 Section 4 of Notes of a War Correspondent. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This is recorded by Robert Parker. It's called Notes of a War Correspondent by Richard Harding Davis. Part 2 is the Spanish-American War. This chapter is the Battle of San Juan Hill. After the Guasi mass fight on June 24th, the army was advanced along the single trail which leads from Sibone on the coast to Santiago. Two streams of excellent water run parallel with this trail for short distances, and some eight miles from the coast crossed it in two places. Our outposts were stationed at the first of these fords, the Cuban outposts a mile and a half farther on at the end of the ford nearer Santiago, where the stream made a sharp turn at a place called El Poso, another mile and a half of trail, extended from El Poso to the trenches of San Juan. The reader should remember El Poso as it marked an important starting point against San Juan on the eventful first of July. For six days, the army was encamped on either side of the trail for three miles back from the outposts. The regimental camps touched each other, and all day long the pack horses carrying the day's rations passed up and down between them. The trail was a sunken wagon road, where it was possible in a few places for two wagons to pass at one time. But the greater distances were so narrow that there was but just room for a wagon or a loaded mule train to make its way. The banks of the trail were three or four feet high, and when it rained it was converted into a huge gutter with sides of mud and with a liquid mud a foot deep between them. The camps were pitched along the trail as near the parallel stream as possible, and in the occasional places where there was a rich high grass. At night the men slept in dog tents, opened up the front and back, and during the day spent their time under the shade of trees along the trail or on the banks of the stream. Centuries were placed at every few feet along these streams to guard them from any possible pollution. For six days the army rested in this way, for as an army moves and acts only on its belly, and as the belly of this army was three miles long it could advance but slowly. The week of rest after the cramped life of the troopship was not ungrateful, although the rations were scarce and there was no tobacco, which was as necessary to the health of the men as their food. During this week of waiting the chief excitement was to walk out a mile and a half beyond the outposts to the hill of El Posal and look across the basin that lay in the great valley which leads to Santiago. The left of the valley was the hills which hide the sea. The right of the valley was the hills in which nestled the village of El Cane, below El Posal in the basin. The dense green forest stretched a mile and a half to the hills of San Juan. These hills looked so quiet and sunny and well kept that they reminded one of a New England orchard. There was a blue bungalow on a hill to the right, a red bungalow higher up on the right, and in the center the blockhouse of San Juan, which looked like a Chinese pagoda. There was three quarters of a mile behind them, with a dip between, where the long white walls of the hospital and barracks of Santiago, wearing thirteen red cross flags, and as was pointed out to the foreign attachés later, two six inch guns a hundred yards in advance of the red cross flags. It was so quiet, so fair, and so prosperous looking that it breathed of peace. It seemed as though one might, without accident, walk in and take dinner at the Venus Restaurant, or lull on the benches in the plaza, or rock in one of the great bentwood chairs around the patio of the Don Carlos Club. But on the 27th of June, a long yellow pit opened in the hillside of San Juan, and in it we could see straw sombreros rising and falling, bobbing up and down, and under the shade of the blockhouse, blue-coated spaniards strolling leisurely about, or riding forth on little white ponies to scamper over the hills. Officials of every regiment, and attachés of foreign countries, correspondents, and staff officers, daily reported the fact that the rifle pits were growing in length and in number, and that in plain sight from the hill of El Poso the enemy was entrenching himself at San Juan, and at the little village of Caney to the right, where he was marching through the streets. But no artillery was sent to El Poso Hill to drop a shell among the busy men at work among the trenches, or to interrupt the street parades in El Caney. For four days before the American soldiers captured the same rifle pits at El Caney and San Juan, with a loss of 2,000 men, they watched these men diligently preparing for their coming, and wondered why there was no order to embarrass or to end these preparations. On the afternoon of June 30, Captain Mills rode up to the tent of Colonel Wood, and told him that on account of illness General Wheeler and General Young had relinquished their commands, and that General Sumner would take charge of the cavalry division, and that he, Colonel Wood, would take command of General Young's brigade and Colonel Carroll of General Sumner's brigade. You will break camp and move forward at four o'clock," he said. It was then three o'clock, and apparently the order to move forward at four had been given to each regiment at nearly the same time, for they all struck their tents and stepped down into the trail together. It was as though fifteen regiments were encamped along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue, and were all ordered at the same moment to move into it and march downtown. If Fifth Avenue were ten feet wide, one can imagine the confusion. General Chaffee was at General Lawton's headquarters, and they stood apart whispering together about the march they were to take to El Caning. Just over their heads the balloon was ascending for the first time, and its great glistening bulk hung just above the treetops, and the men in different regiments picking their way along the trail gazed up at it open-mouthed. The headquarters camp was crowded. After a week of inaction, the army, at a moment's notice, was moving forward, and everyone had ridden in haste to learn why. There were attachés in strange uniforms, self-important Cuban generals, officers from the flagship New York, and an army of photographers. At the side of the camp, double lines of soldiers passed slowly along the two paths of the muddy road, while, between them, aids dashed up and down, splashing them with dirty water, and shouting, You will come up at once, sir! You will not attempt to enter the trail yet, sir! General Summers complements, and why are you not in your place? Twelve thousand men, with their eyes fixed on a balloon and treading on each other's heels in three inches of mud, moved slowly. And after three hours it seemed as though every man in the United States was under arms and stumbling and slipping down that trail. The lines passed until the moon rose. They seemed endless, interminable. There were cavalry mounted and dismounted, artillery with cracking whips and cursing