by John Jakes
“I understand General Shafter will be holding a council of war this afternoon. I want to photograph some of it for audiences in—”
Gilyard’s saber flew from its sheath and slashed sideways, whacking a chip from the tripod, toppling the camera. Paul yelled, “Was tun Sie, Dummkopf?” What are you doing, stupid? As he leaned down to pick up the camera, Gilyard put the point of his sword against Paul’s neck.
“Listen, you. I don’t know what you said but pay attention to this. The general is suffering heat prostration, or something close to it. He won’t permit himself to be photographed, he’ll have you bayoneted first. If he doesn’t, I will.”
“Major.”
Paul recognized Uncle Joe’s voice before he turned and saw him. Uncle Joe was in shirtsleeves and suspenders, his red cheeks gleaming in the heat.
“Put up that saber. We don’t bully civilians, especially reporters.”
“But he—”
“Put your sword up, Gilyard. Or go on report.”
Gilyard’s face turned redder than Uncle Joe’s. He rammed the saber into the sheath and walked off muttering something about the damned volunteers.
Joe Crown shielded Paul from the others and spoke quietly. “Gilyard was right, Shaffer’s unbelievably touchy. Much criticism is falling on him. Roosevelt has spoken against him openly. Called him criminally negligent. I advise you not to risk more trouble by staying here. Photograph somewhere else.”
“All right, Uncle Joe.” Paul’s eyes darted to the nearby officers, most of whom, excluding Gilyard, were paying no attention. “I heard the attack will begin tomorrow, is that right?”
“Yes, in the morning. Very early. It’s no secret. We’re going forward against the San Juan Heights and El Caney at the same time. I must go now.” He gripped Paul’s arm. “Take care of yourself.”
“I will, Uncle. Thank you.”
Uncle Joe gave him an affectionate smile and strode back toward the conference tables.
Troops continued to move forward all that night. At half past three, a thunder and lightning storm drenched the advance for half an hour. Paul took shelter under the bed of a foundered wagon and stripped off his shirt to wrap the camera. Soon he was chilled, his teeth chattering. No matter; he must have pictures.
Before dawn, Friday, July 1, white mist formed in the low places below the fortified heights protecting Santiago. The Americans confronted the heights from the far left, south of the main road, to the village of El Caney four miles north. The village was defended by a stone fort, El Viso. Smaller blockhouses and, presumably, trenches were waiting on the San Juan Heights.
At first light, General Lawton’s division opened its attack against El Caney. Lawton’s small battery of old three-inch field guns began to whack away at the Spanish entrenchments. By nine o’clock an advance was under way. The Spaniards defending the area enjoyed both superior visibility and artillery supremacy, and they had an additional advantage—the telltale smoke from every round of black powder fired by Lawton’s men.
As Lawton was advancing, the left pressed forward along the Santiago road. A critical place in the advance was a low ford on the Aguadores River, a stream the Americans marked on their maps as the San Juan. The bright yellow observation balloon was hovering above the ford. Spanish guns quickly found the range and pierced the balloon. It deflated, sank, struck the trees by the ford, and draped over them limply. It provided a highly visible target for the enemy artillery, precisely locating the river crossing. By midmorning the ford of the Aguadores earned the name Bloody Ford.
Paul pushed toward the ford with the camera, among black cavalrymen advancing on foot, and a few men already wounded and stumbling to the rear. The roar of artillery and the crackle of rifle fire was constant. The smoke was heavy, tending to choke the lungs and make the eyes sting.
Nearing the ford, Paul came upon a lanky, hawk-faced civilian seated on a white horse at the roadside, seemingly oblivious to the shell bursts. The man, slightly pop-eyed, wore a black overcoat and a white sombrero. His blue eyes danced about, taking in every aspect of the scene. He looked hard at Paul’s camera, then gave him an icy little smile. There was something almost unnatural about the man’s calm. As if none of the danger or suffering affected him, only the martial spectacle.
Paul caught up with a white officer; the one who’d come to his room in Tampa. “Who was that civilian on horseback, Lieutenant?”
“Why, merely one of the gentlemen who promoted this war,” Pershing said. “His yacht’s anchored at Siboney. That’s Hearst.”
