Books: Notes of a War Correspondent
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Richard Harding Davis >> Notes of a War Correspondent
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But down in Cuba, outside of Santiago, where the United States army
fought its solitary and modest battle with Spain, you might many
times pass by San Juan Hill and think of it, if you thought of it at
all, as only a pretty site for a bungalow, as a place obviously
intended for orchards and gardens.
On July 1st, twelve years ago, when the American army came upon it
out of the jungle the place wore a partial disguise. It still was an
irregular ridge of smiling, sunny hills with fat, comfortable curves,
and in some places a steep, straight front. But above the steepest,
highest front frowned an aggressive block-house, and on all the
slopes and along the sky-line were rows of yellow trenches, and at
the base a cruel cat's cradle of barbed wire. It was like the face
of a pretty woman behind the bars of a visor. I find that on the day
of the fight twelve years ago I cabled my paper that San Juan Hill
reminded the Americans of "a sunny orchard in New England." That was
how it may have looked when the regulars were climbing up the steep
front to capture the block-house, and when the cavalry and Rough
Riders, having taken Kettle Hill, were running down its opposite
slope, past the lake, to take that crest of San Juan Hill which lies
to the right of the block-house. It may then have looked like a
sunny New England orchard, but before night fell the intrenching
tools had lent those sunny slopes "a fierce and terrible aspect."
And after that, hour after hour, and day after day, we saw the hill
eaten up by our trenches, hidden by a vast laundry of shelter tents,
and torn apart by bomb-proofs, their jutting roofs of logs and broken
branches weighed down by earth and stones and looking like the pit
mouths to many mines. That probably is how most of the American army
last saw San Juan Hill, and that probably is how it best remembers
it--as a fortified camp. That was twelve years ago. When I
revisited it, San Juan Hill was again a sunny, smiling farm land, the
trenches planted with vegetables, the roofs of the bomb-proofs fallen
in and buried beneath creeping vines, and the barbed-wire
entanglements holding in check only the browsing cattle.
San Juan Hill is not a solitary hill, but the most prominent of a
ridge of hills, with Kettle Hill a quarter of a mile away on the edge
of the jungle and separated from the ridge by a tiny lake. In the
local nomenclature Kettle Hill, which is the name given to it by the
Rough Riders, has always been known as San Juan Hill, with an added
name to distinguish it from the other San Juan Hill of greater
renown.
The days we spent on those hills were so rich in incident and
interest and were filled with moments of such excitement, of such
pride in one's fellow-countrymen, of pity for the hurt and dying, of
laughter and good-fellowship, that one supposed he might return after
even twenty years and recognize every detail of the ground. But a
shorter time has made startling and confusing changes. Now a visitor
will find that not until after several different visits, and by
walking and riding foot by foot over the hills, can he make them fall
into line as he thinks he once knew them. Immediately around San
Juan Hill itself there has been some attempt made to preserve the
ground as a public park. A barbed-wire fence, with a gateway,
encircles the block-house, which has been converted into a home for
the caretaker of the park, and then, skirting the road to Santiago to
include the tree under which the surrender was arranged, stretches to
the left of the block-house to protect a monument. This monument was
erected by Americans to commemorate the battle. It is now rapidly
falling to pieces, but there still is enough of it intact to show the
pencilled scribblings and autographs of tourists who did not take
part in the battle, but who in this public manner show that they
approve of its results. The public park is less than a quarter of a
mile square. Except for it no other effort has been made either by
Cubans or Americans to designate the lines that once encircled and
menaced Santiago, and Nature, always at her best under a tropical
sun, has done all in her power to disguise and forever obliterate the
scene of the army's one battle. Those features which still remain
unchanged are very few. The Treaty Tree, now surrounded by a tall
fence, is one, the block-house is another. The little lake in which,
even when the bullets were dropping, the men used to bathe and wash
their clothes, the big iron sugar kettle that gave a new name to
Kettle Hill, and here and there a trench hardly deeper than a
ploughed furrow, and nearly hidden by growing plants, are the few
landmarks that remain.