drivers, rough riders in brown, and regulars, both black and white, in blue. Midnight came, and they were still stumbling and slipping forward. General Summers' headquarters tent was pitched to the right of El Posal Hill. Below us lay the basin a mile and a half in length, and a mile and a half wide, from which a white mist was rising. Near us, drowned under the mist, seven thousand men were sleeping, and farther to the right, General Chafee's five thousand were lying under the bushes along the trails to El Cane, waiting to march on it and eat it up before breakfast. The place hardly needs a map to explain it. The trails were like a pitchfork with its prongs touching the hills of San Juan. The long handle of the pitchfork was the trail over which we had just come. The joining of the handle and the prongs were El Posal. El Cane lay halfway along the right prong, and the left one was the trail down which, in the morning, the troops were to be hurled upon San Juan. It was, as yet, an utterly undiscovered country. Three miles away, across the basin of mist, we could see the street lamps of Santiago shining over the San Juan hills. Above us, the tropical moon hung white and clear in the dark purple sky, pierced with millions of white stars. As we turned in, there was just a little something in the air which made, saying, Good night, a gentle farce, for no one went to sleep immediately, but lay looking up at the stars, and after a long silence, and much restless turning on the blanket which we shared together, the second lieutenant said, So, if anything happens to me tomorrow, you'll see she gets them, won't you? Before the moon rose again, every sixth man who had slept in the mist that night was either killed or wounded. But the second lieutenant was sitting on the edge of a Spanish rifle pit, dirty, sweaty, and weak for food, but victorious, and the unknown she did not get them. El Cane had not yet thrown off her blanket of mist before Capron's battery opened on it from a ridge two miles in the rear. The plan for the day was that El Cane should fall in an hour. The plan for the day is interesting chiefly because it is so different from what happened. According to the plan, the army was to advance in two divisions along the two trails. Incidentally, General Lawton's division was to pick up El Cane, and when El Cane was eliminated, his division was to continue forward and join hands on the right with the divisions of General Sumner and General Kent. The army was then to rest for that night in the woods, half a mile from San Juan. On the following morning, it was to attack San Juan on the two flanks under cover of artillery. The objection to this plan, which did not apparently suggest itself to General Schafter, was that an army of 12,000 men sleeping within 500 yards of the enemy's rifle pits might not unreasonably be expected to pass a bad night. As we discovered the next day, not only the 500 yards, but the whole basin was covered by the fire from the rifle pits. Even by daylight, when it was possible to seek some slight shelter, the army could not remain in the woods, but according to the plan, it was expected to be whack for the night in those woods, and in the morning to maneuver and deploy and march through them to the two flanks of San Juan. How the enemy was to be hypnotized, while this was going forward, it is difficult to understand. According to this program, Capron's battery opened on El Cane, and Grimes' battery opened on the Pagoda-like blockhouse of San Juan. The range from El Poso was exactly 2,400 yards, and the firing, as was discovered later, was not very effective. The battery used black powder, and as a result, after each explosion, the curtain of smoke hung over the gun for fully a minute before the gunners could see the San Juan trenches, which was chiefly important because for a full minute it gave a mark to the enemy. The hill on which the battery stood was like a sugar-loaf. Behind it was the farmhouse of El Poso, the only building in sight within a radius of a mile, and in it were Cuban soldiers and other non-combatants. The rough riders had been ordered to halt in the yard of the farmhouse, and the artillery horses were drawn up in it under the lee of the hill. The first and tenth dismounted cavalry were encamped a hundred yards from the battery along the ridge. They might have sensibly been ordered to paint the rings in a target while a company was firing at the bullseye. To our first twenty shots the enemy made no reply, and when they did it was impossible, owing to their using smokeless powder to locate their guns. Their third shell fell in among the Cubans in the blockhouse and among the rough riders and the men of the first and tenth cavalry, killing some and wounding many. These casualties were utterly unnecessary and were due to the stupidity of whoever placed the men within fifty yards of guns in action. A quarter of an hour after the firing began from El Poso, one of General Shafter's aides directed General Sumner to advance with his division down the Santiago trail and to halt at the edge of the woods. What am I to do then? asked General Sumner. You are to wait further orders, the aide answered. As a matter of fact and history this was probably the last order General Sumner received from General Shafter until the troops of his division had taken the San Juan Hills. As it became impossible to get word to General Shafter, the trail leading to his headquarters tent three miles in the rear being blocked by the soldiers of the first and tenth dismounted cavalry and later by Lawton's division. General Sumner led the sixth, third, and ninth cavalry and the rough riders down the trail with instructions for the first and tenth to follow. The trail, virgin as yet from the foot of an American soldier, was as wide as its narrowest part which was some ten feet across. At places it was as wide as Broadway but only for such short distances that it was necessary for the men to advance in column, in double file. A maze of underbrush and trees on either side was all but impenetrable and when the officers and men had once assembled into the basin they could only guess as to what lay before them or on either flank. At the end of a mile the country became more open and General Sumner saw the Spaniards entrenched a half mile away on the sloping hills. A stream called the San Juan River ran across the trail at this point and another stream crossed it again two hundred yards further on. The troops were halted at this first stream, some crossing it and others deploying in single file to the right. Some were on the banks of the stream, others at the edge of the woods in the bushes. Others lay in the high grass which was so high that it stopped the wind and so hot that it almost choked and suffocated those who lay in it. The enemy saw the advance and began firing with pitiless accuracy into the jammed and crowded trail and along the whole border of the woods. There was not a single yard of ground for a mile to the rear which was not inside the zone of fire. Our men were ordered not to return the fire but to lie