THE BATTLES OF CANEY AND SAN JUAN
General Shafter went to the front to take personal command of the army
on Wednesday, June 29. At that time the divisions of Generals Kent,
Wheeler, and Lawton were encamped on the Siboney-Santiago road, between
the high ridge of Sevilla, from which I had seen the city two days
before, and a half-ruined house and plantation, two or three miles
farther on, known as El Pozo. Most of the troops were in the valley of a
small stream which rises on the western slope of the Sevilla watershed,
runs for a short distance in the direction of Santiago, and then, after
receiving a number of tributaries, turns southward, just beyond the Pozo
farm-house, and falls into the sea through the notch in the rampart at
Aguadores. Although the bottom of this valley, in general, was densely
wooded, there was a series of grassy openings, or glades, on the
northern side of the stream just east of El Pozo, and in one of these
openings General Lawton, who led the advance, had established his
headquarters.
About three miles due north from El Pozo, and between three and four
miles in a northeasterly direction from Santiago, there was a small
village called Caney,[4] which, on account of its geographical
position, was regarded as a place of considerable strategic importance.
It was connected by roads or practicable trails with Santiago on the
west, Guantanamo on the east, and El Pozo on the south; and an enemy
holding it would not only outflank us on that side as soon as we should
pass the Pozo farm-house, but, by means of a rapid cross-march in our
rear, might cut or seriously imperil our only line of communication with
our base of supplies at Siboney. The fact was well known, furthermore,
that there was a strong division of Spanish regulars (about six thousand
men) at Guantanamo; and if this division should undertake to reinforce
the garrison at Santiago, Caney would be directly on its line of march.
In view of these considerations, General Shafter, after a survey of the
country from the summit of the hill at El Pozo, determined to seize
Caney, and, having thus cut off reinforcements from Guantanamo and
protected himself from a flanking movement on the right, advance
directly upon the city. The plan was good enough, as far as it went; but
General Shafter had made no reconnaissance on the Siboney-Santiago road
beyond El Pozo, and was wholly ignorant not only of the strength of the
enemy's position there, but of the nature of the country to be
traversed. It is true that he had superficially looked over the ground,
once, from the top of the Pozo hill; but he could get, in that way, very
little accurate knowledge of the topography of the region, and still
less of the Spaniards' defensive strength.
Our only possible line of advance, in the center, was the
Siboney-Santiago road, which ran, through a dense jungle, down the
valley of the Aguadores River, crossed a small stream flowing into that
river from the north, then crossed the San Juan River, another
tributary of the Aguadores, and finally emerged from the forest directly
in front of the San Juan heights. The enemy, of course, knew exactly
where this road lay, and where it came out of the woods into the open
country; and they had so disposed their batteries and rifle-pits that
they could not only concentrate their fire upon the lower stretches and
the mouth of the road, but sweep with a hail-storm of projectiles the
whole margin of the forest where we should have to deploy and form our
attacking line. General Shafter had not ascertained these facts by means
of a reconnaissance, nor had he, apparently, considered such a state of
affairs as a contingency to be guarded against; but Mr. Richard Harding
Davis asserts that General Chaffee, commander of a brigade in General
Lawton's division, anticipated precisely this situation, and predicted,
five days before the battle, that if our men marched down this trail
into the open country they would be "piled up so high that they would
block the road." He thought that it would be much better to keep away
from the road altogether; cut trails parallel with the entire front of
the forest and hidden by it, with innumerable little trails leading into
the open; and then march the whole army out upon the hills through these
trails at the same moment. Whether this suggestion was ever made to the
commanding general or not, I do not know; but if it was, it failed to
commend itself to his judgment. I refer now--perhaps prematurely--to a
state of affairs in our immediate front which was not fully disclosed
until much later; but I do so because knowledge of it is absolutely
essential to a clear understanding of the way in which the battle of San
Juan was fought.
General Shafter's plan of operations, as outlined by Captain Lee,
British military attache, was substantially as follows: General Lawton's
division was to attack Caney at daylight, July 1, and was expected to
drive the enemy quickly out of that post, which then menaced our right
flank. Meanwhile the remainder of the Fifth Corps was to advance along
the main trail toward Santiago, pushing back the Spanish outposts, and
occupy the line of the San Juan River. There it was to deploy and await
Lawton, who, having taken Caney, was to wheel to his left and form up on
the right of the main line. All these movements were to be completed by
the evening of the 1st, and then the whole army would combine for the
assault of San Juan on the 2d.
