The Roughest Riders Page 8

  It was still dark at 5:00 AM, the time Wheeler had chosen to set his battle plan in motion. But Wood, Roosevelt, and their men were not ready to get going until an hour later, when the first rays of sun illuminated the eastern horizon and revealed “a beautiful valley of grass between two ranges of hills bordering the Daiquiri River,” a black soldier wrote. Roosevelt was displeased when some of the black soldiers needled his men about dragging their feet and holding them all back, implying that the white troops were afraid to face the Spaniards. Roosevelt shot back that he intended to hit Las Guasimas first, despite the arduous route that had been assigned to the volunteers, and he would send back some severed enemy heads for them to keep as trophies if they liked. Notwithstanding the banter, everyone’s adrenalin was flowing. The competitive atmosphere that existed between the volunteers and regulars invigorated the men for the battle ahead.

  The main path, the so-called El Camino Real, made a turn northward from the coast and climbed inland across the verdant valley described by the black trooper. Running parallel about a mile to the left was a steep mountain pass that rose in places as much as forty-five degrees until it joined with the main path at Las Guasimas. Wheeler had instructed Young to hit the Spanish entrenchments first with his white and black forces totaling just under five hundred men. As Young and his troops pushed the Spanish closer toward the mountain ridge, Wood and Roosevelt were to strike the Spanish soldiers on the western flank with their five hundred or so Rough Riders, trapping the Spaniards between the two attacking columns.

  Such was the master strategy, although Wood and Roosevelt had forged their own private pact to reach Las Guasimas ahead of the others. What they hadn’t taken into consideration, however, was the mule train that would be trailing along with them up the sharp mountain incline. The pass was narrow and treacherous, and the mules turned out to be more of a burden than a benefit. The ropes tying the weapons to the mules would not hold, and Wood was exasperated soon after they had started. In desperation, he called LaMotte back into action and ordered him to take charge of the mule train. LaMotte did as instructed, but once again in his own fashion, reloading thirteen of the mules with medical supplies and strapping three of them with some machine guns that he knew would be needed in battle.

  The men crossed a stream and then a railroad track. At that point the two columns of soldiers separated onto their assigned routes: the Rough Riders on the mountain trail and the others traversing the valley to their right before beginning the climb up the hill. The Rough Riders, tanked up on Cuban rum, made their way merrily in the beginning, “babbling joyously, arguing, recounting, laughing, making more noise than a train going through a tunnel,” wrote Stephen Crane.

  The regular white and black troops led by Young proceeded in a more disciplined fashion, acting like seasoned professionals soon to be facing death. They had been in combat before and knew what it was like to engage well-armed enemies. As the sun rose higher in the cloudless blue sky, the heat and humidity built up with a tropical ferocity, and the spirits of the Rough Riders started to flag along with their stamina. Both Wood and Roosevelt knew that the men were not in the best shape for arduous hiking, and from their vantage atop their horses, they looked on in dismay as their troops faltered on the sides of the path and discarded their equipment. The incline grew steeper, taxing the group’s ability to maintain a steady pace. Soon the path turned into a rocky scramble as the men were forced to claw their way up on their hands and feet. Wood and Roosevelt did all they could do to keep their mounts from sliding backward down the slope.

  Not all of the Rough Riders made it to the top. Foot weary from the unaccustomed exertion, they were burdened by their winter-weight uniforms and drenched in sweat, their dehydration worsened by heavy consumption of rum instead of water. Behind them all, the elderly LaMotte lumbered uphill with his mules, stopping often to keep the rope hitches from coming undone when they got snagged in low-hanging branches. Wood and Roosevelt rode at the head of the pack, trying to preserve some semblance of order in their unraveling ranks. Before they reached Las Guasimas, the two leaders came across a wooden blockhouse that would have served as a good defensive fort for the Spanish, except that it was occupied by some of Lawton’s troops, including members of the black Twenty-Fifth. When Lawton had realized that Wheeler could not be diverted, he had sent an advance party to head Wheeler off at the pass, so to speak, but instead they had intercepted the Rough Riders while Wheeler’s men trekked across the valley.

