History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0435/04356.txt

Text File | 1992-10-12 | 28KB | 435 lines

$Unique_ID{how04356}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Rough Riders
Part II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Roosevelt, Theodore}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{fight
wounded
left
first
spanish
troop
shot
three
wood
dead
see
pictures
see
figures
}
$Date{}
$Log{See Color-Sergeant A.P. Wright*0435601.scf
See Burial Ground*0435602.scf
See Rough Riders Camp*0435603.scf
}
Title:       Rough Riders
Book:        Chapter III: General Young's Fight At Las Guasimas
Author:      Roosevelt, Theodore

Part II

     At every halt we took advantage of the cover, sinking down behind any
mound, bush, or tree-trunk in the neighborhood.  The trees, of course,
furnished no protection from the Mauser bullets.  Once I was standing behind a
large palm with my head out to one side, very fortunately; for a bullet passed
through the palm, filling my left eye and ear with the dust and splinters.

     No man was allowed to drop out to help the wounded.  It was hard to leave
them there in the jungle, where they might not be found again until the
vultures and the land-crabs came, but war is a grim game and there was no
choice.  One of the men shot was Harry Heffner of G Troop, who was mortally
wounded through the hips.  He fell without uttering a sound, and two of his
companions dragged him behind a tree.  Here he propped himself up and asked to
be given his canteen and his rifle, which I handed to him. He then again began
shooting, and continued loading and firing until the line moved forward and we
left him alone, dying in the gloomy shade.  When we found him again, after the
fight, he was dead.

     At one time, as I was out of touch with that part of my wing commanded by
Jenkins and O'Neill, I sent Greenway, with Sergeant Russell, a New Yorker, and
trooper Rowland, a New Mexican cow-puncher, down in the valley to find out
where they were.  To do this the three had to expose themselves to a very
severe fire, but they were not men to whom this mattered. Russell was killed;
the other two returned and reported to me the position of Jenkins and O'Neill.
They then resumed their places on the firing-line. After awhile I noticed
blood coming out of Rowland's side and discovered that he had been shot,
although he did not seem to be taking any notice of it.  He said the wound was
only slight, but as I saw he had broken a rib, I told him to go to the rear to
the hospital.  After some grumbling he went, but fifteen minutes later he was
back on the firing-line again and said he could not find the hospital - which
I doubted.  However, I then let him stay until the end of the fight.

     After we had driven the Spaniards off from their position to our right,
the firing seemed to die away so far as we were concerned, for the bullets no
longer struck around us in such a storm as before, though along the rest of
the line the battle was as brisk as ever.  Soon we saw troops appearing across
the ravine, not very far from where we had seen the Spaniards whom we had
thought might be Cubans.  Again we dared not fire, and carefully studied the
new-comers with our glasses; and this time we were right, for we recognized
our own cavalry-men.  We were by no means sure that they recognized us,
however, and were anxious that they should, but it was very difficult to find
a clear spot in the jungle from which to signal; so Sergeant Lee of Troop K
climbed a tree and from its summit waved the troop guidon.  They waved their
guidon back, and as our right wing was now in touch with the regulars, I left
Jenkins and O'Neill to keep the connection, and led Llewellen's troop back to
the path to join the rest of the regiment, which was evidently still in the
thick of the fight.  I was still very much in the dark as to where the main
body of the Spanish forces were, or exactly what lines the battle was
following, and was very uncertain what I ought to do; but I knew it could not
be wrong to go forward, and I thought I would find Wood and then see what he
wished me to do.  I was in a mood to cordially welcome guidance, for it was
most bewildering to fight an enemy whom one so rarely saw.

     I had not seen Wood since the beginning of the skirmish, when he hurried
forward.  When the firing opened some of the men began to curse. "Don't swear
- shoot!" growled Wood, as he strode along the path leading his horse, and
everyone laughed and became cool again.  The Spanish outposts were very near
our advance guard, and some minutes of the hottest kind of firing followed
before they were driven back and slipped off through the jungle to their main
lines in the rear.

