The Boys of '98 Part 28

During this Sunday night the _Vesuvius_ again discharged her dynamite guns, with the western battery as a target, and because of the frightful report which followed the second shot, it was believed a magazine had been exploded.

_June 20._ The fleet of transports arrived off Santiago at noon on the twentieth, and hove to outside the cordon of war-vessels. General Shafter immediately went on board the flag-ship, and returned to his own ship an hour later in company with Admiral Sampson, when the two officers sailed for a.s.serradero, seventeen miles from Santiago, where General Calixto Garcia was encamped with his army of four thousand Cubans. Here a long conference was held with the insurgent general, after which the two commanders returned to the fleet.

_June 21._ The despatch quoted below was sent by Admiral Sampson to the Navy Department, and gives in full the work of the day:

"Landing of the army is progressing favorably at Daiquiri. There is very little, if any, resistance. The _New Orleans_, _Detroit_, _Castine_, _Wasp_, and _Suwanee_ sh.e.l.led the vicinity before the landing. We made a demonstration at Cabanas to engage the attention of the enemy. The _Texas_ engaged the west battery for some hours. She had one man killed. Ten submarine mines have been recovered from the channel of Guantanamo.

Communication by telegraph has been established at Guantanamo."

Daiquiri was chosen as the point of debarkation by General Shafter, and its only fortifications were a blockhouse on a high cliff to the right of an iron pier, together with a small fort and earthworks in the rear. From this town extends a good road to Santiago, and in the immediate vicinity of the port the water-supply is plentiful.

_June 22._ Bombarding the coast as a cover for the troops which were being disembarked, was the princ.i.p.al work of the war-ships on the twenty-second of June, except in Guantanamo Harbour, where volunteers were called for from the _Marblehead_ and the _Dolphin_ to grapple for and remove the contact mines in the harbour. It was an undertaking as perilous as anything that had yet been accomplished, but the bluejackets showed no fear. Four times the designated number came forward in response to the call, and before nightfall seven mines had been removed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: U. S. S. TEXAS.]

The battle-ship _Texas_ was a.s.signed to duty off Matamoras, the works of which were to be bombarded as a portion of the general programme for this day while the troops were being landed. The men of the _Texas_ performed their part well; the Socapa battery was quickly silenced; but not quite soon enough to save the life of one brave bluejacket. The last sh.e.l.l fired by the retreating Spaniards struck the battle-ship twenty feet abaft the stem on the port side. It pa.s.sed through the hull about three feet below the main-deck line, and failed to explode until striking an iron stanchion at the centre line of the berth-deck. Here were two guns' crews, and among them the fragments of the sh.e.l.l flew in a deadly shower, killing one and wounding eight. Later in the day the _Texas_ steamed out to sea to bury the dead, and, this sad duty performed, returned before nightfall to her station on the blockade.

_June 23._ General Shafter thus reported to the War Department:

"Daiquiri, June 23.-Had very fine voyage; lost less than fifty animals, six or eight to-day; lost more putting them through the surf to land, than on transports.

"Command as healthy as when we left; eighty men sick; only deaths, two men drowned in landing; landings difficult; coast quite similar to that in vicinity of San Francisco, and covered with dense growth of bushes.

Landing at Daiquiri unopposed; all points occupied by Spanish troops heavily bombarded by navy to clear them out.

"Sent troops toward Santiago, and occupied Juragua, a naturally strong place, this morning. Spanish troops retreating as soon as our advance was known. Had no mounted troops, or could have captured them, about six hundred all told.

"Railroad from there in. Have cars and engine in possession.

"With a.s.sistance of navy disembarked six thousand men yesterday, and as many more to-day.

"Will get all troops off to-morrow, including light artillery and greater portion of pack-train, probably all of it, with some of the wagons; animals have to be jumped to the water and towed ash.o.r.e.

"Had consultation with Generals Garcia, Rader and Castillo, on afternoon of twentieth, twenty miles west of Santiago. These officers were unanimously of the opinion that the landing should be made east of Santiago. I had come to the same conclusion.

"General Garcia promises to join me at Juragua to-morrow with between three thousand and four thousand men, who will be brought from west of Santiago by ships of the navy to Juragua, and there disembarked.

"This will give me between four thousand and five thousand Cubans, and leave one thousand under General Rabi to threaten Santiago from the west.

"General Kent's division is being disembarked this afternoon at Juragua, and this will be continued during the night. The a.s.sistance of the navy has been of the greatest benefit and enthusiastically given; without them I could not have landed in ten days, and perhaps not at all, as I believe I should have lost so many boats in the surf.

"At present want nothing; weather has been good, no rain on land, and prospects of fair weather.

"SHAFTER, "_Major-General U. S. Commanding._"

The boys of '98 occupied the town of Aguadores before nightfall on the twenty-third of June, the Spaniards having applied the torch to many buildings before they fled. The enemy was driven back on to Santiago, General Linares commanding in person, and close to his heels hung General Lawton and the advance of the American forces.

