The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (132 page)

F
OR THE LAST SIX DAYS
of June the Rough Riders camped in a little Eden on the westward slope of the ridge of Las Guásimas. They washed their bloody uniforms in a stream gushing out of the jungle, learned how to fry mangoes and, when tobacco ran out at a black-market price of $2 a plug, how to smoke dried grass, roots, and manure. The Cubans, if useless for all else, were at least good for rum: a can of Army beef (vintage 1894, according to the label)
was enough to fill one’s canteen, and a whole squad could get drunk on the proceeds of one Rough Rider blanket.
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Fifth Corps staff, meanwhile, had solved the complicated logistical problem of getting General Shafter finally onshore and bringing him up the Camino Real in a sagging buckboard. Like all obese people, the general felt the heat badly; in addition his gout was worse, and he had contracted a scalp condition which necessitated constant scratching by aides.
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Not until the morning of 30 June did he venture down from the ridge to explore the terrain still separating his forces from Santiago.
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The best vantage point was a hill named El Pozo, to the left of the road where it crossed the river—or, to be more precise, where the river crossed the road. Ascending this hill on the Army’s stoutest mule, Shafter gazed across a landscape which the Rough Riders, from their camp in the rear, already knew by heart.

Dense jungle filled the basin in front of him. There were hills to the right and hills to the left—the latter crowned by a fortified village named El Caney. Another ridge of hills rose on the far side of the basin, about a mile and a half away, walling off Santiago in another basin, much wider and lower to the west. The peaks undulated enticingly, exposing whitewashed triangles of the city to view, but their steep facing slopes, and in particular the heavy entrenchments visible all the way along the crest, made it obvious at a glance that they would be, as García had warned, General Linares’s last line of defense. These were the San Juan Heights, and that dominant central outcrop, crowned with a blockhouse, was San Juan Hill itself. Since the Camino Real snaked over the range slightly to the right of it, capture of the hill meant possession of the road. Shafter would then be able to mount a land siege of Santiago while Admiral Sampson continued his siege by sea. It would be a matter of time until starvation forced the surrender of the city.

If General Shafter noticed a smaller hill in front of San Juan Heights, cutting off his view of some of the road, he did not consider it worthy of inclusion in his hand-drawn map.
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A
COUNCIL OF WAR
was called in command headquarters early in the afternoon. Shafter looked ill and exhausted by his ascent of El
Pozo—obviously being at the front did not agree with him—but he had a definite plan of campaign worked out, and announced it in peremptory tones. The Fifth Corps would begin the advance upon Santiago immediately, that very evening. (Eight thousand enemy troops were reported to be on their way from another part of the province, to supplement the twelve thousand already in and around Santiago: clearly not a moment must be lost.) The divisions would move along the Camino Real under cover of dusk, and spread out in the vicinity of El Pozo. While Brigadier General J. F. Kent’s 1st Infantry and General Wheeler’s Cavalry encamped on the flanks of the hill, General Lawton’s 2nd Infantry would swing right and march toward El Caney, and bivouac somewhere en route. All forces would then be poised for a big battle which would inevitably begin next morning.
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Sitting vast and rumpled in shirt-sleeves and suspenders, his gouty foot wrapped in burlap,
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Shafter detailed the swift, simple maneuvers he would like to see, or at least hear about, during the day. At dawn General Lawton would assault El Caney and take the fort there, cutting off the northern supply route to Santiago. This should take only about three hours. Meanwhile the other two divisions would launch their own attack upon San Juan Hill, moving through the jungle along Camino Real, and deploying as they approached the foothills. Lawton was to join them on the right as soon as he was free, and the day’s action would climax in a massive onslaught on the Heights, plainly inspired by the final charge at Las Guásimas.
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The council of war was barely over when a staff officer rode over to Rough Rider headquarters and announced that Generals Wheeler and Young had been felled by fever. Command of the Cavalry Division therefore devolved upon Brigadier General Samuel S. Sumner, and that of Young’s 2nd Brigade upon Leonard Wood; “while to my intense delight,” wrote Theodore Roosevelt, “I got my regiment.”
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His long-postponed colonelcy had come just in time for the decisive engagement of the Spanish-American War.

