Up to the last moment we were spending every ounce of energy we had in
getting the regiment into shape. Fortunately, there were a good many
vacancies among the officers, as the original number of 780 men was
increased to 1,000; so that two companies were organized entirely
anew. This gave the chance to promote some first-rate men.
One of the most useful members of the regiment was Dr. Robb Church,
formerly a Princeton foot-ball player. He was appointed as Assistant
Surgeon, but acted throughout almost all the Cuban campaign as the
Regimental Surgeon. It was Dr. Church who first gave me an idea of
Bucky O'Neill's versatility, for I happened to overhear them
discussing Aryan word-roots together, and then sliding off into a
review of the novels of Balzac, and a discussion as to how far Balzac
could be said to be the founder of the modern realistic school of
fiction. Church had led almost as varied a life as Bucky himself, his
career including incidents as far apart as exploring and elk-hunting
in the Olympic Mountains, cooking in a lumber-camp, and serving as
doctor on an emigrant ship.
Woodbury Kane was given a commission, and also Horace Devereux, of
Princeton. Kane was older than the other college men who entered in
the ranks; and as he had the same good qualities to start with, this
resulted in his ultimately becoming perhaps the most useful soldier in
the regiment. He escaped wounds and serious sickness, and was able to
serve through every day of the regiment's existence.
Two of the men made Second Lieutenants by promotion from the ranks
while in San Antonio were John Greenway, a noted Yale foot-ball player
and catcher on her base-ball nine, and David Goodrich, for two years
captain of the Harvard crew. They were young men, Goodrich having only
just graduated; while Greenway, whose father had served with honor in
the Confederate Army, had been out of Yale three or four years. They
were natural soldiers, and it would be well-nigh impossible to
overestimate the amount of good they did the regiment. They were
strapping fellows, entirely fearless, modest, and quiet. Their only
thought was how to perfect themselves in their own duties, and how to
take care of the men under them, so as to bring them to the highest
point of soldierly perfection. I grew steadily to rely upon them, as
men who could be counted upon with absolute certainty, not only in
every emergency, but in all routine work. They were never so tired as
not to respond with eagerness to the slightest suggestion of doing
something new, whether it was dangerous or merely difficult and
laborious. They not merely did their duty, but were always on the
watch to find out some new duty which they could construe to be
theirs. Whether it was policing camp, or keeping guard, or preventing
straggling on the march, or procuring food for the men, or seeing that
they took care of themselves in camp, or performing some feat of
unusual hazard in the fight--no call was ever made upon them to which
they did not respond with eager thankfulness for being given the
chance to answer it. Later on I worked them as hard as I knew how, and
the regiment will always be their debtor.
Greenway was from Arkansas. We could have filled up the whole regiment
many times over from the South Atlantic and Gulf States alone, but
were only able to accept a very few applicants. One of them was John
McIlhenny, of Louisiana; a planter and manufacturer, a big-game
hunter and book-lover, who could have had a commission in the
Louisiana troops, but who preferred to go as a trooper in the Rough
Riders because he believed we would surely see fighting. He could have
commanded any influence, social or political, he wished; but he never
asked a favor of any kind. He went into one of the New Mexican troops,
and by his high qualities and zealous attention to duty speedily rose
to a sergeantcy, and finally won his lieutenancy for gallantry in
action.
The tone of the officers' mess was very high. Everyone seemed to
realize that he had undertaken most serious work. They all earnestly
wished for a chance to distinguish themselves, and fully appreciated
that they ran the risk not merely of death, but of what was infinitely
worse--namely, failure at the crisis to perform duty well; and they
strove earnestly so to train themselves, and the men under them, as to
minimize the possibility of such disgrace. Every officer and every man
was taught continually to look forward to the day of battle eagerly,
but with an entire sense of the drain that would then be made upon his
endurance and resolution. They were also taught that, before the
battle came, the rigorous performance of the countless irksome duties
of the camp and the march was demanded from all alike, and that no
excuse would be tolerated for failure to perform duty. Very few of the
men had gone into the regiment lightly, and the fact that they did
their duty so well may be largely attributed to the seriousness with
which these eager, adventurous young fellows approached their work.
This seriousness, and a certain simple manliness which accompanied it,
had one very pleasant side. During our entire time of service, I never
heard in the officers' mess a foul story or a foul word; and though
there was occasional hard swearing in moments of emergency, yet even
this was the exception.
