Yet even when full allowances are made, the Army looked pitiful. For one thing, there was hardly anybody in it. The total force was twenty-odd thousand men, less than the present size of the New York Police Department. Spain had nearly ten times that many in Cuba alone, all veterans. Because of the promotion bottleneck which had followed the Civil War, the American officer corps was senile; even some junior officers were white-bearded. Their maps of Cuba had been swiped from geography books, their men were trained in the mass-assault tactics of Waterloo and Gettysburg.
Uniforms had scarcely changed since Appomattox—troops still wore cerulean-blue pants, horse-collar blanket rolls, and brass belt buckles which would heliograph their movements to a tropical enemy—and firearms were hopelessly obsolete. The old Springfield rifle had the recoil of a sledgehammer. There was no modern artillery. The New York Herald couldn’t wait for the Spaniards to “smell a little of our Yankee smokeless powder,” but it was the other side that had the smokeless powder. America, after inventing it, had exported it, and our men were equipped with old black-powder ammunition which blinded them in battle and disclosed their positions.
This weakness on land could have been fatal, but as Bismarck observed, there is a special providence for drunkards, fools and the United States, and that spring providence wore the blue-and-gold of the U.S. Navy. In a war that was to be decided at sea, our fleet was three times as large as Spain’s. It was strong on paper and even stronger in the water, because Spanish naval genius had vanished entirely. Their marksmanship was wretched, their ship bottoms were fouled, and they had decorated the decks of their ironclads with ornamental black-and-gold woodwork which was certain to catch fire in a modern battle. The woodwork was symbolic. It reminded them of Philip II’s glorious Armada. Unhappily for them there were altogether too many such mementos around; when, at the climax of the war, they prepared to train their shore guns on our warships lying off Cuba’s Santiago Bay, they discovered that five cannon were relics of the eighteenth century and a sixth bore the date 1668.
It was typical of them that they received this news with many lugubrious sighs. Back home there was some warlike spirit—Madrid had its own yellow press, which denounced Yanquis, gringos and Protestantes and published cartoons of aroused toreadors executing the Yankee hog. The military, however, felt otherwise. Its leaders hadn’t wanted this war, and their attitude throughout was gloomy. Like France in 1940 and South Vietnam in 1975, they were beaten in the mind. Afterward they confessed they had known in advance that they would lose the crucial battle of Santiago Bay. To their flagship captain the first bugle note that morning was “the last echo of those which history tells us were sounded at the capture of Granada. It was a signal that four centuries of grandeur were at an end and that Spain was becoming a nation of the fourth class.” He turned to his admiral and murmured, “Poor Spain!” The admiral could only nod glumly. Ever since leaving home he had been convinced that he hadn’t a chance.
No such fatalism disheartened Americans. They were aggressive, confident and vehemently patriotic. In the same battle, a lieutenant aboard the Texas cried, “Where are our battle flags? What’s a battle without battle flags?” and broke into a locker to get them while, topside, a band crashed through “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Francis Scott Key’s hymn was probably played more in combat in 1898 than in all the war years since. According to the New York Times, wounded men sang it during the battle of San Juan Hill.
It is a curious fact that in this war even the casualty tags were red, white and blue. The jingo bug had bitten everyone. At least two noncoms—a bosun’s mate at Manila Bay and a sergeant at El Caney—are recorded as having rallied men by shouting “Remember the Maine!” Everyone wanted to be a G. A. Henty hero. One gringo boldly sailed a yacht into the waters off Cadiz; a second poked around Puerto Rico in disguise; a third crossed Cuba on foot to deliver a message to the insurgent General Calixto Garcia Íniguez, and daring missions attracted swarms of naval officers, including a young lieutenant named William F. Halsey.
We had morale, the enemy had none; that was the difference. It was not a difference of principles. Americans had gone to war shouting Viva Cuba Libre, but there was no real co-operation with the insurgents, either there or in the Philippines; they were used as labor troops or not at all.
This was a lily-white war. If anything, the pride of race was stronger here than among the Spaniards. Our Cuban expedition would surely have failed without the gallantry of U.S. Negro regulars, yet when the black-powder smoke drifted away they were assigned humble tasks as hospital orderlies, and Florida restaurants refused to serve them. Most Americans are unaware today that these men helped save the day at San Juan Hill.
