The Roughest Riders (18 page)

T
he action heated up farther north near El Caney. The Spanish returned Capron's artillery fire with a relentless assault of their own directed at Chaffee's troops on the right of the hill. These included the black Twenty-Fifth and some Cuban rebels, both of whom suffered heavy losses in the early stages of combat. Ludlow and his troops veered farther to their left, within about one hundred yards of the west side of the village, where they supported Capron's artillery with a stream of rifle fire. His goal was to prevent the Spanish from circling around on that side of the hill in an attempt to envelope the American attackers. The Spanish defenders then began to sweep all the approaches into El Caney with a wide swath of devastating gunfire that hit the marks with growing accuracy. More of Lawton's forces moved ahead up the middle, past Capron's battery, with orders to approach El Viso and support Chaffee's troops, who remained under heavy fire.

Capron's artillery shells pounded the walls of El Viso but did little damage to the Spaniards, who were well protected behind them. For the next hour, Spanish gunfire inflicted heavy casualties on the American soldiers in a vicious, nonstop firefight. Ludlow's horse
was shot from under him, sending the general sprawling onto the ground. His men dove for cover, with little to protect them against the steady downpour of Mauser bullets. “The buggers are hidden behind rocks, in weeds, in the underbrush,” one of Ludlow's men complained. “We can't see them, and they are shooting us to pieces.”

Ludlow decided that a change of plan was called for. He moved one of his regiments about three hundred yards farther to the southwest to serve as a blocking force against Spanish soldiers trying to encircle them from that direction. That regiment he replaced with two others armed with more modern Krag rifles. Capron's artillery continued to pound El Viso and the Spanish rifle pits and trenches on the southern side of the fort. Meanwhile, Chaffee inched his troops forward in the face of withering Spanish fire that kept them from making much progress. On the southeast slope of El Viso, they found a refuge of sorts in a ravine that provided some protection from direct enemy fire. The firefight continued for an hour longer, when both sides began to run low on ammunition. Lawton ordered his forces to rest while more ammunition was brought up from the rear, and the Spanish welcomed the opportunity to take a break from the action while they tended to their dead and wounded and restocked their own dwindling supplies.

The lull lasted for three hours while the sun climbed higher, pushing the humidity and temperature well into the nineties. While the troops were waiting for new supplies, Lawton ordered one of his colonels, Evan Miles, to move some of his troops farther to the right, between Ludlow's men and Chaffee's forces. Miles succeeded in positioning them there by noon, at which point the Spanish began firing again, pinning them down about eight hundred yards from El Viso. The losses mounted, and stretcher bearers started carrying the dead and wounded back down the trail. One of them yelled over to the men of the Twenty-Fifth on the right, “Give 'em hell, boys. They've been doing us dirt all morning.”

But that was easier said than done. A battle that was supposed to last two hours according to earlier assessments was now dragging on for a good part of the day, with the Americans taking more losses than they were dishing out. Shafter, still laid up in his tent, was growing increasingly frustrated by reports about the lack of progress at the front. He sent a messenger ahead to tell Lawton, “I would not bother with little blockhouses. They can't harm us.” Yet it was not the blockhouses that were harming his men, but rather the well-placed Spanish sharpshooters inside them. Wheeler, too, who had been replaced by Shafter, was beside himself with rage and struggled unsuccessfully to get up from his own sickbed and get back into the fight. Nothing seemed to be going right for the American forces at the moment. The Spanish were resisting every attempt to assault the hill to drive them out of their commanding positions.

Colonel Miles got word that the black Twenty-Fifth with Chaffee needed more support, so he dispatched forty Cuban rebels to circle around to their right to help them protect that flank southeast of El Viso. The Cubans pushed ahead the best they could, but the Spanish riflemen had them in range and cut them down, killing the lieutenant who led them. The Cubans and the Americans they came to support kept firing back, but the configuration of the terrain offered them little protection, restricting their ability to advance. The men inched forward “across a plowed field in front of the enemy's position,” Miles reported, but “the latter's sharpshooters in the houses in Caney enfiladed the left of our line with a murderous fire.” The attackers attempted to redirect their fire on the town of El Caney, but the Spaniards responded with a steady volley of their own that inflicted heavy losses on the Americans.

A new line of troops moved up to a position about sixteen hundred yards behind Miles, and from there they advanced through thick underbrush and three barbed wire fences to within a thousand yards behind the colonel and his men. And there they, too, got
bogged down by heavy Spanish rifle fire that riddled the ground all around them.

The roar of battle near El Caney punctuated the thundering sound of guns pounding the American positions near the San Juan Heights. Shafter was growing more and more alarmed about the mounting losses of his men, and he sent word to Lawton to finish the job at El Caney as soon as possible and then head south to reinforce the troops attempting to assault San Juan. “You must proceed with the remainder of your force and join on immediately upon Sumner's right,” read Shafter's frantic message to Lawton. “If you do not the battle is lost.”

During the lull in fighting, however, Lawton realized that taking El Caney was going to be a bigger job than anyone realized. He couldn't spare a single soldier to send to anyone's assistance. He needed every man he had in his own brigades, and the forces at San Juan would have to fend the best they could on their own. Shafter later agreed that, given the pressure Lawton was under, he was right to continue the fight he already had at hand.

Shafter entrusted McClernand with the unenviable task of delivering his orders and finding some way for the men under Sumner, Kent, and Wood to overtake San Juan before they were all wiped out. “For a time it seemed as though every second man was either killed or wounded,” reported Richard Harding Davis. White and black men, regulars and volunteers lay moaning on the ground, clutching at their arms, legs, and chests, braving it out by acknowledging their wounds with phrases like “I've got a punctured tire.” A wounded black soldier with the Tenth said, “Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me. They must be very busy. I can wait.” He had been shot through the intestines and was lying under a tree
near the river, holding his stomach while three of his black brothers were sprawled around him. All of them had been hit in different parts of their bodies.