The regiment attracted adventurous spirits from everywhere. Our chief
trumpeter was a native American, our second trumpeter was from the
Mediterranean--I think an Italian--who had been a soldier of fortune
not only in Egypt, but in the French Army in Southern China. Two
excellent men were Osborne, a tall Australian, who had been an officer
in the New South Wales Mounted Rifles; and Cook, an Englishman, who
had served in South Africa. Both, when the regiment disbanded, were
plaintive in expressing their fond regret that it could not be used
against the Transvaal Boers!
One of our best soldiers was a man whose real and assumed names I, for
obvious reasons conceal. He usually went by a nickname which I will
call Tennessee. He was a tall, gaunt fellow, with a quiet and
distinctly sinister eye, who did his duty excellently, especially when
a fight was on, and who, being an expert gambler, always contrived to
reap a rich harvest after pay-day. When the regiment was mustered out,
he asked me to put a brief memorandum of his services on his discharge
certificate, which I gladly did. He much appreciated this, and added,
in explanation, "You see, Colonel, my real name isn't Smith, it's
Yancy. I had to change it, because three or four years ago I had a
little trouble with a gentleman, and--er--well, in fact, I had to kill
him; and the District Attorney, he had it in for me, and so I just
skipped the country; and now, if it ever should be brought up against
me, I should like to show your certificate as to my character!" The
course of frontier justice sometimes moves in unexpected zigzags; so I
did not express the doubt I felt as to whether my certificate that he
had been a good soldier would help him much if he was tried for a
murder committed three or four years previously.
The men worked hard and faithfully. As a rule, in spite of the number
of rough characters among them, they behaved very well. One night a
few of them went on a spree, and proceeded "to paint San Antonio red."
One was captured by the city authorities, and we had to leave him
behind us in jail. The others we dealt with ourselves, in a way that
prevented a repetition of the occurrence.
The men speedily gave one another nicknames, largely conferred in a
spirit of derision, their basis lying in contrast. A brave but
fastidious member of a well-known Eastern club, who was serving in the
ranks, was christened "Tough Ike"; and his bunkie, the man who shared
his shelter-tent, who was a decidedly rough cow-puncher, gradually
acquired the name of "The Dude." One unlucky and simple-minded
cow-puncher, who had never been east of the great plains in his life,
unwarily boasted that he had an aunt in New York, and ever afterward
went by the name of "Metropolitan Bill." A huge red-headed Irishman
was named "Sheeny Solomon." A young Jew who developed into one of the
best fighters in the regiment accepted, with entire equanimity, the
name of "Pork-chop." We had quite a number of professional gamblers,
who, I am bound to say, usually made good soldiers. One, who was
almost abnormally quiet and gentle, was called "Hell Roarer"; while
another, who in point of language and deportment was his exact
antithesis, was christened "Prayerful James."
While the officers and men were learning their duties, and learning
to know one another, Colonel Wood was straining every nerve to get our
equipments--an effort which was complicated by the tendency of the
Ordnance Bureau to send whatever we really needed by freight instead
of express. Finally, just as the last rifles, revolvers, and saddles
came, we were ordered by wire at once to proceed by train to Tampa.
Instantly, all was joyful excitement. We had enjoyed San Antonio, and
were glad that our regiment had been organized in the city where the
Alamo commemorates the death fight of Crockett, Bowie, and their
famous band of frontier heroes. All of us had worked hard, so that we
had had no time to be homesick or downcast; but we were glad to leave
the hot camp, where every day the strong wind sifted the dust through
everything, and to start for the gathering-place of the army which was
to invade Cuba. Our horses and men were getting into good shape. We
were well enough equipped to warrant our starting on the campaign, and
every man was filled with dread of being out of the fighting. We had a
pack-train of 150 mules, so we had close on to 1,200 animals to carry.
