The Losses at El Caney

Battle at San Juan Begun

inch. As one man fell, shot through the heart, another would take his place with grim determination and unflinching devotion to duty in every line of his face.

"Their gallantry was heroic. We wondered at these men, who fought like lions and fell like men courting a wholesale massacre, which could well have been avoided had they only kept up their firing without storming our trenches."

The number of Spanish dead is unknown. But three hundred and seventy-seven American soldiers were killed and wounded. They were martyrs in the cause of humanity; they fell, not for the mere purpose of capturing an insignificant Spanish village, but to make a people who were their neighbors free.

After taking El Caney the American outposts were at once pushed forward beyond the town and also within rifle-shot of the intrenchments of San Juan.

San Juan

While the battle of El Caney was going on, the troops there engaged could hear the roar of the guns of El Poso, which had opened on San Juan on their left, about three miles south.

El Poso is a hill about a mile and a half from the hill of San Juan. The plan of the commander-in-chief was that General Lawton, who took El Caney on the Ist of July, should finish that work early in the morning; that then his troops should push south to San

Disarrangement of Plans

Situation of San Juan

Juan, join with the troops of Generals Sumner and Kent, and spend the night in front of San Juan. The next morning the entire force was to attack San Juan on both sides.

This plan was never carried out. General Lawton did not finish capturing El Caney until the end of the afternoon. But meantime the American forces in front of San Juan could not endure being shot to pieces by the Spaniards, and so went forward to capture San Juan without the aid of the troops from El Caney.

The hill of San Juan is just outside of the city of Santiago directly to the east. Looked at on its eastern side it seems like a sharp bluff. On top of the hill was a low farmhouse with broad eaves. This had been turned into a fortification by the Spanish, as had also a long shed near by. East of this farmhouse, near the edge of the hill, were long rows of Spanish trenches; back of the farmhouse, towards Santiago, was a slight dip in the ground, and on the rise towards the city were more trenches. Barbed-wire fences were everywhere.

Looking eastward from the bluff of San Juan hill is a meadow one third of a mile in width, before you get to the brush and trees of the forest. This meadow, in the main, is a tangle of high grass, broken by scattered trees and barbed-wire fences. A little way to the northeast from San Juan is a shallow duck-pond, and just beyond this water is a low hill which, from its great sugar kettles on top, our men called Kettle Hill. Beyond the rolling meadow are the woods, broken by

March through Narrow Trail

Sharpshooters in Trees

swift winding streams; through this timber come the irregular, mountainous trails from Siboney, along which the troops had toiled, and on either side of which they had bivouacked for several days.

General Shafter, from his headquarters two or three miles distant from the edge of the forest, had ordered the troops of the First Division, under General Kent, which was to attack San Juan, to march forward all at once through this narrow trail and form in line of battle as they emerged at the edge of the woods. The road in some places was a hundred feet broad, in others it was not more than ten; practically it was no wider anywhere than at its narrowest part, and as the troops entered the road from their bivouacs there was an almost instant jam. While thus crowded they found themselves under fire without knowing whence the bullets came. It was at last discovered that the tree-tops concealed large numbers of Spanish sharpshooters. Several companies of colored troops were at once ordered into a thicket to bring down these sharpshooters without quarter. After a time the marching crowd was thus partially relieved of its hidden enemies; but the troops, as they neared the edge of the woods, came within the fire of both the Spanish artillery and rifles, and men began to fall rapidly. The confusion of the narrow road was bewildering; two brigades were marching side by side and became hopelessly intermingled. Orders were issued and countermanded; and sometimes the reversal of an order reached an officer before the order itself.

The War Balloon

Troops Placed in Deadly Position

The war balloon, which had been at the head of the troops, had served the Spanish as a fatal index of our location, and was the cause of much of the early slaughter of the day. Before it came down, however, it had discovered a fork in the road to the left, which led to the open meadow. Through this fork a portion of the troops was at once hurried.

But the Spaniards well knew the points where the two roads emerged into the open meadow, and those spots were pens of death.

Thus the morning hours wore on, seemingly without end. From the high hill of El Poso, Captain Grimes's battery began firing early in the morning at the trenches and the fortified farmhouse. But its old-fashioned

powder enveloped it in smoke after each discharge, and it was at least a minute before a second aim could be taken, while its cloud of smoke made it a conspicuous target for the Spaniards; therefore it soon ceased firing and took a new position nearer the enemy.

There was a steady march of wounded men towards the rear; motionless dead were everywhere. Fainting under the heat of the sun and in the suffocation of the tall grass on the sides of the road, men were at the extremity of their endurance, with lolling tongues and staring eyes.

At last endurance was no longer possible. There were no general orders to advance, for the brigade commanders knew that they had been ordered into this position, and they had received no orders from headquarters to get out of it.