The Roughest Riders Page 14
Wood could not spare any men to send to Roosevelt’s assistance, and neither could Kent at the head of the Twenty-Fourth, or any of the other officers with orders to climb the Heights toward San Juan Hill. The Rough Riders were in no position to move forward as the rifle fire from the enemy’s entrenchments blistered through the trees and savaged their ranks, reducing their numbers alarmingly from the more than five hundred they started with. All the men across the entire American front were pinned down by enemy fire, with the Spaniards mostly hidden from view through the heavy foliage. Roosevelt grew desperate to take more aggressive action before his troops were completely slaughtered as they groped through the brush blindly, unable to respond effectively. Neither Kettle Hill nor San Juan Hill could be clearly seen through the trees. Confusion reigned supreme as the casualties mounted, still with no definitive orders from Shafter on how to proceed.
Kent’s men were in dire straits themselves, with Spanish bullets and shells ripping through their ranks. The white troops in front of them refused to push ahead, so Kent ordered them to step aside and let his men pass through. “For the love of country, liberty, honor, and dignity,” Kent pleaded with tears running down his cheeks, “stand up like men and fight, go to the front!” Still, they would not move; some actually tried to head back the other way down the trail, out of the range of enemy fire.
So Kent rushed past them, leading his men in a mad fury in the direction of San Juan Hill. They stormed forward past “the prostrated bodies of the bewildered and stampeded Seventy-First,” wrote Herschel V. Cashin. They rushed wildly across “an open field, attracting the attention of the entire Spanish line, and drawing their concentrated fire.” Their own losses mounted heavily. Kent feared that they had entered a circle of fire, with Spanish guerrillas behind them as well as defenders bombarding them from the hills. But he was in no better position to observe the terrain behind his men than he was to see what faced them on the hill.
“At times I became melancholy and apprehensive as to my fate,” J. W. Galaway, a soldier with the Twenty-Fourth, wrote later, “but it was not from fear, but suspense.” The Twenty-Fourth continued along the route between the Aguadores and San Juan Rivers under heavy, unceasing fire, then Kent ordered some of his men to veer left onto the footpath that the observers in the balloon had spotted. The footpath had not been visible to the soldiers on the ground, but the Spanish were well aware of its existence and the alternative route it provided to their defenses on San Juan. They unleashed a torrent of fire along the trail, killing and wounding many of the men who had followed it, including four officers. Those who had not been hit by enemy bullets continued to inch ahead through the line of fire.
To their right, Pershing’s Tenth faced a similar situation. Sergeant Horace Bivins, who was in charge of the Hotchkiss guns with the unit, said later that they had to stop innumerable times because of bloody mudholes caused mostly by the injured men, and because of other obstacles on the trail. Looking through his field glasses, he saw so much wild game fleeing in terror that he “did not know where to direct [his] first shot.” When he finally did fire toward San Juan Hill, the puffs of black smoke from his guns attracted so much fire from Spanish marksmen that a few men went down around him immediately. Bivins was also hit by a Mauser bullet, which knocked him unconscious for a few minutes. He recovered quickly and got up to continue the assault.
The heat and humidity rapidly became another formidable obstacle bearing down on the American troops. Some stopped to slice their trousers off at the knees, exposing their legs to a wide assortment of biting insects and thorny underbrush. The heavy uniforms chafed their skin, raising red rashes from prickly heat, prompting the men to discard more clothing on the sides of the trails. As they plodded through the chaparral, they reached a point where the San Juan River continued north and the Aguadores River forked to the east and flowed north of El Pozo. Roosevelt abandoned all hope of getting help from Wood or Kent and of hooking up with Lawton heading down the trail from El Caney, so he drove his men forward toward Kettle Hill as best he could in the face of the heavy enemy gunfire.