still and wait for further orders. Some of them could see the rifle pits of the enemy quite clearly and the men in them but many saw nothing but the bushes under which they lay and the high grass which seems to burn when they pressed against it. It was during this period of waiting that the greater number of our men were killed. For one hour they lay on their rifles, staring at the waving green stuff around them while the bullets drove past incessantly and with savage insistence cutting the grass again and again in hundreds of fresh places. Men in line sprang from the ground and sank back again with a groan or rolled to one side clinging silently to an arm or shoulder. Behind the lines hospital stewards passed continually drawing the wounded back to the streams where they laid them in long rows their feet touching the water's edge and their bodies supported by the muddy bank. Up and down the lines and through the fords of the streams mounted aides drove their horses at a gallop as conspicuous a target as the steeple on a church and one after another paid the price of his position and fell from his horse wounded or dead. Captain Mills fell as he was giving an order shot through the forehead behind both eyes. Captain O'Neill of the Rough Riders as he said, there is no Spanish bullet made that can kill me. Steel, Swift, Henry, each of them was shot out of his saddle. Hidden in the trees above the streams and above the trail sharpshooters and gorillas added a fresh terror to the wounded. There was no hiding from them. Their bullets came from every side. The invisible smoke helped to keep their hiding places secret and in the incessant shriek of shrapnel and the spit of the Mausers it was difficult to locate the reports of their rifles. They spared neither the wounded nor recognized the Red Cross. They killed the surgeons and the stewards carrying the litters and killed the wounded men on the litters. A gorilla in a tree above us shot one of the Rough Riders in the breast while I was helping him carry Captain Martin Henry to the dressing station. The ball passing down through him and a second shot from the same tree barely missed Henry as he lay on the ground where we had dropped him. He was already twice wounded and so covered with blood that no one could have mistaken his condition. The surgeons at work along the stream dressed the wounds with one eye cast a loft at the trees. It was not the Mauser bullets they feared, though they passed continuously but too high to do their patience further harm but the bullets of the sharpshooters which struck fairly in among them splashing in the water and scattering the pebbles. The sounds of the two bullets were as different as is the sharp pop of a soda bottle from the buzzing of an angry wasp. For a time it seemed as though every second man was either killed or wounded. One came upon them lying behind the bush under which they had crawled with some strange idea that it would protect them or crouched under the bank of the stream or lying on their stomachs and lapping up the water with the eagerness of thirsty dogs. As to their suffering, the wounded were magnificently silent. They neither complained nor groaned nor cursed. I've got a punctured tire. Was there grim answer to inquiries? White men and colored men, veterans and recruits and volunteers each lay waiting for the battle to begin or to end so that he might be carried away to safety. For the wounded were in as great danger after they were hit as though they were in the firing line, but none questioned nor complained. I came across Lieutenant Roberts of the Tenth Cavalry lying under the roots of a tree beside the stream with three of his colored troopers stretched around him. He was shot through the intestines and each of the three men with him was shot in the arm or leg. They had been overlooked or forgotten and we stumbled upon them only by accident of losing our way. They had no knowledge as to how the battle was going or where their comrades were or where the enemy was. At any moment, for all they knew, the Spaniards might break through the bushes about them. It was the most lonely picture. The young Lieutenant half naked and wet with his own blood sitting upright beside the empty stream and his three followers crouching at his feet like three faithful watchdogs. Each wearing his red badge of courage with his black skin tanned to a haggard gray and with his eyes fixed patiently on the white lips of his officer. When the white soldiers with me offered to carry him back to the dressing station, the Negroes resented it stiffly. If that Lieutenant had been able to move, we would have carried him away long ago, said the Sergeant. Quite overlooking the fact that his arm was shattered. Oh, don't bother the surgeons about me, Roberts added cheerfully. They must be very busy. I can wait. And yet, with all these killed and wounded, we had accomplished nothing except to obey orders which was to await further orders. The observation balloon hastened to the end. It came blundering down the trail and stopped the advance of the first and tenth cavalry and was sent up directly over the heads of our men to observe what should have been observed a week before by scouts and reconnoitering parties. A balloon two miles to the rear and high enough in the air to be out of range of the enemy's fire may someday prove itself to be of use and value. But a balloon on the advance line and only 50 feet above the tops of the trees was merely an invitation to the enemy to kill everything beneath it. And this enemy responded to the invitation. A Spaniard might question if he could hit a man or a number of men hidden in the bushes but had no doubt at all as to his ability to be a mammoth glistening ball only 600 yards distant. And so all the trenches fired at it at once and the men of the first and tenth packed together directly behind it received the full force of the bullets. The men lying directly below it received the shrapnel which was timed to hit it which at last fortunately did hit it. This was endured for an hour an hour of such hell of fire and heat that the heat in itself had there been no bullets would have been remembered for its cruelty. Men gasped on their backs like fishes in the bottom of a boat their heads burning inside and out their limbs too heavy to move. They had been rushed here and rushed there wet with sweat and wet with forwarding the streams under a sun that would have made moving a fan an effort and they lay prostrate gasping at the hot air with faces aflame and their tongues sticking out and their eyes rolling through this the volleys from the rifle pit sputtered and rattled and the bullets sang continuously like the wind through rigging in a gale shrapnel whined and broke and still no order came from General Schafter. Captain House of General Sumner's staff rode down the trail to learn what had delayed the first and tenth and was hailed by Colonel Derby just descending from the shattered balloon I saw men up there on those hills Colonel Derby shouted they are firing at our troops that was part of the information contributed