  The outer wall of the blockhouse measured twelve feet in height, with a few feet of dirt banked against the inner wall, allowing the defenders to fire on their stomachs through narrow slits. It struck Wood and Roosevelt immediately that had Lawton’s troops not gotten there first to chase off the Spaniards, the Rough Riders would have stumbled into an ambush and taken heavy losses. The Spaniards had retreated to a hill a few miles farther along the pass, and Lawton’s regulars said they would keep some guards at the blockhouse to prevent the Spaniards from circling back down while the Rough Riders continued their climb. Wood sent word to LaMotte to hurry along the mules that were carrying the weapons. LaMotte hung back with most of the mule train and sent the three bearing machine guns ahead.

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  The going got a bit easier when the Rough Riders crested a hill and reached more level ground. The jungle growth thinned out, allowing a refreshing ocean breeze to waft in over the cliff and cool them off. The troops in the lead could see their own ships in the harbor and the tents strung out along the beach. The sky was blue and clear, and the idyllic view stood in sharp contrast to the punishing terrain they had just endured. The area was “carpeted with grass almost as soft as the turf in the garden of an old English country house,” reported Edward Marshall in the New York Journal. “The tropical growth on our right shot up rank and strong for ten or fifteen feet, and then arched over until our resting-place was almost embowered. On the left was a narrow, treeless slope on which tall Cuban grass waved lazily.”

  Every now and then they passed through glades and shoulders along the trail, from which they could see far out to the horizon. Roosevelt thought the area was strikingly beautiful and peaceful. It seemed to him and some of the Rough Riders from the West that they were off on a hunting excursion instead of tromping ahead into a gory battle.

  After a bit, Wood and Roosevelt could see Young’s column of men closing in on them from the right. There was no way the Rough Riders were going to reach Las Guasimas before the white and black troops in the valley, who had made better time across the open landscape. Unknown to both of them at that moment was that Wheeler was riding up on horseback to join Young and his men; Fighting Joe was just as anxious as Wood and Roosevelt to engage the “Yankee” Spaniards first.

  General Young ordered a delay so that the attack could begin on both flanks at the same time. He moved to the front right, alongside the white and black regulars of the Twenty-Fifth. While Young held his ground, Wheeler caught up with him from behind. He took stock of the situation, considered their options, and then gave his approval for the next stage of the battle that would soon begin.

  Scouts had reported enemy troops well entrenched where the paths came together in Las Guasimas. The Spanish troops had cut down trees and stacked their trunks and branches for a barricade where the roads met. The Spaniards were posted on a range of high hills in the form of a V, the opening being toward Siboney, according to Chaplain Steward.

  Young’s troops restarted their march across the valley as soon as the generals were sure that the Rough Riders were in position to renew their own advance and hit the Spanish flank simultaneously. Wheeler and Young spotted the enemy first, the sun glinting brightly off the Spanish guns and artillery.

  To their left, Wood posted a Cherokee scout named Tom Isbell and two of Castillo’s Cubans in the lead as they forged their way over spongy level ground. A couple hundred yards behind them were Hamilton Fish and other scouts, and to their rear was Captain Capron leading a platoon of
sixty troops walking in single file. Roosevelt followed Capron and his group, although he quickly began to pick up his pace to move closer to the front. Marching with the main body of men, with the entire line stretched out for more than a mile, were Stephen Crane, Richard Harding Davis, and most of the other correspondents selected by Roosevelt and Wood. Only one journalist, Herschel V. Cashin, marched with Young’s troops on the main path.

  A burst of energy surged through the ranks as both columns inched toward the Spanish barricade. One soldier reported that the adrenalin took hold as they proceeded, the bulk of the men eager to “get into the real war business.” The ground in front of them now was dotted with palm trees, tall grass, and cactus plants. Scurrying off to the sides was an assortment of huge spiders, lizards, and the ever-present land crabs with purple claws, orange legs, and black backs with yellow polka dots. Overhead flew tropical birds emitting a cacophony of ominous squawks.

