IN WHICH IS TO BE FOUND THE TALE OF "CRAB HOLLOW" AND SOME OTHER THINGS.
When we retired to our luxurious couches that night of June 23d, most
of us, excepting the guards, anticipated sleep, but we little recked
what that night had in store for us. As told before, our camp was
pitched on a low piece of ground and among a lot of sparse bushes.
We did not know until the next day that the camping ground was an
old burial place, and we were also not well enough up in the natural
history of things Cuban to understand that if there is any one place
the dainty land crab prefers for its habitat it is a cemetery and this
preference rests upon a purely gastronomic basis. The land crab and the
vulture are the great scavengers of Cuba and while the latter disposes
of anything eatable left above ground the land crab looks after bodies
or anything else placed under ground. In the afternoon we had noticed
the holes of the land crabs but paid little attention to them, and only
saw a few of the crustaceans, but at night we made their acquaintance
at close quarters. We were pretty well fagged out with the heat and
the marching, and this, with the strange sensation of having something
to eat in our stomachs, tended to drowsiness. But hardly had we got
settled in our tents before there were strange rustlings and noises
and then the sensation of something crawling. There were some quick
arisings and the sound of matches hastily struck and then exclamations
and profanity. In some of the companies there was hardly a tent that
had not been pitched over one or more land crab holes and the occupants
of these had begun an investigation. Crawling over the sleepers
usually resulted in awakening them and then came the exclamations,
the illumination by the matches and the pursuit and slaughter of the
visitors. The land crab is not an aggressive animal towards man and
the greeting tendered him usually resulted in his scuttling for his
hole. Not always did he reach there, for many fell victims to ramrods,
clubs and other weapons. One able bodied crab was caught in the act of
backing into his hole with a stocking in his claws, and yielded up his
life for his rapacity. It may have been that he intended to eat the
stocking, and had he done so his fate would have been the same anyway.
The crabs had a pleasant trick that night of crawling half way up the
outside of the tents and then losing their hold and dropping to the
ground. That was bad enough as a deterrent to sleep, but it was not
all. In the afternoon some I company men had repaired a locomotive
disabled by the Spaniards, and kept running it up and down the tracks,
to an accompaniment of bell and whistle, until a late hour.
Bright and early the next morning we were up and as on the day before
looking for grub. Rations were still "shy" and once more we had
recourse to our friends the Siboneyians who gave us what they could,
which was not much, as their own supplies were running low.
Meanwhile the remainder of the transports had come to Siboney and were
landing the rest of the expedition. They had a little different method
of doing it than at Daiquiri. The boats would be filled with men and
towed in as near shore as possible when the men would have to jump out
and wade ashore. Some of them didn't like getting their feet wet but
they had to just the same.
It was some little time before noon when we heard firing from over the
hills and learned that the cavalry brigade had gone on a reconnoisance
in force in that direction. It was only a short time afterwards when
we saw the first wounded begin to come down the trail and learned
that they had found the enemy in force at Las Guasimas and had quite
a go with him. The First and Tenth United States cavalry, our old
neighbors at Lakeland, and the Rough Riders were engaged and from all
accounts were having a warm time. Col. Clark of the Second was acting
as commander of our brigade and receiving orders from Gen. Lawton
to reinforce the cavalry, left for the scene with the Eighth and
Twenty-second Infantry. They arrived there just as the Spaniards were
running and finding nothing for them to do returned to Siboney.
One of the largest buildings in the town had been converted into
a temporary hospital and it was soon filled with the wounded. Our
regimental surgeons, Drs. Bowen, Gates and Hitchcock were pressed
into service and rendered valuable aid. That hospital was our first
introduction to some of the grim realities of war but the boys stood it
well and were anxious to get to the front as quickly as possible. One
of the warships with the transports added to the excitement by shelling
the woods on top of a point near us and we began to conclude it would
be our turn next.