A thunderous burst overhead scattered shrapnel on the road. “Down!” Pershing shouted, a moment late. Two of his black soldiers fell, badly hit. The throat of one opened and spurted blood. Paul crouched, listening to the shrapnel slashing the foliage. Something struck the tripod. He found a sharp triangle of metal embedded in one leg. “Can’t someone get that God damn balloon out of the trees?” a man yelled.
“Keep quiet, keep moving,” Pershing said in a firm voice. All around him, Paul saw terrified faces; eyes huge with a realization that death was close. Close as the artillery firing from the San Juan Heights; close as the shell bursts that rained metal on the column struggling forward.
He followed Pershing and his men down to Bloody Ford.
The water at the ford was brown and swirling with darker streaks. Immediately to the right, toward El Caney, a pennon with a red cross identified a dressing station set up on the bank. In the center of the river, six officers sat on their horses, waving and calling encouragement to the men. “Hurry up.” “Come on, lads.” “Get across, you’ll be safer.” Frail Joe Wheeler was one of the six; Uncle Joe was another. All seemed astonishingly calm, though surely, inside, they must be churning with fear like everyone else.
Lieutenant Pershing jumped into the shallows at the ford. As each of his black soldiers reached the water, Pershing gave him a little nudge, a little pat, a supportive word. “Go on, Bob. That’s it, Line, straight across. Hurry up, now, don’t stop.”
Paul was standing just short of the water. The whistle of a shell made him look up. The first of Pershing’s men were at midstream. There a stout black corporal lost his footing; he dropped his Springfield in the river, the unforgivable sin. Uncle Joe booted his horse forward and leaned far out of the saddle, extending his left arm so the soldier could grasp it.
He grabbed Uncle Joe’s arm with both hands. The shell burst. Shrapnel ripped the water all around the men. A piece of it went into the corporal’s head like a knife cleaving melon. As he sank, still holding Uncle Joe’s arm and dragging him from the saddle, Paul saw a bright red blotch erupt on his uncle’s left thigh. Uncle Joe’s horse went down, but got up after it made a huge splash. Uncle Joe had managed to free his boots from the stirrups. “Get him out of there, save him,” Paul shouted, quickly laying his camera at the roadside and jumping into the water.
Three other soldiers had gone down between Paul and his uncle. They blocked his way, and so did Lieutenant Pershing, who was angrily trying to stop two men fleeing to the rear.
Somehow Uncle Joe managed to keep a stiff arm on the shallow bottom, and his head above water, until a corpsman from the dressing station reached him and lifted him over his shoulder; Paul was still struggling to get around Pershing and the runaways, but he saw Uncle Joe’s head bounce against the corpsman’s back. His eyes were closed. Water streamed off his hair.
The corpsman staggered upstream toward the dressing station. Uncle Joe’s leg trailed in the water, blood like a black dye pouring from it. Paul picked up his camera and wove through the underbrush toward the open-sided tent with the red pennon.
The corpsman laid the general on a litter seconds before Paul arrived. Uncle Joe’s face was pale as milk. At the far side of the tent, a surgeon was sawing the leg of a black soldier biting down on a hickory baton while an orderly dribbled whiskey into the corner of his mouth. A white soldier without a shirt was on the nearest table. A haggard surgeon probed a large and exc
eedingly gory wound in the soldier’s chest. The surgeon shouted at Paul. “Stay the hell out of here unless you’re bleeding.”
“This officer is my uncle. I want to know how badly he’s hurt.”
“For Christ’s sake, I’m working on this one. Shoulder straps don’t get you special attention here. You’ll have to wait.”
Paul watched Pershing’s black soldiers pouring across the ford. The artillery and small-arms fire crashed without letup. “I can’t wait. I will be back.”
He shouldered the tripod and waded into the bloody river.
Beyond the Aguadores, the land opened out to another grassy plain broken here and there by barbed wire fences. The plain ran upward to the San Juan Heights, and to a lower eminence on the right, Kettle Hill. Here Colonel Roosevelt led a fierce attack shortly after twelve o’clock.
