The Roughest Riders (13 page)

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.

R
ichard 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.”

American losses began to build heavily, and Wheeler grew concerned that his casualties would prove to be unacceptable in the event of a defeat—particularly since he had exceeded his authority in launching the assault, reason enough to get him court-martialed
himself. He didn't want to admit it, but he needed Lawton to send him reinforcements as quickly as possible. Fortunately, Lawton had surmised as much, even before he got word from Wheeler; he had been listening to the deafening roar of guns and cannons with mounting alarm from his own base in Siboney. By the time Wheeler's messenger arrived from Las Guasimas, Lawton already had his own white infantry division plus the black Ninth, which had remained behind with him, ready to charge into battle.

The reinforcements, under the leadership of General Adna Chaffee, got there none too soon, although they were needed more by Wood, Roosevelt, and the Rough Riders than by Wheeler's forces, which were holding their own against the Spanish guns. Wood and Roosevelt, who knew nothing about Wheeler's plea for help from Lawton, were meanwhile struggling with the mule train, which was giving them more grief than it was worth. A soldier in charge of unloading the Colt rapid-fire guns from the mules accidentally let them slip and fall to the ground, damaging them beyond immediate repair. The Spanish Mauser bullets continued to rain down upon the men. Wood described the situation as desperate, with bullets cutting through the trees and dropping leaves like green snowflakes. Large branches crashed all around. The Rough Riders fired back blindly until one of Wood's men yelled out, “For God's sake, stop! You are killing your own men!”

The reporters with the Rough Riders were themselves in great danger, among them Edward Marshall, who fell to the ground when a bullet found its mark and smashed into his spine. He was standing close to Wood when he was hit, and the colonel later recalled that the reporter had shown his mettle by dictating a story to the
Journal
while he lay injured on the ground. Marshall let out not so much as a whimper while Stephen Crane took down the wounded man's dictation.

“In hard luck, old man?” Crane asked Marshall.

“Yes, I'm done for.”

“Nonsense. You're all right. What can I do for you?”

“Well, you might file my dispatches. I don't mean file them ahead of your own—but just file them if you find it handy.”

Crane agreed and eventually delivered Marshall's reports to the
Journal
, even though Crane himself was writing for the
World
—an act that was largely responsible for costing him his own job.

Crane helped a few others load Marshall onto a stretcher and carry him to a field hospital, where a doctor attended to his wound. After filing his dispatches, Crane saw to it that Marshall was transported to the
Olivette
, which had been turned into a hospital ship. He thought Marshall was a dead man as he waved him off. Crane was amazed that any man could remain so collected in such dire condition; Marshall had put his job as a reporter ahead of his personal agony, writing first-rate prose as he lay writhing on the ground. Crane was even more astounded that Marshall did not die from his injury.

Marshall not only survived the wound—although it cost him a leg—but he outlived Crane by more than three decades. He later wrote an article about his experiences in the war, and his account includes an interview with one soldier who recalled the horrors of battle in gruesome detail. He said his own breath left his body when he saw the man next to him hit by a bullet that blew the top of his head off, sending it flying into the air. The man collapsed to the ground, his body intact except for the shattered skull.

The black Ninth scrambled up the main path and joined the black Tenth and white troops on their right flank. General Chaffee directed the action on horseback. The Spanish defenders saw the reinforcements advancing rapidly to join the rest of Wheeler's
troops and turned their machine guns in that direction. The Ninth fired back with enfilading fire—meaning it cut across the ranks and swept the entire Spanish line of defense, as distinct from defilading, or more targeted, fire. On the far left, the Rough Riders, under constant assault themselves, continued their own slow climb to join Wheeler's men where the two trails came together.

Part of the Tenth moved to the left, where they drew enemy fire without the ability to respond, since they were out of range with their carbines. They pushed ahead of Wood and the Rough Riders on the left, and came under heavy fire without letup for more than an hour. “Their coolness and fine discipline were superb,” said a white officer with them. Another troop of the Tenth took command of the Hotchkiss mountain guns, which had a longer range, and zeroed in on the Spanish entrenchments—but sparingly, since their supply of ammunition was low. The rest of the Tenth was ordered to advance on the far right.

“I ordered the troops forward at once, telling them to take advantage of all cover available,” said the lieutenant commanding the troop. The volleys from the Spanish were homing in heavily, striking the ground on all sides of the men. It was almost impossible for them to move forward from their cover with any confidence. The lieutenant ran back to where the black troops were positioned near a brick wall and ordered them to charge forward en masse. They dashed ahead in a single great outpouring of men, with three or four of them dropping as they were hit. The Spanish had erected a wire fence in the midst of thick brush, which stood on their right, making it difficult to push ahead. The black troops followed along the fence for a hundred yards or so, reaching a spot where most of them found an opening through which they could charge ahead toward the enemy.

The black Ninth and Tenth and white First pushed ahead into the relentless Spanish fire, advancing cautiously toward the crest up
a sheer incline. Their movement was difficult because of the steep slope, the thick cactus, and the sharp-leaved grass, known as Spanish bayonet, that covered the hillside. The men sliced through it with their knives and sabers. The lieutenant who had ordered them forward recalled that it was impossible to see more than a few men at a time because of the thick foliage. But all of them made it to the crest at about the same time and, from there, began to advance steadily.

General Young had a similar view of the battle: “The ground over which the right column advanced was a mass of jungle growth, with wire fences, not to be seen until encountered, and precipitous heights as the ridge was approached.” It was impossible for the troops to keep in touch with one another toward the front, he recalled, and they could only judge the enemy positions from the sound and direction of the gunfire. Their progress was remarkably difficult, yet they pulled together and moved ahead under continuous rifle fire, backed up by rapid-fire guns. Young noted that the troops under his command maintained perfect discipline in the face of the heavy onslaught. No one straggled or attempted to fall back as they kept up their steady advance toward enemy lines.

T
he battle raged on for more than two hours, with both sides suffering mounting casualties under the steady hail of bullets. The shrieks, groans, and deafening din of warfare shook the very air itself. The smoke from the American guns seared the men's eyes and choked them with every breath they took. As they slogged up the hill, branches crashed around them, inflicting even more injuries. Then, almost miraculously, the Spanish soldiers, despite their greater numbers, slowly began to pull back as the black Ninth and Tenth and the white First pushed past the crest and closed in on the enemy positions. Wheeler's voice rose above the roar as he uttered his famous cry, “We've got the damn Yankees on the run again!”

The Spanish were indeed pulling back as the American troops charged ahead in the face of blistering fire. Wood and Roosevelt could hear the rebel yells emitted by black and white troops alike as they forced the defenders back from their barricades to a new line of defense a few hundred yards to the north. When Roosevelt rode up to the junction of the two paths, he saw Wheeler's men whooping wildly near the brick walls of the abandoned sugarcane storage
house. Nearby lay the bodies of two dead Spaniards, a pile of cartridge cases, and some canned beans, which the Americans immediately cooked over an open fire to assuage their hunger. The men were too exhausted to pursue the enemy to their new redoubt. They collapsed to the ground, shared their meal, and breathed a collective sigh of relief to be out of the hellish fire for a brief moment.