One day in Texas after a long hike through broiling heat and alkali
dust, we came at last to our camping-place. Weary officers and men went
about their appointed tasks of setting up tentage, attending to the
water-supply and sanitation and generally making the place livable.
After a brief meal from rattling mess-kits, most of us lay down to
get the kinks out of our muscles. One company on a little hill in
plain view of the rest of the brigade, was resting quietly under its
pup-tents. Suddenly a Texas twister, one of those little mysterious
whirlwinds, came tearing along out of the silent, clear afternoon.
It pounced upon the most conspicuous tent, grabbed the canvas and
personal covering off the big First Sergeant, lifted them high in the
air, and left him lying in the open like a plucked chicken. A thousand
pairs of eyes fastened on him. He slowly awoke, rubbed his face,
squirmed a little and squinted at his coverings swishing about in the
heavens. “Well,” he said, “Who in the devil started that?”--and rushed
threateningly toward the nearest group of soldiers.
The American people, after a sleep of a quarter of a century, woke up
one morning in 1898 to find that a twister out of the blue had pitched
the battleship Maine to the bottom of Havana Harbor, and tossed us into
war. Amazed, we asked, “Who started that?” Amazed, we said, “How could
war have come upon us?” Amazed and confused we rushed threateningly
this way and that. And why the surprise when for three years we’d been
shaking angry fists at the Spaniard--when we’d been lying in the path
of twisters from a land of twisters. And how completely we’d been lying.
All the while we were provoking Spain to wrath, we were using sugared
cut-throat words to our own people. Well-meaning idealists, thinking
to calm our citizens, were really running them into misery. Two years
before the twister struck us, Mr. Livingstone in the Congress of our
nation, rose and stated: “I do not take much stock in an early war with
Spain or England.” The same day on the same floor Uncle Joe Cannon
said, “I want to say that I do not believe we will have war the coming
year, nor the year after. I doubt if there will be any during this
century or perhaps the early years of the next century.” At the same
time in Europe, Czar Nicholas II of Russia showed how arbitration would
settle everything; and books and articles were published proving that
modern mechanisms would make war result in suicide--in short that war
was impossible. Under this dangerous racket of propaganda the only
attention paid to our land forces, was to pick at them and tear off
little pieces. Any attempt to keep us from slaughtering and distressing
our youth needlessly as we’d done in the past, was laughed out of
court. When the twister struck us, the army was just the same size
it had been twenty-two years before. Little groups of soldiers were
scattered all over the west and on our borders. The overhead of these
little posts had become drab routine. The War Department was clogged
with thirty years’ mold. Its personnel was just sufficient to carry
on a peanut-stand administration and supply. There was no thought for
expansion or operating the army as a whole. There were no plans, no
staffs, no proper maps of Cuba, no set-up for any respectable force.
The army had not been brought together since the Civil War--a third of
a century before. No officer in the service had commanded more than
a regiment, about 700 men, and few had seen that many together. The
soldiers had had no chance to act as a unit, as an organization, as a
going concern. Supplies of all sorts were lacking--food, equipment,
guns and ammunition, everything. We had not learned a single lesson
from a hundred years of horrible disasters of our own making. We
showed to the world the greatest unreadiness we’d had since we’d been a
nation.
We still persisted in the idea that an able bodied man was a soldier.
The President in this belief called out one hundred twenty-five
thousand volunteers when there wasn’t ammunition enough in the country
to let them fight one battle. The people seemed to feel we were
going out with brass bands playing to bag the Spaniard. One day in a
conference, the President turned to the Secretary of War and asked,
“How soon can you put an army into Cuba?” Said the Secretary, “I can
put 40,000 men there in ten days.” Later we found out we couldn’t put
half that number there in two months.
General Miles, the head of the army, suggested the training of fifty
thousand soldiers rather than put in jeopardy a great quantity of
untrained men. But the President rejected that expert advice and called
out seventy-five thousand more volunteers to be exposed to death in
camp. The people were crying “On to Havana!” as they had yelled, On to
Richmond, Mexico and Canada. What matter utter extravagance and human
life?
The government now had two hundred thousand men on its hands. Where
would they put them? O yes, the question of camps. Tampa, New Orleans
and Mobile were decided upon. It was found that all but Tampa were
unsuitable. After much investigation and delay. Camp Alger in Virginia,
and Camp Thomas in Tennessee were selected. They afterwards proved to
be far too small. Meanwhile the volunteers were flocking in much as
they had done in the Civil War--in a sad state of neglect. Unequipped,
untaught, unfed, uncared for, uneverything, they were all struggling
to the front. The little crippled War Department was beset with every
kind of request it could not fill. Congressmen who had taken delight in
blocking legislation for preparedness were the loudest in crying for
guns and vessels to protect their districts. Where were any implements
for the crises? Without having any, the President ordered General Miles
to take to Havana seventy thousand troops--(troops, mind you--real
troops)--when such an irregular mass could have fired little more than
one shot, if they had been troops. Then he ordered General Shafter
at Tampa to the north coast of Cuba, but it was found there were no
transports. Then he ordered twelve thousand troops to Key West, but the
place was found unsuitable.
A month and a half passed. Why weren’t we getting on? General Miles
went to Tampa to see. There he found what you’d expect. Troops
were slowly assembling. Why not? One regular regiment had to come
clear from Alaska. Supplies were failing. Loading of transports was
helter-skelter. Miles reported that the principal part of the regular
army was there, but that of the fourteen regiments of volunteers nearly
forty per cent were undrilled and in one regiment over three hundred
men had never fired a gun. And these were the pick of the untrained men.
