CHAPTER XX
THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN (_Continued_)
When, on June 14, General Shafter"s army sailed for the southeastern coast of Cuba, without adequate facilities for disembarkation, and without a sufficient number of mules, packers, teamsters, and army wagons to insure its proper equipment, subsistence, and maintenance in the field, it was, _ipso facto_, predestined to serious embarra.s.sment and difficulty, if not to great suffering and peril. No amount of zeal, energy, and ability on the part of quartermasters and commissaries, after the army had reached its destination, could possibly make up for deficiencies that should have had attention before the army sailed.
Boats, mules, and wagons were not to be had at Siboney, and when the urgent need of them became apparent it was too late to procure them from the United States. General Shafter cabled the War Department for lighters and steam-tugs almost as soon as he reached the Cuban coast, and General Miles telegraphed for more draft-animals before he had been in Siboney twenty-four hours; but neither the boats nor the mules came in time to be of any avail. Cuban fever waits for no man, and before the boats that should have landed more supplies and the mules that should have carried them to the front reached Siboney, seventy-five per cent.
of General Shafter"s command had been prostrated by disease, due, as he himself admits, to insufficient food, "without change of clothes, and without any shelter whatever."[11]
But the lack of adequate land and water transportation was not the only deficiency in the equipment of the Fifth Army-Corps when it sailed from Tampa. It was also ill provided with medical stores and the facilities and appliances needed in caring for sick and wounded soldiers. Dr.
Nicholas Senn, chief of the operating staff of the army, says that "ambulances in great number had been sent to Tampa, but they were not unloaded and sent to the front." I myself pa.s.sed a whole train-load of ambulances near Tampa in May, but I never saw more than three in use at the front, and, according to the official report of Dr. Guy C. G.o.dfrey, commanding officer of the hospital-corps company of the First Division, Fifth Army-Corps, "the number of ambulances for the entire army was limited to three, and it was impossible to expect them to convey the total number of wounded from the collecting-stations to the First Division hospital."[12]
Lieutenant-Colonel Jacobs of the quartermaster"s department, who was a.s.sistant to General Humphreys in Cuba, testified before the Investigating Commission on November 16 that he had fifty ambulances at Tampa, and that he was about to load them on one of the transports when General Shafter appeared and ordered them left behind.
The surgeon-general declared, in a letter to the "Medical Record," dated August 6, that "General Shafter"s army at Tampa was thoroughly well supplied with the necessary medicines, dressings, etc., for field-service; but, owing to insufficient transportation, he left behind at Tampa his reserve medical supplies and ambulance corps."
General Shafter himself admits that he had not enough medical supplies, but seems to a.s.sert, by implication, that he was not to blame for the deficiency. In a telegram to Adjutant-General Corbin, dated "Santiago, August 3," he said: "From the day this expedition left Tampa until to-day there has never been sufficient medical attendance or medicines for the daily wants of the command, and three times within that time the command has been almost totally out of medicines. I say this on the word of the medical directors, who have in each instance reported the matter to me, the last time yesterday, when the proposition was made to me to take medicines away from the Spanish hospital.... The surgeons have worked as well as any men that ever lived, and their complaint has been universal of lack of means and facilities. I do not complain of this, for no one could have foreseen all that would be required; but I will not quietly submit to having the onus laid on me for the lack of these hospital facilities."
The state of affairs disclosed by these official reports and telegrams seems to me as melancholy and humiliating as anything of the kind ever recorded in the history of American wars. Three ambulances for a whole corps of sixteen thousand men; an army "almost totally out of medicines"
three times in seven weeks; and a proposition to make up our own deficiencies by seizing and confiscating the medical supplies of a Spanish hospital! I do not wonder that General Shafter wishes to escape responsibility for such a manifestation of negligence or incompetence; but I do not see how he can be allowed to do so. It is just as much the business of a commanding general to know that he has medicines and ambulances enough as it is to know that he has food and ammunition enough. He is the man who plans the campaign, and, to a certain extent, predetermines the number of sick and wounded; he is the man who makes requisition upon the War Department for transports, mules, and wagons enough to carry the army and its equipment to the field where it is to operate; and he is the man who should consider all contingencies and emergencies likely to arise as a result of climatic or other local conditions, and who should see that ample provision is made for them.