Of course, our train was split up into sections, seven, all told;
Colonel Wood commanding the first three, and I the last four. The
journey by rail from San Antonio to Tampa took just four days, and I
doubt if anybody who was on the trip will soon forget it. To occupy my
few spare moments, I was reading M. Demolins's "Superiorite des
Anglo-Saxons." M. Demolins, in giving the reasons why the
English-speaking peoples are superior to those of Continental Europe,
lays much stress upon the way in which "militarism" deadens the power
of individual initiative, the soldier being trained to complete
suppression of individual will, while his faculties become atrophied
in consequence of his being merely a cog in a vast and perfectly
ordered machine. I can assure the excellent French publicist that
American "militarism," at least of the volunteer sort, has points of
difference from the militarism of Continental Europe. The battalion
chief of a newly raised American regiment, when striving to get into a
war which the American people have undertaken with buoyant and
light-hearted indifference to detail, has positively unlimited
opportunity for the display of "individual initiative," and is in no
danger whatever either of suffering from unhealthy suppression of
personal will, or of finding his faculties of self-help numbed by
becoming a cog in a gigantic and smooth-running machine. If such a
battalion chief wants to get anything or go anywhere he must do it by
exercising every pound of resource, inventiveness, and audacity he
possesses. The help, advice, and superintendence he gets from outside
will be of the most general, not to say superficial, character. If he
is a cavalry officer, he has got to hurry and push the purchase of his
horses, plunging into and out of the meshes of red-tape as best he
can. He will have to fight for his rifles and his tents and his
clothes. He will have to keep his men healthy largely by the light
that nature has given him. When he wishes to embark his regiment, he
will have to fight for his railway-cars exactly as he fights for his
transport when it comes to going across the sea; and on his journey
his men will or will not have food, and his horses will or will not
have water and hay, and the trains will or will not make connections,
in exact correspondence to the energy and success of his own efforts
to keep things moving straight.
It was on Sunday, May 29th, that we marched out of our hot, windy,
dusty camp to take the cars for Tampa. Colonel Wood went first, with
the three sections under his special care. I followed with the other
four. The railway had promised us a forty-eight hours' trip, but our
experience in loading was enough to show that the promise would not be
made good. There were no proper facilities for getting the horses on
or off the cars, or for feeding or watering them; and there was
endless confusion and delay among the railway officials. I marched my
four sections over in the afternoon, the first three having taken the
entire day to get off. We occupied the night. As far as the regiment
itself was concerned, we worked an excellent system, Wood instructing
me exactly how to proceed so as to avoid confusion. Being a veteran
campaigner, he had all along insisted that for such work as we had
before us we must travel with the minimum possible luggage. The men
had merely what they could carry on their own backs, and the officers
very little more. My own roll of clothes and bedding could be put on
my spare horse. The mule-train was to be used simply for food, forage,
and spare ammunition. As it turned out, we were not allowed to take
either it or the horses.
It was dusk when I marched my long files of dusty troopers into the
station-yard. I then made all dismount, excepting the troop which I
first intended to load. This was brought up to the first freight-car.
Here every man unsaddled, and left his saddle, bridle, and all that he
did not himself need in the car, each individual's property being
corded together. A guard was left in the car, and the rest of the men
took the naked horses into the pens to be fed and watered. The other
troops were loaded in the same way in succession. With each section
there were thus a couple of baggage-cars in which the horse-gear, the
superfluous baggage, and the travel rations were carried; and I also
put aboard, not only at starting, but at every other opportunity, what
oats and hay I could get, so as to provide against accidents for the
horses. By the time the baggage-cars were loaded the horses of the
first section had eaten and drunk their fill, and we loaded them on
cattle-cars. The officers of each troop saw to the loading, taking a
dozen picked men to help them; for some of the wild creatures, half
broken and fresh from the ranges, were with difficulty driven up the
chutes. Meanwhile I superintended not merely my own men, but the
railroad men; and when the delays of the latter, and their inability
to understand what was necessary, grew past bearing, I took charge of
the trains myself, so as to insure the horse-cars of each section
being coupled with the baggage-cars of that section.
We worked until long past midnight before we got the horses and
baggage aboard, and then found that for some reason the passenger-cars
were delayed and would not be out for some hours. In the confusion and
darkness men of the different troops had become scattered, and some
had drifted off to the vile drinking-booths around the stock-yards; so
I sent details to search the latter, while the trumpeters blew the
assembly until the First Sergeants could account for all the men. Then
the troops were arranged in order, and the men of each lay down where
they were, by the tracks and in the brush, to sleep until morning.
At dawn the passenger-trains arrived. The senior Captain of each
section saw to it that his own horses, troopers, and baggage were
together; and one by one they started off, I taking the last in
person. Captain Capron had at the very beginning shown himself to be
simply invaluable, from his extraordinary energy, executive capacity,
and mastery over men; and I kept his section next mine, so that we
generally came together at the different yards.
