The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [331]
Once the Fifth Corps was safely ashore at Daiquirí, plans called for Shafter to capture the fishing port of Siboney, seven miles farther west, then to march directly up the Camino Real over the hills to Santiago, twelve miles north. This would be the most difficult and dangerous part of the expedition, for enemy defenses were known to be concentrated in those hills. One ridge in particular—known as San Juan Heights—was regarded as almost insuperable,15 so heavy were its fortifications, and so determined was Spain’s General Linares to hold it as the last wall protecting Santiago. If he could keep Shafter’s men off at cannon-point for a few weeks, his two most powerful allies—yellow fever and dysentery—would surely lay low all those still standing. But if the yanquis by some miracle broke through, Santiago, and Cuba, and the war, and the Western Hemisphere would be theirs.
NOT UNTIL THE EVENING of the following day were battle orders broadcast among the thirty-one transport ships. When the news reached Roosevelt, he entertained the Rough Riders with his patented war-dance, evolved from years of prancing around the carcasses of large game animals. Hand on hip, hat waving in the air, he sang:
“Shout hurrah for Erin-go-Bragh,
And all the Yankee nation!”16
Aboard the Yucatán a macabre toast was drunk: “To the Officers—may they get killed, wounded or promoted!”17 Only Roosevelt, presumably, could relish such sentiments to the full. That night, in darkened dormitories that rolled and pitched uneasily in a rising sea, the Rough Riders prepared themselves for invasion. The solemnity of what was about to happen, the likelihood that some soldiers would never sleep again (three hundred Spanish troops were said to be entrenched on the heights above Daiquirí, with heavy guns),18 made the hours before reveille increasingly suspenseful.
At 3:30 A.M. bugles sounded below decks. In the shadows, men rose whispering, dressed, and donned their bulky equipment: blanket rolls, full canteens, hundred-round ammunition belts, and haversacks stuffed with three days’ rations.19
Daiquirí was just visible when they emerged on deck in the chill predawn light. It was little more than a notch in the cliffs, with a clutch of corrugated-zinc huts surrounding an old ironworks and a railhead lined with ore-cars. The village appeared to be deserted, but as the Rough Riders looked, a great column of flame leaped up from the ironworks. Evidently the Spaniards intended to destroy Daiquirí’s only industrial resource before the norteamericanos arrived to exploit it.
Debarkation did not begin for several hours, for the sea was choppy and soldiers had considerable difficulty dropping into boats which rose and sank with the speed of elevators. At about 9:40 A.M. the thunder of naval bombardment was heard from Siboney, seven miles west. One by one the warships along the coast opened fire, until the air was shaking with noise and the zinc roofs were fluttering above Daiquirí like leaves blown in a storm. The flames spread along the ore-cars to the shacks, and bands aboard the truck-cars struck up the expedition’s most-requested number: “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”20
Not until 10:10 A.M. did Shafter silence the guns and order the first landing parties ashore. Some boats headed for the wooden pier, where even greater difficulties arose: now it was like jumping out of an elevator onto a passing floor. The fact that the pier was rotting, and slimy, did not help matters. The soldiers had to wait until high waves lifted them above dock level before leaping, in the knowledge that they would be crushed and ground to pieces if they fell between the boat and the barnacled pilings. Other boats raced for the beach, through tumbling surf, and deposited their passengers on the shingle, some head over heels and cursing.21
The problem of getting horses and mules ashore was solved in