Relations with the enemy were more cordial. Aloof from their cerulean-clad Negro comrades, our soldiers were at ease among the light-blue-and-white pin-striped uniforms of Spanish prisoners. “War as it is conducted at this end of the century is curiously civilized,” wrote Richard Harding Davis, and for the socially acceptable, it was. Spanish dead were buried with full military honors; truce flags were hoisted so that opposing commanders might pay tribute to each other’s valor. The American general who demanded the capitulation of Manila was escorted through the lines by a Spanish carriage, attended by liveried footmen. When a dashing American named Richmond Pearson Hobson tried to block Santiago harbor by sinking a collier at the mouth, the enemy admiral personally plucked him from the moonlit water, and when the same admiral’s ship was sunk beneath him, we raced to his rescue. Several other Spanish commanders owed their lives to bluejackets. One of them, Don Antonio Eulate, captain of the cruiser Vizcaya, was blown overboard in battle. Waterlogged, wounded, and menaced by sharks, he was hauled aboard the Iowa. The Iowa’s guard presented arms, and the ham in Don Antonio sprang to life. Straightening slowly, he unbuckled his sword belt, kissed the hilt, and offered it to Capt. Robley Evans with a charming bow. Naturally it was refused. The don then turned seaward and extended a hand toward his sinking ship. “Adios, Vizcaya!” he cried brokenly. At that moment the Vizcaya, with a superb sense of timing, vanished in a blossom of flame.
Such grandees believed that they were dealing with a fellow autocracy. To a degree they were correct. Culturally the United States was divided into rigid social castes, and the Brahmins were strong. Ambulances were reserved for officer casualties. Two cruisers were christened the Harvard and the Yale. Robber barons supported the war privately, like feudal lords. Twenty-eight of America’s warships were millionaires’ yachts, including J. P. Morgan’s mighty Corsair, commanded by the former executive officer of the Maine, Lieutenant Commander Richard Wainwright, and Colonel Astor’s yacht, which lay off Cuba and sent the colonel champagne rations. Helen Gould provided uniforms privately and made a war contribution of $100,000 to the U.S. Treasury; William K. Vanderbilt’s chef served pheasant, squab, and fine wine to selected troops. Aristocracy was one of the two most vigorous institutions in the country. The other was frontier democracy, and the two were joined in the war’s most celebrated regiment: Theodore Roosevelt’s First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the Rough Riders.
Organized by Teddy and by Leonard Wood, who wore gold cuff links in combat, the Riders were a hybrid of cowboys and bluebloods. Lean, slit-eyed plainsmen with names like Cherokee Bill and Rattlesnake Pete served beside men from Boston’s Somerset Club and the Knickerbocker Club of New York, crack polo players, tennis champions, steeplechase riders, Princeton linemen, Yale’s finest high-jumper, and a whole contingent from Teddy’s Harvard, led by two ace quarterbacks. The socialites were a minority, but they saw to it that the entire regiment was outfitted with equipment unavailable to the regulars: tropical uniforms, new Krag rifles, a Colt machine gun, and a dynamite gun which was later purchased by the envious Khedive of Egypt. They also gave the unit a distinct tone, which was demonstrated during the siege of Santiago: when regimental bands were ordered to join in the national anthem, the Rough Riders played “Fair Harvard.”
TR won glory as the co
mmander of the Rough Riders, though he had already made his greatest contribution to victory when he tapped Dewey. The peppery little commodore had promptly painted his ships battle gray, and when war broke out he was impatiently Awalting ammunition from home. The day after it arrived he mounted the bridge of Captain Vernon Gridley’s Olympia and led the Asiatic Squadron out of neutral Hong Kong. Dewey took dead aim on Subic Bay, in the island of Luzon; but Subic was empty, so he changed course for Manila. In the early hours of May first he ran the guns of Corregidor and fell on Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo’s Philippine squadron.
There was never any doubt about the outcome. A British observer reported it as “a military execution, rather than a real contest.” Montojo was weaker and slower, and rather than subject Manila to bombardment he had left the safety of its shore batteries for unprotected Cavite. At 5:41 A.M. Dewey said quietly, “You may fire when ready, Gridley,” and the flagship’s forward turret opened the ball at 5500 yards. Five times the commodore’s battle line swept past in faultless formation, and when it was over all seven Spanish vessels had been destroyed. American casualties were a few scratches. The war was only a few days old, and Manila was bottled up, helpless. At home flags were waved exultantly, Dewey was acclaimed as the new Nelson, and Congress voted to buy him a fancy sword.