The advance began on the afternoon of Thursday, June 30. General
Lawton's division, accompanied by Capron's battery of four field-guns,
marched out on the Caney road, without meeting any opposition, and
bivouacked for the night behind a ridge, or hill, about a mile southeast
of the village. At the same time the remainder of the corps, consisting
of General Wheeler's cavalry division, the division of General Kent, and
three batteries of light artillery, moved down the Siboney-Santiago
road, and went into camp near the Pozo farm-house. At daybreak on
Friday, July 1, both columns were in position, within striking distance
of the enemy's intrenched line. As the fighting at Caney was wholly
independent of the fighting at San Juan, it will be more convenient to
regard the two engagements as separate battles, although they were
carried on simultaneously. I shall not attempt, however, to do more than
describe the tactics on the two widely separated fields, and briefly
state the results.
The defenses of Caney consisted of a strong stone fort on a steep
conical hill at the southeastern corner of the village, and four or five
substantial log blockhouses, so placed as to command every possible, or
at least every practicable, avenue of approach. The blockhouses were
connected one with another by deep, narrow trenches; the stone fort was
surrounded by a network of outlying rifle-pits; there was a barbed-wire
entanglement along the whole eastern front of the enemy's position; and
the large trees in the village, as well as the houses and the old stone
church, were full of sharp-shooters. The garrison of the place, not
including the inhabitants, who, of course, participated to a greater or
less extent in the fighting, consisted of three companies of infantry
belonging to the San Luis brigade and forty-seven guerrillas--a total
force of five hundred and fourteen men. The regulars were armed with the
Mauser magazine-rifle, while the guerrillas used a .45-caliber
Remington, carrying a large and very destructive brass-jacketed ball.
They had neither artillery nor machine-guns, and relied wholly upon
their small arms, their rifle-pits, and the great natural strength of
their position. The officer in command was Brigadier-General Joaquin
Vara del Rey. The attacking force, under direction of General Lawton,
consisted of four brigades, numbering about forty-five hundred men, and
was made up wholly of regulars with the exception of the Second
Massachusetts.
The battle began at half-past six o'clock in the morning. General
Chaffee's brigade took up a position six or eight hundred yards from the
fort on the eastern side of the village; Ludlow's brigade marched around
on the western side, so as to seize the Caney-Santiago road and thus cut
off the enemy's escape; while the brigade of General Miles closed in on
the south. Capron's battery, from the summit of a hill a little more
than a mile southeast of the fort, fired the first shot at 6:35 A. M.
Our infantry on General Chaffee's side then opened fire; the Spaniards
replied from their fort, blockhouses, and rifle-pits; and the engagement
soon became general. For the next three or four hours the battle was
little more than a rifle duel at about six hundred yards' range.
Capron's battery, from the top of the distant hill, continued to bombard
the fort and the village at intervals, but its fire was slow and not
very effective. Our infantry, meanwhile, were suffering far more loss
than they were able to inflict, for the reason that they could find
little or no shelter, while the Spaniards were protected by loopholed
walls and deep rifle-pits, and were firing at ranges which had been
previously measured and were therefore accurately known. In spite of
their losses, however, our men continued to creep forward, and about
eleven o'clock General Chaffee's brigade reached and occupied the crest
of a low ridge not more than three hundred yards from the northeastern
side of the village. The fire of the Spanish sharp-shooters, at this
short range, was very close and accurate, and before noon more than one
hundred of General Chaffee's men lay dead or wounded in a sunken road
about fifty yards back of the firing line. The losses in the brigades of
Generals Ludlow and Miles, on the western and southern sides of the
village, were almost as great, and at 1:30 P. M. the attacking force
seemed to be barely holding its own. At this critical moment, when the
chances of success or defeat seemed to be almost evenly balanced,
General Lawton received an order from General Shafter to abandon the
attack on Caney and hurry to the relief of Generals Kent and Sumner, who
were hotly engaged in front of the San Juan heights. Believing that a
retreat at this juncture would be disastrous, and that the demoralizing
effect of a repulse at Caney would more than counterbalance the support
that he could give the center of the line in front of San Juan, General
Lawton disregarded this order and pressed the attack with renewed vigor.