Of the camps of Generals Chaffee, Lawton, Bates, Sumner, and Wheeler,
of Colonels Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt, there are but the
slightest traces. The Bloody Bend, as some call it, in the San Juan
River, as some call that stream, seems to have entirely disappeared.
At least, it certainly was not where it should have been, and the
place the hotel guides point out to unsuspecting tourists bears not
the slightest physical resemblance to that ford. In twelve years,
during one of which there has been in Santiago the most severe
rainfall in sixty years, the San Juan stream has carried away its
banks and the trees that lined them, and the trails that should mark
where the ford once crossed have so altered and so many new ones have
been added, that the exact location of the once famous dressing
station is now most difficult, if not impossible, to determine. To
establish the sites of the old camping grounds is but little less
difficult. The head-quarters of General Wheeler are easy to
recognize, for the reason that the place selected was in a hollow,
and the most unhealthy spot along the five miles of intrenchments.
It is about thirty yards from where the road turns to rise over the
ridge to Santiago, and all the water from the hill pours into it as
into a rain barrel. It was here that Troop G, Third Cavalry, under
Major Hardee, as it was Wheeler's escort, was forced to bivouac, and
where one-third of its number came down with fever. The camp of
General Sam Sumner was some sixty yards to the right of the head-
quarters of General Wheeler, on the high shoulder of the hill just
above the camp of the engineers, who were on the side of the road
opposite. The camps of Generals Chaffee, Lawton, Hawkins, Ludlow,
and the positions and trenches taken and held by the different
regiments under them one can place only relatively. One reason for
this is that before our army attacked the hills all the underbrush
and small trees that might conceal the advance of our men had been
cleared away by the Spaniards, leaving the hill, except for the high
crest, comparatively bare. To-day the hills are thick with young
trees and enormous bushes. The alteration in the landscape is as
marked as is the difference between ground cleared for golf and the
same spot planted with corn and fruit-trees.
Of all the camps, the one that to-day bears the strongest evidences
of its occupation is that of the Rough Riders. A part of the camp of
that regiment, which was situated on the ridge some hundred feet from
the Santiago road, was pitched under a clump of shade trees, and to-
day, even after seven years, the trunks of these trees bear the names
and initials of the men who camped beneath them. {4} These men will
remember that when they took this hill they found that the
fortifications beneath the trees were partly made from the
foundations of an adobe house. The red tiles from its roof still
litter the ground. These tiles and the names cut in the bark of the
trees determine absolutely the site of one-half of the camp, but the
other half, where stood Tiffany's quick-firing gun and Parker's
Gatling, has been almost obliterated. The tree under which Colonel
pitched his tent I could not discover, and the trenches in which he
used to sit with his officers and with the officers from the
regiments of the regular army are now levelled to make a kitchen-
garden. Sometimes the ex-President is said to have too generously
given office and promotion to the friends he made in Cuba. These men
he met in the trenches were then not necessarily his friends. To-day
they are not necessarily his friends. They are the men the free life
of the rifle-pits enabled him to know and to understand as the
settled relations of home life and peace would never have permitted.
At that time none of them guessed that the "amateur colonel," to whom
they talked freely as to a comrade, would be their Commander-in-
Chief. They did not suspect that he would become even the next
Governor of New York, certainly not that in a few years he would be
the President of the United States. So they showed themselves to him
frankly, unconsciously. They criticised, argued, disagreed, and he
became familiar with the views, character, and worth of each, and
remembered. The seeds planted in those half-obliterated trenches
have borne greater results than ever will the kitchen-garden.
The kitchen-garden is immediately on the crest of the hill, and near
it a Cuban farmer has built a shack of mud and twigs and cultivated
several acres of land. On Kettle Hill there are three more such
shacks, and over all the hills the new tenants have strung stout
barbed-wire fences and made new trails and reared wooden gateways.
It was curious to find how greatly these modern improvements confused
one's recollection of the landscape, and it was interesting, also, to
find how the presence on the hills of 12,000 men and the excitement
of the time magnified distances and disarranged the landscape.
