"It is announced by military experts as an axiom that trained troops armed with the present breech-loading and rapid-firing arm cannot be successfully assailed by any troops who simply assault. Of course you can make the regular approaches and dig up to them. The fallacy of that proposition was made very manifest that day when the men composing the advance marched as deliberately over those breastworks as they ever did when they fought with arms that you could only load about twice in a minute and of the range of only 200 or 300 yards.
"This army was an army of marksmen. For fifteen years the greatest attention has been paid to marksmanship, and I suppose four-fifths of all the men in that army wore on their breasts the marksman's badge. I had given orders, knowing that the noise of firing is harmless and that shots put in the air are harmless—I had given the strictest orders to all officers that their men should be told not to fire a shot unless they could see something moving, and the firing was to be by individuals, what is called file firing, individual firing. The Spanish troops, not so well drilled in firing as ours, used volley firing, which is very effective against large bodies of troops massed and moving over a plain, but utterly inefficient when used against skirmishers moving over a rough country. In that battle, which lasted two hours, less than ten rounds of ammunition per man was fired by my men, and the losses, notwithstanding my men were exposed, their whole bodies, while the enemy were in trenches, where only their heads could be seen, were about equal.
"I saw the commander of that force a few days later in Santiago, and in talking about it he said to me: 'Your men behaved very strange. We were much surprised. They were whipped, but they didn't seem to know it; they continued to advance (laughter and applause), and we had to go away.' He was quite right about it. They did have to go away.
"On the 29th we had reached the immediate vicinity of the peaks in front of Santiago, about a mile and a half from the city. On the 30th I carefully reconnoitered the ground as much as one could in the dense undergrowth, and determined where I would make my attack, which was simply directed in front, and to make a direct assault. There was no attempt at strategy, and no attempt at turning their flanks. It was simply going straight for them. In that I did not misjudge my men, and that is where I succeeded so well. (Applause.) If we had attempted to flank them out or dig them out by regular parallels and get close to them my men would have been sick before it could have been accomplished, and the losses would have been many times greater than they were.
"The only misfortune, as I judged it, of the first day's fight,but which I have since learned was for the best, was that immediately on our right, and what would be in our rear when we attacked the town, was a little village called El Caney, four miles and a half from Santiago, and whence the best road in the country connected with Santiago. I did not know the exact force there, but it was estimated to be 1,000, and perhaps a little more, and it would, of course, have been very hazardous to have left that force so near in our rear.
"Instead of finishing the affair by 9 o'clock, as we expected, it took until 4:30 o'clock in the afternoon before the last shot was fired, and then after a loss of nearly a hundred killed and 250 wounded on our side and the almost total annihilation of the force opposed to us. They had an idea that they would be killed, and when men believe that it is hard to capture them. Just at the close of the battle three or four hundred did attempt to escape, but ran out in front of a brigade that they did not see, and in the course of about three or four hundred yards most of them were dead or mortally wounded, so that probably not more than twenty men on the other side escaped from that battle. It was a most desperate struggle.
"Men were killed in the trenches by being knocked on the head with muskets, and one man I was shown two days later with what would be called a tremendous head on him, and the interpreter asked him how that had occurred, and he doubled up his fist and spoke of the soldier that had hit him as a black man, that he had dropped his gun and hit him in the head with his fist. That was pretty close work.
"Meanwhile the battle in front of Santiago progressed, with three divisions on our side, one of dismounted cavalry and two of infantry. It was beautifully fought. Every man knew what he had to do, and so did every officer. The orders were that Immediately upon being deployed they were to attack. They did it. Every man kept going, and when one's comrade dropped the rest kept going. The result was that in about two hours the line was taken, and practically that afternoon the battle of Santiago was ended, for those men never advanced beyond that point.
"During the night I brought up the division of General Lawton that had been on the right at Caney and put them on the extreme right, where I had intended to have them the day before, and where, had they been, we should probably have taken the town and have gotten only the men that were there, and not the 12,000 that were far beyond our reach who were surrendered a few days later.
"On the morning of the 2d a weak attempt was made upon our lines. In that the Spaniards had to expose themselves, while my men were covered. The fight lasted but a little while, and they retreated.