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CAMPAIGNING IN
CUBA
BY
GEORGE KENNAN
AUTHOR OF "SIBERIA AND THE EXILE SYSTEM"
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1899
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. STARTING FOR THE FIELD 1
II. UNDER THE RED CROSS 10
III. ON THE EDGE OF WAR 23
IV. WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND DESPATCH-BOATS 35
V. OFF FOR SANTIAGO 44
VI. THE CUBAN COAST 53
VII. THE FIGHT AT GUANTANAMO 65
VIII. THE LANDING AND ADVANCE OF THE ARMY 76
IX. A WALK TO THE FRONT 88
X. SIBONEY ON THE EVE OF BATTLE 104
XI. THE BATTLES OF CANEY AND SAN JUAN 116
XII. THE FIELD-HOSPITAL 130
XIII. SIBONEY DURING THE ARMISTICE 150
XIV. ENTERING SANTIAGO HARBOR 164
XV. THE CAPTURED CITY 171
XVI. THE FEEDING OF THE HUNGRY 182
XVII. MORRO CASTLE 192
XVIII. FEVER IN THE ARMY 213
XIX. THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN 222
XX. THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN (_Continued_) 237
XXI. THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN (_Concluded_) 256
CAMPAIGNING IN CUBA
CHAPTER I
STARTING FOR THE FIELD
War broke out between the United States and Spain on April 21, 1898. A
week or ten days later I was asked by the editors of the "Outlook" of
New York to go to Cuba with Miss Clara Barton, on the Red Cross steamer
_State of Texas_, and report the war and the work of the Red Cross for
that periodical. After a hasty conference with the editorial and
business staffs of the paper I was to represent, I accepted the
proposition, and on May 5 left Washington for Key West, where the _State
of Texas_ was awaiting orders from the Navy Department. The army of
invasion, under command of General Shafter, was then assembling at
Tampa, and it was expected that a hostile movement to some point on the
Cuban coast would be made before the end of the month.
I reached Tampa on the evening of Friday, May 6. The Pullman cars of the
Florida express, at that time, ran through the city of Tampa and across
the river into the spacious grounds of the beautiful Tampa Bay Hotel,
which, after closing for the regular winter season, had been compelled
to reopen its doors--partly to accommodate the large number of officers
and war correspondents who had assembled there with their wives and
friends, and partly to serve as headquarters for the army of Cuban
invasion.
It was a warm, clear Southern night when we arrived, and the scene
presented by the hotel and its environment, as we stepped out of the
train, was one of unexpected brilliancy and beauty. A nearly full moon
was just rising over the trees on the eastern side of the hotel park,
touching with silver the drifts of white blossoms on dark masses of
oleander-trees in the foreground, and flooding with soft yellow light
the domes, Moorish arches, and long facade of the whole immense
building. Two regimental bands were playing waltzes and patriotic airs
under a long row of incandescent lights on the broad veranda;
fine-looking, sunbrowned men, in all the varied uniforms of army and
navy, were gathered in groups here and there, smoking, talking, or
listening to the music; the rotunda was crowded with officers, war
correspondents, and gaily attired ladies, and the impression made upon a
newcomer, as he alighted from the train, was that of a brilliant
military ball at a fashionable seaside summer resort. Of the serious and
tragic side of war there was hardly a suggestion.
On the morning after our arrival I took a carriage and drove around the
city and out to the camp, which was situated about a mile and a half
from the hotel on the other side of the river. In the city itself I was
unpleasantly disappointed. The showy architecture, beautiful grounds,
semi-tropical foliage, and brilliant flowers of the Tampa Bay Hotel
raise expectations which the town across the river does not fulfil. It
is a huddled collection of generally insignificant buildings standing in
an arid desert of sand, and to me it suggested the city of
Semipalatinsk--a wretched, verdure-less town in southern Siberia,
colloquially known to Russian army officers as "the Devil's Sand-box."
Thriving and prosperous Tampa may be, but attractive or pleasing it
certainly is not.
As soon as I got away, however, from the hotel and into the streets of
the town, I saw at almost every step suggestions of the serious and
practical side, if not the tragic side, of war. Long trains of four-mule
wagons loaded with provisions, camp equipage, and lumber moved slowly
through the soft, deep sand of the unpaved streets in the direction of
the encampment; the sidewalks were thronged with picturesquely dressed
Cuban volunteers from the town, sailors from the troop-ships, soldiers
from the camp, and war correspondents from everywhere; mounted orderlies
went tearing back and forth with despatches to or from the army
headquarters in the Tampa Bay Hotel; Cuban and American flags were
displayed in front of every restaurant, hotel, and Cuban cigar-shop, and
floated from the roofs or windows of many private houses; and now and
then I met, coming out of a drug-store, an army surgeon or hospital
steward whose left arm bore the red cross of the Geneva Convention.
The army that was destined to begin the invasion of Cuba consisted, at
that time, of ten or twelve thousand men, all regulars, and included an
adequate force of cavalry and ten fine batteries of field-artillery. It
was encamped in an extensive forest of large but scattered pine-trees,
about a mile from the town, and seemed already to have made itself very
much at home in its new environment.