During the fight I walked along a portion of the Santiago road, and
for many years I always have thought of that walk as extending over
immense distances. It started from the top of San Juan Hill beside
the block-house, where I had climbed to watch our artillery in
action. By a mistake, the artillery had been sent there, and it
remained exposed on the crest only about three minutes. During that
brief moment the black powder it burned drew upon it the fire of
every rifle in the Spanish line. To load his piece, each of our men
was forced to crawl to it on his stomach, rise on one elbow in order
to shove in the shell and lock the breech, and then, still flat on
the ground, wriggle below the crest. In the three minutes three men
were wounded and two killed; and the guns were withdrawn. I also
withdrew. I withdrew first. Indeed, all that happened after the
first three seconds of those three minutes is hearsay, for I was in
the Santiago road at the foot of the hill and retreating briskly.
This road also was under a cross-fire, which made it stretch in
either direction to an interminable distance. I remember a
government teamster driving a Studebaker wagon filled with ammunition
coming up at a gallop out of this interminable distance and seeking
shelter against the base of the hill. Seated beside him was a small
boy, freckled and sunburned, a stowaway from one of the transports.
He was grandly happy and excited, and his only fear was that he was
not "under fire." From our coign of safety, with our backs to the
hill, the teamster and I assured him that, on that point, he need
feel no morbid doubt. But until a bullet embedded itself in the blue
board of the wagon he was not convinced. Then with his jack-knife he
dug it out and shouted with pleasure. "I guess the folks will have
to believe I was in a battle now," he said. That coign of safety
ceasing to be a coign of safety caused us to move on in search of
another, and I came upon Sergeant Borrowe blocking the road with his
dynamite gun. He and his brother and three regulars were busily
correcting a hitch in its mechanism. An officer carrying an order
along the line halted his sweating horse and gazed at the strange gun
with professional knowledge.
"That must be the dynamite gun I have heard so much about," he
shouted. Borrowe saluted and shouted assent. The officer, greatly
interested, forgot his errand.
"I'd like to see you fire it once," he said eagerly. Borrowe,
delighted at the chance to exhibit his toy to a professional soldier,
beamed with equal eagerness.
"In just a moment, sir," he said; "this shell seems to have jammed a
bit." The officer, for the first time seeing the shell stuck in the
breech, hurriedly gathered up his reins. He seemed to be losing
interest. With elaborate carelessness I began to edge off down the
road.
"Wait," Borrowe begged; "we'll have it out in a minute."
Suddenly I heard the officer's voice raised wildly.
"What--what," he gasped, "is that man doing with that axe?"
"He's helping me to get out this shell," said Borrowe.
"Good God!" said the officer. Then he remembered his errand.
Until last year, when I again met young Borrowe gayly disporting
himself at a lawn-tennis tournament at Mattapoisett, I did not know
whether his brother's method of removing dynamite with an axe had
been entirely successful. He said it worked all right.
At the turn of the road I found Colonel Leonard Wood and a group of
Rough Riders, who were busily intrenching. At the same moment
Stephen Crane came up with "Jimmy" Hare, the man who has made the
Russian-Japanese War famous. Crane walked to the crest and stood
there as sharply outlined as a semaphore, observing the enemy's
lines, and instantly bringing upon himself and us the fire of many
Mausers. With every one else, Wood was crouched below the crest and
shouted to Crane to lie down. Crane, still standing, as though to
get out of ear-shot, moved away, and Wood again ordered him to lie
down.
"You're drawing the fire on these men," Wood commanded. Although the
heat--it was the 1st of July in the tropics--was terrific, Crane wore
a long India rubber rain-coat and was smoking a pipe. He appeared as
cool as though he were looking down from a box at a theatre. I knew
that to Crane, anything that savored of a pose was hateful, so, as I
did not want to see him killed, I called, "You're not impressing any
one by doing that, Crane." As I hoped he would, he instantly dropped
to his knees. When he crawled over to where we lay, I explained, "I
knew that would fetch you," and he grinned, and said, "Oh, was that
it?"
A captain of the cavalry came up to Wood and asked permission to
withdraw his troop from the top of the hill to a trench forty feet
below the one they were in. "They can't possibly live where they are
now," he explained, "and they're doing no good there, for they can't
raise their heads to fire. In that lower trench they would be out of
range themselves and would be able to fire back."