General Shafter says that "no one could have foreseen all that would be required." That is probably true; but any one, it seems to me, could have foreseen that an army of sixteen thousand men, which was expected to attack intrenched positions, would need more than three ambulances for the transportation of the wounded, to say nothing of the sick. The same remark applies to medicines and medical supplies. Every one knew that our army was going to a very unhealthful region, and it was not difficult to foresee that it would require perhaps two or three times the quant.i.ty of medical supplies that would be needed in a temperate climate and a more healthful environment. The very reason a.s.signed for General Shafter"s hurried advance toward Santiago is that he knew his army would soon be disabled by disease, and wished to strike a decisive blow while his men were still able to fight. If he antic.i.p.ated the wrecking of his army by sickness that could not be averted nor long delayed, why did he not make sure, before he left Tampa, that he had medical supplies and hospital facilities enough to meet the inevitable emergency? His telegram to Adjutant-General Corbin seems to indicate that he was not only unprepared for an emergency, but unprepared to meet even the ordinary demands of an army in the field, inasmuch as he declares, without limitation or qualification, that from June 14 to August 3 he never had medicines enough for the daily wants of his command.
It may be thought that the view here taken of the responsibility of the commanding general for everything that pertains to the well-being and the fighting efficiency of his command is too extreme and exacting, and that he ought not to be held personally accountable for the mistakes or the incompetence of his staff-officers. Waiving a discussion of this question on its merits, it need only be said that, inasmuch as General Shafter has officially recommended all of his staff-officers for promotion on account of "faithful and meritorious services throughout the campaign," he is estopped from saying now that they did not do their duty, or that they made errors of judgment so serious as to imperil the lives of men, if not the success of the expedition. The responsibility for the lack of medical supplies and hospital facilities, therefore, as well as the responsibility for the lack of boats, mules, and wagons, must rest either upon the War Department or upon the general in command.
If the latter made timely requisition for them, and for transports enough to carry them to the Cuban coast, and failed to obtain either or both, the War Department must be held accountable; while, on the other hand, if General Shafter did not ask for medical supplies enough to meet the probable wants of his army in a tropical climate and an unhealthful environment, he must shoulder the responsibility for his own negligence or want of foresight.
I shall now try to show how this lack of boats, mules, wagons, and medical supplies affected General Shafter"s command in the field.
II. The landing at Daiquiri and Siboney.
The points selected for the disembarkation of the army and the landing of supplies were the best, perhaps, that could be found between Santiago harbor and Guantanamo Bay; but they were little more, nevertheless, than shallow notches in the coast-line, which afforded neither anchorage nor shelter from the prevailing wind. There was one small pier erected by the Spanish-American Iron Company at Daiquiri, but at Siboney there were no landing facilities whatever, and the strip of beach at the bottom of the wedge-shaped notch in the precipitous wall of the coast was hardly more than one hundred yards in length. The water deepened so suddenly and abruptly at a distance of fifty yards from the sh.o.r.e that there was practically no anchorage, and General Shafter"s fleet of more than thirty transports had to lie in what was virtually an open roadstead and drift back and forth with the currents and tides. The prevailing winds were from the east and southeast, and the long swell which rolled in from the Caribbean Sea broke in heavy and at times dangerous surf upon the narrow strip of unsheltered beach where the army had to land. All of these local conditions were known, or might have been known, to General Shafter before he left Tampa; but when he arrived off the coast they seemed to take him wholly by surprise. He had brought with him neither surf-boats, nor steam-launches, nor suitable lighters, nor materials with which to construct a pier. How he ever would have disembarked his command without the a.s.sistance of the navy, I do not know. I doubt whether a landing could have been effected at all. Fortunately, the navy was at hand, and its small boats and steam-launches, manned by officers and sailors from the fleet, landed the whole army through the surf with the loss of only two men. The navy then retired from the scene of action, and General Shafter was left to his own devices--and deplorably weak and ineffective they proved to be.