All the commands had gotten horribly tangled. The cavalry’s right was mixed into the infantry’s left. Guidons and bellowing sergeants tried to reassemble their units, without much luck. Paul found himself in the middle of men from the 6th Infantry protecting themselves as best they could behind clumps of palmetto. There was a great deal of blood on the grass, and corpses were strewn about. On the heights, nothing could be seen of the Spaniards except for an occasional conical hat poking up near some large, well-kept farm buildings. The fire from up there was steady and decimating. It left no trace of smoke.
At 1:15, a furious brrrr from the left made Paul jump. Parker’s Gatling Gun detachment, across the ford at last. The Americans now had mechanized fire to counter the artillery on the heights.
Officers shouted orders for an advance. Men stood up, raised their rifles, began moving forward. Across a broad front, the infantry and cavalry charged San Juan Hill at a rapid walk.
The Spaniards poured down their fire. Sheets of flame seemed to spring from the heights. Men in front staggered or swayed, then fell, sometimes with a strange and beautiful grace. Somewhere to the left, hidden by smoke and the terrain, the Gatlings drummed steadily.
Doubled over to make a small target, one of the military attachés ran up beside Paul. He scanned the forward line with field glasses. Paul knew him; Major de Grandpré, from France. The attaché shrugged in the direction of the advance. “Very foolish. But very gallant.”
Paul set up the tripod. He reached for the crank.
There was a sudden burst of fire; a keening cry. Panting, Paul looked back; saw a scattering of dead and wounded. With his head spinning from heat, exertion, the strain on his wound, he hoisted the camera and ran a few steps more, into the lung-burning smoke.
The Gatlings roared. The Spanish fire cut down the Americans climbing the hill, infantry and cavalry, black and white, tangled together without organization but advancing steadily, without pause. Paul saw Roosevelt going up among black men from the 10th, brandishing a revolver, hallooing and waving them on.
He wanted pictures up there. Once more he slung the tripod over his shoulder and ran uphill through the smoke, toward the spurting flames that marked the crest.
The Spanish soldiers were tough fighters; they didn’t give up easily. They poured heavy small-arms fire at the first Americans reaching the heights. Roosevelt was among them. He and some black cavalry and some of his Rough Riders were forced to shelter where they could, firing as the Spaniards readied a countercharge. Paul lay prone just to the rear of the group. He lay embracing his tripod and practically kissing the camera, his right hand crushing his straw hat to his head, as if that would somehow stop a bullet.
He heard intimidating screams; watched the Spaniards rise from their trenches to attempt to overwhelm the attackers. Roosevelt kept shouting encouragement, risking himself by leaping up to fire his revolver. More and more soldiers were coming up the hill, and superior numbers made the difference, along with the devastating fire of the Gatling detachment. The countercharge quickly fell apart. The Spanish began retreating to the hills and vales lying between the heights and Santiago.
About half past four the shooting stopped. Paul was finishing his last frames, running out the magazine with the camera tilted to look into Spanish rifle pits. The stench in the pits was vile, and the contents gruesome. Dozens of dead soldiers in bloody seersucker uniforms lay where they had fought and fallen. One, a man with a bullet hole in his forehead, held his hat in a way that suggested doffing it to a lady.
Audiences at Pflaum’s would probably loathe Paul’s pictures of the dead bodies, and the rest of what he’d filmed, if it came out: the final slow climb to the summit by the blue and khaki line; the dash to surround a blockhouse and the farm buildings. The Spanish flag being torn down. He’d even cranked while an infantry major came upon a wounded Spaniard and killed him with three shots. The smoke-spurts from the officer’s pistol showed clearly.
Before the Spaniard was hit by the first bullet, he shrieked for mercy. Americans would hate the scene because it disgraced one of their own. Paul hated it for a different reason. It was despicably inhuman. Then he thought of Wex and said to himself, Yes, but the pictures are the truth, and people should see.
It was possible to look out toward the southwest and clearly see the red-tiled adobes of Santiago a mile and a half away. Surely the Spaniards there saw the American flag floating over the Gatling-riddled blockhouse; surely they knew the end was coming.
Still, it was by no means a certainty yet. Down in the gentle vales between the heights and the town, hundreds of Spanish soldiers were reestablishing their lines. Dirt flew as they wielded their trenching tools.