The White House learned about the battle from the New York Herald, whose Pacific correspondent was Dewey’s aide. There was nothing odd about that. Newspapers took a proprietary interest in the war; reporters were often combatants. They affected tropical helmets and canvas hunting suits hung with machetes and six-shooters, and they used them. In one early brush with the enemy, when an old side-wheeler tried to land guns for the Cuban rebels, the only casualty was a newspaperman aboard the boat.
Richard Harding Davis, who had donned silk underwear to accompany the Rough Riders, joined in command decisions—actually he had more combat experience than Teddy—and after he and several other correspondents had captured a town in Puerto Rico, Stephen Crane, on orders from his literary agent, took another single-handed. Crane lost face when the World, bowing to protests, disowned his account of cowardice among New York volunteers, but his colleagues remained men of immense prestige. The AP served as the Navy’s communications arm. Generals wooed the press, and one of them had crack troops diverted to his command by complaining to sympathetic newspapers.
Inevitably this power bred arrogance. The New York Journal acted as though it were a branch of the government. Hearst commanded his own private fleet, on the flagship of which he published a newspaper for the Army. Ashore, he reviewed troops on horseback—it was from him that men marching on San Juan learned they were going into battle—and later, soldiers who distinguished themselves were awarded Journal medals.
When Madrid sent a new flying squadron eastward to attack Dewey, Hearst assigned a reporter to bottle it up by scuttling a boat in the Suez Canal. Luckily this failed. The British would have regarded it as a very bad show. But that hadn’t even been considered. Nothing, not even the national interest, deflected the yellow press from its duty to thrill subscribers. To the vexation of an American spy, the details of his mission to Puerto Rico were spread across front pages while he was still there; and despite a pledge of secrecy, the maneuvers of Rear Admiral William T. Sampson were revealed to a public which, unfortunately, included an enemy admiral named Pascual Cervera y Topete.
That betrayal came early in the war, and it was most awkward. Sampson was the Dewey of the Atlantic. He had been told to intercept Cervera, whose fleet was known to have left the Cape Verde Islands on April twenty-ninth. Had he destroyed Cervera, there would have been no need for a land campaign. He should have succeeded, for he was stronger and had guessed the Spaniard’s course; but he was crippled by two circumstances, both wrought by his own civilians. To begin with, the eastern seaboard was terrified by a rumor that the enemy intended to raid American ports. Boston businessmen moved their securities to safe-deposit boxes in Worcester, real-estate men in Long Island added war clauses to leases, and Sampson, under pressure, detached part of his command to defend the coast. Next, a headline revealed that his weakened striking force was bound for Puerto Rico. Cervera read all about it at Martinique. Puerto Rico had been his destination, too, but now he headed for Cuba, and on May nineteenth he slipped past the dark green headlands of Santiago de Cuba, the isolated capital of Oriente Province.
Ten days later found him safe and snug inside the four-mile channel. In a spectacular operation, the tiny U.S. Marine Corps captured Guantánamo Bay. Stephen Crane, who had fought the Civil War vicariously in The Red Badge of Courage, felt “the hot hiss of the bullets trying to cut my hair.” Using the bay as a coaling station, Sampson anchored six miles offshore. Blockade was the best he could do. The Santiago harbor was mined; the high ground on either side was fortified; we had no choice; we had to go ashore in strength, and Sampson asked the United States Army to take the city.
It was asking a great deal of this army, which had barely taken Tampa. One corps had been mustered for expeditionary duty, but had no plans to leave Florida. Richard Harding Davis remembered this as “the rocking-chair period of the war,” when reporters lazed away the days on the veranda of the ornate Tampa Bay Hotel.
