The Army Was Then
To Rest For That Night In The Woods, Half A Mile From San Juan.
On the following morning it was to attack San Juan on the two flanks,
under cover of artillery.
The objection to this plan, which did not
apparently suggest itself to General Shafter, was that an army of
twelve thousand men, sleeping within five hundred yards of the
enemy's rifle-pits, might not unreasonably be expected to pass a bad
night. As we discovered the next day, not only the five hundred
yards, but the whole basin was covered by the fire from the rifle-
pits. Even by daylight, when it was possible to seek some slight
shelter, the army could not remain in the woods, but according to the
plan it was expected to bivouac for the night in those woods, and in
the morning to manoeuvre and deploy and march through them to the two
flanks of San Juan. How the enemy was to be hypnotized while this
was going forward it is difficult to understand.
According to this programme, Capron's battery opened on El Caney and
Grimes's battery opened on the pagoda-like block-house of San Juan.
The range from El Poso was exactly 2,400 yards, and the firing, as
was discovered later, was not very effective. The battery used black
powder, and, as a result, after each explosion the curtain of smoke
hung over the gun for fully a minute before the gunners could see the
San Juan trenches, which was chiefly important because for a full
minute it gave a mark to the enemy. The hill on which the battery
stood was like a sugar-loaf. Behind it was the farm-house of El
Poso, the only building in sight within a radius of a mile, and in it
were Cuban soldiers and other non-combatants. The Rough Riders had
been ordered to halt in the yard of the farm-house and the artillery
horses were drawn up in it, under the lee of the hill. The First and
Tenth dismounted Cavalry were encamped a hundred yards from the
battery along the ridge. They might as sensibly have been ordered to
paint the rings in a target while a company was firing at the bull's-
eye. To our first twenty shots the enemy made no reply; when they
did it was impossible, owing to their using smokeless powder, to
locate their guns. Their third shell fell in among the Cubans in the
block-house and among the Rough Riders and the men of the First and
Tenth Cavalry, killing some and wounding many. These casualties were
utterly unnecessary and were due to the stupidity of whoever placed
the men within fifty yards of guns in action.
A quarter of an hour after the firing began from El Poso one of
General Shafter's aides directed General Sumner to advance with his
division down the Santiago trail, and to halt at the edge of the
woods.
"What am I to do then?" asked General Sumner.
"You are to await further orders," the aide answered.
As a matter of fact and history this was probably the last order
General Sumner received from General Shafter, until the troops of his
division had taken the San Juan hills, as it became impossible to get
word to General Shafter, the trail leading to his head-quarters tent,
three miles in the rear, being blocked by the soldiers of the First
and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and later, by Lawton's division.
General Sumner led the Sixth, Third, and Ninth Cavalry and the Rough
Riders down the trail, with instructions for the First and Tenth to
follow. The trail, virgin as yet from the foot of an American
soldier, was as wide as its narrowest part, which was some ten feet
across. At places it was as wide as Broadway, but only for such
short distances that it was necessary for the men to advance in
column, in double file. A maze of underbrush and trees on either
side was all but impenetrable, and when the officers and men had once
assembled into the basin, they could only guess as to what lay before
them, or on either flank. At the end of a mile the country became
more open, and General Sumner saw the Spaniards intrenched a half-
mile away on the sloping hills. A stream, called the San Juan River,
ran across the trail at this point, and another stream crossed it
again two hundred yards farther on. The troops were halted at this
first stream, some crossing it, and others deploying in single file
to the right. Some were on the banks of the stream, others at the
edge of the woods in the bushes. Others lay in the high grass which
was so high that it stopped the wind, and so hot that it almost
choked and suffocated those who lay in it.
The enemy saw the advance and began firing with pitiless accuracy
into the jammed and crowded trail and along the whole border of the
woods. There was not a single yard of ground for a mile to the rear
which was not inside the zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to
return the fire but to lie still and wait for further orders. Some
of them could see the rifle-pits of the enemy quite clearly and the
men in them, but many saw nothing but the bushes under which they
lay, and the high grass which seemed to burn when they pressed
against it. It was during this period of waiting that the greater
number of our men were killed. For one hour they lay on their rifles
staring at the waving green stuff around them, while the bullets
drove past incessantly, with savage insistence, cutting the grass
again and again in hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang from
the ground and sank back again with a groan, or rolled to one side
clinging silently to an arm or shoulder.
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