Capron's battery, about this time, got the range of the stone fort, shot
away its flagstaff, amid vociferous cheers from our men, and soon began
to make great breaches in its massive walls. General Chaffee, who had
been directed to make a final assault on the fort when, in his judgment,
the proper time had come, then gave the order to charge; and the Twelfth
Infantry, closely followed by several regiments from General Miles's
brigade, and the brigade of General Bates, which had just arrived from
Siboney, swarmed up the steep slope of the hill, drove the Spaniards out
of their rifle-pits, and took the fort by storm. The first man inside
its walls was Mr. James Creelman, a war correspondent, who was shot
through the shoulder while recovering the Spanish flag. Although the
fire from the village and the blockhouses still continued, it gradually
slackened, and in less than half an hour the Spaniards who remained
alive gave up the struggle and retreated by the northern Santiago road,
suffering considerable loss from the fire of General Ludlow's brigade as
they passed. At 4 P. M. village, fort, and blockhouses were all in
undisputed possession of General Lawton's gallant division. The battle
had lasted about nine hours, and in that time seven hundred men had been
killed or wounded. Our own loss was four officers and eighty-four men
killed, and twenty-four officers and three hundred and thirty-two men
wounded; total, four hundred and forty-four. The loss of the Spaniards,
as reported by themselves, was two hundred and forty-eight,--about one
half their entire strength,--not including inhabitants of the village
killed in their houses and in the streets. General Vara del Rey, their
commander, was shot through both legs as he stood in the square opposite
the village church after the storming of the fort, and then, as his men
were placing him on a stretcher, he was instantly killed by a bullet
through the head. Our loss, in this obstinately fought battle, was
numerically much greater than that of the Spaniards; but their
percentage of loss, based on the number of men engaged, was nearly five
times as great as ours. When they retreated, they left forty-eight per
cent. of their whole force dead or wounded in the intrenchments that
they had so gallantly defended, and Lieutenant-Colonel Punet was able to
collect and take back to Santiago that night only one hundred and three
of the five hundred and fourteen officers and men who originally
composed the garrison.
The loss on our side in this engagement was far greater than it probably
would have been if General Lawton had had artillery enough to destroy
the fort and blockhouses and drive the Spaniards out of their rifle-pits
before he pushed forward his infantry; but it was not expected, of
course, that the taking of a small and comparatively insignificant
village would be so serious and difficult a matter; and as General
Shafter had only sixteen light field-guns in all, he doubtless thought
that he could not spare more than four for the attack on Caney.
The moral effect of this battle was to give each of the combatants a
feeling of sincere respect for the bravery of the other. Our men never
doubted, after July 1, that the Spaniards would fight stubbornly--at
least, behind intrenchments; while the Spaniards, in turn, were greatly
impressed by the dash, impetuosity, and unflinching courage of General
Lawton's regulars. A staff-officer of General Vara del Rey said to a
correspondent after the battle: "I have never seen anything to equal the
courage and dash of those Americans, who, stripped to the waist,
offering their naked breasts to our murderous fire, literally threw
themselves on our trenches--on the very muzzles of our guns. We had the
advantage in position, and mowed them down by the hundreds; but they
never retreated or fell back an inch. As one man fell, shot through the
heart, another would take his place, with grim determination and
unflinching devotion to duty in every line of his face. Their gallantry
was heroic." There could hardly be a more generous or a better deserved
encomium.
The battle on the Siboney-Santiago road, in the center of our line,
began nearly two hours later than the battle at Caney. Grimes's battery,
which had taken position on a hill near the Pozo farm-house, opened fire
on the heights of San Juan about eight o'clock. A few moments later the
Spaniards, who evidently had the range of the Pozo hill perfectly from
the beginning, returned the fire with shrapnel, killing two men and
wounding a number of others at the first shot, striking the house at the
third, and driving from the hill in disorder some of the soldiers of the
cavalry division who had been stationed there, as well as a few war
correspondents and non-combatants who had gathered to witness the
bombardment. For three quarters of an hour, or an hour, there was an
artillery duel between Grimes's battery on the Pozo hill and a Spanish
battery situated somewhere on the heights to the westward. In this
interchange of shots the enemy had all the advantage, for the reason
that the smoke from Grimes's black powder revealed the position of his
guns, while the smokeless powder of the Spaniards gave no clue to the
location of theirs.