by the balloon Captain House's reply is lost to history General Kent's division which according to the plan was to have been held in reserve had been rushed up in the rear of the first and the tenth and the tenth had deployed in skirmish order to the right the trail was now completely blocked by Kent's division Lawton's division which was to have reinforced on the right had not appeared but incessant firing from the direction of El Cane showed that he and Shafi were fighting mightily the situation was desperate our troops could not retreat as the trail for two miles behind them was wedged with men they could not remain where they were for they were being shot to pieces there was only one thing they could do go forward and take the San Juan Hills by assault it was as desperate as the situation itself to charge earthworks held by men with modern rifles and using modern artillery until after the earthworks had been shaken by artillery and to attack them in advance and not in the flanks are both impossible military propositions but this campaign had not been conducted according to military rules and a series of military blunders had brought 7000 American soldiers into a chute of death from which there was no escape except by taking the enemy who held it by the throat and driving him out and beating him down so the generals of divisions and brigades stepped back and relinquished their command to the regimental officers and the enlisted men we can do nothing more they virtually said there is the enemy Colonel Roosevelt on horseback broke from the woods behind the line of the 9th and finding its men lying in his way shouted if you don't wish to go forward let my men pass the junior officers of the 9th with their negroes instantly sprang into line with the rough riders and charged at the blue blockhouse on the right I speak of Roosevelt first because with General Hawkins who led Kent's division notably the 6th and 16th regulars he was without doubt the most conspicuous figure in the charge General Hawkins with air as white as snow and yet far in advance his men 30 years his junior was so noble a sight that you felt inclined to pray for his safety on the other hand, Roosevelt mounted high on horseback and charging the rifle pits at a gallop and quite alone made you feel that you would like to cheer he wore on his sombrero a blue polka dock handkerchief a lahave lock which as he advanced floated out straight behind his head like a guidance afterward the men of his regiment who followed this flag adopted a polka dot handkerchief as the badge of the rough riders these two officers were notably conspicuous in the charge but no one claimed that any two men or any one man was more brave or more daring greater courage in that slow stubborn advance than did any of the others someone asked one of the officers if he had any difficulty in making his men follow him no he answered I had some difficulty in keeping up with them as one of the brigadier generals said San Juan was won by the regimental officers and men we had as little to do as the referee at a prize fight who calls time we called time and they did the fighting I have seen many illustrations and pictures of this charge on the San Juan hills but none of them seemed to show it just as I remember it in the picture papers the men are running up hills swiftly and gallantly in regular formation rank after rank with flags flying their eyes aflame and their hair streaming and their bayonets fixed in long brilliant lines an invincible overpowering weight of numbers instead of which I think the thing which impressed one the most when our men started from cover was that they were so few it seemed as if someone had made an awful and terrible mistake one's instinct was to call to them to come back you felt that someone had blundered and that these few men were blindly following out some madman's mad order it was not heroic then it seemed merely absurdly pathetic the pity of it the folly of such a sacrifice was what held you they had no glittering bayonets they were not masked in regular array there were a few men in advance bunched together and creeping up a steep, sunny hill the tops of which roared and flashed with flame the men held their guns pressed across their chest and stepped heavily as they climbed behind these first few spreading out like a fan were single lines of men slipping and scrambling in the smooth grass moving forward with difficulty as though they were wading waist-high through water moving slowly, carefully with strenuous effort it was much more wonderful than any swinging charge could have been they walked to greet death at every step many of them as they advanced sinking suddenly or pitching forward and disappearing in the high grass but the others waded on stubbornly forming a thin blue line that kept creeping higher and higher up the hill it was as inevitable as the rising tide it was a miracle of self-sacrifice a triumph of bulldog courage which one watched breathless with wonder the fire of the Spanish rifleman still stuck bravely to their posts doubled and troubled in fierceness the crest of the hills crackled and burst in amazed roars and rippled with waves of tiny flame but the blue line kept steadily up and on and then, near the top the broken fragments gathered together with a sudden burst of speed the Spaniards appeared for a moment outlined against the sky and poised for instant flight fired a last volley and fled before the swift moving wave that leaped and sprang after them the men of the ninth and the rough riders rushed to the blockhouse together the men of the sixth and of the third of the tenth cavalry of the sixth and sixteenth infantry fell on their faces along the crest of the hills beyond and opened upon the vanishing enemy they drove the yellow silk flags of the cavalry and the flag of their country into the soft earth of the trenches and then sank down and looked back at the road they had climbed and swung their hats in the air and from far overhead from these few figures perched on the Spanish rifle pits with their flags planted among the empty cartridges of the enemy and overlooking the walls of Santiago came faintly the sound of a tired broken cheer this is the end of the battle of San Juan Hill recorded by Robert Parker of Story City, Iowa Section 5 of Notes of a War Correspondent This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Matt Judd Notes of a War Correspondent by Richard Harding Davis The Spanish American War Part 3 The Taking of Cuamo This is the inside story of the surrender during the Spanish War of the town of Cuamo It is written by the man to whom the town surrendered Immediately after the surrender this same man became military governor of Cuamo He held office for fully 20 minutes Before beginning this story the reader must forget all he may happen to know of this particular triumph of the Puerto Rican expedition He must forget that the taking of Cuamo has already been credited to Major General James H. Wilson who on that occasion commanded Captain Anderson's battery the 16th Pennsylvania troops sea of Brooklyn and