by Tony Roberts
They were given jobs to dig in on the reverse slope of the hill so that took up much of their afternoon, and they eventually knocked off when night came with relief. Casey lay on the slope, eyes shut, thinking of so many past experiences. This was just another war, and there would be so many more. With nations these days pushing for nationalism, it was only a matter of time that someone, somewhere would start some stupid stuff.
It would likely be in Europe. Germany was the new boy on the block, strong, industrial, vibrant. They had flexed their muscles recently in uniting themselves after beating the Austrians, Danes and French in successive wars, and now glowered at the British Empire. They had signed an alliance with both Austria-Hungary and Italy and the three faced the alliance of France and Russia. Britain hovered in the background, not wanting to get involved in yet another European squabble, but it seemed to Casey that sooner or later they would have no choice.
There again the trouble with the weakening Ottoman Empire had everyone nervously looking over their shoulders. The peoples of south-eastern Europe wanted freedom from the ‘sick man of Europe’, as the Ottomans were widely known, and much of this was down to their Christian belief, and not wanting to be ruled by a Muslim power. Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Albania…all of them wanted out and some of the action.
The trouble was that both Austria-Hungary and Russia wanted Ottoman territory and not new independent nations on their borders. Casey guessed that some time soon he’d be wanted in Europe. So who would he choose? Not the Ottomans, no. Never in a month of Sundays. He had history with them. The Austrians? No, their time had gone. He’d fought for them in the great days of the 1680s and beyond, but now they had gone on too long and were cracking at the seams themselves.
France? He doubted their army had the capacity to take on the Germans, especially after their hiding in the recent war when they’d been surrounded and smashed. Italy? A new nation, recently united. He had blood connections to them, but the Italy of today was certainly not the Roman Empire of yesteryear. But if war came, would he rally to their flag? Did he see himself as Italian? He guessed so, so it would be interesting if they did go to war. He supposed it would be why and who against.
That left Germany, Russia and Britain. Russia? Hmm… they had a vast army but the general feeling amongst fighting men who knew was that they were a giant with feet of clay. They had a peasant population and were backward. In these days of modern warfare, would their numbers prevail against prepared defenses and the modern weaponry?
Germany then? Strong, militaristic, brash and sure of themselves. Against one opponent, yes, they would eat anyone alive. But they were faced with France at one end and Russia the other. Even the Germans would have trouble fighting both. But definitely a candidate for his services. Finally, Britain. A vast empire, the problem with them was that he could get sent somewhere dumb and out of the way and not to a theater of his choice. Britain had places to defend everywhere, like South Africa, the Caribbean, Singapore, Hong Kong, the fucking Falklands down by Argentina, Aden, West Africa, East Africa, India… God the list was endless. No he wanted to be in the thick of it when it happened, and Britain was just not the most attractive at the present moment.
He would decide if and when a war broke out. For now, he would look for whoever paid the best and gave him the best kind of job. With new ordnance coming out almost yearly and new tactics required, it would keep someone like him busy.
He was called to Colonel Wood’s position at the foot of El Pozo hill, in the hacienda that stood there and gave its name to the feature. It was a busy place with men coming and going and paperwork and maps all over the place. Wood looked up as Casey snapped off a salute. “Ah, Corporal. The Lieutenant-Colonel here sings your praises.”
Casey glanced to Wood’s right where Roosevelt stood, a slight smile playing over his features. “Sir.”
“A man who, I’m told, speaks fluent Spanish.”
“Yes, sir. Learned it in New Mexico.”
“Good, because I have a small task for you, Corporal.” He looked down at a map before him, the edges creased and stained. Casey didn’t like the look of this. Wood looked up. “We’re out front in what we think is an exposed position. Now, we’re in regular touch with the Cuban rebels and they keep on telling us the Spanish are gone and none are between us and the ridge, but I’m not so sure. They’re somewhat excitable and prone to exaggerating. What I need is for you to sneak into the jungle to the north and find out whether what they say about the village of El Caney is correct.”
“El Caney, sir?”
“Here,” Wood reversed the map and jabbed a spot about four miles to the north. There was a village marked to the north of the hill of El Pozo. “We have received conflicting reports of Spanish troops being there or not being there. I want to know how many are there if it is garrisoned. Can you do?”
“Sir, I guess so,” Casey eyed the route. “I’m to go alone?”
“Best to do so, yes. You’ll be given Spanish uniform from stock we’ve captured.” Wood flicked a couple of fingers at one of his staff who led Casey over to a side room, almost a cupboard, where a few piles of captured uniforms rested on a side table. He was told to dress up as best he could and then report back to Colonel Wood, so Casey searched through the not-too-clean selection and finally got a uniform that he was happy with. It was, like all the Spanish uniforms, light blue in color with a leather belt, attached to which were cartridge cases. This was a sergeant’s uniform for on the forearm were sewn the stripes that denoted his rank. Promotion, eh? He might defect to the Spanish and fight for better pay. He grinned at his own sense of humor.
There was a battered looking off-white wide-brimmed hat that he crammed on his head, and he made his way back to the main room and Colonel Wood. He saluted. “Ready for action, sir, except I have no Spanish Mauser rifle.”
