SIBONEY ON THE EVE OF BATTLE
During my absence at the front on Monday, the auxiliary cruiser _Yale_,
with two or three regiments of Michigan troops on board, arrived off
Siboney, and when I went on deck on Tuesday morning these reinforcements
were just beginning to go ashore in a long line of small boats, towed by
a steam-launch from one of the war-ships of the blockading fleet.
The landing of troops and supplies on the Cuban coast was the first
serious difficulty with which General Shafter had to contend. The little
cove at Siboney was wholly unsheltered; there was no wharf or pier at
which a steamer might lie; a gale, or even a fresh breeze, from the
southeast raised a heavy surf on the strip of sand in front of the
village; the water deepened so suddenly and abruptly, at a distance of
fifty yards from the shore, that there was practically no anchorage; and
all men and stores had to be landed by putting them into small boats and
running them up on the beach through the breakers. At Daiquiri, where
General Lawton's division disembarked, the situation was a little
better, for the reason that the Spanish-American Iron Company had built
there a substantial pier, of which the army of invasion could make use.
At that place, therefore, General Shafter disembarked a large part of
his command, and unloaded all his wagons, siege-guns, light artillery,
etc. The mules and horses were put ashore--or rather pitched overboard
with the expectation that they would swim ashore--at Siboney; but, owing
to unskilful management and lack of guidance, twelve per cent. of the
mules--fifty out of four hundred and fifteen--perished. Some, instead of
making for the shore, swam directly out to sea until they became
exhausted and sank; while others attempted to land on the eastern side
of the cove, where there was no beach, and were drowned under the rocks.
Inasmuch as the total number of draft-and pack-animals loaded at Tampa
was wholly inadequate to meet the necessities of such an expedition, the
drowning of twelve per cent. of them, after they had reached their
destination, was a serious and, it seems to me, unnecessary loss.
In the disembarkation of his troops, General Shafter had the assistance
of skilled officers and well-drilled sailors from the blockading fleet,
to say nothing of half a dozen steam-launches and fifty-two good boats;
but when it came to unloading and landing stores, he had to rely on his
own men and his own facilities, and it soon became painfully evident
that they were not equal to the requirements of the situation. I watched
the landing of supplies all day Tuesday, and formed the opinion that it
was disorderly, unskilful, and unintelligent. In the first place, many
of the steamers from which supplies were being taken lay too far from
the beach; and there seemed to be no one who had authority or power
enough to compel them to come nearer. As a result of this, the boats and
lighters were unable to make as quick and frequent trips as they might
have made if the transports had been within one hundred yards of the
beach, instead of half a mile away.
In the second place, most of the boats and lighters seemed to be
directed and handled by men who had had little experience in boating
and no experience whatever in landing through heavy surf. As a result of
this, boats were often stove against the timbers of the little pier
which the engineer corps had hastily built; while the lighters, instead
of being held by an anchor and stern-line as they went into the
breakers, were allowed to swing around into the trough of the sea, where
they either filled and sank, or drifted ashore, broadside to the beach,
in such a position that fifty men could hardly turn them around and get
them off.
Finally, the soldiers and Cubans who acted as stevedores, carrying the
boxes from the boats and piling them on the pier, were not intelligently
directed, and, consequently, labored without method or judgment--getting
in one another's way; allowing the pier to become so blocked up with
stuff that nobody could move on it, much less work; and wasting more
energy in talking, shouting, and bossing one another than they utilized
in doing the thing that was to be done.
If I had ever had any doubt with regard to the expediency of giving to
the navy full and absolute control of the army and its supplies while at
sea, such doubt would have been removed by one day's observation at
Siboney. Army officers, as a rule, know nothing of water transportation,
and cannot reasonably be expected to know anything about it; and to put
them in charge of transports, lighters, and surf-boats is almost as
inconsiderate as to put a sailor in charge of a farm and expect him,
without any previous training, to run reaping-, binding-, and
threshing-machines, take proper care of his live stock, and get as much
out of the soil as an agricultural expert would. Every man to his trade;
and the landing of supplies from thirty or forty transports, in small
boats, on an unsheltered, surf-beaten coast, is not the trade of an army
quartermaster. Lieutenant-Colonel Humphrey and Major Jacobs undoubtedly
did all that they could do, with their knowledge and experience, and
with the limited facilities that General Shafter had provided for them,
to get supplies ashore; but the results were not gratifying, either to
observers at Siboney, or to soldiers at the front. If officers of the
navy had directed the loading of stores on the transports at Tampa, and
the unloading and landing of them at Daiquiri and Siboney, there would
have been a properly equipped hospital at the latter place five days
sooner than there was; there would have been forty or fifty more mules
in the army's pack-train; the beach would not have been strewn with the
wrecks of mismanaged boats and lighters; and the transport-steamers
_Alamo_, _Breakwater_, _Iroquois_, _Vigilancia_, and _La Grande
Duchesse_ would not have brought back to the United States hundreds of
tons of supplies intended for, and urgently needed by, our soldiers at
the front.