The Rough Riders came to a halt in the jungle as they waited for further orders from Sumner, Wood, or Shafter. Enemy fire roared in on them from three locations—San Juan Hill, the Heights, and Kettle Hill—yet they were still under orders from Sumner to hold their fire until Pershing and the Tenth had taken their own advanced positions to their left. The Americans now formed two broken lines as they inched ahead toward the Spanish emplacements. The first, composed mostly of black troops, had approached a meadow on the west side of the San Juan River. Wood’s men were behind them spread across both banks of the river, and the Rough Riders were farther to the north facing Kettle Hill. Pershing’s Tenth was also ordered to hold its fire once they were in place until new orders were received from Shafter’s camp. All of them were more than ready to continue the assault, but still no orders arrived.
Roosevelt decided to pull his men back to the river where they could find some protection behind the western bank. Besides the lethal fire from the hills, Spanish snipers were hidden in the trees shooting the hell out of his men. His blood was boiling, driving him into a rage.
“Boys, this is the day we have trained for!” he yelled to his troops. “You know you are being watched by the regulars. Don’t forget you are a Rough Rider!”
Roosevelt was down to about fifty troops now, a tenth of what he had at the onset of hostilities. He panicked that his Rough Riders would be totally wiped out unless he took some drastic action to alleviate the situation. The clatter and din of war rattled the men’s eardrums as Spanish shells roared in and Mauser bullets zipped through the grass and leaves.
Indeed, enemy fire put not just men but their animals in danger as well. Horses made tempting targets for Spanish sharpshooters, as many of them reared up on their hind legs in fear, presenting themselves as larger and more visible targets than the men did. Some threw off their riders, and other cavalrymen dismounted, preferring to take their chances on foot. Roosevelt’s horse, Texas, was tethered to a tree nearby, and the future president feared he would be hit by incoming fire, yet his mount stood there neighing nervously and was unharmed through the carnage.
Stephen Crane reported later that the entire battlefield was roaring like a brushfire on the prairie, having observed the action himself through field glasses as he stood in the open. Richard Harding Davis told him impatiently to stop showboating and tempting fate and to look for some protection behind a tree.
Beyond the jungle growth, the chaparral, and the denser foliage lay an open meadow with grass and plants that ran up to the foothills of San Juan and Kettle Hills. The Americans halted at the edge of it, waiting for an opportunity to storm up the slopes. To Roosevelt’s left, Pershing’s Tenth opened up a round of fire in the direction of San Juan Hill, although their view of the Spanish emplacements was still obstructed. Roosevelt wanted to support them with his own men, but as he turned to one of his aides, Lieutenant Ernest Haskell, on leave from West Point, the lieutenant’s body stiffened as he froze in place without crying out. The leader of the Rough Riders could see that Haskell had been shot in the stomach by a Mauser bullet.
“Oh, don’t bother about me,” Haskell said when Roosevelt reached out to him. “I’m going to get well.” The twenty-two-year old officer survived the serious wound and lived for another thirty-two years.
Two of Roosevelt’s other top aides went down by his side, one overcome by heat and exhaustion and the other wounded by a bullet that slammed into his neck. A third keeled over dead when a bullet ripped through his brain. Then Roosevelt suffered one of the greatest losses of the battle so far when his favorite sidekick, Captain Buckey O’Neill, the man who dove into the water in an attempt to save two black troops from drowning at the landing, was shot in the mouth.
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William Owen O’Neill was born on February 2, 1860, either in Ireland, St. Louis, Missouri, or Washington, DC. His precise origin remained
as much a mystery as the man himself, partly because he was a larger-than-life adventurer and entrepreneur, fond of spinning tall tales, some of them about himself. The claim that he was born in Ireland is most likely an invention of his; although his father served in the so-called Irish Brigade during the Civil War and was wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg, his parents had been in the United States since the 1850s.
Buckey—a nickname he earned because he liked to “buck,” or gamble, against the odds in poker and other card games—migrated from the east to Prescott, Arizona, in the spring of 1882 making brief stops along the way. The first was in Tombstone in 1880, where he reported on the war between the Earp brothers and the Clanton-McLaury gang of murders and cattle rustlers, which culminated in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881. Next he dallied in Phoenix, a town he didn’t like all that much. Prescott suited him better, and it was there he made his home.