"Yes," said Wood, "but all the other men in the first trench would
see them withdraw, and the moral effect would be bad. They needn't
attempt to return the enemy's fire, but they must not retreat."
The officer looked as though he would like to argue. He was a West
Point graduate and a full-fledged captain in the regular army. To
him, Wood, in spite of his volunteer rank of colonel, which that day,
owing to the illness of General Young, had placed him in command of a
brigade, was still a doctor. But discipline was strong in him, and
though he looked many things, he rose from his knees and grimly
saluted. But at that moment, without waiting for the permission of
any one, the men leaped out of the trench and ran. It looked as
though they were going to run all the way to the sea, and the sight
was sickening. But they had no intention of running to the sea.
They ran only to the trench forty feet farther down and jumped into
it, and instantly turning, began pumping lead at the enemy. Since
five that morning Wood had been running about on his feet, his
clothes stuck to him with sweat and the mud and water of forded
streams, and as he rose he limped slightly. "My, but I'm tired!" he
said, in a tone of the most acute surprise, and as though that fact
was the only one that was weighing on his mind. He limped over to
the trench in which the men were now busily firing off their rifles
and waved a riding-crop he carried at the trench they had abandoned.
He was standing as Crane had been standing, in silhouette against the
sky-line. "Come back, boys," we heard him shouting. "The other men
can't withdraw, and so you mustn't. It looks bad. Come on, get out
of that!" What made it more amusing was that, although Wood had,
like every one else, discarded his coat and wore a strange uniform of
gray shirt, white riding-breeches, and a cowboy Stetson, with no
insignia of rank, not even straps pinned to his shirt, still the men
instantly accepted his authority. They looked at him on the crest of
the hill, waving his stick persuasively at the grave-like trench at
his feet, and then with a shout scampered back to it.
After that, as I had a bad attack of sciatica and no place to sleep
and nothing to eat, I accepted Crane's offer of a blanket and coffee
at his bivouac near El Poso. On account of the sciatica I was not
able to walk fast, and, although for over a mile of the way the trail
was under fire, Crane and Hare each insisted on giving me an arm, and
kept step with my stumblings. Whenever I protested and refused their
sacrifice and pointed out the risk they were taking they smiled as at
the ravings of a naughty child, and when I lay down in the road and
refused to budge unless they left me, Crane called the attention of
Hare to the effect of the setting sun behind the palm-trees. To the
reader all these little things that one remembers seem very little
indeed, but they were vivid at the moment, and I have always thought
of them as stretching over a long extent of time and territory.
Before I revisited San Juan I would have said that the distance along
the road from the point where I left the artillery to where I joined
Wood was three-quarters of a mile. When I paced it later I found the
distance was about seventy-five yards. I do not urge my stupidity or
my extreme terror as a proof that others would be as greatly
confused, but, if only for the sake of the stupid ones, it seems a
pity that the landmarks of San Juan should not be rescued from the
jungle, and a few sign-posts placed upon the hills. It is true that
the great battles of the Civil War and those of the one in Manchuria,
where the men killed and wounded in a day outnumber all those who
fought on both sides at San Juan, make that battle read like a
skirmish. But the Spanish War had its results. At least it made
Cuba into a republic, and so enriched or burdened us with colonies
that our republic changed into something like an empire. But I do
not urge that. It will never be because San Juan changed our foreign
policy that people will visit the spot, and will send from it picture
postal cards. The human interest alone will keep San Juan alive.
The men who fought there came from every State in our country and
from every class of our social life. We sent there the best of our
regular army, and with them, cowboys, clerks, bricklayers, foot-ball
players, three future commanders of the greater army that followed
that war, the future Governor of Cuba, future commanders of the
Philippines, the commander of our forces in China, a future President
of the United States. And, whether these men, when they returned to
their homes again, became clerks and millionaires and dentists, or
rose to be presidents and mounted policemen, they all remember very
kindly the days they lay huddled together in the trenches on that hot
and glaring sky-line. And there must be many more besides who hold
the place in memory. There are few in the United States so poor in
relatives and friends who did not in his or her heart send a
substitute to Cuba. For these it seems as though San Juan might be
better preserved, not as it is, for already its aspect is too far
changed to wish for that, but as it was. The efforts already made to
keep the place in memory and to honor the Americans who died there
are the public park which I have mentioned, the monument on San Juan,
and one other monument at Guasimas to the regulars and Rough Riders
who were killed there. To these monuments the Society of Santiago
will add four more, which will mark the landing place of the army at
Daiquairi and the fights at Guasimas, El Caney, and San Juan Hill.