  The two columns of Americans temporarily lost sight of one another across the ridgeline dividing the Rough Riders from the regulars, and Wood called a halt to get his bearings. Coordinating the two-pronged attack took precedence over everything else, including the question of which column hit the enemy first. He judged the enemy to be no more than a quarter to a half mile ahead, and he feared an ambush more than anything else. The Rough Riders were making their usual racket as they plodded up the path. Wood fell back to confer with Roosevelt and Capron.

  “Pass the word back to keep silence in the ranks,” Wood said testily to the others.

  “Stop that talkin’, can’t ye, damn it!” barked a sergeant, a former New York City cop.

  LaMotte finally caught up to the officers at the front of the line and told Roosevelt that he had counted fifty-two men who had dropped out along the way, reducing their ranks by about 10 percent. Wood didn’t want to hear any of it, however. When Roosevelt asked him to slow the pace and let the stragglers catch up, Wood replied, “I have no time for that now! We are in sight of the enemy, sir!”

  The enemy was indeed close at hand, though not yet visible, as they lay protected behind their well-laid barricades. Roosevelt was not quite convinced of that until he stumbled across some strands of cut barbed wire that had previously crossed the path. He noticed that the wire had just recently been cut; the ends were bright, showing no signs of rust despite the heavy rains and high humidity.

  Both Wood and Roosevelt concluded that they were being set up for another ambush—they later suspected that Castillo, the self-styled Cuban general, might have collaborated with the Spanish—and it was time to tone down the party atmosphere that had prevailed at times during the climb from Siboney. They had the men recheck their rifles to ensure they were fully loaded and tie down their loose equipment to prevent any more rattling than was necessary. At that moment, Capron, who had reconnoitered the pass ahead, reported back that their scouts had come across a dead Spaniard whose corpse had been picked almost to the bone by vultures, crabs, and a variety of nasty insects. The remains of the dead soldier lay ahead just before the pass veered back into the jungle.

  Meanwhile, Young’s scouts on the right had spotted the Spaniards at 7:20 in the morning and were almost in range of their guns. His men had dragged their three Hotchkiss artillery pieces across the flat, dry ground leading toward the enemy line. The Spaniards lay behind their felled-tree barricades, further protected by large boulders on top of a steep hill. Others lay in hand-dug trenches beside the barricades. Young told his men to stop again until he was sure that Wood and Roosevelt had drawn close enough to hit the Spaniards on the left flank. “Don’t shoot until you see something to shoot at!” Young commanded. At eight o’clock, Wheeler took command of his forward unit.

  The main line of defenders stretched across the junction of the two paths. Nearby, brick houses used for storing sugarcane stood in profile against the sky. The Spaniards, having positioned most of their sharpshooters in the tall grass to the west rather than on a steep slope on the east that dropped into the valley, posed a greater threat to the Rough Riders than to Wheeler’s forces.

  “General Young and myself examined the position of the enemy,” Wheeler reported afterward. “The lines were deployed and I directed him to open fire with the Hotchkiss guns. The enemy replied and the firing immediately became general.”

  The Rough Riders were almost there when they heard the roaring of the guns. As they tried to step up their advance, a volley of bullets flew from the Spaniards’ Mausers, although mostly whizzing above their heads. The shots ripped through the trees, emitting an unnerving noise like the humming of telegraph wires. But then the Spanish sharpshooters lowered their sights and found their marks. One by one, Rough Riders crumbled in agony beneath the steady fusillade.

  “I got it that time,” one of the volunteers called out as he fell. Others began to curse.

  “Don’t swear—shoot!” Wood shouted.

  “There was no more gossip in the ranks,” Marshall reported. “The men sprang to their feet without waiting for an order. As they did so a volley which went over our heads came through the mysterious tangle on our right. A scattering fire was heard from the direction in which the scouts had gone. Then silence.”

  Although their shots were apparent, the Spanish soldiers were all but invisible, hidden in the high grass with their smokeless gunpowder that gave no hint of where they were. The denseness of the jungle added to the challenge of figuring out exactly where they were entrenched. Stephen Crane was particularly critical of Wood and Roosevelt’s strategy. They entered the fray, he wrote, with “simply a gallant blunder. This silly brave force wandered placidly into trouble, but their conduct was magnificent.”