The first thing that struck me in going through the camp was its
businesslike aspect. It did not suggest a big picnic, nor an encampment
of militia for annual summer drill. It was manifestly a camp of
veterans; and although its dirty, weather-beaten tents were pitched here
and there without any attempt at regularity of arrangement, and its camp
equipage, cooking-utensils, and weapons were piled or stacked between
the tents in a somewhat disorderly fashion, as if thrown about at
random, I could see that the irregularity and disorder were only
apparent, and were really the irregularity and disorder of knowledge and
experience gained by long and varied service in the field. I did not
need the inscriptions--"Fort Reno" and "Fort Sill"--on the army wagons
to assure me that these were veteran troops from the Plains, to whom
campaigning was not a new thing.
As we drove up to the camp, smoke was rising lazily into the warm summer
air from a dozen fires in different parts of the grounds; company cooks
were putting the knives, forks, and dishes that they had just washed
into improvised cup-boards made by nailing boxes and tomato-crates
against the trees; officers in fatigue-uniform were sitting in
camp-chairs, here and there, reading the latest New York papers; and
thousands of soldiers, both inside and outside the sentry-lines, were
standing in groups discussing the naval fight off Manila, lounging and
smoking on the ground in the shade of the army wagons, playing hand-ball
to pass away the time, or swarming around a big board shanty, just
outside the lines, which called itself "NOAH'S ARK" and announced in big
letters its readiness to dispense cooling drinks to all comers at a
reasonable price.
The troops in all branches of the army at Tampa impressed me very
favorably. The soldiers were generally stalwart, sunburnt,
resolute-looking men, twenty-five to thirty-five years of age, who
seemed to be in perfect physical condition, and who looked as if they
had already seen hard service and were ready and anxious for more. In
field-artillery the force was particularly strong, and our officers in
Tampa based their confident expectation of victory largely upon the
anticipated work of the ten batteries of fine, modern field-guns which
General Shafter then intended to take with him. Owing to lack of
transportation facilities, however, or for some other reason to me
unknown, six of these batteries were left in Tampa when the army sailed
for Santiago, and the need of them was severely felt, a few weeks later,
at Caney and San Juan.
Upon my return from the camp I called upon General Shafter, presented my
letter of introduction from the President, and said I wished to consult
him briefly with regard to the future work of the American National Red
Cross. He received me cordially, said that our organization would soon
have a great and important work to do in Cuba in caring for the
destitute and starving reconcentrados, and that he would gladly afford
us all possible facilities and protection. The Red Cross corps of the
army medical department, he said, would be fully competent to take care
of all the sick and wounded soldiers in the field; but there would be
ample room for our supplementary work in relieving the distress of the
starving Cuban peasants, who would undoubtedly seek refuge within our
lines as soon as we should establish ourselves on the island. He
deprecated and disapproved of any attempt on the part of the Red Cross
to land supplies for the reconcentrados under a flag of truce in advance
of the army of invasion and without its protection. "The Spanish
authorities," he said, "under stress of starvation, would simply seize
your stores and use them for the maintenance of their own army. The best
thing for you to do is to go in with us and under our protection, and
relieve the distress of the reconcentrados as fast as we uncover it." I
said that I thought this was Miss Barton's intention, and that we had
fourteen hundred tons of food-stuffs and medical supplies on the steamer
_State of Texas_ at Key West, and were ready to move at an hour's
notice. With an understanding that Miss Barton should be notified as
soon as the army of invasion embarked, I bade the general good-by and
returned to the hotel.
In an interview that I had on the following day with Colonel Babcock,
General Shafter's adjutant-general, I was informed, confidentially, that
the army was destined for "eastern Cuba." Small parties, Colonel Babcock
said, would be landed at various points on the coast east and west of
Havana, for the purpose of communicating with the insurgents and
supplying them with arms and ammunition; but the main attack would be
made at the eastern end of the island. He did not specifically mention
Santiago by name, because Cervera's fleet, at that time, had not taken
refuge there; but inasmuch as Santiago was the most important place in
eastern Cuba, and had a deep and sheltered harbor, I inferred that it
would be made the objective point of the contemplated attack. The
Secretary of War, in his reply to the questions of the Investigating
Commission, says that the movement against Santiago, as then planned,
was to be a mere "reconnaissance in force, to ascertain the strength of
the enemy in different locations in eastern Cuba"; but Colonel Babcock
certainly gave me to understand that the attack was to be a serious one,
and that it would be made with the whole strength of General Shafter's
command. The matter is of no particular importance now, except in so far
as the information given me by Colonel Babcock indicates the views and
intentions of the War Department two weeks before Admiral Cervera's
fleet took refuge in Santiago harbor.