On the afternoon of Tuesday, June 28, one of the small vessels of the
mosquito fleet arrived from Guantanamo Bay with a letter from Captain
McCalla in which he said that General Perez had furnished a pack-train
and an escort for the food that the Red Cross had promised to send to
the Guantanamo refugees, and that he would like to have us return there
as soon as possible and land five thousand rations. As our hospital work
on shore was well under way, and Dr. Lesser and the nurses had been
supplied with everything that they would need for a day or two, Miss
Barton decided to fill Captain McCalla's requisition at once. Late
Tuesday evening, therefore, the _State of Texas_ left Siboney, and after
a quiet and peaceful run down the coast entered Guantanamo Bay about six
o'clock Wednesday morning. At half-past six Captain McCalla came on
board to make arrangements for the landing, and in less than two hours
there was a large lighter alongside, with a steam-launch to tow it to
the place where an officer of General Perez's command was waiting for it
with a pack-train and an escort. Before noon ten or fifteen thousand
pounds of supplies, consisting principally of beans, rice, hard bread,
and South American jerked beef, had been safely landed on the western
side of the entrance to the lower harbor; and as we passed the point, on
our return, we saw a large party of Cubans carrying the boxes and
barrels up the bank.
We reached Siboney early that evening, drifted and rolled all night on a
heavy swell, a mile or two off the coast, and at daybreak on the
following morning ran close in to the beach and began landing supplies
for several thousand destitute Cuban refugees who had assembled at the
little village of Firmeza, three miles back of Siboney in the hills. In
getting provisions ashore at Siboney, we encountered precisely the same
difficulties that the army had to meet; but we fortunately had with us,
as chief of transportation, a man who was familiar with boats and who
had had large experience in handling them in circumstances and under
conditions similar to those that prevailed on the Cuban coast. In
proportion to our facilities, therefore, we got more stuff ashore in a
given time than the army quartermasters did, and with fewer accidents.
Mr. Warner, I think, was the first man to use, at Siboney, an anchor and
a stern-line to prevent a boat or a lighter from broaching to in the
surf. It was a simple enough expedient, but nobody, apparently, had
thought of it. By dropping an anchor astern, just before the lighter
reached the outer edge of the breakers, and then slacking off the line
until the boat was near enough so that thirty Cubans could rush into the
water, seize it, and run it up on the beach, a landing was effected
without difficulty or risk. Then, when the supplies had been unloaded,
the stern-anchor line could be used again as a means of pulling the
lighter off through the surf into smooth water and preventing it from
swinging around broadside to the sea while being launched. The best time
for this work was between five and ten o'clock in the morning. After ten
o'clock there was almost always a fresh breeze from the southeast,
which raised such a surf on the beach that unless the landing of
supplies was a matter of extreme urgency it had to be temporarily
suspended. We succeeded in getting ashore on Wednesday food enough to
satisfy the wants of the refugees at Firmeza, and Mr. Elwell was sent
there to superintend its distribution.
Wednesday evening, as there seemed to be no prospect of an immediate
engagement at the front, I decided to go to Port Antonio, Jamaica, with
Mr. Trumbull White, on the Chicago "Record's" despatch-boat _Hercules_,
to post my letters and the letters that had been intrusted to me by
Colonel Wood and Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt, and to get some articles
of camp equipment which I had ordered in New York, but which had failed
to reach me before the _State of Texas_ sailed from Key West.
We reached Port Antonio at eight o'clock on Thursday, spent the day
there, and returned the next night to Siboney. Early Friday morning, as
we were approaching the Cuban coast, the captain of the _Hercules_ came
down into the cabin with the astounding news that the blockading fleet
had disappeared. "The jig is up, boys!" he exclaimed excitedly. "They've
taken the city, and the fleet is inside the harbor. I can't see a sign
of a ship anywhere along the coast."
We all rushed on deck and gazed with sinking hearts at the long black
line of the rampart and the high blue mountains beyond it. If Santiago
had been taken in our absence, it would be the cruelest blow that
fortune had ever dealt us! Although the sun was still below the horizon,
the atmosphere was crystal-clear, and we could see without a glass the
step-like outline of Morro Castle, and even the hazy blue smoke rising
from the camp-fires on-the beach at Siboney; but of the war-ships--the
_New York_, the _Brooklyn_, the _Indiana_, and the _Texas_--there was
not a sign. I do not know what Mr. White thought,--he seemed to be as
cool and imperturbable as ever,--but when I fully realized that the
fleet was not there, and drew from that fact the inevitable conclusion
that the city had been captured, I was ready to anathematize the British
West Indies, Port Antonio, the _Hercules_, and the cruel ill luck which
had taken me a hundred miles away at the decisive moment of the Santiago
campaign.