O
NE SMALL DETAIL
which had apparently escaped General Shafter’s attention was that mobilization of some sixteen thousand
men along a road ten feet wide would cause certain problems, especially as he had ordered the entire Fifth Corps to start marching at
4:00 P.M
. A violent rainstorm at 3:30 did not help matters, for it converted the Camino Real into a ditch which squished deeper under every fresh line of boots.
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“Darkness came and still we marched,” one Rough Rider remembered. “The tropical moon rose. You could almost envy the ease with which this orange ball crossed the sky. It was all we could do to lift our muddy shoes.”
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At last, at about eight o’clock, the dark silhouette of El Pozo loomed up through the trees, and the regiment clambered halfway up its eastern slope. Leaving his men to sleep where they chose, Roosevelt strolled over the brow of the hill and found Wood establishing temporary headquarters in an abandoned sugar factory. Brigadier General and Colonel now, they gazed across at San Juan Heights, and the refracted glow of Santiago’s street lights.
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Then they curled up in their yellow slickers on a bed of saddle blankets and went to sleep.

T
HE FIRST OF
J
ULY, 1898
, which Roosevelt ever afterward called “the great day of my life,” dawned to a fugato of bugles, phrase echoing phrase as reveille sounded in the various camps.
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The morning was Elysian, with a pink sky lightening rapidly to pale, cloudless blue. Mists filled the basin below El Pozo, evaporating quickly as the air warmed, exposing first the crowns of royal palms, then the lower green of deciduous trees and vines. Hills rippled around the horizon to east, west, and north, like a violet backdrop. As the vapor burned away, the effect to Roosevelt was of shimmering curtains rising to disclose “an amphitheatre for the battle.”
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While his men got up he walked about calmly lathering his face, reassuring the many who had woken afraid.
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He wore a dark blue shirt with yellow suspenders, fastened with silver leaves, and—in the apparent belief that people might otherwise mistake him for a Regular—a stand-up collar emblazoned with the Volunteer insignia.
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Breakfast was frugal: a handful of beans, the invariable slabs of fat bacon and hardtack, washed down with bitter coffee. Then the regiment fell in, along with others of Wood’s brigade, to await marching orders. Four big guns of the 1st Artillery were hauled up El Pozo and
wedged into position. A staff officer came by with the predictable news that General Shafter had been taken ill during the night, and would have to command the battle from his cot.
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Roosevelt probably paid little attention: he was waiting for the first detonation of Lawton’s battery.

It came at 6:30, a sullen roar that rolled over the still-sleeping jungle and sent clouds of birds into the air. Almost immediately the El Pozo battery followed suit, and Roosevelt and Wood became conscious of a white plume of gunsmoke hanging motionless over their heads. Wood barely had time to say “he wished our brigade could be moved somewhere else” when there was a whistling rush from the direction of San Juan Hill, and something exploded in the midst of the white plume. Another shell, another and another: the second explosion raised a shrapnel bump on Roosevelt’s wrist, wounded four Rough Riders, and blew the leg off a Regular. The fourth killed and maimed “a good many” Cubans, and perforated the lungs of Wood’s horse. Evidently Spanish gunners were as
deadly accurate as Spanish riflemen. Roosevelt waited no longer, and hustled his regiment downhill into jungle cover.
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About 8:45 the enemy cannonade ceased for no apparent reason
—tortilla
time?—and General Sumner ordered the Cavalry Division to hurry en masse along Camino Real toward San Juan. About where the jungle thinned out, a creek, also called San Juan, crossed the road at right angles; here the Rough Riders were to deploy to the right, and await further orders before moving up the Heights. Shafter’s original battle plan had been for them to link up with the 1st Infantry, as soon as General Lawton returned in triumph from El Caney; but the continual booming of guns from that quarter indicated that the fort was holding up much better than anticipated.
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For strategic purposes, Lawton’s aid could now be discounted.