The principal sufferings after the surrender were due to four causes: first, improper clothes; second, improper food; third, lack of shelter; fourth, lack of proper medical attention.
In regard to clothing and these other necessaries, it should be borne in mind that the corps which went to Santiago was virtually the Regular Army. Every regiment which went to Tampa went there ready for service. Its equipment was just as complete on the 26th of April as it was on the 6th of June. There should have been no problems to solve in regard to them—and yet there were many.
First—Clothing.
The troops wore the same clothing to Cuba they had brought from Sheridan, Assinniboine, and Sherman. They wore winter clothing for their service in the torrid zone, and those who received summer clothing at all received it late in August, just in time to return to the bracing breezes of Montauk Point, where, in their enfeebled condition, winter clothing would have been more suitable. It did not require a professor of hygiene to foresee that the winter clothing used in northern Michigan would not be suitable for campaigning in southern Cuba in July; or that summer clothing suitable for southern Cuba would be too light for men returning to the northern part of Long Island. Is it to be concluded that it was impossible to obtain summer clothing for 18,000 men between the 26th of April and the 6th of June?
Second—Improper Food.
Most of the troops were embarked upon the transports by the 10th of June. Their food on transport consisted of the travel ration: canned roast beef, canned baked beans, canned tomatoes, and hardtack, with coffee, were the components. They subsisted upon this food, imprisoned in fetid holds of foul transports, unfit for the proper transportation of convicts, until the 25th day of June, when they disembarked. On drawing rations for the field it was found that the field ration would be of the same components, with the addition of bacon and minus the baked beans and tomatoes. During the emergency, up to include the 18th day of July, this was the ration. Occasionally a few cans of tomatoes found their way to camp, but rarely. The ration was always short, such as it was, but this the soldiers could have endured and did endure without a murmur.
But on the 18th of July, with unlimited wharfage at a distance of two miles and a half, with excellent roads, and with abundance of transportation (see Gen. Shafter’s Official Report), and with surrender foreknown for a sufficient length of time to have brought any quantity of vegetables from New York City, the ration continued to be bacon, canned beef, hardtack, and coffee. Finally, about the 25th of July, small amounts of soft bread began to be doled out, and an occasional issue of frozen fresh beef was made. It was soon demonstrated that not sufficient fresh beef could be made available. The vegetables which had been brought had nearly all spoiled on the transports. Hundreds of barrels of potatoes and onions were unloaded upon the docks and were so badly decayed as to make them useless. These vegetables had been drifting about the Caribbean Sea and upon the Atlantic Ocean since the 9th and 10th of June. Occasionally it was practicable to get a quarter or a half ration of potatoes and half of the usual allowance of canned tomatoes, but that was all.
It did not require a professor of hygienic dietetics to predict that men fed in the tropics upon a diet suited to the icy shores of Greenland would become ill, especially when they were clad in a manner suited to the climate of Labrador. Are we to conclude that it was impossible to get rice, beans, canned fruits, canned corn, and other vegetables to take the place of potatoes and onions?