The engineer corps found near the railroad at Siboney a few sticks of heavy timber belonging to the Iron Company, out of which they improvised a small, narrow pier; but it was soon undermined and knocked to pieces by the surf. The chief quartermaster discovered on or near the beach three or four old lighters, also belonging to the Iron Company, which he used to supplement the service rendered by the single scow attached to the expedition; but as he put them in charge of soldiers, who had had no experience in handling boats in broken water, they were soon stove against the corners of the pier, or swamped in the heavy surf that swept the beach. All that could be done then was to land supplies as fast as possible in the small rowboats of the transports. If General Shafter had had competent and experienced officers to put in command of these boats, and steam-launches to tow them back and forth in strings or lines of half a dozen each, and if he had made provision for communication with the captains of the steamers by means of wigwag flag-signals, so as to be able to give them orders and control their movements, he might have landed supplies in this way with some success. But none of the difficulties of the situation had been foreseen, and no arrangements had been made to cope with them. The captains of the transports put their vessels wherever they chose, and when a steamer that lay four or five miles at sea was wanted closer insh.o.r.e, there was no means of sending orders to her except by rowboat. The captains, as a rule, did not put officers in charge of their boats, and the sailors who manned them, having no competent direction, acted upon their own judgment. Finally, boats which could have made a round trip between the transports and the sh.o.r.e in half an hour if towed by a steam-launch often used up the greater part of two hours in toiling back and forth through a heavy sea under oars.
It is not a matter for surprise that, with such facilities and under such conditions, General Shafter found it almost impossible to land even food and ammunition enough to keep his army properly supplied. In his official report of the campaign he says: "It was not until nearly two weeks after the army landed that it was possible to place on sh.o.r.e three days" supplies in excess of those required for daily consumption."
In addition to all the unnecessary difficulties and embarra.s.sments above described, there was another, almost, if not quite, as serious, arising from the manner in which the transports had been loaded at Tampa. Stores were put into the steamers apparently without any reference to the circ.u.mstances under which they would be taken out, and without any regard to the order in which they would be needed at the point of destination. Medical supplies, for example, instead of being put all together in a single transport, were scattered among twenty or more vessels, so that in order to get all of them it was necessary either to bring twenty steamers close to sh.o.r.e, one after another, and take a little out of each, or send rowboats around to them all where they lay at distances ranging from one mile to five.[13] Articles of equipment that would be required as soon as the army landed were often buried in the holds of the vessels under hundreds of tons of stuff that would not be needed in a week, and the army went forward without them, simply because they could not be quickly got at. Finally, I am inclined to believe, from what I saw and heard of the landing of supplies at Siboney, that there was not such a thing as a bill of lading, manifest, or cargo list in existence, and that the chief quartermaster had no other guide to the location of a particular article than that furnished by his own memory or the memory of some first mate. I do not a.s.sert this as a fact; I merely infer it from the difficulty that there seemed to be in finding and getting ash.o.r.e quickly a particular kind of stores for which there happened to be an immediate and urgent demand. After the fight of the Rough Riders at Guasimas, for example, General Wood found himself short of ammunition for his Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns. He sent Lieutenant Kilbourne back to General Shafter at Siboney with a request that a fresh supply be forwarded at the earliest possible moment.
General Shafter said that he had no idea where that particular kind of ammunition was to be found, and referred the applicant to Quartermaster Jacobs at Daiquiri. Lieutenant Kilbourne walked seven miles to Daiquiri, only to find that the quartermaster had no more idea where that ammunition was than the commanding general had. He thereupon returned to Guasimas, after a march of more than twenty miles, and reported to General Wood that ammunition for the rapid-fire guns could not be had, because n.o.body knew where it was. If the commanding general and the quartermaster could not put their hands on ammunition when it was needed, they could hardly be expected to find, and forward promptly, articles of less vital importance, such as camp-kettles, hospital tents, clothing, and spare blankets.