  The Spanish seemed to know beforehand precisely which path the Rough Riders would take, and they had positioned some sharpshooters on the heavily wooded slope near two blockhouses flanked by wood and stone entrenchments.

  One of the first to be hit was the Native American scout Tom Isbell. Somehow he managed to survive the seven bullets that struck him in different parts of his body. Captain Capron and Sergeant Fish were not nearly as fortunate. Fish was the first to be mortally wounded, looking almost robust in death. He had been shot through the chest, and he sank to the ground with his back against a tree. Young Capron stood over him firing round after round, but he too was killed, just a few yards from Fish. The earth around him was covered with his empty shells. Capron’s final words were “Don’t mind me, boys. Go on with the fight!” Roosevelt nearly became a casualty himself when a Mauser bullet struck a palm tree and showered his face with splinters. He had been standing behind a large palm tree with his head sticking out to the side when the bullet struck, filling his left eye and ear with tiny shards of wood.

  Ahead and to the right of the Rough Riders, Wheeler and Young advanced their black and white troops to within nine hundred yards of the Spanish lines. They had a better view of the enemy deployment, as the Spanish did of them, and both sides quickly took heavy losses. The casualties mounted during the first stages of the engagement. The Rough Riders tried to move forward through thick jungle growth, their ranks reduced now not just because of those who had dropped out along the trail but because many had fallen during the initial skirmish. Men had fallen wounded or dead in alarming numbers. Bogged down by the impossible terrain and caught off guard by increasingly accurate enemy gunfire, the Rough Riders had been unable to press their attack in an organized manner, and they suffered heavily for it.

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  Richard Harding Davis, who, like Hemingway, enjoyed adventure as much as he did writing about it, tried to point a path forward for the Rough Riders. “There they are, Colonel! Look over there! I can see their hats near that glade!” he shouted. The way forward looked like the walls of a maze to him. Each trooper had to remain aware of the men on both sides of him to keep his bearings in the thicket. At any moment, the entire field of fire could go from swarming with soldiers to empty of friendly troops, the only sign of them the racket of vines and tree limbs
being pushed aside somewhere in the distance. Staying close, the men could hear the heavy breathing of their comrades with each step they took. Finally, they burst through into a clearing facing a curtain of dark vines, and the men fell to the ground and began to return the Spanish fusillade.

  Roosevelt passed the dead and wounded, wincing at the sight of Fish as he lay with glazed eyes beside the tree on one side of the trail amid a tangle of jungle growth. Wood tried to maintain a semblance of control over the impossible situation, calling for the men to advance in an orderly fashion instead of rushing ahead on their own. But his commands fell on deaf ears. The soldiers’ lack of combat experience prevented them from remaining calm and collected under the constant enemy bombardment.

  Roosevelt admitted that they were moving ahead blindly. He couldn’t see where most of his men were positioned at any given moment, and he had no idea where the Spanish soldiers were located. His basic instinct as a man of action was to simply charge forward toward the enemy gunfire. What was most infuriating of all was facing an enemy in battle whom he could not see. The jungle around them was dense, and as the men vanished into the vines, they seemed to be swallowed up. He began to worry that he would be court-martialed later if word got out that he had lost control of his men. It was the most confusing situation ever experienced by a leader who was normally on top of the events around him. After the battle was over, he learned that he was not the only officer who had trouble in the fight; the others he spoke to all admitted they had been as much in the dark as Roosevelt had been.

  Through the jungle growth on the right, the firing continued nonstop as the white and black troops under Wheeler and Young engaged the Spanish at close range. The gunfire was amazingly heavy, according to eyewitnesses. The soldiers in the black Tenth tried to charge the enemy through “thick, prickly weed, through which paths had always to be cut with knives and sabers,” reported Herschel Cashin. The Spaniards held their ground behind their barricades, firing in unison at the slowly advancing Tenth. A black soldier with the Tenth, with a ragged wound visible on his thigh, kept reloading and firing at the enemy from behind a rock. When another trooper told him he had been wounded badly, he laughed it off and replied, “Oh, that’s all right. That’s been there for some time.”