     Here, at the very outset of our active service, we suffered the loss of
two as gallant men as ever wore uniform.  Sergeant Hamilton Fish at the
extreme front, while holding the point up to its work and firing back where
the Spanish advance guards lay, was shot and instantly killed; three of the
men with him were likewise hit.  Captain Capron, leading the advance guard in
person, and displaying equal courage and coolness in the way that he handled
them, was also struck, and died a few minutes afterward.  The command of the
troop then devolved upon the First Lieutenant, young Thomas. Like Capron,
Thomas was the fifth in line from father to son who had served in the American
army, though in his case it was in the volunteer and not the regular service;
the four preceding generations had furnished soldiers respectively to the
Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil War.  In a
few minutes Thomas was shot through the leg, and the command devolved upon the
Second Lieutenant, Day (a nephew of "Albemarle" Cushing, he who sunk the great
Confederate ram).  Day, who proved himself to be one of our most efficient
officers, continued to handle the men to the best possible advantage, and
brought them steadily forward.  L Troop was from the Indian Territory.  The
whites, Indians, and half-breeds in it, all fought with equal courage.
Captain McClintock was hurried forward to its relief with his Troop B of
Arizona men.  In a few minutes he was shot through the leg and his place was
taken by his First Lieutenant, Wilcox, who handled his men in the same
soldierly manner that Day did.

     Among the men who showed marked courage and coolness was the tall
color-sergeant, Wright; the colors were shot through three times.

[See Color-Sergeant A.P. Wright]

     When I had led G Troop back to the trail I ran ahead of them, passing the
dead and wounded men of L Troop, passing young Fish as he lay with glazed eyes
under the rank tropic growth to one side of the trail.  When I came to the
front I found the men spread out in a very thin skirmish line, advancing
through comparatively open ground, each man taking advantage of what cover he
could, while Wood strolled about leading his horse, Brodie being close at
hand.  How Wood escaped being hit, I do not see, and still less how his horse
escaped.  I had left mine at the beginning of the action, and was only
regretting that I had not left my sword with it, as it kept getting between my
legs when I was tearing my way through the jungle. I never wore it again in
action.  Lieutenant Rivers was with Wood, also leading his horse.  Smedburg
had been sent off on the by no means pleasant task of establishing
communications with Young.

     Very soon after I reached the front, Brodie was hit, the bullet
shattering one arm and whirling him around as he stood.  He had kept on the
extreme front all through, his presence and example keeping his men entirely
steady, and he at first refused to go to the rear; but the wound was very
painful, and he became so faint that he had to be sent. Thereupon, Wood
directed me to take charge of the left wing in Brodie's place, and to bring it
forward; so over I went.

     I now had under me Captains Luna, Muller, and Houston, and I began to
take them forward, well spread out, through the high grass of a rather open
forest.  I noticed Goodrich, of Houston's troop, tramping along behind his
men, absorbed in making them keep at good intervals from one another and fire
slowly with careful aim.  As I came close up to the edge of the troop, he
caught a glimpse of me, mistook me for one of his own skirmishers who was
crowding in too closely, and called out, "Keep your interval, sir; keep your
interval, sir; and go forward."

     A perfect hail of bullets was sweeping over us as we advanced.  Once I
got a glimpse of some Spaniards, apparently retreating, far in the front, and
to our right, and we fired a couple of rounds after them.  Then I became
convinced, after much anxious study, that we were being fired at from some
large red-tiled buildings, part of a ranch on our front. Smokeless powder, and
the thick cover in our front, continued to puzzle us, and I more than once
consulted anxiously the officers as to the exact whereabouts of our opponents.
I took a rifle from a wounded man and began to try shots with it myself.  It
was very hot and the men were getting exhausted, though at this particular
time we were not suffering heavily from bullets, the Spanish fire going high.
As we advanced, the cover became a little thicker and I lost touch of the main
body under Wood; so I halted and we fired industriously at the ranch buildings
ahead of us, some five hundred yards off.  Then we heard cheering on the
right, and I supposed that this meant a charge on the part of Wood's men, so I
sprang up and ordered the men to rush the buildings ahead of us.  They came
forward with a will.  There was a moment's heavy firing from the Spaniards,
which all went over our heads, and then it ceased entirely.  When we arrived
at the buildings, panting and out of breath, they contained nothing but heaps
of empty cartridge-shells and two dead Spaniards, shot through the head.