The next four days were very hot and very dusty. I tried to arrange so
the sections would be far enough apart to allow each ample time to
unload, feed, water, and load the horses at any stopping-place before
the next section could arrive. There was enough delay and failure to
make connections on the part of the railroad people to keep me
entirely busy, not to speak of seeing at the stopping-places that the
inexperienced officers got enough hay for their horses, and that the
water given to them was both ample in quantity and drinkable. It
happened that we usually made our longest stops at night, and this
meant that we were up all night long.
Two or three times a day I got the men buckets of hot coffee, and
when we made a long enough stop they were allowed liberty under the
supervision of the non-commissioned officers. Some of them abused the
privilege, and started to get drunk. These were promptly handled with
the necessary severity, in the interest of the others; for it was only
by putting an immediate check to every form of lawlessness or
disobedience among the few men who were inclined to be bad that we
were enabled to give full liberty to those who would not abuse it.
Everywhere the people came out to greet us and cheer us. They
brought us flowers; they brought us watermelons and other fruits, and
sometimes jugs and pails of milk--all of which we greatly appreciated.
We were travelling through a region where practically all the older
men had served in the Confederate Army, and where the younger men had
all their lives long drunk in the endless tales told by their elders,
at home, and at the cross-roads taverns, and in the court-house
squares, about the cavalry of Forrest and Morgan and the infantry of
Jackson and Hood. The blood of the old men stirred to the distant
breath of battle; the blood of the young men leaped hot with eager
desire to accompany us. The older women, who remembered the dreadful
misery of war--the misery that presses its iron weight most heavily on
the wives and the little ones--looked sadly at us; but the young girls
drove down in bevies, arrayed in their finery, to wave flags in
farewell to the troopers and to beg cartridges and buttons as
mementos. Everywhere we saw the Stars and Stripes, and everywhere we
were told, half-laughing, by grizzled ex-Confederates that they had
never dreamed in the bygone days of bitterness to greet the old flag
as they now were greeting it, and to send their sons, as now they were
sending them, to fight and die under it.
It was four days later that we disembarked, in a perfect welter of
confusion. Tampa lay in the pine-covered sand-flats at the end of a
one-track railroad, and everything connected with both military and
railroad matters was in an almost inextricable tangle. There was no
one to meet us or to tell us where we were to camp, and no one to
issue us food for the first twenty-four hours; while the railroad
people unloaded us wherever they pleased, or rather wherever the jam
of all kinds of trains rendered it possible. We had to buy the men
food out of our own pockets, and to seize wagons in order to get our
spare baggage taken to the camping ground which we at last found had
been allotted to us.
Once on the ground, we speedily got order out of confusion. Under
Wood's eye the tents were put up in long streets, the picket-line of
each troop stretching down its side of each street. The officers'
quarters were at the upper ends of the streets, the company kitchens
and sinks at the opposite ends. The camp was strictly policed, and
drill promptly begun. For thirty-six hours we let the horses rest,
drilling on foot, and then began the mounted drill again. The
regiments with which we were afterward to serve were camped near us,
and the sandy streets of the little town were thronged with soldiers,
almost all of them regulars; for there were but one or two volunteer
organizations besides ourselves. The regulars wore the canonical dark
blue of Uncle Sam. Our own men were clad in dusty brown blouses,
trousers and leggings being of the same hue, while the broad-brimmed
soft hat was of dark gray; and very workmanlike they looked as, in
column of fours, each troop trotted down its company street to form by
squadron or battalion, the troopers sitting steadily in the saddles as
they made their half-trained horses conform to the movement of the
guidons.
Over in Tampa town the huge winter hotel was gay with general officers
and their staffs, with women in pretty dresses, with newspaper
correspondents by the score, with military attaches of foreign powers,
and with onlookers of all sorts; but we spent very little time there.
We worked with the utmost industry, special attention being given by
each troop-commander to skirmish-drill in the woods. Once or twice we
had mounted drill of the regiment as a whole. The military attaches
came out to look on--English, German, Russian, French, and Japanese.
With the Englishman, Captain Arthur Lee, a capital fellow, we soon
struck up an especially close friendship; and we saw much of him
throughout the campaign. So we did of several of the newspaper
correspondents--Richard Harding Davis, John Fox, Jr., Caspar Whitney,
and Frederic Remington. On Sunday Chaplain Brown, of Arizona, held
service, as he did almost every Sunday during the campaign.
