Books: Notes of a War Correspondent

R >> Richard Harding Davis >> Notes of a War Correspondent

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"Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me," Roberts added, cheerfully.
"They must be very busy. I can wait."

As yet, with all these killed and wounded, we had accomplished
nothing--except to obey orders--which was to await further orders.
The observation balloon hastened the end. It came blundering down
the trail, and stopped the advance of the First and Tenth Cavalry,
and was sent up directly over the heads of our men to observe what
should have been observed a week before by scouts and reconnoitring
parties. A balloon, two miles to the rear, and high enough in the
air to be out of range of the enemy's fire may some day prove itself
to be of use and value. But a balloon on the advance line, and only
fifty feet above the tops of the trees, was merely an invitation to
the enemy to kill everything beneath it. And the enemy responded to
the invitation. A Spaniard might question if he could hit a man, or
a number of men, hidden in the bushes, but had no doubt at all as to
his ability to hit a mammoth glistening ball only six hundred yards
distant, and so all the trenches fired at it at once, and the men of
the First and Tenth, packed together directly behind it, received the
full force of the bullets. The men lying directly below it received
the shrapnel which was timed to hit it, and which at last,
fortunately, did hit it. This was endured for an hour, an hour of
such hell of fire and heat, that the heat in itself, had there been
no bullets, would have been remembered for its cruelty. Men gasped
on their backs, like fishes in the bottom of a boat, their heads
burning inside and out, their limbs too heavy to move. They had been
rushed here and rushed there wet with sweat and wet with fording the
streams, under a sun that would have made moving a fan an effort, and
they lay prostrate, gasping at the hot air, with faces aflame, and
their tongues sticking out, and their eyes rolling. All through this
the volleys from the rifle-pits sputtered and rattled, and the
bullets sang continuously like the wind through the rigging in a
gale, shrapnel whined and broke, and still no order came from General
Shafter.

Captain Howse, of General Sumner's staff, rode down the trail to
learn what had delayed the First and Tenth, and was hailed by Colonel
Derby, who was just descending from the shattered balloon.

"I saw men up there on those hills," Colonel Derby shouted; "they are
firing at our troops." That was part of the information contributed
by the balloon. Captain Howse's reply is lost to history.

General Kent's division, which, according to the plan, was to have
been held in reserve, had been rushed up in the rear of the First and
Tenth, and the Tenth had deployed in skirmish order to the right.
The trail was now completely blocked by Kent's division. Lawton's
division, which was to have re-enforced on the right, had not
appeared, but incessant firing from the direction of El Caney showed
that he and Chaffee were fighting mightily. The situation was
desperate. Our troops could not retreat, as the trail for two miles
behind them was wedged with men. They could not remain where they
were, for they were being shot to pieces. There was only one thing
they could do--go forward and take the San Juan hills by assault. It
was as desperate as the situation itself. To charge earthworks held
by men with modern rifles, and using modern artillery, until after
the earthworks have been shaken by artillery, and to attack them in
advance and not in the flanks, are both impossible military
propositions. But this campaign had not been conducted according to
military rules, and a series of military blunders had brought seven
thousand American soldiers into a chute of death from which there was
no escape except by taking the enemy who held it by the throat and
driving him out and beating him down. So the generals of divisions
and brigades stepped back and relinquished their command to the
regimental officers and the enlisted men.

"We can do nothing more," they virtually said. "There is the enemy."

Colonel Roosevelt, on horseback, broke from the woods behind the line
of the Ninth, and finding its men lying in his way, shouted: "If you
don't wish to go forward, let my men pass." The junior officers of
the Ninth, with their negroes, instantly sprang into line with the
Rough Riders, and charged at the blue block-house on the right.

I speak of Roosevelt first because, with General Hawkins, who led
Kent's division, notably the Sixth and Sixteenth Regulars, he was,
without doubt, the most conspicuous figure in the charge. General
Hawkins, with hair as white as snow, and yet far in advance of men
thirty years his junior, was so noble a sight that you felt inclined
to pray for his safety; on the other hand, Roosevelt, mounted high on
horseback, and charging the rifle-pits at a gallop and quite alone,
made you feel that you would like to cheer. He wore on his sombrero
a blue polka-dot handkerchief, a la Havelock, which, as he advanced,
floated out straight behind his head, like a guidon. Afterward, the
men of his regiment who followed this flag, adopted a polka-dot
handkerchief as the badge of the Rough Riders. These two officers
were notably conspicuous in the charge, but no one can claim that any
two men, or any one man, was more brave or more daring, or showed
greater courage in that slow, stubborn advance, than did any of the
others. Some one asked one of the officers if he had any difficulty
in making his men follow him. "No," he answered, "I had some
difficulty in keeping up with them." As one of the brigade generals
said: "San Juan was won by the regimental officers and men. We had
as little to do as the referee at a prize-fight who calls 'time.' We
called 'time' and they did the fighting."