As the sun rose over the level plain of the Caribbean, and the swift
ocean-going tug bore us nearer and nearer to the dark line of the still
distant coast, the captain, who had been sweeping the base of the
rampart with a long marine telescope, suddenly shouted: "Aha! I think I
can see the _Brooklyn_, boys. It may be all right yet." I looked eagerly
toward the position that Commodore Schley's flagship usually occupied on
the western side of the harbor entrance, but could see nothing that even
suggested the _Brooklyn's_ familiar outline. If there were any vessels
of the blockading fleet between us and the land, they certainly were off
their stations and very close in under the shadow of the land. But the
captain's eyesight was better than mine. In five minutes more he
announced that he could see the _Brooklyn_, the _New York_, and the
_Iowa_. "They're all there," he added after another look, "but some of
them seem to be away out of position. The _New York_ is off Aguadores,
and the _Brooklyn_ is half-way down to Aserraderos."
In fifteen minutes more it became apparent to us all that the height of
the rampart and the mountains back of it, together with the crystalline
clearness of the atmosphere, had led us to underestimate the distance,
and that, when we first took alarm at the apparent absence of the
blockading fleet, the war-ships were at least fifteen miles away,
although the coast did not seem to be five. At such a distance the dull
gray hulls of the vessels could hardly be seen, even if they were not
below our horizon. With much lighter hearts, but with a feeling,
nevertheless, that something of importance had occurred or was about to
occur, we ran down alongside the _Iowa_, hailed her through a megaphone,
and asked if there was any news. "It's reported that they are fighting
over there," replied the officer of the deck, waving his hand toward
Santiago, "but we haven't any particulars." There was no smoke rising
above the rampart in the direction of the city, we could hear no sound
of cannonading, and I was more than half inclined to believe that the
report of fighting at the front was premature; but whether this were so
or not, the _Iowa_, the _Texas_, the _New York_, and all the warships
near us were cleared for action; their officers seemed to be eagerly
awaiting orders; Admiral Sampson's flagship was exchanging wigwag
flag-signals with a man on the beach beyond the mouth of the Aguadores
ravine, and it was perfectly evident that something was expected to
happen. Under such circumstances, the thing for us to do was to get
back, as speedily as possible, to Siboney. Turning in a great circle
around the _Iowa_, we steamed swiftly eastward along the coast, passing
the _New York_, the _Suwanee_, and the _Gloucester_, which were lying,
cleared for action, close under the walls of the Aguadores fort;
exchanging greetings with the New York "Sun's" graceful despatch-boat
_Kanapaha_, which came hurrying westward as if bound for some important
field of expected activity; and finally rounding to alongside the _State
of Texas_ in the Siboney cove.
There was nothing in the appearance of the village to indicate that a
battle was in progress, or even in anticipation. Boats were going to and
fro between the transports and the pier as usual; there was the usual
crowd of Cuban ragamuffins and tatterdemalions on the beach, with a
sprinkling of soldiers in the streets; everything seemed to be quiet on
board the _State of Texas_, and I said to Mr. White, as I bade him
good-by, that I did not believe we had missed anything after all.
We soon had evidence, however, that there was an engagement in progress
off the coast, if not at the front. Between nine and ten o'clock in the
morning heavy cannonading could be heard in the direction of Morro
Castle, and great clouds of white smoke began to rise over a projecting
point of the rampart which hid, from our point of view, the mouth of the
Aguadores ravine. Anxious to see what was going on, I persuaded Miss
Barton to let the _State of Texas_ run out of the cove and take some
position from which we might witness the bombardment. Getting under way
at once, we steamed out four or five miles in a west-southwest direction
to a point about three miles off Aguadores, from which we could see the
whole line of the coast. A column of infantry--the Thirty-third
Michigan, I think, under command of General Duffield--had moved westward
along the railroad under the rampart to the mouth of the Aguadores
ravine, and was apparently engaged in attacking the enemy's position
there under cover of Admiral Sampson's guns. We could not clearly follow
the movements of the troops, for the reason that they were hidden, or
partially hidden, by the bushes and trees, but we could see every
movement made and every shot fired by the war-ships. The _Gloucester_,
on the western side of the notch, was knocking to pieces the old stone
fort half-way up the hill; the _New York_, from a position directly in
front of the railroad-bridge, was enfilading the ravine with four-and
eight-inch shells; while the _Suwanee_, completely hidden most of the
time in a great cloud of smoke, was close in to the mouth of the river,
sweeping the whole adjacent region with a storm of projectiles from her
rapid-fire and machine guns. I do not know whether the old Aguadores
fort had any armament or not. Its sea face had been reduced to a heap of
crumbled masonry before we reached the scene of action, and I did not
afterward see a shot fired from it, nor a single soldier in or about it.