There were but four or five days at Tampa, however. We were notified
that the expedition would start for destination unknown at once, and
that we were to go with it; but that our horses were to be left
behind, and only eight troops of seventy men each taken. Our sorrow at
leaving the horses was entirely outweighed by our joy at going; but it
was very hard indeed to select the four troops that were to stay, and
the men who had to be left behind from each of the troops that went.
Colonel Wood took Major Brodie and myself to command the two
squadrons, being allowed only two squadron commanders. The men who
were left behind felt the most bitter heartburn. To the great bulk of
them I think it will be a life-long sorrow. I saw more than one, both
among the officers and privates, burst into tears when he found he
could not go. No outsider can appreciate the bitterness of the
disappointment. Of course, really, those that stayed were entitled to
precisely as much honor as those that went. Each man was doing his
duty, and much the hardest and most disagreeable duty was to stay.
Credit should go with the performance of duty, and not with what is
very often the accident of glory. All this and much more we explained,
but our explanations could not alter the fact that some had to be
chosen and some had to be left. One of the Captains chosen was Captain
Maximilian Luna, who commanded Troop F, from New Mexico. The Captain's
people had been on the banks of the Rio Grande before my forefathers
came to the mouth of the Hudson or Wood's landed at Plymouth; and he
made the plea that it was his right to go as a representative of his
race, for he was the only man of pure Spanish blood who bore a
commission in the army, and he demanded the privilege of proving that
his people were precisely as loyal Americans as any others. I was glad
when it was decided to take him.
It was the evening of June 7th when we suddenly received orders that
the expedition was to start from Port Tampa, nine miles distant by
rail, at daybreak the following morning; and that if we were not
aboard our transport by that time we could not go. We had no intention
of getting left, and prepared at once for the scramble which was
evidently about to take place. As the number and capacity of the
transports were known, or ought to have been known, and as the number
and size of the regiments to go were also known, the task of allotting
each regiment or fraction of a regiment to its proper transport, and
arranging that the regiments and the transports should meet in due
order on the dock, ought not to have been difficult. However, no
arrangements were made in advance; and we were allowed to shove and
hustle for ourselves as best we could, on much the same principles
that had governed our preparations hitherto.
We were ordered to be at a certain track with all our baggage at
midnight, there to take a train for Port Tampa. At the appointed time
we turned up, but the train did not. The men slept heavily, while Wood
and I and various other officers wandered about in search of
information which no one could give. We now and then came across a
Brigadier-General, or even a Major-General; but nobody knew anything.
Some regiments got aboard the trains and some did not, but as none of
the trains started this made little difference. At three o'clock we
received orders to march over to an entirely different track, and away
we went. No train appeared on this track either; but at six o'clock
some coal-cars came by, and these we seized. By various arguments we
persuaded the engineer in charge of the train to back us down the nine
miles to Port Tampa, where we arrived covered with coal-dust, but with
all our belongings.
The railway tracks ran out on the quay, and the transports, which had
been anchored in midstream, were gradually being brought up alongside
the quay and loaded. The trains were unloading wherever they happened
to be, no attention whatever being paid to the possible position of
the transport on which the soldiers were to go. Colonel Wood and I
jumped off and started on a hunt, which soon convinced us that we had
our work cut out if we were to get a transport at all. From the
highest General down, nobody could tell us where to go to find out
what transport we were to have. At last we were informed that we were
to hunt up the depot quartermaster, Colonel Humphrey. We found his
office, where his assistant informed us that he didn't know where the
Colonel was, but believed him to be asleep upon one of the transports.
This seemed odd at such a time; but so many of the methods in vogue
were odd, that we were quite prepared to accept it as a fact. However,
it proved not to be such; but for an hour Colonel Humphrey might just
as well have been asleep, as nobody knew where he was and nobody could
find him, and the quay was crammed with some ten thousand men, most of
whom were working at cross purposes.