     The country all around us was thickly forested, so that it was very
difficult to see any distance in any direction.  The firing had now died out,
but I was still entirely uncertain as to exactly what had happened.  I did not
know whether the enemy had been driven back or whether it was merely a lull in
the fight, and we might be attacked again; nor did I know what had happened in
any other part of the line, while as I occupied the extreme left, I was not
sure whether or not my flank was in danger.  At this moment one of our men who
had dropped out, arrived with the information (fortunately false) that Wood
was dead.  Of course, this meant that the command devolved upon me, and I
hastily set about taking charge of the regiment.  I had been particularly
struck by the coolness and courage shown by Sergeants Dame and McIlhenny, and
sent them out with small pickets to keep watch in front and to the left of the
left wing.  I sent other men to fill the canteens with water, and threw the
rest out in a long line in a disused sunken road, which gave them cover,
putting two or three wounded men, who had hitherto kept up with the
fighting-line, and a dozen men who were suffering from heat exhaustion - for
the fighting and running under that blazing sun through the thick dry jungle
was heart-breaking - into the ranch buildings.  Then I started over toward the
main body, but to my delight encountered Wood himself, who told me the fight
was over and the Spaniards had retreated.  He also informed me that other
troops were just coming up.  The first to appear was a squadron of the Ninth
Cavalry, under Major Dimick, which had hurried up to get into the fight, and
was greatly disappointed to find it over.  They took post in front of our
lines, so that our tired men were able to get a rest, Captain McBlain, of the
Ninth, good-naturedly giving us some points as to the best way to station our
outposts.  Then General Chaffee, rather glum at not having been in the fight
himself, rode up at the head of some of his infantry , and I marched my
squadron back to where the rest of the regiment was going into camp, just
where the two trails came together, and beyond - that is, on the Santiago side
of - the original Spanish lines.

     The Rough Riders had lost eight men killed and thirty-four wounded, aside
from two or three who were merely scratched and whose wounds were not
reported.  The First Cavalry, white, lost seven men killed and eight wounded;
the Tenth Cavalry, colored, one man killed and ten wounded; so, out of 964 men
engaged on our side, 16 were killed and 52 wounded.  The Spaniards were under
General Rubin, with, as second in command, Colonel Alcarez.  They had two
guns, and eleven companies of about a hundred men each: three belonging to the
Porto Rico regiment, three to the San Fernandino, two to the Talavero, two
being so-called mobilized companies from the mineral districts, and one a
company of engineers; over twelve hundred men in all, together with two guns.
^*

[Footnote *: See Lieutenant Muller y Tejeiro, "Combates y Capitulacion de
Santiago de Cuba," page 136.  The Lieutenant speaks as if only one echelon, of
seven companies and two guns, was engaged on the 24th.  The official report
says distinctly, "General Rubin's column," which consisted of the companies
detailed above.  By turning to page 146, where Lieutenant Tejeiro enumerates
the strength of the various companies, it will be seen that they averaged over
110 men apiece; this probably does not include officers, and is probably an
under-statement anyhow.  On page 261 he makes the Spanish loss at Las
Guasimas, which he calls Sevilla, 9 killed and 27 wounded. Very possibly he
includes only the Spanish regulars; two of the Spaniards we slew, over on the
left, were in brown, instead of the light blue of the regulars, and were
doubtless guerillas.]

