The brave Linares, however, had already realized the hopelessness of his cause, but he would not surrender without permission from his home government. Therefore the city must be bombarded. Pacificos and the non-combatants were ordered out of the city and were permitted to come within our lines. All day long on the dusty road leading from Santiago to El Cancy passed the long white line; faint, hungry women carried a bundle of clothing and parcel of food or an infant while helpless children trailed wearily at the skirts of their wretched mothers. An old man tottered along on his cane and behind him a puny lad and an aged woman; old and young women and children and decrepit men of every class—those refined and used to luxury together with the ragged beggar—crowding each other in this narrow column. It was a pitiful sight; from daylight to dark the miserable procession trooped past. The suffering of the innocent is not the least of the sorrows of war.
The days of truce and hostilities alternated; all roll calls were suspended except the sunset call and retreat on days of truce.
At the evening call we daily ceased our chatting, cooking or working and groups or lines of officers and men stood with uncovered heads in respectful and reverent attention as the music of the Star Spangled Banner and the sight of the flag we had planted on the hill above us, lifted us out of ourselves and carried us in thought to home and country; it was the soldiers' silent Ave Maria.
Duty in the trenches was no less arduous because of the few days of truce; all the available men would report to work at strengthening positions and building bomb-proof shelters. Vigilance never relaxed until the capitulation. The rainy season had set in in earnest and the trenches were at times knee deep with mud and water. The constant exposures to the heat and rain together with the strain of battle began to have its effect upon even the strongest of us. Our sick list gradually grew and the dreaded yellow fever appeared in our ranks; the field hospitals already overcrowded with wounded were compelled to accommodate the increasing number of fever patients; medical supplies and food for the sick were lacking and though many things were furnished by the Red Cross there was yet a shortage.
Since July 3d the firing from the Spanish trenches had become irregular, desultory and non-effective. Our artillery gunners now knew the range of every Spanish battery and our men in the trenches—every one a trained marksman—knew the distance of every Spanish position. A Spanish captain told me afterward that it was dangerous for them even to stick up a finger for fear of having it shot off; and yet the Spanish commander still held out.
The literary style of the young lecturer reveals the direct virile qualities that since have made General Pershing one of the most forceful and clear American writers on topics having to do with the military affairs of the country. His use of adjectives perhaps is somewhat freer than in his later writings, but there is the same vivid, direct power of expression and description. His modesty at the time prevented him from referring to the fact that twice he was recommended for brevet commissions in the war with Spain for "personal gallantry and untiring energy and faithfulness." Nor did he mention the words of General Baldwin, a brave soldier of the Civil War, who said of him: "Pershing is the coolest man under fire I ever saw." And he makes no mention of the earnest protest of a certain foreign officer, the representative of his own government in the Santiago campaign, who begged the daring troops not to make the now famous charge up San Juan Hill because they would be rushing into certain death.
The official records, however, are now available and consequently we are not dependent upon stories which occasionally seem to possess a snow-ball like quality of increasing in size as they gain in distance from their starting points.
Headquarters, Tenth U. S. Cavalry,
Camp Hamilton, Cuba, July, 1898.
Adjutant General, Second Brigade, Cavalry Division, Fifth Army Corps.
Sir:—I have the honor to submit the following report of the part taken by the Tenth Cavalry in the battle of July 12th and 13th, 1898, before Santiago de Cuba.