It would be easy to fill pages with ill.u.s.trations and proofs of the statements above made, but I must limit myself to a typical case or two relating to medical supplies, which seem to have been most neglected.
In a report to Surgeon-General Sternberg dated July 29, Dr. Edward L.
Munson, commander of the reserve ambulance company, says that for two days after his arrival at Siboney he was unable to get any transportation whatever for medical supplies from the ships to the sh.o.r.e. On the third day he was furnished with one rowboat, but even this was taken away from him, when it had made one trip, by direct order of General Shafter, who wished to a.s.sign it to other duty. Some days later, with the boats of the _Olivette_, _Cherokee_, and _Breakwater_, he succeeded in landing medical supplies from perhaps one third of the transports composing the fleet. "I appealed on several occasions," he says, "for the use of a lighter or small steamer to collect and land medical supplies, but I was informed by the quartermaster"s department that they could render no a.s.sistance in that way.... At the time of my departure large quant.i.ties of medical supplies, urgently needed on sh.o.r.e, still remained on the transports, a number of which were under orders to return to the United States." "In conclusion," he adds, "it is desired to emphasize the fact that the lamentable conditions prevailing in the army before Santiago were due (1) to the military necessity which threw troops on sh.o.r.e and away from the possibility of supply, without medicines, instruments, or hospital stores of any kind; and (2) to the lack of foresight on the part of the quartermaster"s department in sending out such an expedition without fully antic.i.p.ating its needs as regards temporary wharf.a.ge, lighters, tugs, and despatch-boats."
Dr. Frank Donaldson, a.s.sistant surgeon attached to Colonel Roosevelt"s Rough Riders, states in a letter to the Philadelphia "Medical Journal,"
dated July 12, that "a desperate effort" was made to secure a few cots for the sick and wounded in the field-hospitals at the front. There were hundreds of these cots, he says, on one of the transports off Siboney, but it proved to be utterly impossible to get any of them landed.
Whether they were all carried back to the United States or not I do not know; but large quant.i.ties of supplies, intended for General Shafter"s army, _were_ carried back on the transports _Alamo_, _Breakwater_, _Vigilancia_, and _La Grande d.u.c.h.esse_.
I do not mean to throw any undeserved blame upon the quartermasters and commissaries at Siboney. Many of them worked day and night with indefatigable energy to get supplies on sh.o.r.e and forward them to the army; but they were hampered by conditions over which they had no control, and for which, perhaps, they were not in any way responsible; they were often unable to obtain the a.s.sistance of steamer captains and other officers upon whose cooperation the success of their own efforts depended, and they probably did all that could be done by individuals acting as separate units rather than as correlated parts of an organized and intelligently directed whole. The trouble at Siboney was the same trouble that became apparent at Tampa. There was at the head of affairs no controlling, directing, and energizing brain, capable of grasping all the details of a complex situation and making all the parts of a complicated mechanism work harmoniously together for the accomplishment of a definite purpose.
III. The strategic plan of campaign and its execution.
As this branch of the subject will be discussed--if it has not already been discussed--by better-equipped critics than I can pretend to be, I shall limit myself to a brief review of the campaign in its strategic aspect as it appears from the standpoint of a civilian.
I understand, from officers who were in a position to know the facts, that the original plan of attack on the city of Santiago provided for close and effective cooperation of the army with the navy, and for a joint a.s.sault by way of Aguadores and Morro Castle. General Shafter was to move along the line of the railroad from Siboney to Aguadores, keeping close to the coast under cover of the guns of the fleet, and, with the a.s.sistance of the latter, was to capture the old Aguadores fort and such other intrenchments as should be found at the mouth of the Aguadores ravine. This, it was thought, might be accomplished with very little loss, because the fleet could sh.e.l.l the Spaniards out of their fortifications, and thus make it possible for the army to occupy them without much fighting. Having taken Aguadores, General Shafter was to continue his march westward along the coast, still under the protection of Admiral Sampson"s guns, until he reached Morro. Then, without attempting to storm or reduce the castle, he was to go down through the ravine that leads to the head of the Estrella cove, and seize the submarine-mine station at the mouth of Santiago harbor. When electrical connection between the station and the mines had been destroyed, and the mines had thus been rendered harmless, Admiral Sampson was to force an entrance, fighting his way in past the batteries, and the army and fleet were then to advance northward toward the city along the eastern side of the bay.