Wood regarded him for a moment. Insubordinate wretch. “Lieutenant-Colonel? See to it that this soldier has the correct weaponry.”
Roosevelt saluted and led Casey outside and around the side of the building. Here was a collection of boxes, crates and barrels, left by the army, as a kind of forward supply point. “Corporal Long, you are fortunate that as well as seizing a quantity of Spanish uniforms, we managed to take hold of a few of their rifles and ammunition. Most are going to be handed over to our armories and war office but you can pick one of your choice.”
A rack of rifles stood under a cloth screen so Casey picked the first – there wasn’t much choice between them, to be honest – and weighed it in his hands. He knew it well, having made it his business to keep up with the latest weaponry around the world. A Mauser M1893 bolt-action rifle, weighing 8.8 lbs and used smokeless cartridges, firing a 7mm caliber bullet. He smiled. A far superior weapon to those being used by the American army. “This is more like it, sir!”
Roosevelt grunted. “Grab as much ammo as you can from that box there, Corporal, and nobody knows where you got it from, got it?”
“Sir. Shame we can’t equip our men with this; we’d sweep the Spanish off that ridge in no time.”
“Let’s leave that to the day we decide to attack, shall we? Our boys have the guts and resolve to win, and we outnumber them.”
“Numbers don’t always guarantee victory, sir.” Casey recalled a recent siege that had happened in South Africa, and although he hadn’t been there, he’d read all about it. “Else the British wouldn’t have won at Rorke’s Drift.”
“Against Zulus armed with spears. No wonder they won.”
“Many of the Zulus had guns taken from the dead at Isandlwana, sir.”
Roosevelt allowed a flicker of irritation cross his features for a second. “Enough of this, Corporal. Remember your place. Now, you’re to sneak down into the jungle to the north-east and make your way to El Caney. You’ll know it from the stone church there.”
“Built as a commemorative to Hernan Cortes taking divine orders from up high to convert the indigenous of this island to Christi
anity, if I remember my history.”
Roosevelt stared at Casey for a long moment. “Corporal. I would appreciate it if you remained silent until I have finished, else you may miss some important point.”
The eternal mercenary grinned, then snapped smartly to attention. He was instructed to follow the Las Guasimas creek, which marked the boundary of the jungle from the cleared land as far as the road from Las Guasimas to El Caney, then strike out along it to the village. He was to wait at the edge of the jungle by the road until nightfall, then press on.
On his return he was to give the password Rough Rider or risk being shot at. He had one day to achieve his task, or if he failed to return, another scout would be sent out. Casey reckoned the rest of the army would be arriving by then and someone else would stake out the village and take the credit. Roosevelt was after more glory.
With two day’s provisions in his knapsack and a canteen full of water, he was seen off by his buddies, with a lot of derisive cat-calling and comments about how pretty he looked and not to stumble by mistake into one of the other American camps else he’d be violated badly. Casey shot them the middle finger as he walked away from the hill and into the jungle on the far side of the creek.
Moving through the jungle was hard, as trees made him turn this way and that, but he couldn’t get lost, as long as he had the creek to guide him. The land on the far side of the creek was fenced off and cultivated or had long grass waving in the slight breeze. He kept a tree or bush between him and the creek, just in case someone happened to be looking in that direction, but it was debatable whether any Spanish were this far out. The Cuban insurgents had more or less cleared the area out and the Spanish forces wouldn’t go too far from their garrisons without sufficient numbers.
As the afternoon wore on Casey came to the road. He knelt and eyed the terrain ahead of him. The road was nothing but mud and dirt, and passed in between two fields and crossed the creek via a small stone bridge. It then carried on into the distance and somewhere out there was El Caney.
He rested for an hour until the sun went down, then set off again, quickly crossing the bridge and hugging one side of the track. If anyone happened by he could swiftly pop into the field and lie low. He had the advantage of being just the one man whereas anyone coming his way would not be alone and they would almost likely be hostile – even if they were the insurgents. They’d take one look at his uniform and want to shoot holes in him.
The night was upon him and he kept to the side of the track, making slow but steady progress. His left shoulder he made sure kept on touching the tall grass, but this had its own danger, for once he bumped sharply into a post, some kind of fence support or something. He bit off a curse and after that slowed down some.
The road curved and dipped, then climbed slightly. Darkness wasn’t too bad as the sky was clear and he could see reasonably well by starlight. The air was still and humid, and sweat dripped off his forehead and nose, and he kept on wiping his brow. Damned heat.
He thought he heard something, so he slipped into the field and crouched, his rifle poised. Only his eyes moved as two men came along the track. They stopped perhaps twenty feet away and began talking about what they would do in a new Cuba, so he guessed they were two of the rebels that the US Government were fighting for.
“So you don’t think we’ll have much of a change under our own rule?” one said.
“No. We’re fighting for a new Cuba but we’ll still have masters and we’ll still have nothing,” the other said disparagingly.
“Oh, you’re a pessimist. Our leaders assure us we won’t be paying taxes for Madrid to remain in comfort on our sweat and blood. You must surely agree, Pepe, that it is better not to be ruled from Spain, but by ourselves?”