At last, however, after over an hour's industrious and rapid search
through this swarming ant-heap of humanity, Wood and I, who had
separated, found Colonel Humphrey at nearly the same time and were
allotted a transport--the Yucatan. She was out in midstream, so Wood
seized a stray launch and boarded her. At the same time I happened to
find out that she had previously been allotted to two other regiments
--the Second Regular Infantry and the Seventy-first New York
Volunteers, which latter regiment alone contained more men than could
be put aboard her. Accordingly, I ran at full speed to our train; and
leaving a strong guard with the baggage, I double-quicked the rest of
the regiment up to the boat, just in time to board her as she came
into the quay, and then to hold her against the Second Regulars and
the Seventy-first, who had arrived a little too late, being a shade
less ready than we were in the matter of individual initiative. There
was a good deal of expostulation, but we had possession; and as the
ship could not contain half of the men who had been told to go aboard
her, the Seventy-first went away, as did all but four companies of the
Second. These latter we took aboard. Meanwhile a General had caused
our train to be unloaded at the end of the quay farthest from where
the ship was; and the hungry, tired men spent most of the day in the
labor of bringing down their baggage and the food and ammunition.
The officers' horses were on another boat, my own being accompanied
by my colored body-servant, Marshall, the most faithful and loyal
of men, himself an old soldier of the Ninth Cavalry. Marshall had
been in Indian campaigns, and he christened my larger horse
"Rain-in-the-Face," while the other, a pony, went by the name of
"Texas."
By the time that night fell, and our transport pulled off and
anchored in midstream, we felt we had spent thirty-six tolerably
active hours. The transport was overloaded, the men being packed like
sardines, not only below but upon the decks; so that at night it was
only possible to walk about by continually stepping over the bodies of
the sleepers. The travel rations which had been issued to the men for
the voyage were not sufficient, because the meat was very bad indeed;
and when a ration consists of only four or five items, which taken
together just meet the requirements of a strong and healthy man, the
loss of one item is a serious thing. If we had been given canned
corned beef we would have been all right, but instead of this the
soldiers were issued horrible stuff called "canned fresh beef." There
was no salt in it. At the best it was stringy and tasteless; at the
worst it was nauseating. Not one-fourth of it was ever eaten at all,
even when the men became very hungry. There were no facilities for the
men to cook anything. There was no ice for them; the water was not
good; and they had no fresh meat or fresh vegetables.
However, all these things seemed of small importance compared with
the fact that we were really embarked, and were with the first
expedition to leave our shores. But by next morning came the news that
the order to sail had been countermanded, and that we were to stay
where we were for the time being. What this meant none of us could
understand. It turned out later to be due to the blunder of a naval
officer who mistook some of our vessels for Spaniards, and by his
report caused consternation in Washington, until by vigorous scouting
on the part of our other ships the illusion was dispelled.
Meanwhile the troop-ships, packed tight with their living freight,
sweltered in the burning heat of Tampa Harbor. There was nothing
whatever for the men to do, space being too cramped for amusement or
for more drill than was implied in the manual of arms. In this we
drilled them assiduously, and we also continued to hold school for
both the officers and the non-commissioned officers. Each troop
commander was regarded as responsible for his own non-commissioned
officers, and Wood or myself simply dropped in to superintend, just as
we did with the manual of arms. In the officers' school Captain Capron
was the special instructor, and a most admirable one he was.
The heat, the steaming discomfort, and the confinement, together
with the forced inaction, were very irksome; but everyone made the
best of it, and there was little or no grumbling even among the men.
All, from the highest to the lowest, were bent upon perfecting
themselves according to their slender opportunities. Every book of
tactics in the regiment was in use from morning until night, and the
officers and non-commissioned officers were always studying the
problems presented at the schools. About the only amusement was
bathing over the side, in which we indulged both in the morning and
evening. Many of the men from the Far West had never seen the ocean.
One of them who knew how to swim was much interested in finding that
the ocean water was not drinkable. Another, who had never in his life
before seen any water more extensive than the headstream of the Rio
Grande, met with an accident later in the voyage; that is, his hat
blew away while we were in mid-ocean, and I heard him explaining the
accident to a friend in the following words: "Oh-o-h, Jim! Ma hat blew
into the creek!" So we lay for nearly a week, the vessels swinging
around on their anchor chains, while the hot water of the bay flowed
to and fro around them and the sun burned overhead.
At last, on the evening of June 13th, we received the welcome order
to start. Ship after ship weighed anchor and went slowly ahead under
half-steam for the distant mouth of the harbor, the bands playing, the
flags flying, the rigging black with the clustered soldiers, cheering
and shouting to those left behind on the quay and to their fellows on
the other ships. The channel was very tortuous; and we anchored before
we had gone far down it, after coming within an ace of a bad collision
with another transport. The next morning we were all again under way,
and in the afternoon the great fleet steamed southeast until Tampa
Light sank in the distance.
