The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [338]
Fifth Corps staff, meanwhile, had solved the complicated logistical problem of getting General Shafter finally onshore and bringing him up the Camino Real in a sagging buckboard. Like all obese people, the general felt the heat badly; in addition his gout was worse, and he had contracted a scalp condition which necessitated constant scratching by aides.79 Not until the morning of 30 June did he venture down from the ridge to explore the terrain still separating his forces from Santiago.80
The best vantage point was a hill named El Pozo, to the left of the road where it crossed the river—or, to be more precise, where the river crossed the road. Ascending this hill on the Army’s stoutest mule, Shafter gazed across a landscape which the Rough Riders, from their camp in the rear, already knew by heart.
Dense jungle filled the basin in front of him. There were hills to the right and hills to the left—the latter crowned by a fortified village named El Caney. Another ridge of hills rose on the far side of the basin, about a mile and a half away, walling off Santiago in another basin, much wider and lower to the west. The peaks undulated enticingly, exposing whitewashed triangles of the city to view, but their steep facing slopes, and in particular the heavy entrenchments visible all the way along the crest, made it obvious at a glance that they would be, as García had warned, General Linares’s last line of defense. These were the San Juan Heights, and that dominant central outcrop, crowned with a blockhouse, was San Juan Hill itself. Since the Camino Real snaked over the range slightly to the right of it, capture of the hill meant possession of the road. Shafter would then be able to mount a land siege of Santiago while Admiral Sampson continued his siege by sea. It would be a matter of time until starvation forced the surrender of the city.
If General Shafter noticed a smaller hill in front of San Juan Heights, cutting off his view of some of the road, he did not consider it worthy of inclusion in his hand-drawn map.81
A COUNCIL OF WAR was called in command headquarters early in the afternoon. Shafter looked ill and exhausted by his ascent of El Pozo—obviously being at the front did not agree with him—but he had a definite plan of campaign worked out, and announced it in peremptory tones. The Fifth Corps would begin the advance upon Santiago immediately, that very evening. (Eight thousand enemy troops were reported to be on their way from another part of the province, to supplement the twelve thousand already in and around Santiago: clearly not a moment must be lost.) The divisions would move along the Camino Real under cover of dusk, and spread out in the vicinity of El Pozo. While Brigadier General J. F. Kent’s 1st Infantry and General Wheeler’s Cavalry encamped on the flanks of the hill, General Lawton’s 2nd Infantry would swing right and march toward El Caney, and bivouac somewhere en route. All forces would then be poised for a big battle which would inevitably begin next morning.82
Sitting vast and rumpled in shirt-sleeves and suspenders, his gouty foot wrapped in burlap,83 Shafter detailed the swift, simple maneuvers he would like to see, or at least hear about, during the day. At dawn General Lawton would assault El Caney and take the fort there, cutting off the northern supply route to Santiago. This should take only about three hours. Meanwhile the other two divisions would launch their own attack upon San Juan Hill, moving through the jungle along Camino Real, and