About nine o'clock the order was given to advance; and the divisions of
Generals Kent and Wheeler began to move down the narrow, jungle-skirted
trail, toward the open country which was supposed to lie beyond the
crossing of the second stream, under the heights of San Juan. General
Kent's orders were to move ahead to a green knoll on the western side of
the San Juan River (the second stream), and there deploy to the left in
what was believed to be the margin of the dense forest which covered the
bottom of the valley. At the same time the cavalry division, which,
owing to the illness of General Wheeler, was temporarily under command
of General Sumner, was directed to advance along the same trail, cross
the San Juan River, deploy to the right in the margin of the woods, and
there await further orders. The attempt of two divisions to march
simultaneously down a forest trail which in places was not more than
twelve feet wide resulted, naturally, in crowding, disorder, and delay;
and when the head of the column, after crossing the first stream, came
within the zone of the enemy's fire, the confusion was greatly
increased. The Spaniards, as General Chaffee predicted, had taken the
bearing and range of the road, between the first stream and the western
edge of the forest, and before the cavalry division reached the ford of
the San Juan, on the other side of which it was to deploy and await
orders, it was receiving a heavy fire, not only from the batteries and
rifle-pits on the San Juan heights, but from hundreds of trees along the
trail, in which the enemy had posted sharp-shooters.
So far as I know, riflemen had never before been posted in trees to
check the advance of an army through a broken and forest-clad country;
but the scheme was a good one, and it was carried out with thoughtful
attention to every detail. The sharp-shooters were generally hidden in
carefully prepared nests of leaves; some of them had tunics of fresh
palm-leaves tied around their bodies from the shoulders down, so that at
a little distance they could not be distinguished from the foliage of
the trees in which they were concealed; and in a few cases that were
reported to me they wore under their leafy tunics double canvas jackets
filled with sand and carefully quilted, as a partial protection from
bullets. This swarm of tree-men formed the Spanish skirmish-line, and a
most dangerous and effective line it was, for the reason that it could
be neither seen, driven in, nor dislodged. The hidden marksmen used
Mauser rifles with smokeless powder, and although our men heard the
reports and were killed or disabled by the projectiles, they had no
guide or clue whatever to the location of their assailants. A
skirmish-line in thickets or clumps of chaparral on the ground might
have been driven back as our army advanced, and thus our rear would have
been all the time secure from attack; but a skirmish-line hidden in
tree-tops was as dangerous to the rear as to the front, and a soldier
pressing forward toward what he supposed to be the enemy's position was
just as likely to get a Mauser bullet in his back as in his breast.
Scores of wounded men who were brought into the First Division
field-hospital on Friday and Saturday had never seen a Spanish
intrenchment, or had even so much as a glimpse of a Spanish soldier.
In spite of the deadly fire to which they were subjected from front,
sides, and rear, our troops pushed on, as rapidly as the congested state
of the trail would permit, toward the ford of the San Juan River. The
loss which our advance sustained at this point was greatly increased by
the sending up of an observation balloon, which hung over the road, just
above the trees, and not only attracted the fire of the Spaniards in
front, but served their artillerymen as a target and a range-finder. It
was an even better firing guide than the sheets of iron or zinc roofing
which they had put up in some of the openings through which the trail
ran; and until it was finally torn by shrapnel so that it slowly sank
into the forest, the men under and behind it were exactly in the focus
of the converging streams of bullets which it attracted from all parts
of the San Juan heights. The only useful discovery made by it was the
fact that there was a second or branch trail leading to a lower ford of
the San Juan River which General Kent's division might take, and thus
relieve the crowding on the main road.