under General Ernst the second and third Wisconsin volunteers He must forget that in the records of the War Department all the praise and it is of the highest but this victory is bestowed upon General Wilson and his 4,000 soldiers the writer of this when he cabled in the count of the event to his paper gave with everyone else the entire credit to General Wilson and ever since his conscience has abraded him his only claim for tolerance as a War Correspondent has been that he always has stuck to the facts and now he feels that in the sacred cause of history his friendship and admiration for General Wilson that veteran of the civil, Philippine and Chinese wars must no longer stand in the way of his duty as an accurate reporter he no longer can tell a lie he must at last own up that he himself captured Cuamo on the morning of the 9th of August 1898 the 16th Pennsylvania volunteers arrived on the outskirts of that town in order to get there they had spent the night in crawling over mountain trails and scrambling through streams and ravines it was General Wilson's plan that by this flanking night march the 16th Pennsylvania would reach the road leading from Cuamo to San Juan in time to cut off the retreat of the Spanish garrison when General Wilson with the main body attacked it on the opposite side at 7 o'clock in the morning General Wilson began the frontal attack by turning loose the artillery on a blockhouse which threatened his approach and by advancing the Wisconsin volunteers the cavalry he sent to the right to capture Los Baños at 8 o'clock from where the main body rested two miles from Cuamo we could hear the 16th Pennsylvania open its attack and instantly become hotly engaged the enemy returned the fire fiercely and the firing from both sides at once became so severe that it was evident that the Pennsylvania volunteers either would take the town without the main body or that they would greatly need its assistance the artillery was accordingly advanced to 1,000 yards and the infantry was hurried forward a second Wisconsin approached Cuamo along the main road from Ponce the third Wisconsin threw fields of grass to the right of the road until the two regiments met at the ford by which the Baños road crosses the Cuamo River but before they met from a position near the artillery I had watched through my glasses the second Wisconsin with General Ernst at its head advancing along the main road and as when I saw them they were near the river I guessed that they would continue across the bridge and they would soon be in the town as the firing from the 16th still continued it seemed obvious that General Ernst would be the first general officer to enter Cuamo and to receive its surrender I had never seen 5,000 people surrender to one man and it seemed that if I would witness that ceremony my best plan was to abandon the artillery and as quickly as possible to sue the second Wisconsin I did not want to share the spectacle of the surrender with my brother correspondence so I tried to steal away from the three who were present they were Thomas F. Millard Walstein Root of the Sun and Horace Thompson by dodging through a coffee central I came out a half mile from them and in advance of the 3rd Wisconsin there I encountered two boy officers Captain John C. Breckenridge and Lieutenant Fred S. Titus who had temporarily abandoned their thankless duties in the commissariat department in order to seek death or glory in the skirmish line they wanted to know where I was going and when I explained that when Cuamo surrendered they were also going to be among those present so we slipped away from the main body and rode off as an independent organisation but from the Bald Ridge where the artillery was still hammering the town the three correspondents and Captain Alfred Padgett and Majesties Naval Attache observed our attempt to steal a march on General Wilson's forces and pursued us and soon overtook us we were now 7 or to be exact 8 4 with Mr Millard was Jimmy who in times of peace sells papers in Herald Square and in times of war carries Mr Millard's copy to the press post we were much nearer the 4 than the bridge so we waded the drift and started on a gallop along the mile of military road that lay between us and Cuamo the firing from the 16th Pennsylvania had slackened but as we advanced it became sharper more insistent and seemed to urge us to greater speed once the road were dug rough rifle pits which had the look of having been but that moment abandoned what had been intended for the breakfast of the enemy was burning in pots over tiny fires little heaps of cartridges lay in readiness upon the edges of each pit and an armchair in which a sentry had kept a comfortable look out lay sprawling in the middle of the road the huts that faced it were empty the only living things we saw were the chickens and pigs in the kitchen gardens on either hand was every evidence of hasty and panic-stricken flight we rejoiced at these evidences of the fact that the Wisconsin volunteers had swept all before them our rejoicings were not entirely unselfish it was so quiet ahead that someone suggested the town had already surrendered but that would have been too bitter a disappointment and as the firing from the further side of Cuamo still continued we refused to believe it and whipped the ponies into greater haste we were now only a quarter of a mile distant from the built-up portion of Cuamo where the road turned sharply into the main street of the town Captain Padgett who in the absence of the British military attaché on account of sickness accompanied the army as a guest of General Wilson gave way to thoughts of etiquette Will General Wilson think that I should have waited for him? he shouted the words were jolted out of him as he rose in the saddle the noise of the ponies hooves made conversation difficult he shouted back that the presence of General Ernst in the town made it quite proper for a foreign attaché to enter it it must have surrendered by now I shouted it's been half an hour since Ernst crossed the bridge at these innocent words all my companions tugged violently at their bridles and shouted whoa! crossed the bridge they yelled there is no bridge the bridge is blown up if he hasn't crossed by the Ford he isn't in the town then in my turn I shouted but by now the Puerto Rican ponies had decided that this was the race of their lives and each had made up his mind that Mexican bit or no Mexican bit until he had carried his rider first into the town of Cuamo he would not be halted as I tugged helplessly at my Mexican bit I saw how I had made my mistake the volunteers on finding the bridge destroyed instead of marching upon Cuamo had turned to the Ford the same Ford which we had crossed half an hour before they had reached it they now were behind us instead of a town which had surrendered to a thousand American soldiers we, seven unarmed men and Jimmy were being swept into a hostile city as fast as the enemies ponies could take us there Reckonridge and Titus hastily put the blame upon me if we get into trouble with the general for this they shouted