I have seen many illustrations and pictures of this charge on the San
Juan hills, but none of them seem to show it just as I remember it.
In the picture-papers the men are running uphill swiftly and
gallantly, in regular formation, rank after rank, with flags flying,
their eyes aflame, and their hair streaming, their bayonets fixed, in
long, brilliant lines, an invincible, overpowering weight of numbers.
Instead of which I think the thing which impressed one the most, when
our men started from cover, was that they were so few. It seemed as
if some one had made an awful and terrible mistake. One's instinct
was to call to them to come back. You felt that some one had
blundered and that these few men were blindly following out some
madman's mad order. It was not heroic then, it seemed merely
absurdly pathetic. The pity of it, the folly of such a sacrifice was
what held you.

They had no glittering bayonets, they were not massed in regular
array. There were a few men in advance, bunched together, and
creeping up a steep, sunny hill, the tops of which roared and flashed
with flame. The men held their guns pressed across their chests and
stepped heavily as they climbed. Behind these first few, spreading
out like a fan, were single lines of men, slipping and scrambling in
the smooth grass, moving forward with difficulty, as though they were
wading waist high through water, moving slowly, carefully, with
strenuous effort. It was much more wonderful than any swinging
charge could have been. They walked to greet death at every step,
many of them, as they advanced, sinking suddenly or pitching forward
and disappearing in the high grass, but the others waded on,
stubbornly, forming a thin blue line that kept creeping higher and
higher up the hill. It was as inevitable as the rising tide. It was
a miracle of self-sacrifice, a triumph of bull-dog courage, which one
watched breathless with wonder. The fire of the Spanish riflemen,
who still stuck bravely to their posts, doubled and trebled in
fierceness, the crests of the hills crackled and burst in amazed
roars, and rippled with waves of tiny flame. But the blue line crept
steadily up and on, and then, near the top, the broken fragments
gathered together with a sudden burst of speed, the Spaniards
appeared for a moment outlined against the sky and poised for instant
flight, fired a last volley, and fled before the swift-moving wave
that leaped and sprang after them.

The men of the Ninth and the Rough Riders rushed to the block-house
together, the men of the Sixth, of the Third, of the Tenth Cavalry,
of the Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry, fell on their faces along the
crest of the hills beyond, and opened upon the vanishing enemy. They
drove the yellow silk flags of the cavalry and the flag of their
country into the soft earth of the trenches, and then sank down and
looked back at the road they had climbed and swung their hats in the
air. And from far overhead, from these few figures perched on the
Spanish rifle-pits, with their flags planted among the empty
cartridges of the enemy, and overlooking the walls of Santiago, came,
faintly, the sound of a tired, broken cheer.

III--THE TAKING OF COAMO

This is the inside story of the surrender, during the Spanish War, of
the town of Coamo. It is written by the man to whom the town
surrendered. Immediately after the surrender this same man became
Military Governor of Coamo. He held office for fully twenty minutes.

Before beginning this story the reader must forget all he may happen
to know of this particular triumph of the Porto Rican Expedition. He
must forget that the taking of Coamo has always been credited to
Major-General James H. Wilson, who on that occasion commanded Captain
Anderson's Battery, the Sixteenth Pennsylvania, Troop C of Brooklyn,
and under General Ernst, the Second and Third Wisconsin Volunteers.
He must forget that in the records of the War Department all the
praise, and it is of the highest, for this victory is bestowed upon
General Wilson and his four thousand soldiers. Even the writer of
this, when he cabled an account of the event to his paper, gave, with
every one else, the entire credit to General Wilson. And ever since
his conscience has upbraided him. His only claim for tolerance as a
war correspondent has been that he always has stuck to the facts, and
now he feels that in the sacred cause of history his friendship and
admiration for General Wilson, that veteran of the Civil, Philippine,
and Chinese Wars, must no longer stand in the way of his duty as an
accurate reporter. He no longer can tell a lie. He must at last own
up that he himself captured Coamo.

