The Roughest Riders (15 page)

All the dead Rough Riders except for Capron were buried on the battlefield in one long trench lined with palm leaves, each man wrapped in a blanket. Capron had wanted his remains interred at
home, but when that proved unfeasible, they buried him on a hill behind the hospital, near the seashore. The rocks along the trail where the Rough Riders had walked were spattered with blood, the grass was matted with it, and abandoned blanket rolls, haversacks, carbines, and canteens lay strewn along the length of the trail.

While the men recuperated in Siboney, Shafter continued to oversee the unloading of the remaining men and equipment onto the beach, with the last of them putting in at Siboney, west of the original encampment at Daiquiri. From his perch aboard ship, Shafter devised a strategic plan for the next phase of the war. He dispatched orders to Wheeler to not take any direct action of his own—no more probes without consulting with him first—and he also sent along details about the next engagement. Shafter wanted to move first against the San Juan Heights, a few miles east of Santiago, before attacking the Spanish garrison there. Lawton's men would lead the charge, followed by Wheeler's forces, and then by the Rough Riders, all of them accompanied by a contingent of Cuban rebels, this time without the untrustworthy Castillo present. Fourteen thousand American soldiers were to participate in the major thrust toward Santiago.

William Randolph Hearst, who had been sounding the clarion cry for war from the beginning, interviewed Shafter aboard the
Seguranca
and found him to be “in bad humor because of losses in the skirmish,” although later Shafter felt obliged to play down his anger to avoid having to court-martial Wheeler for insubordination.

The officers and men took advantage of the respite from the action, burying their dead, resting before their next encounter with the Spaniards, and restocking their larders with the new provisions being loaded onto shore. All the troops and supplies, including the black Twenty-Fourth under General Jacob Kent, were finally on land on the night of June 24, two full days after the first contingents hit the beach at Daiquiri.

North of Las Guasimas sat the town of Sevilla, flanked by the Aguadores River, which flowed parallel to the main trail for a couple of miles, then zigzagged back and forth across it. Wheeler, once again interpreting Shafter's orders to suit his own ends, sent advance scouts ahead to Sevilla without consulting anyone else. He set up an American outpost there, where the river crossed the trail, and another outpost of Cubans about a mile and a half farther to the west, closer to Santiago. There the river made a sharp turn south toward a low hill called El Pozo—the Fountain, or the Well—where a hacienda sat on the eastern slope.

The trail continued for another mile or more westward beyond El Pozo, where it split, and crossed a valley toward the San Juan River. The trail picked up on the other side of the river and headed into the San Juan Heights, whose crown was San Juan Hill. A lower hill named Kettle Hill, which was topped by a sugar-refining kettle, sat a short distance to the right of San Juan Hill. Looking westward from El Pozo, the sea at Santiago Harbor was hidden from view by a high ridge, but the water and the city of Santiago could be seen through a dip in the ridge near San Juan Hill. North of the valley were the foothills of the Sierra Maestra range, where the village of El Caney lay nestled.

Wheeler's scouts could see the Spanish soldiers on San Juan Hill building a fortified line of trenches bound by barbed wire next to a blockhouse that adorned its crest. They appeared to be digging in for a strong defense of the area, and Wheeler knew that their positions would be impregnable once they completed their work. The Cuban scouts reported that General Linares was sending reinforcements toward San Juan Hill from Santiago. Once they arrived, any hope of a successful American assault on the position would greatly
diminish. In Wheeler's view, a direct approach would be suicidal. His men would have to take El Caney first, then veer south through Kettle and San Juan Hills to achieve victory. Outside of El Caney, Wheeler thought he might be able to cut off the Spaniards' water supply, which flowed into the town from the mountains.

A long yellow pit was visible on the hillside leading up to San Juan, and the scouts could see the straw sombreros of the Spaniards bobbing up and down as the men in their blue uniforms built their fortifications close to the blockhouse. The higher-ranking among them rode around on white horses, overseeing the troops preparing their lines of defense. The soldiers worked like an army of ants, digging trenches on San Juan Hill and also to the north in the area around El Caney. The American scouts could see the enemy
marching through the streets of El Caney from their vantage point at El Pozo.

San Juan Hill was the most famous of the hills taken by American troops during the long, brutal war against the Spanish in Cuba.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LC-USZ62-58789)

The Spanish had already built more than two miles of trenches throughout the San Juan Heights. They were rapidly constructing a greater line of defense snaking from the coast eight miles northeast to El Caney. Time was on their side, particularly if they could hold the Americans off a bit longer, which would allow for yellow fever and other tropical diseases brought on by infected mosquitos to kick in with a vengeance. The Spanish had been dealing with those ailments for decades, and although they themselves were far from immune, they believed the diseases would help weaken the attackers' morale and gut their ranks even before they climbed the hills.

The main areas of defense were the trenches around the block-house on San Juan Hill, but the Spanish had dug additional trenches and gun pits along the flanks of the hill to protect against an enveloping action by the invaders. A long line of barbed wire was strung in front of the trenches, mostly on Kettle Hill, to slow the enemy's advance. The Spanish miscalculated, however, in positioning their troops and fortifications on the top of San Juan Hill instead of along the lower promontory of Kettle Hill. The lower position would have afforded better command over the tree line less than five hundred yards below, where El Camino Real and another trail merged coming out of the forest.