For the next six days we sailed steadily southward and eastward
through the wonderful sapphire seas of the West Indies. The thirty odd
transports moved in long parallel lines, while ahead and behind and on
their flanks the gray hulls of the war-ships surged through the blue
water. We had every variety of craft to guard us, from the mighty
battle-ship and swift cruiser to the converted yachts and the frail,
venomous-looking torpedo-boats. The war-ships watched with ceaseless
vigilance by day and night. When a sail of any kind appeared,
instantly one of our guardians steamed toward it. Ordinarily, the
torpedo-boats were towed. Once a strange ship steamed up too close,
and instantly the nearest torpedo-boat was slipped like a greyhound
from the leash, and sped across the water toward it; but the stranger
proved harmless, and the swift, delicate, death-fraught craft returned
again.
It was very pleasant, sailing southward through the tropic seas
toward the unknown. We knew not whither we were bound, nor what we
were to do; but we believed that the nearing future held for us many
chances of death and hardship, of honor and renown. If we failed, we
would share the fate of all who fail; but we were sure that we would
win, that we should score the first great triumph in a mighty
world movement. At night we looked at the new stars, and hailed the
Southern Cross when at last we raised it above the horizon. In the
daytime we drilled, and in the evening we held officers' school; but
there was much time when we had little to do, save to scan the
wonderful blue sea and watch the flying-fish. Toward evening, when the
officers clustered together on the forward bridge, the band of the
Second Infantry played tune after tune, until on our quarter the
glorious sun sunk in the red west, and, one by one, the lights blazed
out on troop-ship and war-ship for miles ahead and astern, as they
steamed onward through the brilliant tropic night.
The men on the ship were young and strong, eager to face what lay
hidden before them, eager for adventure where risk was the price of
gain. Sometimes they talked of what they might do in the future, and
wondered whether we were to attack Santiago or Porto Rico. At other
times, as they lounged in groups, they told stories of their past
--stories of the mining camps and the cattle ranges, of hunting bear
and deer, of war-trails against the Indians, of lawless deeds of
violence and the lawful violence by which they were avenged, of brawls
in saloons, of shrewd deals in cattle and sheep, of successful quests
for the precious metals; stories of brutal wrong and brutal appetite,
melancholy love-tales, and memories of nameless heroes--masters of men
and tamers of horses.
The officers, too, had many strange experiences to relate; none, not
even Llewellen or O'Neill, had been through what was better worth
telling, or could tell it better, than Capron. He had spent years
among the Apaches, the wildest and fiercest of tribes, and again and
again had owed his life to his own cool judgment and extraordinary
personal prowess. He knew the sign language, familiar to all the
Indians of the mountains and the plains; and it was curious to find
that the signs for different animals, for water, for sleep and death,
which he knew from holding intercourse with the tribes of the
Southeast, were exactly like those which I had picked up on my
occasional hunting or trading trips among the Sioux and Mandans of the
North. He was a great rifle shot and wolf hunter, and had many tales
to tell of the deeds of gallant hounds and the feats of famous horses.
He had handled his Indian scouts and dealt with the "bronco" Indians,
the renegades from the tribes, in circumstances of extreme peril; for
he had seen the sullen, moody Apaches when they suddenly went crazy
with wolfish blood-lust, and in their madness wished to kill whomever
was nearest. He knew, so far as white man could know, their ways of
thought, and how to humor and divert them when on the brink of some
dangerous outbreak. Capron's training and temper fitted him to do
great work in war; and he looked forward with eager confidence to what
the future held, for he was sure that for him it held either triumph
or death. Death was the prize he drew.
Most of the men had simple souls. They could relate facts, but they
said very little about what they dimly felt. Bucky O'Neill, however,
the iron-nerved, iron-willed fighter from Arizona, the Sheriff whose
name was a by-word of terror to every wrong-doer, white or red, the
gambler who with unmoved face would stake and lose every dollar he had
in the world--he, alone among his comrades, was a visionary, an
articulate emotionalist. He was very quiet about it, never talking
unless he was sure of his listener; but at night, when we leaned on
the railing to look at the Southern Cross, he was less apt to tell
tales of his hard and stormy past than he was to speak of the
mysteries which lie behind courage, and fear, and love, behind animal
hatred, and animal lust for the pleasures that have tangible shape. He
had keenly enjoyed life, and he could breast its turbulent torrent as
few men could; he was a practical man, who knew how to wrest personal
success from adverse forces, among money-makers, politicians, and
desperadoes alike; yet, down at bottom, what seemed to interest him
most was the philosophy of life itself, of our understanding of it,
and of the limitations set to that understanding. But he was as far as
possible from being a mere dreamer of dreams. A staunchly loyal and
generous friend, he was also exceedingly ambitious on his own account.