On the morning of the 9th of August, 1898, the Sixteenth Pennsylvania
Volunteers arrived on the outskirts of that town. In order to get
there they had spent the night in crawling over mountain trails and
scrambling through streams and ravines. It was General Wilson's plan
that by this flanking night march the Sixteenth Pennsylvania would
reach the road leading from Coamo to San Juan in time to cut off the
retreat of the Spanish garrison, when General Wilson, with the main
body, attacked it from the opposite side.

At seven o'clock in the morning General Wilson began the frontal
attack by turning loose the artillery on a block-house, which
threatened his approach, and by advancing the Wisconsin Volunteers.
The cavalry he sent to the right to capture Los Banos. At eight
o'clock, from where the main body rested, two miles from Coamo, we
could hear the Sixteenth Pennsylvania open its attack and instantly
become hotly engaged. The enemy returned the fire fiercely, and the
firing from both sides at once became so severe that it was evident
the Pennsylvania Volunteers either would take the town without the
main body, or that they would greatly need its assistance. The
artillery was accordingly advanced one thousand yards and the
infantry was hurried forward. The Second Wisconsin approached Coamo
along the main road from Ponce, the Third Wisconsin through fields of
grass to the right of the road, until the two regiments met at the
ford by which the Banos road crosses the Coamo River. But before
they met, from a position near the artillery, I had watched through
my glasses the Second Wisconsin with General Ernst at its head
advancing along the main road, and as, when I saw them, they were
near the river, I guessed they would continue across the bridge and
that they soon would be in the town.

As the firing from the Sixteenth still continued, it seemed obvious
that General Ernst would be the first general officer to enter Coamo,
and to receive its surrender. I had never seen five thousand people
surrender to one man, and it seemed that, if I were to witness that
ceremony, my best plan was to abandon the artillery and, as quickly
as possible, pursue the Second Wisconsin. I did not want to share
the spectacle of the surrender with my brother correspondents, so I
tried to steal away from the three who were present. They were
Thomas F. Millard, Walstein Root of the Sun, and Horace Thompson. By
dodging through a coffee central I came out a half mile from them and
in advance of the Third Wisconsin. There I encountered two "boy
officers," Captain John C. Breckenridge and Lieutenant Fred. S.
Titus, who had temporarily abandoned their thankless duties in the
Commissariat Department in order to seek death or glory in the
skirmish-line. They wanted to know where I was going, and when I
explained, they declared that when Coamo surrendered they also were
going to be among those present.

So we slipped away from the main body and rode off as an independent
organization. But from the bald ridge, where the artillery was still
hammering the town, the three correspondents and Captain Alfred
Paget, Her Majesty's naval attache, observed our attempt to steal a
march on General Wilson's forces, and pursued us and soon overtook
us.

We now were seven, or to be exact, eight, for with Mr. Millard was
"Jimmy," who in times of peace sells papers in Herald Square, and in
times of war carries Mr. Millard's copy to the press post. We were
much nearer the ford than the bridge, so we waded the "drift" and
started on a gallop along the mile of military road that lay between
us and Coamo. The firing from the Sixteenth Pennsylvania had
slackened, but as we advanced it became sharper, more insistent, and
seemed to urge us to greater speed. Across the road were dug rough
rifle-pits which had the look of having been but that moment
abandoned. What had been intended for the breakfast of the enemy was
burning in pots over tiny fires, little heaps of cartridges lay in
readiness upon the edges of each pit, and an arm-chair, in which a
sentry had kept a comfortable lookout, lay sprawling in the middle of
the road. The huts that faced it were empty. The only living things
we saw were the chickens and pigs in the kitchen-gardens. On either
hand was every evidence of hasty and panic-stricken flight. We
rejoiced at these evidences of the fact that the Wisconsin Volunteers
had swept all before them. Our rejoicings were not entirely
unselfish. It was so quiet ahead that some one suggested the town
had already surrendered. But that would have been too bitter a
disappointment, and as the firing from the further side of Coamo
still continued, we refused to believe it, and whipped the ponies
into greater haste. We were now only a quarter of a mile distant
from the built-up portion of Coamo, where the road turned sharply
into the main street of the town.