     General Rubin reported that he had repulsed the American attack, and
Lieutenant Tejeiro states in his book that General Rubin forced the Americans
to retreat, and enumerates the attacking force as consisting of three regular
regiments of infantry, the Second Massachusetts and the Seventy-first New York
(not one of which fired a gun or were anywhere near the battle), in addition
to the sixteen dismounted troops of cavalry.  In other words, as the five
infantry regiments each included twelve companies, he makes the attacking
force consist of just five times the actual amount. As for the "repulse," our
line never went back ten yards in any place, and the advance was practically
steady; while an hour and a half after the fight began we were in complete
possession of the entire Spanish position, and their troops were fleeing in
masses down the road, our men being too exhausted to follow them.

     General Rubin also reports that he lost but seven men killed.  This is
certainly incorrect, for Captain O'Neill and I went over the ground very
carefully and counted eleven dead Spaniards, all of whom were actually buried
by our burying squads.  There were probably two or three men whom we missed,
but I think that our official reports are incorrect in stating that forty-two
dead Spaniards were found; this being based upon reports in which I think some
of the Spanish dead were counted two or three times.  Indeed, I should doubt
whether their loss was as heavy as ours, for they were under cover, while we
advanced, often in the open, and their main lines fled long before we could
get to close quarters.  It was a very difficult country, and a force of good
soldiers resolutely handled could have held the pass with ease against two or
three times their number.  As it was, with a force half of regulars and half
of volunteers, we drove out a superior number of Spanish regular troops,
strongly posted, without suffering a very heavy loss.  Although the Spanish
fire was very heavy, it does not seem to me it was very well directed; and
though they fired with great spirit while we merely stood at a distance and
fired at them, they did not show much resolution, and when we advanced, always
went back long before there was any chance of our coming into contact with
them.  Our men behaved very well indeed - white regulars, colored regulars,
and Rough Riders alike.  The newspaper press failed to do full justice to the
white regulars, in my opinion, from the simple reason that everybody knew that
they would fight, whereas there had been a good deal of question as to how the
Rough Riders, who were volunteer troops, and the Tenth Cavalry, who were
colored, would behave; so there was a tendency to exalt our deeds at the
expense of those of the First Regulars, whose courage and good conduct were
taken for granted.  It was a trying fight beyond what the losses show, for it
is hard upon raw soldiers to be pitted against an unseen foe, and to advance
steadily when their comrades are falling around them, and when they can only
occasionally see a chance to retaliate.  Wood's experience in fighting Apaches
stood him in good stead.  An entirely raw man at the head of the regiment,
conducting, as Wood was, what was practically an independent fight, would have
been in a very trying position.  The fight cleared the way toward Santiago,
and we experienced no further resistance.

     That afternoon we made camp and dined, subsisting chiefly on a load of
beans which we found on one of the Spanish mules which had been shot.  We also
looked after the wounded.  Dr. Church had himself gone out to the firing-line
during the fight, and carried to the rear some of the worst wounded on his
back or in his arms.  Those who could walk had walked in to where the little
field-hospital of the regiment was established on the trail.  We found all our
dead and all the badly wounded.  Around one of the latter the big, hideous
land-crabs had gathered in a grewsome ring, waiting for life to be extinct.
One of our own men and most of the Spanish dead had been found by the vultures
before we got to them; and their bodies were mangled, the eyes and wounds
being torn.

     The Rough Rider who had been thus treated was in Bucky O'Neill's troop;
and as we looked at the body, O'Neill turned to me and asked, "Colonel, isn't
it Whitman who says of the vultures that 'they pluck the eyes of princes and
tear the flesh of kings'?" I answered that I could not place the quotation.
Just a week afterward we were shielding his own body from the birds of prey.