This plan had many obvious advantages, the most important of which was the aid and protection that would be given to the army, at every stage of its progress, by the guns of perhaps thirty or forty ships of war. In the opinion of naval officers, Admiral Sampson"s cruisers and battle-ships could sweep the country ahead of our advance with such a storm of shot and sh.e.l.l that the Spaniards would not be able to hold any position within a mile of the coast. All that the army would have to do, therefore, would be to occupy the country as fast as it was cleared by the fire of the fleet, and then open the harbor to the latter by cutting communication with the submarine mines which were the only effective defense that the city had on the water side. General Shafter"s army, moreover, would be all the time on high, sea-breeze-swept land, and therefore comparatively safe from malarial fever, and it would not only have a railroad behind it for the transportation of its supplies, but be constantly within easy reach of its base by water.
Why this plan was eventually given up I do not know. In abandoning it General Shafter voluntarily deprived himself of the aid that might have been rendered by three or four hundred high-powered and rapid-fire guns, backed by a trained fighting force of six or eight thousand men. I do not know the exact strength of Sampson"s and Schley"s combined fleets, but this seems to me to be a conservative estimate. A prominent officer of the battle-ship _Iowa_ told me in Santiago, after the surrender, that the fighting ships under Admiral Sampson"s command, including the auxiliary cruisers and mosquito fleet, could concentrate on any given field a fire of about one hundred sh.e.l.ls a second. This included, of course, small projectiles from the rapid-fire and one-pound machine guns. He did not think it possible for Spanish infantry to live, much less fight, in the field swept by such a fire, and this was his reason for believing that the fleet could have cleared the way for the army if the latter had advanced along the coast instead of going back into the interior. The plan of attack by way of Aguadores and Morro was regarded by the foreign residents of Santiago as the one most likely to succeed; and a gentleman who lived eight years at Daiquiri, as manager of the Spanish-American Iron Company, and who is familiar with the topography of the whole region, writes me: "I have always thought that the great mistake of the Santiago campaign was that they a.s.saulted the city at its most impregnable point, instead of taking possession of the heights at Aguadores, which would have been tantamount to the fall of Morro, the possession of the harbor entrance and of the harbor itself. The forces of the Spaniards were not sufficient to maintain any considerable number of men there, and it seems to me that, with the help of the fleet sh.e.l.ling the heights, they could have been reached very easily along the Juragua Railroad. If General Duffield had pressed on when he was there, it is probable that he would have met with only a thin skirmish-line, or, if the fleet had done its work, with no resistance at all."
The reason a.s.signed for General Shafter"s advance through the valleys and over the foot-hills of the interior, instead of along the high land of the coast, is that he had been ordered to "capture the garrison at Santiago and a.s.sist in capturing the harbor and the fleet." He did not believe, it is said, that he could "capture the garrison" without completely investing the city on the east and north. If he attacked it from the southern or Morro side, he might take the city, but the garrison would escape by the Cobre or the San Luis road. This seems like a valid and reasonable objection to the original plan of campaign; but I doubt very much whether the Spanish army would have tried to escape in any event, for the reason that the surrounding country was almost wholly dest.i.tute of food, and General Linares, in the hurry and confusion of defeat, would hardly have been able to organize a provision-train for an army of eight or ten thousand men, even if he had had provisions to carry. The only place where he could hope to find food in any quant.i.ty was Manzanillo, and to reach that port he would have had to make a forced march of from twelve to fifteen days. But the question whether the interior line of advance or the coastline was the better must be left to strategists, and I express no opinion with regard to it.