Pepe spat noisily onto the ground. “Not with these leaders. They just want to replace the current governor and carry on like him. They’re not like us, Ramon, they are descended from aristos, like Garcia.”
“General Garcia?” Ramon said, clearly skeptical. “He’s fighting for our freedom, Pepe. Why else would he always be battling for our cause. This is his third war he’s taken part in. At least he fights alongside us ordinary soldiers. You never see the haughty Spanish aristos do that!”
“Except General Vara del Rey,” Pepe said by way of reply. “He fights alongside his men. It’s lucky there are not too many generals like him in the Spanish army, eh? Good the fools put him out of the way at El Caney.”
“Ah,” Ramon lit up a cigarette. “They can stay there and let the Americanos fight for Santiago. Come on, lets go back to the village. I’m tired. Our patrol is done and there’s nothing to report, as usual.”
Casey waited until they had passed out of earshot before re-emerging onto the track and carried on his way up towards El Caney. At least he now had the name of the man in command of the garrison there. He wondered how many men he did have. He guessed he would have to take a look himself from a vantage point. The legend about Cortes he’d said to Roosevelt had been a popular one in Spanish circles and he’d heard it after returning from Tenochtitlan after the disaster there that had overtaken them.
Yes, that had been a military disaster, and they had been lucky to escape with the numbers they had. Of course, there had been talk almost at once of getting a new force together to retake the Aztec city but Casey had had his fill by then of the whole bloody affair and wanted to fight in a proper war, which was why he’d re-crossed the Atlantic to Spain and enlisted in Charles’ army to fight in Italy.
El Caney had been well off the beaten track for the Conquistador army so he had no idea whether the legend was true or not. Cortes had been based in Havana for most of his career up to leaving for the mainland, so it did seem a little far-fetched that he had received a vision there from God or whoever to convert the populace to Catholicism.
It was a bit like Constantine doing the same at the Milvian Bridge. Casey hadn’t been around at the time of that civil war; he’d been in China at the time, buried alive by that bitch Li Tsao. But Constantine had used religion to secure a victory and then push it on the rest of the empire.
His musings were interrupted by seeing lights ahead, so he pushed into a field off the track and made his way through a grove of trees to a fence, which he slipped through and crested a rise and there, spread out ahead of him, was the village of El Caney, complete with church. He lay flat and studied the place. A creek ran across his line of sight ahead of him and there was a wooden blockhouse or fort, judging by its size and design, on a small rise. The track wriggled past it and into the village that lay beyond, and by the lights being held by the soldiers, he could see rolls of barbed wire being set up at the boundary edge.
Plenty of soldiers carrying out the work, and others digging in behind wooden fences. Casey guessed he would have to find a better concealed point for daylight observation, or else he’d be spotted in this position all too soon. He moved across the land, keeping low, and slipped behind a clump of bushes near a dip in the ground. He could hear the chuckling of water and guessed this was the Las Guasimas creek again. It had wriggled north from the edge of the jungle, and was the watercourse the village of El Caney sat upon.
He waited patiently, thinking about his escape route, and kept on looking back. Going along the road – or dirt track if he was more accurate – was not an option. He wondered what would happen if he was seen. No doubt the Spanish would think he was a deserter and punish him. Would it be best if he just walked up to the village and say he had gotten lost after the battle of Las Guasimas and had finally sneaked through the American lines? No doubt he could pass for a Latin, since he had been born in Italy, but his Spanish wasn’t faultless; he couldn’t speak it like a native. His Spanish was that of the motherland, and archaic. Maybe he could fool his way through, but he didn’t really want to risk it.
Best he remained here and spy on the settlement and work out how many were there.
Then he heard something close by and turned his head, only to see the
muzzle of a rifle pointed at his forehead. “Come with us,” a whispery voice said in Spanish. “You are our prisoner.”
CHAPTER NINE
He was taken, his hands shackled behind his back, along the route of the creek, a muzzle of a rifle pressed into him by one of the three who had taken him captive. They walked in silence until they were a sufficient distance from the village, and then they began to interrogate him in a patch of cleared ground in one of the fields of tall grass.
“So, what were you doing out there watching your own village?” the one who designated himself as the leader, demanded. He had a bushy black beard and glared at him with hostility.
“I’m an American soldier, sent by my commanding officer, to assess the Spanish strength at the village.”
“Why? We have already told the Americans this information. General Vara del Rey and about five hundred and fifty men. Why would our allies ignore our advice? You lie.”
“I don’t know why he sent me other than he maybe wanted a second opinion? I’m a soldier and I just do what I’m told to do,” he shrugged.
“I do not believe you. You are a scout of del Ray and you were resting outside the village before reporting back to him with information that will inform him of our numbers and positions.”
“Oh give your brain a chance,” Casey snapped, fed up with the situation. “I was spying on the village and waiting for daylight to see how many they had there. Now you’ve told me I don’t need to remain here any longer and you can let me return to El Pozo.”
“Nice try,” the interrogator chuckled, “but you’re not being released. You will give us the real reason why you’re here.”