thin skirmish-line, or, if the fleet had done its work, with no resistance at all.”

The reason a.s.signed for General Shafter's advance through the valleys and over the foot-hills of the interior, instead of along the high land of the coast, is that he had been ordered to ”capture the garrison at Santiago and a.s.sist in capturing the harbor and the fleet.” He did not believe, it is said, that he could ”capture the garrison” without completely investing the city on the east and north. If he attacked it from the southern or Morro side, he might take the city, but the garrison would escape by the Cobre or the San Luis road. This seems like a valid and reasonable objection to the original plan of campaign; but I doubt very much whether the Spanish army would have tried to escape in any event, for the reason that the surrounding country was almost wholly dest.i.tute of food, and General Linares, in the hurry and confusion of defeat, would hardly have been able to organize a provision-train for an army of eight or ten thousand men, even if he had had provisions to carry. The only place where he could hope to find food in any quant.i.ty was Manzanillo, and to reach that port he would have had to make a forced march of from twelve to fifteen days. But the question whether the interior line of advance or the coastline was the better must be left to strategists, and I express no opinion with regard to it.

The operations and manoeuvers of our army in front of Santiago have already been described and commented upon by a number of expert observers, and the only additional criticisms that I have to make relate to General Shafter's neglect of reconnaissances, as a means of ascertaining the enemy's strength and position; his apparent loss of grip after the battle of July 1-2; and his failure not only to prevent, but to take any adequate steps to prevent, the reinforcement of the Santiago garrison by a column of five thousand regulars from Manzanillo under command of Colonel Escarrio. If I am correctly informed, the only reconnaissances made from the front of our army, after it came within striking distance of the enemy's intrenched line, were made by General Chaffee and a few other commanding officers upon their own responsibility and for their own information. General Shafter knew little more about the topography of the country in front of his advance picket-line than could be ascertained by mere inspection from the top of a hill. He received information to the effect that General Pando, with a strong column of Spanish regulars, was approaching Santiago from the direction of Manzanillo; but he never took any adequate steps to ascertain where General Pando was, when and by what road he might be expected to arrive, or how many men he was bringing with him. In the course of a single day--July 3--General Shafter sent three telegrams to the War Department with regard to the whereabouts of Pando, in each of which he located that officer in a different place. In the first he says: ”Pando has arrived at Palma” (a village about twenty-five miles northwest of Santiago on the Cobre road). In the second he declares that Pando is ”six miles north of Santiago,” ”near a break in the [San Luis]

railroad,” and that he thinks ”he will be stopped.” In the third he says: ”Pando, I find to-night, is some distance away and will not get into Santiago.”

We know now--and General Shafter should have known then--that the column of reinforcements from Manzanillo was not led by General Pando, but by Colonel Escarrio, and that at the very time when Shafter, in successive telegrams, was placing it ”at Palma,” ”six miles north,” ”near a break in the railroad,” and ”some distance away,” it was actually in the Santiago intrenchments, ready for business.

I take this case as an ill.u.s.tration on account of its extreme importance. A column of five thousand Spanish regulars is not to be despised; and when it is within a few days', or perhaps a few hours', march, knowledge of its exact location may be a matter of life and death to a thousand men. Was there any reason why General Shafter should not have informed himself accurately with regard to the strength and the position of this column of reinforcements? I think not. When Admiral Sampson arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor, it was of vital importance that he should know with certainty the location of Cervera's fleet. He did not hastily telegraph the War Department that it was reported at Cienfuegos; that it was said to be in the Windward Pa.s.sage; that it was five miles north of Morro, or that it was near a reef in the Este Channel and would be stopped. He sent Lieutenant Victor Blue ash.o.r.e to make a thorough and careful reconnaissance. Lieutenant Blue made a difficult and dangerous journey of seventy miles, on foot, around the city of Santiago, saw personally every vessel in the harbor, and then returned to the flags.h.i.+p, and reported that Cervera's fleet was all there. I do not know whether this was good strategy on the part of Admiral Sampson or not, but it was certainly good common sense. Suppose that General Shafter had asked General Wood to pick out from the Rough Riders half a dozen experienced scouts and Indian fighters to make a reconnaissance, with Cuban guides, in the direction of Manzanillo, and ascertain exactly where that column of reinforcements was, and when it might be expected to arrive. Would not the men have been forthcoming, and would not the desired information have been obtained? I have confidence enough in the Rough Riders to answer this question emphatically in the affirmative. The capable men are not all in the navy, and if General Shafter did not have full information with regard to Colonel Escarrio's movements, it was simply because he did not ask any of his officers or men to get it for him--and it was information well worth having. If that column of five thousand Spanish regulars had reached Santiago two days earlier--the evening before instead of the morning after the battle of July 1-2--I doubt very much whether we should have taken either Caney or San Juan Hill, and General Shafter might have had better reason than he did have to ”consider the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear.”[14]

