The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [340]
About 8:45 the enemy cannonade ceased for no apparent reason—tortilla time?—and General Sumner ordered the Cavalry Division to hurry en masse along Camino Real toward San Juan. About where the jungle thinned out, a creek, also called San Juan, crossed the road at right angles; here the Rough Riders were to deploy to the right, and await further orders before moving up the Heights. Shafter’s original battle plan had been for them to link up with the 1st Infantry, as soon as General Lawton returned in triumph from El Caney; but the continual booming of guns from that quarter indicated that the fort was holding up much better than anticipated.95 For strategic purposes, Lawton’s aid could now be discounted.
The freshness of the early morning had long since evaporated when Roosevelt, riding on Texas, led his men up the road. But last night’s mud was still thick and the jungle gave off insufferable clouds of dank moisture.96 The heat rose steadily to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the sun drilled down with blistering force on sweaty arms and shoulders. Roosevelt’s neck, at least, was protected. He had ingeniously attached his blue polka-dot scarf—the unofficial insignia of a Rough Rider—in a semicircular screen dangling from the rim of his sombrero. It fluttered bravely as he trotted along,97 like the plumes of Alexander the Great; later in the day it would serve him to flamboyant effect.
By now the familiar z-z-z-z-eu of Mauser bullets could be heard overhead. They sang louder and louder “in a steady deathly static”98 as Kent’s 1st Regular Brigade, marching just ahead of Roosevelt, approached San Juan Creek. The trees thinned, and suddenly so many thousands of bullets came down, ripping in sheets through grass and reeds and human bodies, that the mud of the crossing turned red, and the water flowing over it ran purple. The Rough Riders wavered, then halted, horrified at the pile-up of bodies in front of them. Ever afterward, this point of deploy was known as Bloody Ford.99
As if to improve still further the marksmanship of the Spanish snipers (many of whom were hidden in the high crests of royal palms, completely camouflaged with green uniforms and smokeless powder), an irresistible target was towed down Camino Real: the observation balloon of the Signal Corps. Glistening and wobbling in the sun, it stayed aloft long enough to reconnoiter another crossing five hundred yards to the left, relieving the gruesome bottleneck at Bloody Ford, and gave the cannons on San Juan Heights a precise indication of the position of the advance column.100
Plunging frantically across the creek, before the riddled balloon sank and smothered them, the Rough Riders found themselves crouching in a field full of waist-high grass. San Juan Hill rose up directly ahead, its blockhouse and breastworks clearly visible, as were the conical straw hats of entrenched soldiers. Roosevelt’s orders were to march to the right, along the bank of the creek, and establish himself at the foot of the little hill that Shafter had overlooked the day before.101 He, however, had not, and saw at once that it represented the nearest and most dangerous holdout of the enemy. Already it was breathing fire at its crest, like a miniature volcano about to erupt, and spitting showers of Mausers. The bullets came whisking through the grass with vicious effectiveness as the Rough Riders crawled nearer. Every now and again a trooper would leap involuntarily into the air, then crumple into a nerveless heap.102 Roosevelt remained obstinately on horseback, determined to set an example of courage to his men. Now began the worst part of the battle. While the Rough Riders took what cover they could, in bushes and banks below the hill, and in the mosquito-bogs at the edge of the creek, other cavalry regiments fought their way slowly into