Captain Paget, who in the absence of the British military attache on
account of sickness, accompanied the army as a guest of General
Wilson, gave way to thoughts of etiquette.

"Will General Wilson think I should have waited for him?" he shouted.
The words were jolted out of him as he rose in the saddle. The noise
of the ponies' hoofs made conversation difficult. I shouted back
that the presence of General Ernst in the town made it quite proper
for a foreign attache to enter it.

"It must have surrendered by now," I shouted. "It's been half an
hour since Ernst crossed the bridge."

At these innocent words, all my companions tugged violently at their
bridles and shouted "Whoa!"

"Crossed the bridge?" they yelled. "There is no bridge! The bridge
is blown up! If he hasn't crossed by the ford, he isn't in the
town!"

Then, in my turn, I shouted "Whoa!"

But by now the Porto Rican ponies had decided that this was the race
of their lives, and each had made up his mind that, Mexican bit or no
Mexican bit, until he had carried his rider first into the town of
Coamo, he would not be halted. As I tugged helplessly at my Mexican
bit, I saw how I had made my mistake. The volunteers, on finding the
bridge destroyed, instead of marching upon Coamo had turned to the
ford, the same ford which we had crossed half an hour before they
reached it. They now were behind us. Instead of a town which had
surrendered to a thousand American soldiers, we, seven unarmed men
and Jimmy, were being swept into a hostile city as fast as the
enemy's ponies could take us there.

Breckenridge and Titus hastily put the blame upon me.

"If we get into trouble with the General for this," they shouted, "it
will be your fault. You told us Ernst was in the town with a
thousand men."

I shouted back that no one regretted the fact that he was not more
keenly than I did myself.

Titus and Breckenridge each glanced at a new, full-dress sword.

"We might as well go in," they shouted, "and take it anyway!" I
decided that Titus and Breckenridge were wasted in the Commissariat
Department.

The three correspondents looked more comfortable.

"If you officers go in," they cried, "the General can't blame us,"
and they dug their spurs into the ponies.

"Wait!" shouted Her Majesty's representative. "That's all very well
for you chaps, but what protects me if the Admiralty finds out I have
led a charge on a Spanish garrison?"

But Paget's pony refused to consider the feelings of the Lords of the
Admiralty. As successfully Paget might have tried to pull back a
row-boat from the edge of Niagara. And, moreover, Millard, in order
that Jimmy might be the first to reach Ponce with despatches, had
mounted him on the fastest pony in the bunch, and he already was far
in the lead. His sporting instincts, nursed in the pool-rooms of the
Tenderloin and at Guttenburg, had sent him three lengths to the good.
It never would do to have a newsboy tell in New York that he had
beaten the correspondents of the papers he sold in the streets; nor
to permit commissioned officers to take the dust of one who never
before had ridden on anything but a cable car. So we all raced
forward and, bunched together, swept into the main street of Coamo.
It was gratefully empty. There were no American soldiers, but, then,
neither were there any Spanish soldiers. Across the street stretched
more rifle-pits and barricades of iron pipes, but in sight there was
neither friend nor foe. On the stones of the deserted street the
galloping hoofs sounded like the advance of a whole regiment of
cavalry. Their clatter gave us a most comfortable feeling. We
almost could imagine the townspeople believing us to be the Rough
Riders themselves and fleeing before us.

And then, the empty street seemed to threaten an ambush. We thought
hastily of sunken mines, of soldiers crouching behind the barriers,
behind the houses at the next corner, of Mausers covering us from the
latticed balconies overhead. Until at last, when the silence had
become alert and menacing, a lonely man dashed into the middle of the
street, hurled a white flag in front of us, and then dived headlong
under the porch of a house. The next instant, as though at a signal,
a hundred citizens, each with a white flag in both hands, ran from
cover, waving their banners, and gasping in weak and terror-shaken
tones, "Vivan los Americanos."

We tried to pull up, but the ponies had not yet settled among
themselves which of us had won, and carried us to the extreme edge of
the town, where a precipice seemed to invite them to stop, and we
fell off into the arms of the Porto Ricans. They brought us wine in
tin cans, cigars, borne in the aprons and mantillas of their women-
folk, and demijohns of native rum. They were abject, trembling,
tearful. They made one instantly forget that the moment before he
had been extremely frightened.