it would be your fault you told us Ernst was in the town with a thousand men I shouted back that no one regretted the fact more keenly than I did myself Titus and Reckonridge each glanced at a new full-dressed sword we might as well go in they shouted and take it anyway I decided that Titus and Reckonridge were wasted in the commissariat department the three correspondents looked more comfortable a few officers go in they cried the general can't blame us and they dug their spurs into the pony Wait shouted her majesty's representative that's all very well for you chaps but what protects me if the Admiralty finds out that I have led a charge on the Spanish garrison the pageants pony refused to consider the feelings of the Lords of the Admiralty as successfully pageant might have tried to pull back a robot from the edge of Niagara and moreover Millard in order that Jimmy might be the first to reach Ponce with dispatchers had mounted him on the fastest pony in the bunch and he already was far in the lead his sporting instincts nursed in the pool rooms of the tenderloin and at Gutenberg had sent him three lengths to the good he never would do to have a newsboy tell in New York that he had beaten the correspondents of the paper he sold in the streets nor to permit commissioned officers to take the dust of one who never before had ridden on anything but a cable car so we all raced forward and bunched together swept into the main street of Kawama it was gratefully empty there were no American soldiers but then neither were there any Spanish soldiers across the street stretched more rifle pits and barricades of iron pipes but inside there was neither friend nor phone on the stones of the deserted street the galloping hooves sounded like the advance of a whole regiment of cavalry their clatter gave us a most comfortable feeling we almost could imagine the townspeople believing us to be the rough riders themselves and fleeing before us and then the empty street seemed to threaten an ambush we thought hastily of sunken minds of soldiers crouching behind the barriers behind the houses at the next corner of mouses covering us from the lattice balconies overhead until at last when the silence had become alert and menacing a lonely man dashed into the middle of the street hurled a white flag in front of us and then dived headlong under the porch of a house the next instant as though at a signal a hundred citizens each with a white flag in both hands ran from cover waving near banners and gasping in weak and terror-shaken tones bivan los americanos we tried to pull up but the ponies had not yet settled among themselves which of us had won and carried us to the extreme edge of the town where a precipice seemed to invite them to stop and we fell off into the arms of the Puerto Ricans they bought us wine in tin cans cigars born in aprons and mantillas of their women folk and dimijons of native rum they were abject trembling tearful they made one instantly forget that the moment before he had been extremely frightened one of them spoke to me the few words of Spanish with which I had an acquaintance he told me he was the alcalder and that he begged to surrender into my hands the town of Kawamo I led him instantly to one side I was afraid that if I did not take him up he would surrender to Padgett or to Jimmy I bade him conduct me to his official residence he did so and gave me the key to the cartel a staff of office of golden ebony and the flag of the town which he had hidden behind his writing desk it was a fine Spanish flag with a coat of arms embroidered in gold I decided that with whatever else I might part that flag would always be mine that the chance of me again receiving the surrender of a town of 5000 people was slender and that this token would be wrapped around me in my coffin I accordingly hid it in my poncho and strapped it to my saddle then I appointed a hotel keeper who spoke a little English as my official interpreter and told the Alcalde that I was now military governor mayor and chief of police and that I wanted the seals of the town he gave me a rubber stamp with a coat of arms cut in it and I wrote myself three letters which to ensure their safe arrival I addressed it to three different places and stamped them with the rubber seals in time all three reached me and I now have them as a documentary proof of the fact that for 20 minutes I was military governor and mayor of Kawamo in a brief administration I detailed Titus and Breckenridge to weakwag the 16th Pennsylvania that we had taken the town and that it was now safe for them to enter in order to compromise Padgett they used his red silk handkerchief root I entailed to conciliate the inhabitants by drinking with every one of them he tells me he carried out my instructions to the letter I also settled one assault and battery case and put the chief offender under arrest at least I told the interpreter that he was under arrest but I had no one to guard him and he grew tired of being under arrest and went off to celebrate his emancipation from the rule of Spain my administration came to an end in 20 minutes when General Wilson rode into Kawamo at the head of his staff and 3,000 men he wore a white helmet and he looked to the part of the conquering hero so satisfactorily that I forgot I was mayor and ran out into the street to snap a picture of him he looked greatly surprised the tone in which he spoke caused me to decide that after all I would not keep the flag at Kawamo I pulled it off my saddle and said General, it's too long a story to tell you now but here is the flag of the town it's the first Spanish flag and it was that had been captured in Puerto Rico General Wilson smiled again and accepted the flag he and about 4,000 other soldiers think it belongs to them but the truth will out one day the bestowal on the proper persons of a vote of thanks from Congress a pension or any other trifle like prize money will show the American people to whom that flag really belongs I know that in time the glorious deed of the 7 heroes of Kawamo or 8 if you included Jimmy will be told in song and story someone else will write the song this is the story end of the taking of Kawamo recording by Matthew Judd of a war correspondent this is LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Matt Judd notes of a war correspondent by Richard Harding Davis the Spanish American war part 4 the passing of San Juan Hill when I was a boy I thought battles were fought in waste places selected for the purpose viewed from the fact that when our school 9 wished to play ball it was forced into the suburbs to search for a vacant lot I thought opposing armies also marched out of town until I reached some desolate spot where there were no window panes and where their cannonballs would hurt no one but themselves even later when I saw battles fought among villages artillery galloping through a cornfield garden walls breached for rifle fire and farmhouses in flames it always seemed as though the generals had elected to fight in such surroundings through an inexcusable striving after theatrical effect