The Roughest Riders (26 page)

President William McKinley traveled to Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island to bask in the afterglow of the victory in Cuba and to welcome back returning heroes of the campaign, including Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-ds-04492)

When they left, however, they would not be going off to “peaceful pursuits,” as Reverend Malone had envisioned. The campaign in Cuba was over, but the war against Spain still raged on in other remote regions of the globe. The service of the Buffalo Soldiers was required to finish off what remained of the crumbling Spanish empire.

T
he war guns boomed, beckoning the Buffalo Soldiers to battle once again. Five men of the Tenth were awarded Medals of Honor, and twenty-five other black troops received Certificate of Merit Medals for their actions in Cuba. Now it was time to prove that they were patriotic and fit enough for duty on different islands to complete the final collapse of the Spanish empire. Puerto Rico was next, but it was only a warm-up exercise for the vigorous fights they would face in more far-flung battlefields, including the Philippines. The battle for Spain's stronghold in Puerto Rico had actually begun in May 1898, around the time the American troops were gathering in Tampa to await orders to sail for Cuba.

It started with a naval engagement on May 12, as American gunboats pounded the island's capital city of San Juan and established a blockade around the harbor. The Spaniards tried to break it without success during three separate battles, during which the US Navy inflicted considerable damage on the Spanish fleet defending the city. The naval war continued through much of the summer, until Secretary of War Alger ordered a land offensive in July that would include some of the Buffalo Soldiers who were able to leave
Montauk earlier than their brothers. He ordered General Nelson A. Miles to land his men on the northeast section of the island, where a lighthouse lit the waters off the coast with sweeping beams of light. The town that Miles's military strategists selected was Fajardo, about five miles inland from the coast and, under normal conditions, an easy thirty-mile march from the strategically located capital of San Juan. But conditions were anything but normal, as the Spanish had troops stationed in the area, and their resistance might mean a potentially long and costly engagement with no guarantee of victory. When Miles reappraised the situation, he revised his plan of attack.

Instead of striking at the northeastern quadrant of Puerto Rico, the American troops would land at a place the Spaniards least expected them to attack, in a dismal little barrio named Guánica, situated on a bay along the southern coastline. Guánica had less than one thousand inhabitants scattered among sixty houses and a variety of shacks, but its bay was one of the best on the island, with a solid wharf and steep banks on the eastern side. A sole, poorly manned blockhouse on the hill overlooking the harbor was its primary fortification. The Spanish defenses there consisted of a handful of soldiers belonging to a Puerto Rican militia unit, commanded by Lieutenant Enrique Méndez López. Miles arrived on July 25 at 5:45
AM
with a convoy of transport ships carrying 3,314 troops, escorted by a small battleship, the USS
Massachusetts.
As the American fleet approached from the south, lighthouse keeper Robustiano Rivera was shocked to spot the flotilla out at sea and sounded the alarms. As it turned out, most Puerto Ricans were as eager as the Cubans to be free of Spanish domination, and they ran off rather than engage in combat against men they regarded as liberators.

In addition to the
Massachusetts
, the American armada consisted of the
Gloucester
, the
Yale
, the
Windom
, the
Columbia
, the
Dixie
, the
Wasp
, the
Lampasas
, the
Unionist
, the
Stillwater
, and the
Specialist
,
plus two captured Spanish ships, the
Rita
and the
Nueces.
The black troops who were healthy enough to make the journey to Puerto Rico had been reorganized as Company L and incorporated into the Sixth Massachusetts Regimental National Guard. Miles sailed aboard the
Yale.
The
Gloucester
, a former yacht named the
Corsair
that had belonged to J. P. Morgan and was donated to the government, was the fastest in the fleet and the first to establish a beachhead. Twenty-eight sailors and marines lowered rafts into the water at 8:45
AM
, set up a machine-gun nest when they hit the sand, and surrounded it with a ring of barbed wire.

López and his remaining militia opened fire on the machine-gun nest from three hundred yards away. The Americans responded in kind, supported by heavy shells directed at the blockhouse by the
Gloucester.
The land battle for Puerto Rico had now begun. One by one, the rest of the US fleet anchored in the harbor and began to lower rafts into the water for the troops to ride to the beach. The Sixth Massachusetts with its unit of Buffalo Soldiers hit the shore right behind the first wave of sailors and marines. The landing of troops onto the beach was concluded by 11:00
AM
, and the initial skirmish was brief and conclusive. Six Spaniards lay dead with gunshot wounds, and López and three others suffered serious injuries. The rest of the militia, including lighthouse keeper Rivera, ran toward Yauco, a town located six miles to the north where a larger defense force was entrenched.

Yauco's main industry was coffee, although tobacco, sugarcane, and fruit also grew throughout the area. The town, home to about twenty-two thousand inhabitants, was situated in a coastal plain, but the slopes of Puerto Rico's central mountain range and a heavily forested region bordered it on the north. At the time of the invasion, 11 masonry houses, 166 wooden houses, 77 huts, a church, and the municipal building fleshed out the main part of the town. On the outskirts were several manufacturing plants producing
furniture, crackers, pasta, chocolate, and other goods. The villagers had rebelled against the Spanish several times, most recently on March 24, 1897, when sixty armed insurrectionists commanded by Fidel Velez tried to topple the colonial regime. Most of the men who survived were taken prisoner.

In Guánica, the American troops lowered the Spanish flag, raised their own, and proceeded to build a landing dock to complete their debarkation. Seven companies of the Sixth Massachusetts, including the Buffalo Soldiers in Company L, and one from the Sixth Illinois left shortly after midnight in pursuit of the fleeing defenders. There were no American casualties during the brief encounter.

