Campaigning in Cuba

by George Kennan

General Shafter seems disposed to attribute the difficulty that he experienced in supplying his army with food to the condition of the roads rather than to the lack of mules, packers, teamsters, and wagons. In an interview with a correspondent of the Boston "Herald" at Santiago on August 25 he is reported as saying: "There has been some question concerning the transportation facilities of the army. The facilities were all there, and the transportation equipment provided was all that it should have been; but our difficulties were enormous. There was only one road; to build another would have taken two years. The nature of the country, the weather, all these things helped to disorganize this department. The use of wagons was almost impossible. The pack-train, as a matter of fact, did the real service. I had not, at first, thought the pack-train would be of service; but if it had not been there, I do not know what the army would have done for food. The roads were practically impassable. With the bridges down, the wagons could not be worked. I had a great deal of concern when we were only able to get up one day's rations at a time, but as soon as we were able to get a few days' rations ahead, we knew we were prepared for anything."

It is hardly accurate to say, without qualification and without limitation as to time, that the "roads were practically impassable." They were unquestionably very bad, and perhaps impassable, at the last; but before they became so there was ample time to take over them, with a suitable supply-train, all the tents, cooking-utensils, clothing, medical supplies, and provisions that the army so urgently needed but did not have. The road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front did not become impassable for loaded wagons until the end of the second week in July. For ten days after the army landed it was comparatively dry and good; and for ten days or two weeks more it was at least passable, and was constantly traversed, not only by pack-trains, but by wagons with loads.

Captain Henry L. Marcotte, a retired officer of the Seventeenth Infantry, who went with General Shafter's army as correspondent for the "Army and Navy Journal," describes the condition of the road as follows:

"The road from Daiquiri to Siboney, about seven miles, leads over the foot-hill slopes of the mountain-ranges and crosses a winding stream several times during that distance. The road-bed, being mostly of rock, and well shaded by tropical growths, with good water every few hundred yards, made the journey for the Catling battery a picnic without obstacles. From Siboney to Corps.... There is a mystery about the 'condition of the road' that may remain so unless it is fixed upon as the scape-goat for the lack of transportation.... The condition of the road at no time would have prevented a farmer from taking a load of hay to market.... There was no point from Daiquiri to the trenches which could not have been as easily reached by wagons as by pack-mules between June 22 and July 18."

Captain Marcotte, as a retired officer of the regular army, is better qualified than I am to express an opinion with regard to the availability of a road for military purposes, and he does not hesitate to say that the road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front was practicable for loaded wagons up to July 18, or for a period of nearly a month subsequent to the landing of the army. During a part of that time, he says, its condition was not such as to prevent a farmer from taking a load of hay over it.

I myself went over this road from Siboney to the front four times between June 26 and July 9,—twice on foot, once in an ambulance, and once in an army wagon,—and my own judgment is that for ten days after the disembarkation of the army the road was comparatively dry and good. After that it became muddy and bad, but was by no means impassable, even for heavily loaded wagons, when I traversed it for the last time, five days before the surrender of Santiago. With the fall of that city the army's base of supplies was transferred from Siboney to Santiago harbor, and the condition of the Siboney road ceased to be a factor in the transportation problem. When a dozen steamers, loaded with supplies of all kinds, anchored off the Santiago piers, on July 15, the bulk of the army was within two miles of them, and there ought to have been no difficulty in getting to the troops everything that they needed.

If the road from Siboney to the front was practicable for both pack-mules and wagons from the time when the army landed to the time when its base of supplies was transferred to Santiago, and if, as General Shafter asserts, "the facilities were all there, and the transportation equipment provided was all that it should have been," why was the army left for almost a month without suitable tents, without adequate hospital supplies, without camp-kettles, without cooking-utensils other than tin plates, coffee-cups, and old tomato-cans, without hammocks, without extra clothing or spare blankets, and with only a limited supply of food? That this was the state of the army is beyond question.

Lieutenant John H. Parker of the Gatling-gun battery reported to Adjutant-General Corbin, under date of July 23, that he and his men had been entirely without tents for a period of twenty-eight days.

John Henry of the Twenty-first Infantry wrote to his cousin in Lowell, Massachusetts, that his regiment had been on the firing line seventeen days. For two days they had nothing at all to eat, and no shelter, and lay on the ground in puddles of water.

Ex-Representative F. H. Krebs of the Second Massachusetts Regiment says that for twenty-six consecutive days he had only hard bread, bacon, and coffee, and that for three days he lived on one hardtack a day. The soldiers of his regiment did all their cooking in tin plates and coffee-cups, and slept for two months on the wet ground, under what are called "shelter"-tents, for the reason, I suppose,—lucus a non lucendo,—that they do not shelter.