as though they wished to furnish the war correspondence with a chance for descriptive writing with the horrors of war as horrible as they are without any aid from these contrasts their presence always seemed not only sinful but bad art as unnecessary as turning a red light on the dying gladiator there are so many places which are scenes set apart for battles places that look as though nature had condemned them for just such sacrifices Kalenzo with its bare copiers and great stretch of belt is one of these and so also is Spion Cop and in Manchuria Nunshan Hill the photographs have made all of us familiar with the vast desolate approaches to Port Arthur these are among the waste places of the earth Baron deserted fit meeting grounds only for men whose object in life for the moment is to kill men were you shown over one of these places and told a battle was fought here you would answer why of course but down in Cuba outside Santiago where the United States Army fought its solitary and modest battle with Spain you might many times pass by San Juan Hill and think of it if you thought of it at all as only a prettier sight for a bungalow as a place obviously intended for orchards and gardens on July the first 12 years ago when the American Army came upon it out of the jungle the place wore a partial disguise it still was an irregular ridge of smiling sunny hills with fat comfortable curves and in some places a steep straight front but above the steepest highest front frowned an aggressive blockhouse and on all the slopes and along the skyline were rows of yellow trenches and at the base a cruel cat's cradle of barbed wire it was like the face of a pretty woman behind the bars of a visor I find that on the day of the fight 12 years ago I cabled my paper that San Juan Hill reminded the Americans of a sunny orchid in New England that was how it may have looked when the regulars were climbing up the steep front to capture the blockhouse and when the cavalry and rough riders having taken Kettle Hill were running down its opposite slope past the lake to take that crest of San Juan Hill which lies to the right of the blockhouse it may then have looked like a sunny New England orchard but before night fell all the moving tools had lent those sunny slopes a fierce and terrible aspect and after that hour after hour and day after day we saw the hill eaten up by our trenches hidden by a vast laundry of shelter tents and torn apart by bomb proofs their jutting roofs of logs and broken branches weighed down by earthen stones and looking like the pit mouths to many mines that probably is how most of the American Army last saw San Juan Hill probably is how is best to remember it as a fortified camp that was twelve years ago when I revisited it San Juan Hill was again a sunny, smiling farmland the trenches planted with vegetables the roofs of the bomb proofs fallen in and buried beneath creeping vines and the barbed wire entanglements holding in check only the browsing cattle San Juan Hill is not a solitary hill but the most prominent of a ridge of hills with Kettle Hill a quarter of a mile away on the edge of the jungle and separated from the ridge by a tiny lake in the local nomenclature Kettle Hill which is the name given to it by the Rough Riders has always been known as San Juan Hill with an added name to distinguish it from the other San Juan Hill of greater renown the days we spent on these hills were so rich in incident and interest and were filled with moments of such excitement of such pride in one's fellow countrymen of pity for the hurt and dying and good fellowship that one supposed he might return after even twenty years and recognise every detail of the ground but a shorter time has made startling and confusing changes now a visitor will find that not until after several different visits and by walking and riding foot by foot over the hills can he make them fall into line as he thinks he once knew them immediately around San Juan Hill itself there has been some attempt made to preserve the ground as a public park a barbed wire fence with a gateway and circles the block house which has been converted into a home for the caretaker of the park and then skirting the road to Santiago to include the tree under which the surrender was arranged stretches to the left of the block house to protect a monument this monument was erected by Americans to commemorate the battle it is now rapidly falling to pieces but there is still enough of it intact to show the penciled scribblings and autographs of tourists who did not take part in the battle but who in this public manner show that they approve of its results the public park is less than a quarter of a mile square except for it no other effort has been made by other Cubans or Americans to designate the lines that once encircled and menaced Santiago and nature always at her best under a tropical sun has done all in her power to disguise and forever obliterate a scene of the army's one battle those features which still remain unchanged are very few the treaty tree now surrounded by a tall fence is one the block house is another the little lake in which even when the bullets were dropping the men used to bathe and wash their clothes the big iron sugar kettle that gave a new name to Kettle Hill and here and there at Trench hardly deeper than a plowed furrow and nearly hidden by growing plants are the few landmarks that remain of the camps of generals Chaffee, Lawton, Bates, Sumner and Wheeler Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt there are but the slightest traces the bloody bend as some call it in the San Juan River as some call that stream seems to have entirely disappeared at least it certainly was not where it should have been and the place the hotel guides point out to unsuspecting tourists bears not the slightest physical resemblance to that Ford in twelve years during one of which there has been in Santiago the most severe rainfall in sixty years this stream has carried away its banks and the trees that lined them and the trails that should mark where the Ford once crossed have so altered and so many new ones have been added that the exact location of the once famous dressing station is now most difficult if not impossible to determine to establish the sights of the old camping grounds is but little less difficult the headquarters of General Wheeler are easy to recognise for the reason that the place selected was in a hollow and the most unhealthy spot along the five miles of entrenchments it was here that Troop G, Third Cavalry under Major Hardy as it was Wheeler's escort was forced to Bivouac and where one third of its number came down with fever the camp of General Sam Sumner was some sixty yards to the right of the headquarters of General Wheeler on the high shoulder of the hill just above the camp of the engineers who were on the side of the road opposite the camps of Generals Chaffee, Lawton Hawkins, Ludlow and the positions and trenches taken and held by the different regiments under them one can place only relatively one reason for this is that before our army