The trenches sprawled for about two miles north of the block-house, where a stone bridge crossed the San Juan River onto the main road leading west to Santiago—the road that Spanish reinforcements were reported to be taking. El Caney sat two miles north of the bridge, about four miles north of El Pozo. El Caney was a small village with a big stone church, tin-roofed commercial buildings, and tiny houses with palm-thatched roofs. In and of itself it was hardly worth defending; its primary value was its strategic importance as a gateway of sorts to the Spanish bastion
and harbor at Santiago. Hernando Cortés reportedly slept there the night before he sailed off to the Yucatán in February 1519 to conquer Mexico and expand Spain's empire in the New World.

Six hundred yards southeast of the village loomed a large fort named El Viso—the Lookout—providing defenders with a clear view of approaching armies from the south and east. The village itself hosted four blockhouses, which the Spaniards surrounded with trenches, gun pits, and barbed wire. They also posted troops on the west side of the village to protect it against an American advance from that direction. What the town lacked was a sufficient number of well-supplied soldiers to man the defenses, since Linares still believed the major American thrust would be a direct assault on Santiago. Linares deployed five hundred troops at El Caney and a similar number around San Juan Hill. The so-called reinforcements that the Cuban insurgents had warned the Americans about, along with much-needed food and equipment, remained only a rumor.

And so the stage was set for the next phase of the war, a battle that would surprise combatants on both sides of the conflict with its stunning ferocity.

T
he American troops used the time after Las Guasimas to nurse their wounds, rest up for the conflict ahead, and wait for additional supplies and troops to make it up the trail from the beach. It turned into an abysmal six-day hiatus in the fighting. With the rain pounding down every day, the trail became a mudslide with barely enough room for a wagon or mule train to climb in single file. The banks along the side of the trail were several feet high in many spots, channeling the trail with a mud-choked quagmire a foot deep. The new troops slogged on, slipping sideways and backward into one another as they approached the campsites of those who had left earlier. Soldiers lay where they could, wet and miserable in their dog tents, which were open to the elements in the front and back. The arrival of the new men and animals only added to the already unbearable congestion. The rains sometimes let up briefly, allowing the sunshine through for a while before the clouds closed in again and drenched the men and equipment with relentless fury.

As new troops arrived in established campsites, others moved farther up the trail to make space for them and find more breathing
room of their own. The line of men, animals, and supplies stretched longer and longer. The Rough Riders joined Wheeler's men on the afternoon of June 25 and camped near them alongside a stream while they waited for new orders. General Jacob Kent, leading the black Twenty-Fourth, hastened up the trail as quickly as possible, with orders to join the others before the next assault. There was never enough food to go around, but the mules were loaded with new supplies of salt pork, hardtack, beans, and canned tomatoes, which they shared.

That afternoon, Kent reported to Wheeler with his Twenty-Fourth Infantry troops, and they bivouacked for the night near the landing. Two days later, on June 27, the entire division moved out on the road toward Santiago and encamped on the same ground that Lawton had occupied a few days earlier. Some of the men set up positions near Sevilla, while others, including the Twenty-Fourth Infantry, set up a new camp at Las Guasimas. The order they followed was now more or less what it had been at the beginning, in accordance with Shafter's original plan. Lawton was once again in the lead with the black Twenty-Fifth and other troops. Wheeler followed him with the black Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and Kent took up the rear with the black Twenty-Fourth under his command.

The Rough Riders had already been instructed, on Sunday morning, June 26, to pitch a new camp three miles west toward Santiago, an assignment that did not sit well with Wood, Roosevelt, and some of their men. “Our camp ground was disappointing,” one Rough Rider complained. “The brush made it quite a job to get to headquarters. The heat and wretched conditions have begun to tell on everyone.” One of his sidekicks was more enthusiastic, however: “A finer country we never saw. There are mountains all around us covered with coconut and mango trees, with a few pineapples and limes.” Wood and Roosevelt fumed that Shafter and the
other regular army generals wanted the volunteers out of the way, shunted off to the side where they were unlikely to do any harm.

The American troops grew increasingly frustrated as they sat around idly waiting for orders. When their officers expressed concern about time lost while the enemy fortified its positions, the only response from Shafter was to do nothing until he had a chance to survey the scene himself and direct the next line of attack. In other words, stand by until you receive further orders. Wheeler, Young, Wood, Roosevelt, and others already deployed throughout the area could barely restrain themselves from commencing a new operation at once, and even Lawton had become restless in response to the general lack of direction that was affecting the men's morale.

Many of the soldiers had a clear view now of Santiago and the harbor from their new positions, and they were increasingly anxious to roll down over the enemy positions there. The trails around Sevilla were crowded with seven thousand American troops and nearly half as many Cuban rebels, and new soldiers recently landed at Siboney were trudging up the path, adding to the congestion. In Santiago, General Linares did his best to buoy his own troops' morale. “Soldiers, we left the coal regions because I did not wish to sacrifice your lives in unequal battle, under cover of armored ships,” he explained to his men, referring to the American bombardment of the coast. “The encounter is at hand, and it will take place under equal conditions.”