Every man had only a limited view of what was going on in the general battlefield, and most expressed fear that the enemy soldiers might come swarming in at any moment and finish them off while they were unable to fight back. As yet, despite their heroic efforts, the American forces had accomplished nothing of value. Making matters worse, the mammoth observation balloon rose about fifty feet directly overhead once again, an open invitation for the Spaniards to use it for target practice while foot soldiers marched helplessly beneath it. The enemy attackers sent a steady outpouring of bullets at the balloon, which was only six hundred yards away at this point, and much of their fire took a heavy toll on the men on the ground, members of the First and Tenth in particular.

Like so many fish at the bottom of a barrel, men continued to fall after being hit by bullets and shrapnel from timed charges. Their blood saturated the earth and their uniforms, which were already soaked with sweat and water from fording the streams. Many lay prostrate, suffocating in the blistering heat, their eyes rolling, their heads feeling as though they were on fire. The bullets showed no mercy as they came streaking in from the Spanish rifle pits, and the shrapnel screamed through the air for what seemed like an eternity. One of the officers yelled from the balloon, “I see men up there on those hills. They are firing at our troops!” The response from below went unrecorded and was probably unprintable.

Kent moved the black Twenty-Fourth farther up the trail to come to the aid of the white First and the black Ninth and Tenth, which were in the lead and taking the heaviest fire. General Hamilton Hawkins, a tall Civil War veteran with a snow-white mane, directed Kent's reinforcements along the crowded path as they worked their way toward the front. The route back down was
completely blocked for two miles by Kent's forces as they inched their way forward. The entire route was packed with men—the living, dead, and wounded—with little room for anyone to maneuver. They were all entangled in a chute of death from which there was no visible means of escape.

Then, inexplicably, McClernand sent a courier with a message to Kent to move to the side and let the Rough Riders advance to the head of the line. McClernand seemed to have misinterpreted Shafter's orders in taking this action; Shafter had clearly wanted Roosevelt's volunteers to be held back in reserve, but the chain of command and disjointed string of orders got more and more garbled by the minute. Roosevelt, for his part, was only too happy to mount his horse and tell his men to follow him into battle. He rode up the trail, causing a considerable amount of resentment among the regular army vets who had thought from the beginning that the Rough Riders were receiving too much favorable press attention, at their own expense.

The air was still and hot as the men struggled ahead. The vegetation in the jungle around them stank, as though it was rotting from the overbearing humidity, and it was thick enough to block their view to the sides. The putrid stench emanating from the bodies of decomposing horses mingled with the general rot and brought some of the men to the point of nausea. Fortunately, the Spanish had failed to take advantage of the terrain by planning an ambush, and the troops were able to plod forward without resistance. The grumbling in the ranks of the regulars reached Sumner's ears, and he rode back down the trail to reassure his men that they would do most of the fighting, despite the role McClernand had assigned to the Rough Riders. Sumner intended to direct Roosevelt and his volunteers to the right, more in the direction of the lower-lying Kettle Hill, rather than toward their main objective on the peak of San Juan.

Although they were not yet under fire, the going was tough for the Rough Riders. In crossing several deep, fast-moving streams, some of the men were swept downriver, and many of the cowboys, unable to swim, choked on the rushing currents. Weighed down by the sweltering heat and their heavy, wet clothing, the volunteers discarded much of what remained of their personal equipment. The entire procession of men and animals came to a crawl, the slowest among them clogging the trail at various points like slugs in a drainpipe. There was scarcely an inch of extra space to move around. Kent grew incensed by Shafter's poor strategic planning, and he conferred with Sumner about what they should do next. None of the officers knew precisely where they were in relation to their objectives. Sumner commanded Kent and Wood to head straight ahead until they reached the Aguadores River and then halt there while they joined forces and reconnoitered.

A
t that moment, a wraith-like figure appeared in their midst in the form of General Wheeler. The feisty old veteran had forced himself off his sickbed, roused into a fury by the sound of guns booming in the hills. He somehow mounted his horse unseen by the medics or any of his aides and rode like a ghost on horseback toward the San Juan Heights. By the time he reached Sumner and the others, however, he was too weak to assume command and was forced to serve as a mere liaison between McClernand and the generals at the front. After another hour of slogging up the overgrown trail, they reached the spot where it intersected the Aguadores River. Roosevelt rode up to join them, leading the remnants of his troops strung out down the trail behind him.

“Colonel, better get down, or they'll pot you,” one of the officers called out to Roosevelt.

“I'm not going to lie down for any confounded Spaniard!” Roosevelt answered.

From the banks of the river, they could see that the Spaniards had leveled most of the trees and heavy brush on the other side to create an open killing field for their riflemen. The observation
balloon floated overhead, tethered in place by ropes held by troops on the ground. One of the officers in the balloon called down that there was a previously unseen footpath veering off to the left that provided another route to San Juan Hill. The observers couldn't see many enemy soldiers along the route, so they assumed that most of the defenders were hidden on the far side of the ridge. Sumner contemplated the situation, trying to figure out the next phase of the attack. Should he expose his men to the cleared banks on the other side of the river, taking a chance that the enemy was not waiting in ambush for them? Or should he play it safe and await further orders from Shafter, who was laid up with no firsthand knowledge of their predicament? Some of the men were already crossing the river on their own, with no orders from anyone, so Sumner felt he had little choice but to plunge across himself with the bulk of his forces.