One of them spoke to me the few words of Spanish with which I had an
acquaintance. He told me he was the Alcalde, and that he begged to
surrender into my hands the town of Coamo. I led him instantly to
one side. I was afraid that if I did not take him up he would
surrender to Paget or to Jimmy. I bade him conduct me to his
official residence. He did so, and gave me the key to the cartel, a
staff of office of gold and ebony, and the flag of the town, which he
had hidden behind his writing-desk. It was a fine Spanish flag with
the coat of arms embroidered in gold. I decided that, with whatever
else I might part, that flag would always be mine, that the chance of
my again receiving the surrender of a town of five thousand people
was slender, and that this token would be wrapped around me in my
coffin. I accordingly hid it in my poncho and strapped it to my
saddle. Then I appointed a hotel-keeper, who spoke a little English,
as my official interpreter, and told the Alcalde that I was now
Military Governor, Mayor, and Chief of Police, and that I wanted the
seals of the town. He gave me a rubber stamp with a coat of arms cut
in it, and I wrote myself three letters, which, to insure their safe
arrival, I addressed to three different places, and stamped them with
the rubber seals. In time all three reached me, and I now have them
as documentary proof of the fact that for twenty minutes I was
Military Governor and Mayor of Coamo.

During that brief administration I detailed Titus and Breckenridge to
wigwag the Sixteenth Pennsylvania that we had taken the town, and
that it was now safe for them to enter. In order to compromise Paget
they used his red silk handkerchief. Root I detailed to conciliate
the inhabitants by drinking with every one of them. He tells me he
carried out my instructions to the letter. I also settled one
assault and battery case, and put the chief offender under arrest.
At least, I told the official interpreter to inform him that he was
under arrest, but as I had no one to guard him he grew tired of being
under arrest and went off to celebrate his emancipation from the rule
of Spain.

My administration came to an end in twenty minutes, when General
Wilson rode into Coamo at the head of his staff and three thousand
men. He wore a white helmet, and he looked the part of the
conquering hero so satisfactorily that I forgot I was Mayor and ran
out into the street to snap a picture of him. He looked greatly
surprised and asked me what I was doing in his town. The tone in
which he spoke caused me to decide that, after all, I would not keep
the flag of Coamo. I pulled it off my saddle and said: "General,
it's too long a story to tell you now, but here is the flag of the
town. It's the first Spanish flag"--and it was--"that has been
captured in Porto Rico."

General Wilson smiled again and accepted the flag. He and about four
thousand other soldiers think it belongs to them. But the truth will
out. Some day the bestowal on the proper persons of a vote of thanks
from Congress, a pension, or any other trifle, like prize-money, will
show the American people to whom that flag really belongs.

I know that in time the glorious deed of the seven heroes of Coamo,
or eight, if you include "Jimmy," will be told in song and story.
Some one else will write the song. This is the story.

IV--THE PASSING OF SAN JUAN HILL

When I was a boy I thought battles were fought in waste places
selected for the purpose. I argued from the fact that when our
school nine wished to play ball it was forced into the suburbs to
search for a vacant lot. I thought opposing armies also marched out
of town until they reached some desolate spot where there were no
window panes, and where their cannon-balls would hurt no one but
themselves. Even later, when I saw battles fought among villages,
artillery galloping through a cornfield, garden walls breached for
rifle fire, and farm-houses in flames, it always seemed as though the
generals had elected to fight in such surroundings through an
inexcusable striving after theatrical effect--as though they wished
to furnish the war correspondents with a chance for descriptive
writing. With the horrors of war as horrible as they are without any
aid from these contrasts, their presence always seemed not only
sinful but bad art; as unnecessary as turning a red light on the
dying gladiator.

There are so many places which are scenes set apart for battles--
places that look as though Nature had condemned them for just such
sacrifices. Colenso, with its bare kopjes and great stretch of
veldt, is one of these, and so, also, is Spion Kop, and, in
Manchuria, Nan Shan Hill. The photographs have made all of us
familiar with the vast, desolate approaches to Port Arthur. These
are among the waste places of the earth--barren, deserted, fit
meeting grounds only for men whose object in life for the moment is
to kill men. Were you shown over one of these places, and told, "A
battle was fought here," you would answer, "Why, of course!"

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