     One of the men who fired first, and who displayed conspicuous gallantry
was a Cherokee half-breed, who was hit seven times, and of course had to go
back to the States.  Before he rejoined us at Montauk Point he had gone
through a little private war of his own; for on his return he found that a
cow-boy had gone off with his sweetheart, and in the fight that ensued he shot
his rival.  Another man of L Troop who also showed marked gallantry was Elliot
Cowdin.  The men of the plains and mountains were trained by life-long habit
to look on life and death with iron philosophy.  As I passed by a couple of
tall, lank, Oklahoma cow-punchers, I heard one say, "Well, some of the boys
got it in the neck!" to which the other answered with the grim plains proverb
of the South: "Many a good horse dies."

     Thomas Isbell, a half-breed Cherokee in the squad under Hamilton Fish,
was among the first to shoot and be shot at.  He was wounded no less than
seven times.  The first wound was received by him two minutes after he had
fired his first shot, the bullet going through his neck.  The second hit him
in the left thumb.  The third struck near his right hip, passing entirely
through the body.  The fourth bullet (which was apparently from a Remington
and not from a Mauser) went into his neck and lodged against the bone, being
afterward cut out.  The fifth bullet again hit his left hand. The sixth
scraped his head and the seventh his neck.  He did not receive all of the
wounds at the same time, over half an hour elapsing between the first and the
last.  Up to receiving the last wound he had declined to leave the
firing-line, but by that time he had lost so much blood that he had to be sent
to the rear.  The man's wiry tough ess was as notable as his courage.

     We improvised litters, and carried the more sorely wounded back to
Siboney that afternoon and the next morning; the others walked.  One of the
men who had been most severely wounded was Edward Marshall, the correspondent,
and he showed as much heroism as any soldier in the whole army.  He was shot
through the spine, a terrible and very painful wound, which we supposed meant
that he would surely die; but he made no complaint of any kind, and while he
retained consciousness persisted in dictating the story of the fight.  A very
touching incident happened in the improvised open-air hospital after the
fight, where the wounded were lying.  They did not groan, and made no
complaint, trying to help one another.  One of them suddenly began to hum, "My
Country 'tis of Thee," and one by one the others joined in the chorus, which
swelled out through the tropic woods, where the victors lay in camp beside
their dead.  I did not see any sign among the fighting men, whether wounded or
unwounded, of the very complicated emotions assigned to their kind by some of
the realistic modern novelists who have written about battles.  At the front
everyone behaved quite simply and took things as they came, in a
matter-of-course way; but there was doubtless, as is always the case, a good
deal of panic and confusion in the rear where the wounded, the stragglers, a
few of the packers, and two or three newspaper correspondents were, and in
consequence the first reports sent back to the coast were of a most alarming
character, describing, with minute inaccuracy, how we had run into an ambush,
etc.  The packers with the mules which carried the rapid-fire guns were among
those who ran, and they let the mules go in the jungle; in consequence the
guns were never even brought to the firing-line, and only Fred Herrig's skill
as a trailer enabled us to recover them.  By patient work he followed up the
mules' tracks in the forest until he found the animals.

     Among the wounded who walked to the temporary hospital at Siboney was the
trooper, Rowland, of whom I spoke before.  There the doctors examined him, and
decreed that his wound was so serious that he must go back to the States.
This was enough for Rowland, who waited until nightfall and then escaped,
slipping sut of the window and making his way back to camp with his rifle and
pack, though his wound must have made all movement very painful to him.  After
this, we felt that he was entitled to stay, and he never left us for a day,
distinguishing himself again in the fight at San Juan.

     Next morning we buried seven dead Rough Riders in a grave on the summit
of the trail, Chaplain Brown reading the solemn burial service of the
Episcopalians, while the men stood around with bared heads and joined in
singing, "Rock of Ages." Vast numbers of vultures were wheeling round and
round in great circles through the blue sky overhead.  There could be no more
honorable burial than that of these men in a common grave - Indian and
cow-boy, miner, packer, and college athlete - the man of unknown ancestry from
the lonely Western plains, and the man who carried on his watch the crests of
the Stuyvesants and the Fishes, one in the way they had met death, just as
during life they had been one in their daring and their loyalty.