Buckey was first and foremost a man of action, but he was also a literary man—traits he shared with the leader of the Rough Riders and which endeared him to Roosevelt. He started his career as a court reporter, then moved up the ladder and became editor of the Prescott Journal Miner, after which he founded, wrote, edited, and published the Hoof and Horn, a livestock periodical. The action side of his nature took over when he ran for various offices and was elected sheriff of Yavapai County and later mayor of Prescott. Twice he ran for Congress as a territorial representative for the Populists, but he lost those races, in 1894 and 1896, to major-party candidates.
O’Neill made his real money developing onyx and copper mines and building a railroad line to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. He exhibited an interest in archaeology when he led a Smithsonian expedition to explore the Sinagua Indian ruins known today as Montezuma Castle in Arizona’s Verde Valley. Buckey indulged a taste for military adventure at the same time, joining a local militia and helping organize the Arizona National Guard. Like an earlier Hemingway, the man of action turned his hand to fiction, publishing stories in the San Francisco Examiner and Argosy.
His path met up with Roosevelt’s in 1898 when Buckey helped found the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, the unit headed by Colonel Wood that was destined to become the heartbeat of the assemblage Roosevelt put together for the war in Cuba. Roosevelt and Buckey O’Neill hit it off from the start. Buckey was the prototypical cowboy Roosevelt had become intrigued with during his many trips out west, a man who could ride, shoot, and fight with the best of them. He was one of the first who volunteered to join Roosevelt in Cuba, telling him, “I am ready to take all the chances.” He shared Roosevelt’s philosophy that the war would not be over until every officer in the unit was killed, wounded, or promoted.
On that fatal day, July 1, with the Rough Riders pinned down at the bank of the river, Roosevelt ordered Buckey O’Neill to lead an advance team to get a better view of the Spanish positions on top of the incline. Buckey motioned his men forward toward a field of waist-high grass near the edge of a clearing on the other side of the river. The men dove to the ground in the grass and lay flat, still obeying orders not to fire back until they were commanded to do so. Buckey stood upright at the head of his detail, about twenty yards from the riverbank, smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. Roosevelt thought he was taking unnecessary risk, but the captain didn’t believe an officer should dive for cover when the men he led were in danger.
“Captain, a bullet is sure to hit you,” a sergeant said to Buckey, all but begging him to lie down.
Buckey blew out a cloud of smoke, laughed, and replied according to witnesses, “Sergeant, the Spanish bullet isn’t made that will kill me.”
Moments later, he turned on his heel to face the Spanish guns, and a Mauser bullet flew into his mouth and exited through the back of his head. Buckey O’Neill was dead before his body hit the ground. The manner of his death and the life that preceded it grew into a legend, and the man was even lionized in a 1997 TV miniseries, in which he was portrayed by actor Sam Elliott. A bronze statue of Buckey erected in 1907 has become a Prescott landmark and occupies a prominent spot in front of the Yavapai County Courthouse.
Roosevelt was beside himself with anguish, grief, despair, and mounting anger. He clearly had to do something. He couldn’t wait forever while the best of his men were falling dead around him with orders to hold their fire. He sent another message to Sumner and Wood, pleading for permission to shoot back and advance. Wood’s and Sumner’s impatience and frustration were also boiling over, as they themselves had no clear orders from Shafter on how to proceed. Sumner, whose troops included the black Ninth, later said that it had become “necessary either to advance or else retreat under fire.” Roosevelt was at the point of taking it upon himself to move toward the hill when the long-awaited message arrived a little after 1:00 PM from Sumner’s camp, with Shafter’s approval, to “move forward and support the regulars on the assault on the hills in front.”
It was the summons Roosevelt had been hoping for, and he sprang to action without delay. He mounted Texas, pointed his men in the direction of Kettle Hill, past the body of Buckey O’Neill, and led the charge in the midst of a blizzard of enemy gunfire.