Alger was enraged when he first learned about the American landing at Guánica in an Associated Press report the next day. Miles had disobeyed his order to attack the area around San Juan, and had changed his battle plan without consulting with Alger beforehand. It was only when Miles cabled Alger three days later, after Miles was able to set up a telegraph connection to Washington, DC, that Alger realized the operation had gone smoothly. At that point, he decided to let the issue rest. “Spanish troops are retreating from southern part of Puerto Rico,” Miles reported. “The army will soon be in mountain region. Weather delightful; troops in best of health and spirit. Anticipate no insurmountable obstacles in future results. Results thus far have been accomplished without loss of a single life.” Had Miles botched the skirmish, there is little question that Alger would have slammed Miles with disciplinary action.

Walter J. Stevens, a corporal with Company L who claimed kinship with Crispus Attucks, the first man killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770, wrote later that while the American invasion force suffered no casualties at Guánica, the battle took its toll in other ways. Puerto Rico was teeming with typhoid, malaria, and yellow fever at the time. “Our boys also endured many other diseases and one of the things they suffered a great deal was diarrhea. Some died
of this dreadful ailment and many of the men, including myself, contracted it and were eventually brought home to good old Boston on the hospital ship.” Of the battle itself, Stevens attributed the quick American victory to poor enemy marksmanship. They shot “haphazardly from the hip,” and most of their bullets flew over the heads of Company L as it lay in a wheat field.

Rivera and the retreating militia informed the authorities in Yauco that the Americans had landed and taken control of the harbor in Guánica. Captain Salvador Meca ordered the Third Company of his Twenty-Fifth Patria Battalion to march south and intercept the Americans before they could reach his garrison in Yauco. Meanwhile, along their way north, the pursuing Americans ran into some Puerto Rican units that jumped out of their hiding places with their hands raised and pledged their loyalty to the invaders. The Americans welcomed the locals and asked them to join forces against the Spaniards.

But not all of the islanders were hostile toward their Spanish overlords; many were loyalists who hated the Americans more than they did the Spaniards, with whom they at least shared a common language. This contingent of volunteers was known as the Puerto Rican Civil Guards, mounted guerrillas from Yauco and nearby villages. About three miles south of Yauco, Meca's men were also reinforced by two companies of the Cazador Patria Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Puig. And so the stage was set for a clash not only between Spaniards and Americans but also between Puerto Rican collaborators and Puerto Rican rebels.

The Americans' main objective was to capture the terminus of the rail line that ran between Yauco and Ponce, the largest city on the south side of the island, in an effort to cut off supplies and lines
of communication. The main track, which extended across the island, cut east about six miles from Yauco to Ponce, which boasted a deeper harbor than the one at Guánica. If Miles could shut down that city, the conquest of the southern part of Puerto Rico would be all but assured. The combined forces of the Spanish and Puerto Rican defenses under Puig's command positioned themselves on both sides of the main road leading from Guánica to Yauco, around a coffee plantation known as the Hacienda Desideria. The Puerto Ricans who had hooked up with the Americans knew precisely where the main lines of defense would be and warned the invaders beforehand, as they approached the area around 2:00
AM
under the cover of night.

General George A. Garretson, who commanded the troops heading north, ordered three companies, including the Buffalo Soldiers of Company L, to branch off to the right and occupy the Seboruco Hills overlooking the hacienda. The sky was clear and glinting with stars, and despite the late hour, there was enough light to illuminate the movement of the oncoming Americans and alert the defenders. The Spaniards fired first, pouring in a fusillade of bullets from their smokeless repeating Mausers. Most of the shots missed their marks, and the Americans responded with a deadlier stream of firepower from their smoky Springfield rifles.

Garretson decided to seize the moment as soon as the first rays of sun painted a pink glow across the eastern horizon. Dawn had revealed the first enemy position on a slope just south of the hacienda, and he gave the order to charge. The companies of the Sixth Massachusetts sprang forward, spearheaded by Company L, and ran toward the gun emplacements in front of the building. The Spaniards fell back almost immediately, seeking cover behind the walls of the hacienda. Some of Puig's men had deserted their positions during the night, and the remaining men began to panic when the reinforcements they expected from Yauco didn't materialize. Rather
than retreat in the face of the enemy attack, Puig tried a flanking movement around the charging Massachusetts and Illinois companies, temporarily taking the Americans by surprise. The Buffalo Soldiers and their white compatriots held their ground, however, and pressed forward, forcing the defenders to pull back farther along the road leading to Yauco.

By the time dawn had fully blossomed on the horizon, Meca's and Puig's soldiers were in full retreat. Sixteen had been killed or wounded, while the Americans suffered no deaths and only four minor injuries. All were racing north toward Yauco, with Puig accepting most of the blame for his failed defense, since his men had been the first to face the enemy and the first to give up critical ground. In their panic, the Spaniards continued to retreat through Yauco, with Garretson's troops closing in from behind.

Puig realized that his predicament had become hopeless; the Americans were rapidly narrowing the distance between them, leaving him with little or no opportunity to blow up the all-important rail line linking the village to the city of Ponce. In doing so he would have been fulfilling the Americans' goal to do just that, but with the invaders poised to occupy both cities, Puig would be denying them the link that previously had benefited the Spanish. Company L and the other troops entered Yauco, surprised to hear the cheers from some locals who welcomed the American forces on their land. Garretson ordered the Buffalo Soldiers to secure and garrison the town. The Spaniards' only option was to continue toward the next barrios up the line—Maricao, Lares, Adjuntas—abandoning their artillery and heavy equipment along the way.