But it was not long before our thoughts were turned from the vision of
great deeds in battle to a more prosaic but necessary matter. A lot of
rations had been landed and soon we were revelling in such delicacies
as hardtack, "sowbelly" bacon, coffee, canned beef (?) and canned
tomatoes. Orders were issued for each man to take four days' rations
but our haversack capacity was not equal to this and we packed all we
could into our rolls. Even then we could not take all the issue and
what was left we gave to our friends, the people of Siboney, who gladly
accepted what we didn't want. The issue was hardly begun before Col.
Clark gave us orders to move and off we started about 4.30 in the
afternoon. We had not gone far in the direction of Las Guasimas before
we came to the conclusion that the commissary department of the army
had at least one genius who deserved a medal and some other things.
About half the issue of tomatoes was in gallon cans and it was planned
to have one man carry them a short distance and then let another sharer
of the can relieve him. But our route lay up hill and we hit up a
lively pace so that it was not long before there was a "kick" about
the tomatoes. The ending of the kick in every case was a noise which
indicated that the can had landed in the bushes and when tired out, we
reached our bivouac place that night there were but few gallon cans of
tomatoes left with the outfit.
Meanwhile we kept steadily climbing up into the hills, finding rough
footing and stumbling over rocks and everything else in the darkness
until about 9 o'clock we reached the scene of the battle and found the
First and Tenth cavalry burying their dead. We passed on in silence but
we did quite a bit of thinking. A short distance further up we halted
on a level bit of ground by the side of the Rough Riders and after
making our simple preparations for our night's bivouac heard their tale
of the fight. Our cooking fires were soon going and we not only heard
Roosevelt's men tell their experiences and gave them our sympathy,
but what they wanted more at that particular time, we gave them food,
sharing our rations with them. One New York paper, in its story of
the Las Guasimas fight spoke of the Second Massachusetts as having
"supported the Rough Riders," but so far as we knew our only support to
them was that night when we certainly did support them with our rations.
When we landed in Cuba a detail of men from each company was left on
the boats to look after property and as we learned afterwards they
heard all sorts of stories about what happened to us that day. But
all the stories agreed that the Second had been having a bad time of
it and that our loss was heavy. One New York newspaper man had been
given a circumstantial account of our regiment having been surrounded
by the Spaniards and of our cutting our way out with a heavy loss in
officers and men and was so impressed by it that he wrote a very pretty
story which he was on the point of having cabled to his paper when a
brother correspondent happened along and convinced him that as we were
at Siboney until the action was all over we could hardly have been so
badly cut up. So the story was not cabled but it was a narrow escape.
When we left Siboney that afternoon G company was left behind to assist
in unloading supplies for our brigade, one company from each regiment
being detailed for that purpose. They left Siboney early the next
morning and reached us just as we were preparing to resume the march
again.
Our next camping place was on a plateau near where had once been a
sizeable plantation and which was only a short distance from Las
Guasimas. Here we remained two days taking life easy before we again
took up the march. On the 27th we reached Sevilla and there remained
until late in the afternoon of June 30th. During our stay in
Sevilla occurred another food shortage and also the great tobacco
famine. Rations were hard to get and so were medicines. There was so
much feeling over the delinquency in getting our supplies up to us that
a meeting of the company commanders was held and a committee appointed
to wait upon Col. Clark to see if something could not be done. The
outcome of all the talk was the loan of some of the horses of the field
and staff to a detail which, in charge of Lieut. Vesper of B, went back
to the ships and obtained a small supply of provisions and tobacco.
The cause of the failure to keep the troops supplied lay with the
quartermaster's department which had apparently broken down utterly,
for though there were tons upon tons of supplies already landed
at Siboney there was not enough of pack trains or other means of
transportation to get them up to us. We all fared alike at this time,
officers and men, regulars and volunteers, and our brigade, the leading
one in the army, had been hustled along so fast that it was difficult
under any circumstances to get supplies to us owing to the distance and
the condition of the roads.
On the 28th the new commander of the brigade, Gen. Ludlow, reported and
relieved Col. Clark who resumed command of the Second. Lieut. Harry
Parkhurst of K who had been acting as aide-de-camp on the brigade staff
was also relieved and rejoined his company.