[See Burial Ground: The spot where the seven Rough Riders were buried after
the first day's fight at Las Guasimas.]

     On the afternoon of the 25th we moved on a couple of miles, and camped in
a marshy open spot close to a beautiful stream.  Here we lay for several days.
Captain Lee, the British attache, spent some time with us; we had begun to
regard him as almost a member of the regiment.  Count von Gotzen, the German
attache, another good fellow, also visited us.  General Young was struck down
with the fever, and Wood took charge of the brigade.  This left me in command
of the regiment, of which I was very glad, for such experience as we had had
is a quick teacher.  By this time the men and I knew one another, and I felt
able to make them do themselves justice in march or battle.  They understood
that I paid no heed to where they came from; no heed to their creed, politics,
or social standing; that I would care for them to the utmost of my power, but
that I demanded the highest performance of duty; while in return I had seen
them tested, and knew I could depend absolutely on their courage, hardihood,
obedience, and individual initiative.

[See Rough Riders Camp: Camp of the Rough Riders after the Guasimas fight.]

     There was nothing like enough transportation with the army, whether in
the way of wagons or mule-trains; exactly as there had been no sufficient
number of landing-boats with the transports.  The officers' baggage had come
up, but none of us had much, and the shelter-tents proved only a partial
protection against the terrific downpours of rain.  These occurred almost
every afternoon, and turned the camp into a tarn, and the trails into torrents
and quagmires.  We were not given quite the proper amount of food, and what we
did get, like most of the clothing issued us, was fitter for the Klondyke than
for Cuba.  We got enough salt port and hardtack for the men, but not the full
ration of coffee and sugar, and nothing else.  I organized a couple of
expeditions back to the seacoast, taking the strongest and best walkers and
also some of the officers' horses and a stray mule or two, and brought back
beans and canned tomatoes.  These I got partly by great exertions on my part,
and partly by the aid of Colonel Weston of the Commissary Department, a
particularly energetic man whose services were of great value.  A silly
regulation forbade my purchasing canned vegetables, etc., except for the
officers; and I had no little difficulty in getting round this regulation, and
purchasing (with my own money, of course) what I needed for the men.

     One of the men I took with me on one of these trips was Sherman Bell, the
former Deputy Marshal of Cripple Creek, and Wells-Fargo Express rider. In
coming home with his load, through a blinding storm, he slipped and opened the
old rupture.  The agony was very great and one of his comrades took his load.
He himself, sometimes walking, and sometimes crawling, got back to camp, where
Dr. Church fixed him up with a spike bandage, but informed him that he would
have to be sent back to the States when an ambulance came along.  The
ambulance did not come until the next day, which was the day before we marched
to San Juan.  It arrived after nightfall, and as soon as Bell heard it coming,
he crawled out of the hospital tent into the jungle, where he lay all night;
and the ambulance went off without him. The men shielded him just as
school-boys would shield a companion, carrying his gun, belt, and bedding;
while Bell kept out of sight until the column started, and then staggered
along behind it.  I found him the morning of the San Juan fight.  He told me
that he wanted to die fighting, if die he must, and I hadn't the heart to send
him back.  He did splendid service that day, and afterward in the trenches,
and though the rupture opened twice again, and on each occasion he was within
a hair's breadth of death, he escaped, and came back with us to the United
States.

     The army was camped along the valley, ahead of and behind us, our
outposts being established on either side.  From the generals to the privates
all were eager to march against Santiago.  At daybreak, when the tall palms
began po show dimly through the rising mist, the scream of the cavalry
trumpets tore the tropic dawn; and in the evening, as the bands of regiment
after regiment played the "Star-Spangled Banner," all, officers and men alike,
stood with heads uncovered, wherever they were, until the last strains of the
anthem died away in the hot sunset air.