The operations and manoeuvers of our army in front of Santiago have already been described and commented upon by a number of expert observers, and the only additional criticisms that I have to make relate to General Shafter"s neglect of reconnaissances, as a means of ascertaining the enemy"s strength and position; his apparent loss of grip after the battle of July 1-2; and his failure not only to prevent, but to take any adequate steps to prevent, the reinforcement of the Santiago garrison by a column of five thousand regulars from Manzanillo under command of Colonel Escarrio. If I am correctly informed, the only reconnaissances made from the front of our army, after it came within striking distance of the enemy"s intrenched line, were made by General Chaffee and a few other commanding officers upon their own responsibility and for their own information. General Shafter knew little more about the topography of the country in front of his advance picket-line than could be ascertained by mere inspection from the top of a hill. He received information to the effect that General Pando, with a strong column of Spanish regulars, was approaching Santiago from the direction of Manzanillo; but he never took any adequate steps to ascertain where General Pando was, when and by what road he might be expected to arrive, or how many men he was bringing with him. In the course of a single day--July 3--General Shafter sent three telegrams to the War Department with regard to the whereabouts of Pando, in each of which he located that officer in a different place. In the first he says: "Pando has arrived at Palma" (a village about twenty-five miles northwest of Santiago on the Cobre road). In the second he declares that Pando is "six miles north of Santiago," "near a break in the [San Luis]
railroad," and that he thinks "he will be stopped." In the third he says: "Pando, I find to-night, is some distance away and will not get into Santiago."
We know now--and General Shafter should have known then--that the column of reinforcements from Manzanillo was not led by General Pando, but by Colonel Escarrio, and that at the very time when Shafter, in successive telegrams, was placing it "at Palma," "six miles north," "near a break in the railroad," and "some distance away," it was actually in the Santiago intrenchments, ready for business.
I take this case as an ill.u.s.tration on account of its extreme importance. A column of five thousand Spanish regulars is not to be despised; and when it is within a few days", or perhaps a few hours", march, knowledge of its exact location may be a matter of life and death to a thousand men. Was there any reason why General Shafter should not have informed himself accurately with regard to the strength and the position of this column of reinforcements? I think not. When Admiral Sampson arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor, it was of vital importance that he should know with certainty the location of Cervera"s fleet. He did not hastily telegraph the War Department that it was reported at Cienfuegos; that it was said to be in the Windward Pa.s.sage; that it was five miles north of Morro, or that it was near a reef in the Este Channel and would be stopped. He sent Lieutenant Victor Blue ash.o.r.e to make a thorough and careful reconnaissance. Lieutenant Blue made a difficult and dangerous journey of seventy miles, on foot, around the city of Santiago, saw personally every vessel in the harbor, and then returned to the flagship, and reported that Cervera"s fleet was all there. I do not know whether this was good strategy on the part of Admiral Sampson or not, but it was certainly good common sense. Suppose that General Shafter had asked General Wood to pick out from the Rough Riders half a dozen experienced scouts and Indian fighters to make a reconnaissance, with Cuban guides, in the direction of Manzanillo, and ascertain exactly where that column of reinforcements was, and when it might be expected to arrive. Would not the men have been forthcoming, and would not the desired information have been obtained? I have confidence enough in the Rough Riders to answer this question emphatically in the affirmative. The capable men are not all in the navy, and if General Shafter did not have full information with regard to Colonel Escarrio"s movements, it was simply because he did not ask any of his officers or men to get it for him--and it was information well worth having. If that column of five thousand Spanish regulars had reached Santiago two days earlier--the evening before instead of the morning after the battle of July 1-2--I doubt very much whether we should have taken either Caney or San Juan Hill, and General Shafter might have had better reason than he did have to "consider the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear."[14]
If General Shafter believed that these Spanish reinforcements were "some distance away" and that they would "not get into Santiago," it is difficult to understand why he should have so far lost his grip, after the capture of Caney and San Juan Hill, as to telegraph the War Department that he was "seriously considering the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear." His troops had not been defeated, nor even repulsed; they had been victorious at every point; and the Spaniards, as we afterward learned in Santiago, were momentarily expecting them to move another mile to the front, rather than five miles to the rear. It is the belief of many foreign residents of Santiago, including the English cable-operators, who had the best possible means of knowing the views of the Spanish commanders, that if our army had continued the attack after capturing Caney and San Juan Hill it might have entered the city before dark. This may or may not be so; but the chance--if chance there was--vanished when Colonel Escarrio, on the morning after the battle, marched around the head of the bay and into the city with a reinforcing column of five thousand regulars.