For the sweating, beflanneled troops, however, it was a struggle in sand and palmetto scrub, and to their commanding officer it was the start of a bitter personal trial. Major General William Rufus Shafter belonged in Gilbert and Sullivan. He had gout and weighed three hundred pounds. “His immense abdomen hung down, yes, actually hung down between his legs,” one officer wrote home, and TR remarked bitingly that “not since the campaign of Crassus against the Parthians has there been so criminally incompetent a general as Shafter.” Shafter could be shrewd, though few appreciated it. Special platforms were built so he could mount his horse, but since the animal sagged pathetically, the general rode around most of the time in a buckboard with his afflicted foot wrapped in burlap, or lay prostrate in his tent, his bullfrog jowls pulsing like bellows.
The orders he gave for embarkation were simple for him, a nightmare for everyone else. Discovering that his ships would carry only eighteen thousand of the Corps’ twenty-five thousand men, he issued no new orders. Instead he merely announced that they would leave at dawn. The result was an insane scramble—a “higgledy-piggledy business,” said Roosevelt, who scribbled in his diary, “No military at head. No allotment of transports. No plans.”
The Rough Riders had been having a rough time anyway; they had reached Tampa by commandeering a coal train, and now, grimy and exhausted, they seized an old tramp steamer. Other regiments collapsed into chaos. Pandemonium continued through the night and was followed by senseless delays before the disorderly mass of shipping crept into the Caribbean, lights ablaze and decks rocking to the music of regimental bands. Defying every principle of naval caution, this excursion approached the misty Sierra Maestra on June twentieth.
The landing was an even greater travesty. Sampson and Shafter conferred, and fell into bilious disagreement. To the admiral, Shafter’s course was obvious: he should hit the shore on both sides of the harbor and charge the fortress of Santiago Castle. The general could scarcely be blamed for declining. The British had tried precisely that maneuver in the eighteenth century, and had been massacred.
Santiago, in fact, was highly defensible at all points; for twenty miles in either direction the beach was backed by towering limestone cliffs crowned with blockhouses. Two sheltered bays were discovered, but Shafter rejected both. Instead he chose to land on Siboney and Daiquiri—open beaches east of Santiago. The Spaniards could have stopped him at the surf line. Incredibly they abandoned the bluffs and withdrew inland, and after an ineffectual bombardment the corps splashed ashore, yelping and waving campaign hats.
TR spotted his former naval aide in a passing launch and hailed him, like a taxi. Horses were less fortunate: troopers belted them overboard with blacksnake whips while buglers blew “Boots and Saddles” from
the beach. Some mounts made it, but by dusk the sea was dotted with drowned bodies. One animal was later picked up swimming toward Venezuela.
Thus the cavalry division had to proceed dismounted. It retained its élan, however, and it was ably led by Major General “Fighting Joe” Wheeler, late of the Confederate army. Fighting Joe’s appointment had been frankly political. The administration had been apprehensive about the South’s reaction to the arrival of northern soldiers: troop trains had even been ordered to bypass Richmond. Joe was supposed to be a symbol of national unity. He was more. Despite his age he was a gifted commander; he still had a keen eye for terrain, and this terrain displeased him. Inland there was a well-watered plain, suitable for campsites, while the shore was a buggy trap.
The Spaniards held the one pass in the hills, at Las Guásimas. They might be reinforced at any time, so when Fighting Joe found himself in temporary command—Shafter reported that his foot was being “beastly”—he decided to break out of the beachhead. He made one error. The green Rough Riders were put in front. They marched into an ambush, were pinned down, and had to call for infantry support. Then, just as Las Guásimas was developing into a mincing machine, the obliging Spaniards withdrew again. The news of their retreat electrified old Joe. He leaped up and yelled, “We got the Yankees on the run!”
Before he could celebrate, he was sick. The plain beyond the pass might be a strategic asset, but it was no protection against malaria and the yellow fever. Illness began to spread through the dog tents the first day ashore, and doctors could do little. In 1898 fevers were generally attributed to “swamp exhalations and other noxious vapors of the soil.” The mosquito was never mentioned, nor were there any typhoid inoculations; soldiers received castor oil at sick call or wore red flannel “bellybands,” red being regarded as a medicinal color. As a result, disease was the more formidable enemy in Cuba. If the Spaniards could hold Santiago long enough the corps would disintegrate in the wilderness, and the one man who realized that was gross, waddling General Shafter. He had had yellow jack once himself. It was worse than gout. He decided to rush the attack.
Controversy And Other Essays in Journalism (1950–1975) Page 10