I left Port Tampa for Key West on the Plant-line steamer _Mascotte_ at
half-past ten o'clock Saturday evening, May 7. The long, narrow, and
rather sinuous channel out of Tampa Bay was marked by a line of buoys
and skeleton wooden frames resting on driven spiles; but there were no
lights for the guidance of the mariner, except one at the outer
entrance, ten or twelve miles from the port; and if the _Mascotte_ had
not been provided with a powerful search-light of her own she would
hardly have been able to find her way to sea, as the night was cloudy
and the buoys were invisible. With the long, slender shaft of her
search-light, however, she probed the darkness ahead, as with a radiant
exploring finger, and picked up the buoys, one after another, with
unfailing certainty and precision. Every two or three minutes a floating
iron balloon, or a skeleton frame covered with sleeping aquatic birds,
would flash into the field of vision ahead, like one of Professor
Pepper's patent ghosts, stand out for a moment in brilliant white relief
against a background of impenetrable darkness, and then vanish with the
swiftness of summer lightning, as the electric beam left it to search
for another buoy farther away.
When I awoke the next morning we were out on the blue, tumbling,
foam-crested water of the Gulf, forty or fifty miles from the Florida
coast. All day Sunday we steamed slowly southward, seeing no vessels
except a Jamaica "fruiter," whose captain shouted to us, as he crossed
our bow, that he had been blown off his course in a recent gale, and
would like to know his position and distance. We should have reached Key
West at half-past two Sunday afternoon; but an accident which disabled
one of the _Mascotte's_ boilers greatly reduced her normal speed, so
that when I went to my state-room at eleven o'clock Sunday evening we
were still twenty or thirty miles from our destination.
Three hours later I was awakened by shouted orders, the tramping of
feet, and the rattling of heavy chain-cable on the forward deck, and,
dressing myself hastily, I went out to ascertain our situation. The moon
was hidden behind a dense bank of clouds, the breeze had fallen to a
nearly perfect calm, and the steamer was rolling and pitching gently on
a sea that appeared to have the color and consistency of greenish-gray
oil. Two hundred yards away, on the port bow, floated a white pyramidal
frame in the fierce glare of the ship's search-light, and from it, at
irregular intervals, came the warning toll of a heavy bell. It was the
bell-buoy at the entrance to Key West harbor, and far away on the
southeastern horizon appeared a faintly luminous nebula which marked the
position of Key West city. Under the war regulations then in force, no
vessels other than those belonging to the United States navy were
permitted to enter or leave the port of Key West between late evening
twilight and early dawn, and we were, therefore, forced to anchor off
the bell-buoy until 5 A. M. Just as day was breaking we got our anchor
on board and steamed in toward the town. The comparatively shallow water
of the bay, in the first gray light of dawn, had the peculiar opaque,
bluish-green color of a stream fed by an Alpine glacier; but as the
light increased it assumed a brilliant but delicate translucent green of
purer quality, contrasting finely with the scarlet flush in the east
which heralded the rising, but still hidden, sun. On our right, as we
entered the wide, spacious harbor, were two or three flat-topped,
table-like islands, or "keys," which, in general outline and appearance,
suggested dark mesas of foliage floating in a tropical ocean of pale
chrysolite-green. Directly ahead was the city of Key West--a long, low,
curving silhouette of roofs, spires, masts, lighthouses, cocoanut-palms,
and Australian pines, delicately outlined in black against the scarlet
arch of the dawn, "like a ragged line of Arabic etched on the blade of a
Turkish simitar." At the extreme western end of this long, ragged
silhouette rose the massive walls of Fort Taylor, with its double tier
of antiquated embrasures; and on the left of it, as the distance
lessened and the light increased, I could distinguish the cream-colored
front of the Marine Hospital, the slender white shaft of the lighthouse,
the red pyramidal roof of the Government Building, and the pale-yellow
walls and cupola of the Key West Hotel--all interspersed with graceful
leaning palms, or thrown into effective relief against dark masses of
feathery Australian pine.
Along the water-front, for a distance of half a mile, extended an almost
unbroken line of steamers, barks, schooners, and brigantines,
discharging or receiving cargo, while out on the pale-green, translucent
surface of the harbor were scattered a dozen or more war-ships of the
North Atlantic Squadron, ranging in size from the huge, double-turreted
monitor _Puritan_ to the diminutive but dangerous-looking torpedo-boat
_Dupont_. All were in their war-paint of dirty leaden gray, which,
although it might add to their effectiveness, certainly did not seem to
me to improve their appearance as component parts of an otherwise
beautiful marine picture. Beyond the war-ships and nearer to the eastern
end of the island lay the captured Spanish prizes, including the big
black liners _Pedro_ and _Miguel Jover_, the snow-white _Argonauta_, the
brigantine _Frascito_, and a dozen or more fishing-schooners intercepted
by the blockading fleet while on their way back to Havana from the
Yucatan banks.
But none of these war-ships or prizes had, for me, the interest that
attached to a large black two-masted steamer of eighteen hundred tons,
which was lying at anchor off the government wharf, flying from her
mainmast-head a white flag emblazoned with the red Greek cross of the
Geneva Convention. It was the steamship _State of Texas_, of the Mallory
line, chartered by the American National Red Cross to carry to Cuba
supplies for the starving reconcentrados, and to serve as headquarters
for its president, Miss Clara Barton, and her staff of trained surgeons,
nurses, and field-officers.