Finally most of the regular army and a few volunteers set sail, after
a mad unmanaged scramble to get trains, and go abroad. Supplies were
hustled into holds helter-skelter. Most of the volunteers had to be
left behind because they were not equipped or trained. But the little
seventeen thousand were off. Were they? The Navy thought they had
sighted the Spanish fleet. The troops out at sea were turned back to
the mainland. The presence of the Spanish fleet proved to be a myth.
Again they set sail, crowded like galley-slaves into small vessels,
with little water, on pine cots, among neighing horses and foul odors.
The food made them sick. The embalmed beef by hurried contracts became
notorious. The boats moved seven miles an hour, then four miles, and
often not at all. After much suffering they arrived at Daiquiri near
Santiago harbor. There the civilian transports refused to land and kept
far out. Men were hurt and drowned in getting to shore. Fifty horses
swam out to sea and were lost. Fortunately the Spaniards fled inland.
If they hadn’t, their superior weapons would have torn our foolhardy
little force to pieces. One hundred ninety-six thousand, eight hundred
twenty Spanish troops were in Cuba, but we didn’t know it. Nor did we
know that they were as badly led and cared for as troops could be. By
the godsend of their complete lack of resistance, the little seventeen
thousand got ashore in five days.
Then came the scrambling action of Las Gausimas through the brush.
The Army was used to this sort of bushwhacking against the Indians.
And the Rough Riders, though they’d just received their new Krags
the day before the fight, did good work. But the Spaniards fled--and
that helped. Then came a delay of a week. Supplies were hard to get
from the boats. Troops milled around with little food and ammunition.
The artillery wasn’t brought forward. What a chance for the Spaniard
then! A determined charge of a quarter of his force and the United
States troops would have been helpless. But since the Spaniard didn’t
do anything right, we were saved again. Half the regular army and
three volunteer regiments went on to San Juan and El Caney. Although
assaulting El Caney was a military blunder, the little force went
charging along with useless losses. One volunteer regiment funked
the fight. And another, though acting well, had to be sent out of it
because its ancient black powder weapons made it an easy target for
the smokeless Mauser rifle of the enemy. More useless casualties. The
artillery had nothing but black powder too. Every time it belched,
it threw up clouds of smoke that could be seen for miles. Still more
casualties. The Spaniards had put up barbed wire around their little
forts. And we had no wire-cutters. It was a long day’s work of slow
progress. The Spaniard, like all poor troops, could shoot well as long
as his vitals were covered up. But we finally took the two strongholds,
with over twelve per cent losses. We had won because the enemy was
grossly mismanaged and inefficient. We were badly managed, but we had
streaks of efficiency. Therein lay the difference--our salvation. When
the siege of Santiago was undertaken, General Shafter’s lines were so
thin that even poor troops with a little zeal could have punctured
them. But the Spaniards for some unknown reason seemed to be more
fearful than we were.
Even so it would have been a stand-off, had it not been for the great
victory of our Navy in destroying Cervera’s fleet. And of course it
would destroy the Spanish ships. It had had seven years’ building
before the war. Under the supervision of Presidents Cleveland and
Arthur, we had developed the famous White Squadron. What would the
soldier have done without the Navy? What would he have done without the
complete sloppiness of the Spaniard? One authority shows that the war
would have lasted four or five years with more useless slaughter of our
own men than we had seen even in the Civil War.
Even so, in only one hundred nine days of war, the volunteers alone
lost two hundred eighty-nine killed--but--listen to the _but_--three
thousand eight hundred forty-eight by sickness. Thirteen times as many
by disease as by battle. And most of these deaths occurred in our
country--before the poor volunteer had had a chance to lift a finger of
help.
When the twister caught us, we had the great sum of one hundred
seventy-nine army medical officers for a mass of men that swelled to
two hundred sixteen thousand in four months. In our sleep there had
been no thought that the camp is more deadly than the bullet, that any
doctor can’t be a sanitary man in the field--that field sanitation
is a specialty like eye, ear, nose and throat or abdominal surgery.
Doctors can’t get that training in a few months. In over-crowded camps
in the United States many an otherwise fine medical man made a fizzle
of sanitation. Others who did know sanitation were not backed up by
the untrained volunteer officers. So our best youth died like flies
and by flies. And the suffering of those who did not die was appalling
torture. Filth was too often in the open. An untrained regiment would
be strewn with sickness, while a trained one right beside it would have
no sickness at all.
By our sleep beforehand and our unjust haste after we were waked up
by the twister, we had done worse things. We had forced the little
seventeen thousand into Cuba at the height of the fever season. Right
after the surrender of Santiago, seventy-five per cent of Shafter’s
command, the majority of our entire trained forces were on the sick
list. Had the Spaniard held out a little longer, he’d have had only a
handful or none at all to fight. But he didn’t hold out. And we had
another miraculous escape. But the death toll went up. And over in the
Pacific it went up higher. In the Philippine Insurrection that followed
the Spanish-American War, we lost in two years over seven thousand men.
Sleep is a very soothing thing, isn’t it? Quite necessary as a
part-time job. But when we sleep all the time, our friends know that
we are sick. When such a sickness overtakes a nation, how quickly it
spreads into death. How suddenly it kills innocent persons, when the
twister comes out of the blue and leaves us naked.
_XII_