Its offensive power--if it ever had any--was so completely destroyed,
that I momentarily expected General Duffield's troops to ford the river
above the railroad-bridge and take undisputed possession of it. But the
Michigan men were apparently prevented from doing so by the fire from
some rifle-pits up the ravine, which the guns of the war-ships could
not, or did not, wholly silence. We were not in a position, perhaps, to
form a trustworthy judgment with regard to the strength of the
Spaniards' defense; but it seemed to me that if the attack had been
vigorously made and persistently followed up, the enemy might have been
driven from the ravine. Admiral Sampson, in his report of the
engagement, says that the Spaniards had no artillery except one small
field-piece, which they fired only four or five times, and that not more
than fifteen or twenty of them could be seen, at any time, in or about
the rifle-pits. General Duffield, on the other hand, reports that they
numbered five hundred, and that their artillery shelled the railroad
track and the woods where his troops were until 3 P.M.--about five
hours. That their fire was not very destructive sufficiently appears
from the fact that, in half a day of more or less continuous
skirmishing, General Duffield lost only two men killed and six wounded.
Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon the Michigan troops
returned by rail to Siboney; the war-ships withdrew to their blockading
stations; and the field, as well as the honors, remained in possession
of the Spaniards. After the engagement the _State of Texas_ ran close in
to the shore, and we saw perhaps a dozen Spanish soldiers standing or
walking on the hillside west of the ravine. There may have been more of
them in the concealment of the woods; but my impression is that their
force was very small, and that General Duffield, with the aid and
support of the war-ships, should have been able to clear the ravine and
take possession not only of the abandoned fort but of the commanding
heights above it.
When we got back to Siboney, late in the afternoon, the village was full
of rumors of heavy fighting in front of Santiago; and, an hour or two
after dark, wounded men, some on foot and some in army wagons, began to
arrive at the Siboney hospital from the distant field of battle. As they
had all been disabled and sent to the rear in the early part of the day,
they could give us no information with regard to the result of the
engagement. Many of them had been wounded before they had seen a Spanish
intrenchment, or even a Spanish soldier; and all they knew about the
fight was that the army had moved forward at daybreak and they
themselves had been shot in the woods by an enemy whom they could
neither locate nor see.
The Siboney hospital, thanks to the devotion and unwearied energy of
Major Lagarde and his assistants, was by this time in fairly good
working order. There was a lack of blankets, pillows, and tentage, and
the operating facilities, perhaps, were not as ample as they might have
been; but in view of the extraordinary difficulties with which the
surgeons had had to contend, the results were highly creditable to them,
even if not wholly satisfactory to an observer. As fast as the wounded
arrived, they walked, or were carried on stretchers, to two or three
large tents, pitched end to end and opening into one another, where
hospital stewards and nurses placed them on the tables, and the
surgeons, some of them stripped naked to the waist, examined their
injuries by candle-light, and performed such operations as were
necessary to give them relief. They were then taken or led away, and, as
far as possible, furnished with blankets and shelter; but as the supply
of blankets was very short, and all the available houses and tents were
soon filled, the wounded who came in after midnight were laid in a row
on the ground and covered with a long strip of canvas. Fortunately, the
night was clear, still, and warm, and a nearly full moon made it almost
as light as day, so that it was not so cheerless and uncomfortable to
lie out on the ground without a blanket as it would have been if the
night had been dark and cold, or rainy; but it was bad enough.
Most of our Red Cross surgeons and nurses were assisting in the
operating-tents, and I remained on shore until after three o'clock in
the morning. There was little that I could do beyond looking up the
wounded, who frequently came into the village on foot, after a painful
march of ten or twelve miles, and were so weak, hungry, and exhausted
that, instead of coming to the hospital, they lay down anywhere in the
street or under the wall of a house. Some of these men I found, with the
assistance of a friendly and sympathetic Cuban, and had them carried on
litters to the operating-tents. All of the wounded who came back from
the front that night ought to have had hot tea or coffee, and some such
easily digested food as malted milk, as most of them had eaten nothing
since the early morning and were worn out with pain and fatigue. But of
course no provision had been made for supplying them even with hard
bread and water, and when taken from the operating-tables they were
simply laid on the ground, to get through the night as best they could
without nourishment or drink. We all understand, of course, that, in the
oft-quoted words of General Sherman, "war is hell"; but it might be made
a little less hellish by adequate preparation for the reception and care
of the wounded.
I went off to the _State of Texas_ between three and four o'clock, and
threw myself into my berth just as day was beginning to break over the
hills east of the cove.