CHAPTER XI
THE BATTLES OF CANEY AND SAN JUAN
General Shafter went to the front to take personal command of the army on Wednesday, June 29. At that time the divisions of Generals Kent, Wheeler, and Lawton were encamped on the Siboney-Santiago road, between the high ridge of Sevilla, from which I had seen the city two days before, and a half-ruined house and plantation, two or three miles farther on, known as El Pozo. Most of the troops were in the valley of a small stream which rises on the western slope of the Sevilla watershed, runs for a short distance in the direction of Santiago, and then, after receiving a number of tributaries, turns southward, just beyond the Pozo farm-house, and falls into the sea through the notch in the rampart at Aguadores. Although the bottom of this valley, in general, was densely wooded, there was a series of grassy openings, or glades, on the northern side of the stream just east of El Pozo, and in one of these openings General Lawton, who led the advance, had established his headquarters.
About three miles due north from El Pozo, and between three and four miles in a northeasterly direction from Santiago, there was a small village called Caney,[4] which, on account of its geographical position, was regarded as a place of considerable strategic importance. It was connected by roads or practicable trails with Santiago on the west, Guantanamo on the east, and El Pozo on the south; and an enemy holding it would not only outflank us on that side as soon as we should pass the Pozo farm-house, but, by means of a rapid cross-march in our rear, might cut or seriously imperil our only line of communication with our base of supplies at Siboney. The fact was well known, furthermore, that there was a strong division of Spanish regulars (about six thousand men) at Guantanamo; and if this division should undertake to reinforce the garrison at Santiago, Caney would be directly on its line of march. In view of these considerations, General Shafter, after a survey of the country from the summit of the hill at El Pozo, determined to seize Caney, and, having thus cut off reinforcements from Guantanamo and protected himself from a flanking movement on the right, advance directly upon the city. The plan was good enough, as far as it went; but General Shafter had made no reconnaissance on the Siboney-Santiago road beyond El Pozo, and was wholly ignorant not only of the strength of the enemy's position there, but of the nature of the country to be traversed. It is true that he had superficially looked over the ground, once, from the top of the Pozo hill; but he could get, in that way, very little accurate knowledge of the topography of the region, and still less of the Spaniards' defensive strength.
Our only possible line of advance, in the center, was the Siboney-Santiago road, which ran, through a dense jungle, down the valley of the Aguadores River, crossed a small stream flowing into that river from the north, then crossed the San Juan River, another tributary of the Aguadores, and finally emerged from the forest directly in front of the San Juan heights. The enemy, of course, knew exactly where this road lay, and where it came out of the woods into the open country; and they had so disposed their batteries and rifle-pits that they could not only concentrate their fire upon the lower stretches and the mouth of the road, but sweep with a hail-storm of projectiles the whole margin of the forest where we should have to deploy and form our attacking line. General Shafter had not ascertained these facts by means of a reconnaissance, nor had he, apparently, considered such a state of affairs as a contingency to be guarded against; but Mr. Richard Harding Davis asserts that General Chaffee, commander of a brigade in General Lawton's division, anticipated precisely this situation, and predicted, five days before the battle, that if our men marched down this trail into the open country they would be "piled up so high that they would block the road." He thought that it would be much better to keep away from the road altogether; cut trails parallel with the entire front of the forest and hidden by it, with innumerable little trails leading into the open; and then march the whole army out upon the hills through these trails at the same moment. Whether this suggestion was ever made to the commanding general or not, I do not know; but if it was, it failed to commend itself to his judgment. I refer now—perhaps prematurely—to a state of affairs in our immediate front which was not fully disclosed until much later; but I do so because knowledge of it is absolutely essential to a clear understanding of the way in which the battle of San Juan was fought.
General Shafter's plan of operations, as outlined by Captain Lee, British military attaché, was substantially as follows: General Lawton's division was to attack Caney at daylight, July 1, and was expected to drive the enemy quickly out of that post, which then menaced our right flank. Meanwhile the remainder of the Fifth Corps was to advance along the main trail toward Santiago, pushing back the Spanish outposts, and occupy the line of the San Juan River. There it was to deploy and await Lawton, who, having taken Caney, was to wheel to his left and form up on the right of the main line. All these movements were to be completed by the evening of the 1st, and then the whole army would combine for the assault of San Juan on the 2d.
The advance began on the afternoon of Thursday, June 30. General Lawton's division, accompanied by Capron's battery of four field-guns, marched out on the Caney road, without meeting any opposition, and bivouacked for the night behind a ridge, or hill, about a mile southeast of the village. At the same time the remainder of the corps, consisting of General Wheeler's cavalry division, the division of General Kent, and three batteries of light artillery, moved down the Siboney-Santiago road, and went into camp near the Pozo farm-house. At daybreak on Friday, July 1, both columns were in position, within striking distance of the enemy's intrenched line. As the fighting at Caney was wholly independent of the fighting at San Juan, it will be more convenient to regard the two engagements as separate battles, although they were carried on simultaneously. I shall not attempt, however, to do more than describe the tactics on the two widely separated fields, and briefly state the results.