General Shafter says, in his official report, that "the arrival of General Escarrio was not antic.i.p.ated" because "it was not believed that his troops could arrive so soon." The time when a reinforcing column of five thousand men will reach the enemy ought not to be a matter of vague belief--it should be a matter of accurate foreknowledge; and if General Shafter had sent a couple of officers with a few Rough Riders out on the roads leading into Santiago from Manzanillo, he might have had information that would have made the arrival of Colonel Escarrio less unexpected. But he seems to have taken no steps either to ascertain the movements of the latter or to prevent his junction with Linares.
General O. O. Howard, in an interview published in the New York "Tribune" of September 14, 1898, explains the apparent indifference of General Shafter to the approach of these reinforcements as follows: "In regard to the Cubans allowing the Spanish reinforcements to enter Santiago from Manzanillo, I would say that I met General Shafter on board the _Vixen_, and from my conversation with him I infer that he intended to allow the Spaniards to enter the city, so as to have them where he could punish them more."
It is to be hoped that General Howard misunderstood General Shafter, because such strategy as that indicated would suggest the tactics of the pugnacious John Phoenix, who, in a fight in the editorial room, put his nose into the mouth of his adversary in order to hold the latter more securely.
The explanation of the entrance of the Spanish reinforcements given by General Shafter in his official report of the campaign is as follows: "General Garcia, with between four and five thousand Cubans, was intrusted with the duty of watching for and intercepting the reinforcements expected. This, however, he failed to do, and Escarrio pa.s.sed into the city along my extreme right and near the bay."
General Garcia himself, however, in his report to his own government, states that he was directed by General Shafter to occupy and hold a certain position on the right wing of the army, and that, without disobeying orders and leaving that position, he could not possibly intercept the Manzanillo troops.
As it happened, Escarrio"s column did not become a controlling or decisive factor in the campaign, and the question why he was allowed to reinforce the Santiago garrison has therefore only a speculative interest. If, however, these reinforcements had happened to arrive two days earlier--in time to take part in the battle of July 1-2--the whole course of events might have been changed. The Spanish garrison of the city, according to the English cable-operators and the foreign residents, consisted of three thousand regulars, one thousand volunteers, and about one thousand sailors and marines from Cervera"s fleet--a force, all together, of not more than five thousand men. This comparatively small army, fighting in intrenchments and in almost impregnable positions, came so near repulsing our attack on July 1 that General Shafter "seriously considered the advisability of falling back to a position five miles in the rear." If the five thousand men in the Spanish blockhouses and rifle-pits had been reinforced July 1 instead of July 3 by the five thousand regulars from Manzanillo, the Santiago campaign might have ended in a great disaster. Fortunately for General Shafter, and unfortunately for General Toral, "Socorro de Espana o tarde o nunca" ("Spanish reinforcements arrive late or never ").
CHAPTER XXI
THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN (_Concluded_)