Parts of the divisions of Generals Kent and Sumner crossed the San Juan
shortly after noon, and made an attempt to deploy on its western bank
and form in line of battle; but the jungle was so dense, and the fire
which swept the whole margin of the forest between them and the heights
of San Juan was so destructive, that they could do little more than seek
such cover as could be had and await orders. So far as I have been able
to ascertain, no orders were received at this critical time by either of
the division commanders. The narrow road, for a distance of a mile back
of the firing line, was crowded with troops pressing forward to the San
Juan ford; General Shafter, at his headquarters two miles in the rear,
had little knowledge of the situation, and no adequate means of getting
orders to his subordinates at the front; and meanwhile our advanced
line, almost lost in the jungle, was being decimated by a fire which the
men could not effectively return, and which it was impossible long to
endure. Exactly what happened at this turning-point of the battle, who
took the lead, and what orders were given, I do not certainly know; but
the troops nearest the edge of the forest, including the Rough Riders,
two regiments of General Hawkins's brigade (the Sixth and Sixteenth), a
few men from the Seventy-first New York under Captain Rafferty, and
perhaps squads or fragments of three or four other commands, suddenly
broke from cover, as if moved by a general spontaneous impulse, and,
with Colonel Roosevelt and General Hawkins as their most conspicuous, if
not their foremost, leaders, charged "Kettle Hill" and the heights of
San Juan. The advancing line, at first, looked very weak and thin; but
it was equal to its task. In less than fifteen minutes it had reached
the crest, and was driving the Spaniards along it toward the blockhouse,
and down the slope behind it into the next valley. With the aid of the
Ninth, Thirteenth, and Twenty-fourth Infantry, and the Gatling-gun
battery of Lieutenant Parker, which supported the charging line by
enfilading the enemy's trenches from a position on the left, the summit
of the long ridge was soon cleared, the blockhouse captured, and the
battle won before two o'clock in the afternoon.
Whether General Sumner or General Kent directly and personally ordered
this charge or not, I cannot say; but from statements made to me by
officers and men who participated in it, I am inclined to believe that
it really was--as it has since been called--a "great popular movement,"
the credit for which belongs chiefly to the regimental and company
officers and their men. That General Shafter had nothing to do with it
is evident. He might have ordered it if he had been there; but he was
not there. One of the wounded men in the field-hospital told me a story
of a sergeant in one of the colored regiments, who was lying, with his
comrades, in the woods, under the hot fire from the San Juan heights.
Getting no order to advance, and tiring of the inaction, he finally
sprang to his feet and rushed out into the open, shouting to the men of
his company: "Come on, boys! Let's knock h--l out of the
blankety-blanks!" whereupon the whole regiment rose like a single man,
and started, at a dead run, for the hill. The story is doubtless
apocryphal, but it will serve as an illustration of the way in which the
charge up the slope of San Juan may have originated. Our men in the edge
of the woods, in the bushes, and in the grain-fields had perhaps become
so tired of inaction, and so exasperated by the deadly fire which was
picking them off, one by one, as they lay, that they were ready for any
desperate venture; and when somebody--no matter who--started forward, or
said, "Come on, boys!" they simply rose en masse and charged. I cannot
find, in the official reports of the engagement, any record of a
definite order by any general officer to storm the heights; but the men
were just in the mood for such a movement, and either with orders or
without orders they charged up the hill, in the face of a tremendous
fire from batteries, trenches, and blockhouses, and, in the words of an
English officer, quoted by General Breckenridge in his testimony before
the Investigating Commission, they not only covered themselves with
glory, but extricated their corps commander "from a devil of a fix."
When the divisions of Generals Kent and Wheeler had been distributed
along the crest of the San Juan ridge, the line looked too weak and thin
to hold the position; but Skobeleff once said that a position carried
by attack can be held, even if seventy-five per cent. of the attacking
force have perished; and there was no doubt in the minds of the regulars
and the Rough Riders that there were enough of them left not only to
hold San Juan, but to take the city. Mr. Ramsden, British consul in
Santiago, says, in his diary, that the Spaniards were so disheartened by
their defeat that "if the Americans had followed up their advantage and
rushed the town, they would have carried it." But our men were too much
exhausted by the heat, and by their floundering in the jungle, to fight
another battle that day. When the firing ceased they had to pick up the
wounded and bury the dead, and then they spent a large part of the night
in erecting breastworks, digging trenches, and making preparations for a
counter-attack.