As Roosevelt rode up from the riverbank, he saw one of his men lying in a bush off to the side. Roosevelt ordered him to get up and join the charge. The trooper staggered to his feet and tried to move forward, and it was then Roosevelt noticed that he had already been raked across the length of his body by Spanish gunfire. The man fell over dead. Roosevelt blanched when he realized that the bullets may have been intended for himself, an easier target mounted on his horse, but had claimed the life of one of his volunteers instead. That he was putting himself at greater risk by charging ahead of his men on horseback had not occurred to Roosevelt before then. But it was not his nature to shy away from danger; the incident rattled him temporarily, but he shrugged it off and rode on.
Ahead and to the left of Roosevelt, Pershing told his men to charge. He positioned himself at the head of the black Tenth as he observed the entire field of combat. They were all engaged now, as Pershing reported on the action afterward: “Each officer or soldier next in rank took charge of the line or group immediately in his front or rear and halting to fire at each good opportunity, taking reasonable advantage of cover, the entire command moved forward as coolly as though the buzzing of bullets was the humming of bees. White regiments, black regiments, regulars, and Rough Riders … unmindful of race or color, unmindful of whether commanded by ex-Confederate or not, and mindful of only their common duty as Americans.”
Pershing’s Tenth Cavalry and Sumner’s Ninth Cavalry rushed directly ahead toward San Juan Hill. Farther south, Kent also advanced with the black Twenty-Fourth and other men under his command toward San Juan, with some of the troops approaching along the smaller footpath seen from the balloon. The Rough Riders pushed on toward Kettle Hill north of them, and Wood’s brigades formed another line of attack across the entire range of battle. When Pershing saw most of the attackers heading up the incline through the brush to San Juan, he veered the Tenth off to the right to reinforce Roosevelt’s left flank and support the Rough Riders’ steep climb to Kettle Hill.
The first ranks of attackers had now moved within about five hundred yards of Kettle Hill and could see the sugar refinery and some of the enemy emplacements through the constant cloud of Mauser bullets that continued to inflict heavy casualties on the Americans. The enemy was almost in sight, but what the attackers didn’t know yet and would soon discover was the hills were protected by barbed wire fences that were all but invisible as they snaked through the thick brush around the Spanish entrenchments.
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The advance was made under heavy infantry fire, through open flat ground, cut up by heavy wire fences,” Sumner recalled later. Beyond the barbed wire, the jungle growth ended and the incline became steeper. To his right, Pershing’s Tenth joined up with Roosevelt and the Rough Riders as they continued to push slowly up the hill. Roosevelt w
anted his men to get to the top before the others, and he urged them on while still mounted on Texas, shouting at the soldiers to not fall behind. Some of the Rough Riders ran a few steps before the hill became more demanding, and then they found themselves panting for breath and falling to the ground, trying to crawl up the incline when their legs gave out. Pershing’s Tenth was beside the Rough Riders on the left, with Sumner’s Ninth to the left of them, most of the black troops in better physical condition due to long years of battlefield experience. Together, they slogged their way closer to the enemy lines.
The Mauser bullets steadily took a toll, finding their marks from the riflemen on the hill and from snipers hidden in the trees to the right. The American lines of attack devolved into a welter of confusion, with troops strewn out along the slopes from Kettle Hill over the Heights to San Juan, and down along the trails behind them with the rear guards still moving up from El Pozo. Medical corpsmen scampered up and down, pinning white tags on the slightly wounded, blue-and-white tags on those more seriously injured, and red tags on the more critical cases. They carted away the wounded as quickly as they could and left the dead where they had fallen, to be buried later. “We thought we had a soft snap,” a medic recalled later, referring to the outnumbered enemy, “but we got a tough proposition here.”
The front ranks of American attackers encountered the first strands of the Spaniards’ barbed wire defenses. The enemy had strung the fences between palmetto poles sunk into the ground in a zigzag pattern about twenty-five yards apart. The Tenth reached the first jagged line of wire before the others and started to tear at it with their bare hands. Roosevelt tried to move ahead on horseback, but Texas began to stumble and rear up in fear as the hill grew more challenging. The horse almost became ensnared in the wire, temporarily bringing horse and rider to a halt. But Roosevelt was able to guide Texas across the fence when the troops pulled the poles out of the ground and flattened it.