The defenses of Caney consisted of a strong stone fort on a steep conical hill at the southeastern corner of the village, and four or five substantial log blockhouses, so placed as to command every possible, or at least every practicable, avenue of approach. The blockhouses were connected one with another by deep, narrow trenches; the stone fort was surrounded by a network of outlying rifle-pits; there was a barbed-wire entanglement along the whole eastern front of the enemy's position; and the large trees in the village, as well as the houses and the old stone church, were full of sharp-shooters. The garrison of the place, not including the inhabitants, who, of course, participated to a greater or less extent in the fighting, consisted of three companies of infantry belonging to the San Luis brigade and forty-seven guerrillas—a total force of five hundred and fourteen men. The regulars were armed with the Mauser magazine-rifle, while the guerrillas used a .45-caliber Remington, carrying a large and very destructive brass-jacketed ball. They had neither artillery nor machine-guns, and relied wholly upon their small arms, their rifle-pits, and the great natural strength of their position. The officer in command was Brigadier-General Joaquin Vara del Rey. The attacking force, under direction of General Lawton, consisted of four brigades, numbering about forty-five hundred men, and was made up wholly of regulars with the exception of the Second Massachusetts.
The battle began at half-past six o'clock in the morning. General Chaffee's brigade took up a position six or eight hundred yards from the fort on the eastern side of the village; Ludlow's brigade marched around on the western side, so as to seize the Caney-Santiago road and thus cut off the enemy's escape; while the brigade of General Miles closed in on the south. Capron's battery, from the summit of a hill a little more than a mile southeast of the fort, fired the first shot at 6:35 A. M. Our infantry on General Chaffee's side then opened fire; the Spaniards replied from their fort, blockhouses, and rifle-pits; and the engagement soon became general. For the next three or four hours the battle was little more than a rifle duel at about six hundred yards' range. Capron's battery, from the top of the distant hill, continued to bombard the fort and the village at intervals, but its fire was slow and not very effective. Our infantry, meanwhile, were suffering far more loss than they were able to inflict, for the reason that they could find little or no shelter, while the Spaniards were protected by loopholed walls and deep rifle-pits, and were firing at ranges which had been previously measured and were therefore accurately known. In spite of their losses, however, our men continued to creep forward, and about eleven o'clock General Chaffee's brigade reached and occupied the crest of a low ridge not more than three hundred yards from the northeastern side of the village. The fire of the Spanish sharp-shooters, at this short range, was very close and accurate, and before noon more than one hundred of General Chaffee's men lay dead or wounded in a sunken road about fifty yards back of the firing line. The losses in the brigades of Generals Ludlow and Miles, on the western and southern sides of the village, were almost as great, and at 1:30 P. M. the attacking force seemed to be barely holding its own. At this critical moment, when the chances of success or defeat seemed to be almost evenly balanced, General Lawton received an order from General Shafter to abandon the attack on Caney and hurry to the relief of Generals Kent and Sumner, who were hotly engaged in front of the San Juan heights. Believing that a retreat at this juncture would be disastrous, and that the demoralizing effect of a repulse at Caney would more than counterbalance the support that he could give the center of the line in front of San Juan, General Lawton disregarded this order and pressed the attack with renewed vigor. Capron's battery, about this time, got the range of the stone fort, shot away its flagstaff, amid vociferous cheers from our men, and soon began to make great breaches in its massive walls. General Chaffee, who had been directed to make a final assault on the fort when, in his judgment, the proper time had come, then gave the order to charge; and the Twelfth Infantry, closely followed by several regiments from General Miles's brigade, and the brigade of General Bates, which had just arrived from Siboney, swarmed up the steep slope of the hill, drove the Spaniards out of their rifle-pits, and took the fort by storm. The first man inside its walls was Mr. James Creelman, a war correspondent, who was shot through the shoulder while recovering the Spanish flag. Although the fire from the village and the blockhouses still continued, it gradually slackened, and in less than half an hour the Spaniards who remained alive gave up the struggle and retreated by the northern Santiago road, suffering considerable loss from the fire of General Ludlow's brigade as they passed. At 4 P. M. village, fort, and blockhouses were all in undisputed possession of General Lawton's gallant division. The battle had lasted about nine hours, and in that time seven hundred men had been killed or wounded. Our own loss was four officers and eighty-four men killed, and twenty-four officers and three hundred and thirty-two men wounded; total, four hundred and forty-four. The loss of the Spaniards, as reported by themselves, was two hundred and forty-eight,—about one half their entire strength,—not including inhabitants of the village killed in their houses and in the streets. General Vara del Rey, their commander, was shot through both legs as he stood in the square opposite the village church after the storming of the fort, and then, as his men were placing him on a stretcher, he was instantly killed by a bullet through the head. Our loss, in this obstinately fought battle, was numerically much greater than that of the Spaniards; but their percentage of loss, based on the number of men engaged, was nearly five times as great as ours. When they retreated, they left forty-eight per cent. of their whole force dead or wounded in the intrenchments that they had so gallantly defended, and Lieutenant-Colonel Punet was able to collect and take back to Santiago that night only one hundred and three of the five hundred and fourteen officers and men who originally composed the garrison.
The loss on our side in this engagement was far greater than it probably would have been if General Lawton had had artillery enough to destroy the fort and blockhouses and drive the Spaniards out of their rifle-pits before he pushed forward his infantry; but it was not expected, of course, that the taking of a small and comparatively insignificant village would be so serious and difficult a matter; and as General Shafter had only sixteen light field-guns in all, he doubtless thought that he could not spare more than four for the attack on Caney.