If, by risking his life, no matter how great the risk, he could gain
high military distinction, he was bent on gaining it. He had taken so
many chances when death lay on the hazard, that he felt the odds were
now against him; but, said he, "Who would not risk his life for a
star?" Had he lived, and had the war lasted, he would surely have won
the eagle, if not the star.
We had a good deal of trouble with the transports, chiefly because
they were not under the control of the navy. One of them was towing a
schooner, and another a scow; both, of course, kept lagging behind.
Finally, when we had gone nearly the length of Cuba, the transport
with the schooner sagged very far behind, and then our wretched
transport was directed by General Shafter to fall out of line and keep
her company. Of course, we executed the order, greatly to the wrath of
Captain Clover, who, in the gunboat Bancroft, had charge of the rear
of the column--for we could be of no earthly use to the other
transport, and by our presence simply added just so much to Captain
Clover's anxiety, as he had two transports to protect instead of one.
Next morning the rest of the convoy were out of sight, but we reached
them just as they finally turned.
Until this we had steamed with the trade-wind blowing steadily in
our faces; but once we were well to eastward of Cuba, we ran southwest
with the wind behind on our quarter, and we all knew that our
destination was Santiago. On the morning of the 20th we were close to
the Cuban coast. High mountains rose almost from the water's edge,
looking huge and barren across the sea. We sped onward past Guantanamo
Bay, where we saw the little picket-ships of the fleet; and in the
afternoon we sighted Santiago Harbor, with the great war-ships
standing off and on in front of it, gray and sullen in their
war-paint.
All next day we rolled and wallowed in the seaway, waiting until a
decision was reached as to where we should land. On the morning of
June 22nd the welcome order for landing came.
We did the landing as we had done everything else--that is, in a
scramble, each commander shifting for himself. The port at which we
landed was called Daiquiri, a squalid little village where there had
been a railway and iron-works. There were no facilities for landing,
and the fleet did not have a quarter the number of boats it should
have had for the purpose. All we could do was to stand in with the
transports as close as possible, and then row ashore in our own few
boats and the boats of the war-ships. Luck favored our regiment. My
former naval aide, while I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy,
Lieutenant Sharp, was in command of the Vixen, a converted yacht; and
everything being managed on the go-as-you-please principle, he steamed
by us and offered to help put us ashore. Of course, we jumped at the
chance. Wood and I boarded the Vixen, and there we got Lieutenant
Sharp's black Cuban pilot, who told us he could take our transport
right in to within a few hundred yards of the land. Accordingly, we
put him aboard; and in he brought her, gaining at least a mile and a
half by the manoeuvre. The other transports followed; but we had our
berth, and were all right.
There was plenty of excitement to the landing. In the first place,
the smaller war-vessels shelled Daiquiri, so as to dislodge any
Spaniards who might be lurking in the neighborhood, and also shelled
other places along the coast, to keep the enemy puzzled as to our
intentions. Then the surf was high, and the landing difficult; so that
the task of getting the men, the ammunition, and provisions ashore was
not easy. Each man carried three days' field rations and a hundred
rounds of ammunition. Our regiment had accumulated two rapid-fire Colt
automatic guns, the gift of Stevens, Kane, Tiffany, and one or two
others of the New York men, and also a dynamite gun, under the
immediate charge of Sergeant Borrowe. To get these, and especially the
last, ashore, involved no little work and hazard. Meanwhile, from
another transport, our horses were being landed, together with the
mules, by the simple process of throwing them overboard and letting
them swim ashore, if they could. Both of Wood's got safely through.
One of mine was drowned. The other, little Texas, got ashore all
right. While I was superintending the landing at the ruined dock, with
Bucky O'Neill, a boatful of colored infantry soldiers capsized, and
two of the men went to the bottom; Bucky O'Neill plunging in, in full
uniform, to save them, but in vain.
However, by the late afternoon we had all our men, with what
ammunition and provisions they could themselves carry, landed, and
were ready for anything that might turn up.