If General Shafter believed that these Spanish reinforcements were ”some distance away” and that they would ”not get into Santiago,” it is difficult to understand why he should have so far lost his grip, after the capture of Caney and San Juan Hill, as to telegraph the War Department that he was ”seriously considering the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear.” His troops had not been defeated, nor even repulsed; they had been victorious at every point; and the Spaniards, as we afterward learned in Santiago, were momentarily expecting them to move another mile to the front, rather than five miles to the rear. It is the belief of many foreign residents of Santiago, including the English cable-operators, who had the best possible means of knowing the views of the Spanish commanders, that if our army had continued the attack after capturing Caney and San Juan Hill it might have entered the city before dark. This may or may not be so; but the chance--if chance there was--vanished when Colonel Escarrio, on the morning after the battle, marched around the head of the bay and into the city with a reinforcing column of five thousand regulars.

General Shafter says, in his official report, that ”the arrival of General Escarrio was not antic.i.p.ated” because ”it was not believed that his troops could arrive so soon.” The time when a reinforcing column of five thousand men will reach the enemy ought not to be a matter of vague belief--it should be a matter of accurate foreknowledge; and if General Shafter had sent a couple of officers with a few Rough Riders out on the roads leading into Santiago from Manzanillo, he might have had information that would have made the arrival of Colonel Escarrio less unexpected. But he seems to have taken no steps either to ascertain the movements of the latter or to prevent his junction with Linares.

General O. O. Howard, in an interview published in the New York ”Tribune” of September 14, 1898, explains the apparent indifference of General Shafter to the approach of these reinforcements as follows: ”In regard to the Cubans allowing the Spanish reinforcements to enter Santiago from Manzanillo, I would say that I met General Shafter on board the _Vixen_, and from my conversation with him I infer that he intended to allow the Spaniards to enter the city, so as to have them where he could punish them more.”

It is to be hoped that General Howard misunderstood General Shafter, because such strategy as that indicated would suggest the tactics of the pugnacious John Phoenix, who, in a fight in the editorial room, put his nose into the mouth of his adversary in order to hold the latter more securely.

The explanation of the entrance of the Spanish reinforcements given by General Shafter in his official report of the campaign is as follows: ”General Garcia, with between four and five thousand Cubans, was intrusted with the duty of watching for and intercepting the reinforcements expected. This, however, he failed to do, and Escarrio pa.s.sed into the city along my extreme right and near the bay.”

General Garcia himself, however, in his report to his own government, states that he was directed by General Shafter to occupy and hold a certain position on the right wing of the army, and that, without disobeying orders and leaving that position, he could not possibly intercept the Manzanillo troops.

As it happened, Escarrio's column did not become a controlling or decisive factor in the campaign, and the question why he was allowed to reinforce the Santiago garrison has therefore only a speculative interest. If, however, these reinforcements had happened to arrive two days earlier--in time to take part in the battle of July 1-2--the whole course of events might have been changed. The Spanish garrison of the city, according to the English cable-operators and the foreign residents, consisted of three thousand regulars, one thousand volunteers, and about one thousand sailors and marines from Cervera's fleet--a force, all together, of not more than five thousand men. This comparatively small army, fighting in intrenchments and in almost impregnable positions, came so near repulsing our attack on July 1 that General Shafter ”seriously considered the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear.” If the five thousand men in the Spanish blockhouses and rifle-pits had been reinforced July 1 instead of July 3 by the five thousand regulars from Manzanillo, the Santiago campaign might have ended in a great disaster. Fortunately for General Shafter, and unfortunately for General Toral, ”Socorro de Espana o tarde o nunca” (”Spanish reinforcements arrive late or never ”).