_June 24._ It was evident that the Spanish intended to make a stand at Sevilla, six miles from Juragua, and five miles from Santiago. The Americans were pressing them hotly to prevent General Linares from gaining time to make preparations for an encounter, when the Rough Riders, as Colonel Wood's regiment was termed, and the First and Tenth Cavalry fell into an ambuscade. Then what will probably be known as the battle of La Quasina was fought.

It is thus described by a correspondent of the a.s.sociated Press:

That the Spaniards were thoroughly posted as to the route to be taken by the Americans in their movement toward Sevilla was evident, as shown by the careful preparations they had made.

The main body of the Spaniards was posted on a hill, on the heavily wooded slopes of which had been erected two blockhouses flanked by irregular intrenchments of stone and fallen trees. At the bottom of these hills run two roads, along which Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt's men, and eight troops of the First and Tenth Cavalry, with a battery of four howitzers, advanced. These roads are but little more than gullies, rough and narrow, and at places almost impa.s.sable.

In these trails the fight occurred. Nearly half a mile separated Roosevelt's men from the regulars, and between, and on both sides of the road in the thick underbrush, was concealed a force of Spaniards that must have been large, judging from the terrific and constant fire they poured in on the Americans.

The fight was opened by the First and Tenth Cavalry, under General Young.

A force of Spaniards was known to be in the vicinity of La Quasina, and early in the morning Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt's men started off up the precipitous bluff, back of Siboney, to attack the enemy on his right flank. General Young at the same time took the road at the foot of the hill.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COLONEL THEODORE ROOSEVELT.]

About two and one-half miles out from Siboney some Cubans, breathless and excited, rushed into camp with the announcement that the Spaniards were but a little way in front, and were strongly entrenched. Quickly the Hotchkiss guns in the front were brought to the rear, while a strong scouting line was thrown out.

Then cautiously and in silence the troops moved forward until a bend in the road disclosed a hill where the Spaniards were located. The guns were again brought to the front and placed in position, while the men crouched down in the road, waiting impatiently to give Roosevelt's men, who were toiling over the little trail along the crest of the hill, time to get up.

At 7.30 A. M. General Young gave the command to the men at the Hotchkiss guns to open fire. That command was the signal for a fight that for stubbornness has seldom been equalled. The instant the Hotchkiss guns were fired, from the hillside commanding the road came volley after volley from the Mausers of the Spaniards.

"Don't shoot until you see something to shoot at," yelled General Young, and the men, with set jaws and gleaming eyes, obeyed the order. Crawling along the edge of the road, they protected themselves as much as possible from the fearful fire of the Spaniards, the troopers, some of them stripped to the waist, watching the base of the hill, and when any part of a Spaniard became visible, they fired. Never for an instant did they falter.

One dusky warrior of the Tenth Cavalry, with a ragged wound in his thigh, coolly knelt behind a rock, loading and firing, and when told by one of his comrades that he was wounded, laughed and said:

"Oh, that's all right. That's been there for some time."

In the meantime, away off to the left could be heard the crack of the rifles of Colonel Wood's men, and the regular, deeper-toned volley-firing of the Spaniards.

Over there the American losses were the greatest. Colonel Wood's men, with an advance-guard well out in front, and two Cuban guides before them, but apparently with no flankers, went squarely into the trap set for them by the Spaniards, and only the unfaltering courage of the men in the face of a fire that would even make a veteran quail, prevented what might easily have been a disaster. As it was, Troop L, the advance-guard under the unfortunate Captain Cap.r.o.n, was almost surrounded, and but for the reinforcement hurriedly sent forward every man would probably have been killed or wounded.

When the reserves came up there was no hesitation. Colonel Wood, with the right wing, charged straight at a blockhouse eight hundred yards away, and Colonel Roosevelt, on the left, charged at the same time. Up the men went, yelling like fiends, and never stopping to return the fire of the Spaniards, but keeping on with a grim determination to capture that blockhouse.

That charge was the end. When within five hundred yards of the coveted point, the Spaniards broke and ran, and for the first time the boys of '98 had the pleasure which the Spaniards had been experiencing all through the engagement, of shooting with the enemy in sight.

The losses among the Rough Riders were reported as thirteen killed and forty wounded; while the First Cavalry lost sixteen wounded. Edward Marshall, a newspaper correspondent, was seriously wounded.

While the land-forces were fighting four miles northwest of Juragua, Rear-Admiral Sampson learned that the Spaniards were endeavouring to destroy the railroad leading from Juragua to Santiago de Cuba.

This road runs west along the seash.o.r.e, under cover of the guns of the American fleet, until within three miles of El Morro, and then cuts through the mountains along the river into Santiago.

When the attempt of the Spaniards was discovered, the _New York_, _Scorpion_, and _Wasp_ closed in and cleared the hill and brush of Spaniards.