The tobacco famine was relieved somewhat by some of the weed brought
from the ships by the various "relief expeditions" and also by the
arrival of the details which had been left on the boats and the
majority of the members of which had gained permission to rejoin us
as soon as they heard the stories about our having been in action and
losing heavily. The horse detail also came up and brought to Adjutant
Hawkins the news that his horse had been drowned while being got
ashore. As the chaplain's horse and one owned by Hospital Steward
Fortier had been stolen while in Tampa by "Billy the Hostler" there was
a shyness of horses around headquarters.
While in Tampa Private T. C. Boone of K had been transferred to the
signal corps with the rank of sergeant and afterwards became a member
of the war balloon squad. On the afternoon of the 20th we saw the
famous balloon for the first time and watched it with interest as it
rose above the trees near our camp. We understood that Boone was one
of the men in the car and for that reason the balloon had more than
usual interest for us of the Springfield companies. The next afternoon
another ascension was made and again we watched the "big gas bag" and
speculated in a pessimistic vein upon its successful use. Our doubts
as to its usefulness turned out to be correct.
On the 28th the good news was announced that we could send mail home
that afternoon and there was great scrambling for pens, pencils, paper
and envelopes. It was our first opportunity since we had landed to send
letters and that it was taken advantage of the big mail bags that left
headquarters late that afternoon for division headquarters attested.
Probably the condition in which about all our letters reached the folks
at home was fully explained soon after our return, but it will bear
retelling. When we landed most of us had paper, envelopes and stamps.
But these were carried either in the haversacks or rolls and with the
heat the envelope flaps became stuck together, likewise the stamps and
paper became dirty. All were about in the same condition, so in order
to get a letter into an envelope it was necessary to slit the latter
at one end, insert the letter and then sew up the envelope. As most
of the sewing was done with black thread and the envelopes were not
especially clean the effect upon the good folks at home must have been
rather startling, especially when the letters came without stamps, as
they usually did. In place of stamps the government allowed the use of
the words, "Soldier's Letter" in one corner of the envelope and when
indorsed by an officer was allowed to go through.
From our camp we could see a portion of the fortifications of Santiago
and especially two large buildings which we were informed were barracks
that had been transformed into hospitals and over which we could with
field glasses see a number of Red Cross flags floating. We heard many
weird tales as to what the Spaniards had done and would do and the
stories, mainly of Cubans, as to how many troops were in the city,
varied all the way from 10,000 to 40,000. On the 29th the much talked
of "army" of Gen. Calixto Garcia arrived and it was a motley looking
outfit, mostly black in color and of great variety, principally of
lack of quantity, as to uniforms but fairly well supplied with arms
and ammunition. The knowledge of English of the component parts of
Garcia's forces was about equal to out knowledge of Spanish, but
considerable interchange of ideas was effected, principally by signs.
One or two of the warriors would stroll into camp and after standing
around a bit with the inevitable Cuban grin would exclaim, "_Santiago,
boum, boum?_" at the same time pointing to the city. We could do no
less than to assure them there would be plenty of "_boum, boum_" and
that when it happened Santiago would be "on the bum." The ice thus
broken, the Cuban's machete was examined and the wearer induced to
give an exhibition of its use both as a weapon and a handy tool for
many purposes. Generally before they left camp they would "borrow"
some "tobac" and if they could obtain some hardtack or bacon they went
away happy. Sometimes they brought us some mangoes or "monkey plums"
and then would follow some great bartering. The surgeons in an excess
of zeal had warned us against the mango but we pinned our faith to the
Cubans' declaration that if one didn't eat mangoes and drink liquor on
the same day no evil effects would result from the free and unlimited
use of the fruit. The mango tastes nice but it is an acquired art to
know how to eat it without getting three-quarters of it over one's
face and clothing. Still it came in handy when our rations were short,
which was about always and we were not over fastidious as to how we ate
anything in those days.