IV. The wrecking of the army by disease after the decisive battle of July 1-2.
The army under command of General Shafter left Tampa on the fourteenth day of June, and arrived off the Cuban coast near Santiago on the 20th of the same month. Disembarkation began at Daiquiri on the 22d, and ended at Siboney on the 24th. On the morning of June 25 the whole army was ash.o.r.e, and was then in a state of almost perfect health and efficiency. One week later the soldiers at the front began to sicken with malarial and other fevers, and two weeks later, according to General Shafter"s report, "sickness was increasing very rapidly, and the weakness of the troops was becoming so apparent that I was anxious to bring the siege to an end." On July 21, less than four weeks after the army landed, Colonel Roosevelt told me that not more than one quarter of his men were fit for duty, and that when they moved five miles up into the hills, a few days before, fifty per cent. of the entire command fell out of the ranks from exhaustion. On July 22 a prominent surgeon attached to the field-hospital of the First Division stated to me that at least five thousand men in the Fifth Army-Corps were then ill with fever, and that there were more than one thousand sick in General Kent"s division alone. On August 3 eight general officers in Shafter"s command signed a round-robin in which they declared that the army had been so disabled by malarial fevers that it had lost its efficiency; that it was too weak to move back into the hills; that the epidemic of yellow fever which was sure to occur would probably destroy it, and that if it were not moved North at once it "must perish." At that time, according to General Shafter"s telegram of August 8 to the War Department, "seventy-five per cent. of the command had been ill with a very weakening malarial fever, which leaves every man too much broken down to be of any use." In the short s.p.a.ce of forty days, therefore, an army of sixteen thousand men had lost three fourths of its efficiency, and had been reduced to a condition so low that, in the opinion of eight general officers, it must inevitably "perish" unless immediately sent back to the United States. Early in August, after a stay in Cuba of only six weeks, the Fifth Army-Corps began to move northward, and before September 1 the whole command was in camp at Montauk Point, Long Island.
Of the eighteen thousand men who composed it, five thousand were very ill, or soon became very ill, and were sent to the general hospital; while five thousand more, who were less seriously sick, were treated in their tents.[15] Eight thousand men out of eighteen thousand were nominally well, but had been so enfeebled by the hardships and privations of the campaign that they were no longer fit for active Cuban service, and, in the opinion of General Miles, hardly one of them was in sound health.[16] I think it is not an exaggeration to describe this state of affairs as "the wrecking of the army by disease." It is my purpose in the present chapter to inquire whether such wrecking of the army was inevitable, and if not, why it was allowed to happen.
A review of the history of campaigns in tropical countries seems to show that Northern armies in such regions have always suffered more from disease than from battle; but it does not by any means show that the virtual destruction of a Northern army by disease in a tropical country is inevitable _now_. When the British army under the Earl of Albemarle landed on the Cuban coast and attacked Havana in 1762, it lost nearly one half its efficiency, as a result of sickness, in about four weeks; but at that time the fact that nine tenths of all tropical diseases are caused by microscopic germs, and are therefore preventable, was not known. The progress made in sanitary science in the present century renders unnecessary and inexcusable in 1898 a rate of sickness and mortality that was perhaps inevitable in 1762. Northern soldiers, if properly equipped and cared for, can live and maintain their health now under conditions which would have been absolutely and inevitably fatal to them a century ago.
In April last there was an interesting and instructive discussion of this subject, or of a subject very closely connected with this, at a meeting held in the rooms of the Royal Geographical Society, London, and attended by many of the best-known authorities on tropical pathology in Great Britain. Most of the gentlemen who took part in the debate were of opinion that there is no reason whatever why the white man should not be able to adapt himself to the new conditions of life in the tropics, and protect himself against the diseases that prevail in those regions. The popular belief that the white man cannot successfully colonize the tropics is disproved by the fact that he has done so. It is undoubtedly true that many Northerners who go to equatorial regions contract disease there and die; but in the majority of such cases the man is the victim of his obstinate unwillingness to change his habits in respect to eating, drinking, and clothing, and to conform his life to the new conditions.
The chief diseases, both acute and chronic, of tropical countries--those which formerly caused such ravages among the white settlers, and gave rise to the prevalent theory that Europeans can live only in the temperate zone--are all microbic in origin, and consequently in great measure preventable. We cannot expect, of course, to see them absolutely wiped out of existence; but their sting may be extracted by means of an improved public and private hygiene and other prophylactic measures. A comparison of the healthfulness of the West India Islands under enlightened British rule with that of the two under Spanish misrule shows what can be done by sanitation to convert a pest-hole into a paradise. Indeed, as Dr. L. Sambon, in opening the discussion, well said, sanitation within the last few decades has wrought wonderful changes in all tropical countries as regards health conditions, and the changes in some places have been so great that regions once considered most deadly are now even recommended as health resorts.