CHAPTER XXI

THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN (_Concluded_)

IV. The wrecking of the army by disease after the decisive battle of July 1-2.

The army under command of General Shafter left Tampa on the fourteenth day of June, and arrived off the Cuban coast near Santiago on the 20th of the same month. Disembarkation began at Daiquiri on the 22d, and ended at Siboney on the 24th. On the morning of June 25 the whole army was ash.o.r.e, and was then in a state of almost perfect health and efficiency. One week later the soldiers at the front began to sicken with malarial and other fevers, and two weeks later, according to General Shafter's report, ”sickness was increasing very rapidly, and the weakness of the troops was becoming so apparent that I was anxious to bring the siege to an end.” On July 21, less than four weeks after the army landed, Colonel Roosevelt told me that not more than one quarter of his men were fit for duty, and that when they moved five miles up into the hills, a few days before, fifty per cent. of the entire command fell out of the ranks from exhaustion. On July 22 a prominent surgeon attached to the field-hospital of the First Division stated to me that at least five thousand men in the Fifth Army-Corps were then ill with fever, and that there were more than one thousand sick in General Kent's division alone. On August 3 eight general officers in Shafter's command signed a round-robin in which they declared that the army had been so disabled by malarial fevers that it had lost its efficiency; that it was too weak to move back into the hills; that the epidemic of yellow fever which was sure to occur would probably destroy it, and that if it were not moved North at once it ”must perish.” At that time, according to General Shafter's telegram of August 8 to the War Department, ”seventy-five per cent. of the command had been ill with a very weakening malarial fever, which leaves every man too much broken down to be of any use.” In the short s.p.a.ce of forty days, therefore, an army of sixteen thousand men had lost three fourths of its efficiency, and had been reduced to a condition so low that, in the opinion of eight general officers, it must inevitably ”perish” unless immediately sent back to the United States. Early in August, after a stay in Cuba of only six weeks, the Fifth Army-Corps began to move northward, and before September 1 the whole command was in camp at Montauk Point, Long Island.

Of the eighteen thousand men who composed it, five thousand were very ill, or soon became very ill, and were sent to the general hospital; while five thousand more, who were less seriously sick, were treated in their tents.[15] Eight thousand men out of eighteen thousand were nominally well, but had been so enfeebled by the hards.h.i.+ps and privations of the campaign that they were no longer fit for active Cuban service, and, in the opinion of General Miles, hardly one of them was in sound health.[16] I think it is not an exaggeration to describe this state of affairs as ”the wrecking of the army by disease.” It is my purpose in the present chapter to inquire whether such wrecking of the army was inevitable, and if not, why it was allowed to happen.

A review of the history of campaigns in tropical countries seems to show that Northern armies in such regions have always suffered more from disease than from battle; but it does not by any means show that the virtual destruction of a Northern army by disease in a tropical country is inevitable _now_. When the British army under the Earl of Albemarle landed on the Cuban coast and attacked Havana in 1762, it lost nearly one half its efficiency, as a result of sickness, in about four weeks; but at that time the fact that nine tenths of all tropical diseases are caused by microscopic germs, and are therefore preventable, was not known. The progress made in sanitary science in the present century renders unnecessary and inexcusable in 1898 a rate of sickness and mortality that was perhaps inevitable in 1762. Northern soldiers, if properly equipped and cared for, can live and maintain their health now under conditions which would have been absolutely and inevitably fatal to them a century ago.

In April last there was an interesting and instructive discussion of this subject, or of a subject very closely connected with this, at a meeting held in the rooms of the Royal Geographical Society, London, and attended by many of the best-known authorities on tropical pathology in Great Britain. Most of the gentlemen who took part in the debate were of opinion that there is no reason whatever why the white man should not be able to adapt himself to the new conditions of life in the tropics, and protect himself against the diseases that prevail in those regions. The popular belief that the white man cannot successfully colonize the tropics is disproved by the fact that he has done so. It is undoubtedly true that many Northerners who go to equatorial regions contract disease there and die; but in the majority of such cases the man is the victim of his obstinate unwillingness to change his habits in respect to eating, drinking, and clothing, and to conform his life to the new conditions.

The chief diseases, both acute and chronic, of tropical countries--those which formerly caused such ravages among the white settlers, and gave rise to the prevalent theory that Europeans can live only in the temperate zone--are all microbic in origin, and consequently in great measure preventable. We cannot expect, of course, to see them absolutely wiped out of existence; but their sting may be extracted by means of an improved public and private hygiene and other prophylactic measures. A comparison of the healthfulness of the West India Islands under enlightened British rule with that of the two under Spanish misrule shows what can be done by sanitation to convert a pest-hole into a paradise. Indeed, as Dr. L. Sambon, in opening the discussion, well said, sanitation within the last few decades has wrought wonderful changes in all tropical countries as regards health conditions, and the changes in some places have been so great that regions once considered most deadly are now even recommended as health resorts.

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