A man in a boater and white raincoat came walking along the exposed hilltop, past a Spanish two-pounder canted crazily, one wheel shot to pieces. It was Crane.
Paul was too tired to do more than nod hello. In the drifting smoke he cranked the camera with an arm he wished he could break off, so badly did it hurt. He was still filming the rifle pit. Crane walked around him, out of camera range, and gazed down.
A shot rang out. Another. Crane took off his boater, calmly turned and peered at the shallow valleys, the source of the shots. Some of the Spanish soldiers were beginning a harrying fire.
An infantry officer wagged a pistol at them as he jogged by. “You civilians get off this hill, you’re not impressing anyone.” Crane and Paul paid no attention. Several more shots resounded. Paul heard the familiar buzz of Mauser bullets.
He checked the counter and saw he’d run out of film. He sank down on his haunches beside the tripod. Suddenly he remembered Uncle Joe. He must find out how he was. But not this moment. Not for a bit. He was spent.
“Incredible, eh, Dutch? In The Red Badge I only imagined it. This is ten times worse.”
Paul nodded dumbly.
“I wonder how Dick Davis is feeling. I wonder if he still thinks we’re a race of gentlemen. Well, I’d better go on. See as much as I can. Watch out for yourself, now.”
“And you, Stephen.”
Jotting in a notebook, Crane walked away. Paul saw him look into another rifle pit and shake his head in solemn wonder.
112
The General
SIX PILLARS OF SMOKE rose from Santiago harbor next day, visible for miles. Steam was being raised by the ships of the blockaded Spanish squadron—two destroyers and four large cruisers, including Infanta María Teresa, flagship of Admiral Cervera. To the American troops, and the American ships waiting offshore, the smoke meant one thing. Cervera would attempt to break out.
Sunday morning, July 3, the first Spanish vessel steamed from the harbor at half past eight. The other ships followed at ten-minute intervals. Soon, big naval guns were thundering, and a smoke pall hid the sea.
Cervera’s ships attempted to escape to the west. The American vessels gave chase, maneuvering to fire salvos whenever possible. Commodore Winfield Scott Schley directed the battle from aboard Brooklyn, but it was Iowa that scored the first fatal hit on María Teresa. Pipes ruptured; Spanish sailors died screaming in scalding steam. Iowa made a second direct hit, and a third. With his flagship i
n flames, and every man aboard destined to perish if she stayed on course, Cervera ordered the helm turned toward shore, where the burning vessel grounded. Those still alive leaped overboard to safety.
One by one, the other Spanish ships were grounded or sunk. The battle was over at a few minutes past one o’clock. Almost five hundred Spanish seamen had died, but only one American. The Navy began to pick up prisoners from the sea and the beach; seventeen hundred and fifty in all. One was Admiral Cervera. He was treated with all the dignity and courtesy his rank and the rules of war demanded. His bravery and humane concern for his crew were much admired by the Americans.
Full of opium pills for pain, Joe Crown listened to the noisy sea battle and watched the smoke rise as he lay on a cot in a field hospital tent. He was going to recover, though the surgeons said the shrapnel wound in his left thigh would have killed him had not the doctor at the temporary station by the river stopped the bleeding in time. News of the great victory reached the field hospital late in the afternoon. Weak as he was, Joe joined in the cheering.
On that same Sunday, he learned later, General Shafter sent a letter into Santiago under a flag of truce. He warned the Spanish high command that at 10 A.M. Monday he would begin shelling the town. He requested that all women, children, and foreign nationals leave before firing commenced. The exodus began before sunset. By the time the American bombardment opened precisely at ten the following morning, several thousand civilians were in makeshift refugee camps around the settlement of El Caney. The American Army lacked the rations to feed them. Hunger and illness came quickly.
During the next few days, the Spaniards defending Santiago counterattacked several times, with little success. The Americans had built bombproofs and dug trenches into which they lowered the Gatlings, minus their wheels. Protected by their deadly fire, American soldiers gained ground a little at a time. There were bloody engagements, and casualties on both sides. But the end of the campaign was no longer in doubt.