But I believe even more than this might be done to preserve to the
place its proper values. These values are sentimental, historical,
and possibly to the military student, educational. If to-day there
were erected at Daiquairi, Siboney, Guasimas, El Poso, El Caney, and
on and about San Juan a dozen iron or bronze tablets that would tell
from where certain regiments advanced, what posts they held, how many
or how few were the men who held those positions, how near they were
to the trenches of the enemy, and by whom these men were commanded, I
am sure the place would reconstruct itself and would breathe with
interest, not only for the returning volunteer, but for any casual
tourist. As it is, the history of the fight and the reputation of
the men who fought is now at the mercy of the caretaker of the park
and the Cuban "guides" from the hotel. The caretaker speaks only
Spanish, and, considering the amount of misinformation the guides
disseminate, it is a pity when they are talking to Americans, they
are not forced to use the same language. When last I visited it,
Carlos Portuondo was the official guardian of San Juan Hill. He is
an aged Cuban, and he fought through the Ten Years' War, but during
the last insurrection and the Spanish-American War he not only was
not near San Juan, but was not even on the Island of Cuba. He is a
charming old person, and so is his aged wife. Their chief concern in
life, when I saw them, was to sell me a pair of breeches made of
palm-fibre which Carlos had worn throughout the entire ten years of
battle. The vicissitudes of those trousers he recited to me in great
detail, and he very properly regarded them as of historic value. But
of what happened at San Juan he knew nothing, and when I asked him
why he held his present post and occupied the Block-House, he said,
"To keep the cows out of the park." When I asked him where the
Americans had camped, he pointed carefully from the back door of the
Block-House to the foot of his kitchen-garden. I assured him that
under no stress of terror could the entire American army have been
driven into his back yard, and pointed out where it had stretched
along the ridge of hills for five miles. He politely but
unmistakably showed that he thought I was a liar. From the Venus
Hotel there were two guides, old Casanova and Jean Casanova, his
languid and good-natured son, a youth of sixteen years. Old
Casanova, like most Cubans, is not inclined to give much credit for
what they did in Cuba to the Americans. After all, he says, they
came only just as the Cubans themselves were about to conquer the
Spaniards, and by a lucky chance received the surrender and then
claimed all the credit. As other Cubans told me, "Had the Americans
left us alone a few weeks longer, we would have ended the war." How
they were to have taken Havana, and sunk Cervera's fleet, and why
they were not among those present when our men charged San Juan, I
did not inquire. Old Casanova, again like other Cubans, ranks the
fighting qualities of the Spaniard much higher than those of the
American. This is only human. It must be annoying to a Cuban to
remember that after he had for three years fought the Spaniard, the
Yankee in eight weeks received his surrender and began to ship him
home. The way Casanova describes the fight at El Caney is as
follows:
"The Americans thought they could capture El Caney in one day, but
the brave General Toral fought so good that it was six days before
the Americans could make the Spaniards surrender." The statement is
correct except as regards the length of time during which the fight
lasted. The Americans did make the mistake of thinking they could
eat up El Caney in an hour and then march through it to San Juan.
Owing to the splendid courage of Toral and his few troops our
soldiers, under two of our best generals, were held in check from
seven in the morning until two in the afternoon. But the difference
between seven hours of one day and six days is considerable. Still,
at present at San Juan that is the sort of information upon which the
patriotic and puzzled American tourist is fed.
Young Casanova, the only other authority in Santiago, is not so sure
of his facts as is his father, and is willing to learn. He went with
me to hold my pony while I took the photographs that accompany this
article, and I listened with great interest to his accounts of the
battle. Finally he made a statement that was correct. "How did you
happen to get that right?" I asked.
"Yesterday," he said, "I guided Colonel Hayes here, and while I
guided him he explained it to me."
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