attacked the hills all the underbrush and small trees that might conceal the advance of our men had been cleared away by the Spaniards leaving the hill, except for the high crest comparatively bare today the hills are thick with young trees and enormous bushes the alteration in the landscape is as marked as is the difference between ground cleared for golf and the same spot planted with corn and fruit trees of all the camps the one that today bears the strongest evidences of its occupation is that of the rough riders a part of the camp of that regiment which was situated on the ridge some hundred feet from the Santiago Road was pitched under a clump of shade trees and today even after seven years the trunks of these trees bear the names and initials of the men who camped beneath them these men will remember that when they took this hill they found that the fortifications beneath the trees were partly made from the foundations of an adobe house the red tiles from its roof still littered the ground these tiles and the names cut in the bark of the trees determine absolutely the sight of one half of the camp for the other half, where stood Tiffany's quick firing gun and Park is gattling has been almost obliterated the tree under which Colonel pitched his tent I could not discover and the trenches in which he used to sit with his officers and with the officers of the regiments of the regular army to make a kitchen garden sometimes the ex-president is said to have too generously given office and promotion to the friends he made in Cuba these men he met in the trenches were then not necessarily his friends today they are not necessarily his friends they are the men the free life of the rifle pits enabled him to know and to understand as the settled relations of home life and peace would never have permitted at that time none of them guessed that the amateur Colonel to whom they talked freely as to a comrade would be their commander in chief they did not suspect that he would become even the next governor of New York certainly not that in a few years he would be the president of the United States so they showed themselves to him frankly unconsciously they criticised, argued, disagreed and he became familiar with the views, character and worth of each and remembered the seeds planted in those half obliterated trenches have borne greater results than ever will the kitchen garden is immediately on the crest of the hill and near it a Cuban farmer has built a shack of mud and twigs and cultivated several acres of land on Kettle Hill there are three more such shacks and over all the hills the new tenants have strung stout barbed wire fences and made new trails and reared wooden gateways it was curious to find how greatly these modern improvements confused one's recollection of the landscape and it was interesting also to find how the presence on the hills of twelve thousand men and the excitement of the time unified distances and disarranged the landscape during the fight I walked along a portion of the Santiago road and for many years I always have thought of that walk as extending over immense distances it started from the top of San Juan Hill beside the block house where I had climbed to watch our artillery in action by a mistake the artillery had been sent there and remained exposed on the crest only about three minutes during that brief moment the black powder it burned drew upon it the fire of every rifle in the Spanish line to load his piece each of our men was forced to crawl to it on his stomach rise on one elbow in order to shove in the shell and lock the breach and then still flat on the ground wriggle below the crest in the three minutes three men were wounded and two killed and the guns were withdrawn I also withdrew I withdrew first indeed all that happened after the first three seconds of those three minutes is hearsay Santiago road at the foot of the hill and retreating briskly this road also was under a crossfire which made it stretch in either direction to an interminable distance I remember a government teamster driving a Studebaker wagon filled with ammunition coming up at a gallop out of this interminable distance and seeking shelter against the base of the hill seated beside him was a small boy freckled and sunburned a stowaway from one of the transports he was grandly happy and excited his only fear was that he was not under fire from our coin of safety with our backs to the hill the teamster and I assured him that on that point he need feel no more but doubt but until the bullet embedded itself in the blue board of the wagon he was not convinced then with his jackknife he dug it out and shouted with pleasure I guess the folks will have to believe I was in a battle now he said that coin of safety ceasing to be a coin of safety caused us to move on in search of another and I came upon Sergeant Burrow blocking the road with his dynamite gun he and his brother and three regulars were busily correcting a hitch in its mechanism an officer carrying an order along the line halted his sweating horse and gazed at the strange gun with professional knowledge that must be the dynamite gun I have heard so much about he shouted Burrow saluted and shouted ascent the officer greatly interested forgot his errand I'd like to see you fire at once he said eagerly Burrow delighted at the chance to exhibit his toy to a professional soldier beamed with equal eagerness in just a moment sir he said this shell seems to have jammed a bit the officer for the first time seeing the shell stuck in the breach hurriedly gathered up his reins he seemed to be losing interest with elaborate carelessness I began to edge off down the road wait Burrow begged we'll have it out in a minute suddenly I heard the officer's voice raised wildly what he gasped is that man doing with that axe he's helping me to get out this shell said Burrow good god said the officer then he remembered his errand until last year when I again met young Burrow gaily disporting himself at a lawn tennis tournament at Matapoisette I did not know whether his brother's method of removing dynamite with an axe had been entirely successful he said it worked all right at the turn of the road I found Colonel Leonard Wood and a group of rough riders who were busily entrenching at the same moment Stephen Crane came up with Jimmy Hare the man who had made the Russian-Japanese war famous Crane walked to the crest and stood there as sharply outlined as the semaphore observing the enemy's lines and instantly bringing upon himself and us the fire of many mausers with everyone else Wood was crouched below the crest and shouted to Crane to lie down still standing as though to get out of earshot moved away and Wood again ordered him to lie down you're drawing the fire on these men Wood commanded although the heat it was the first of July in the tropics was terrific Crane wore a long India rubber raincoat and was smoking a pipe he appeared as cool as though he were looking down from a box at a theater I knew that to Crane anything that savoured of a pose was hateful so as I did not want to see him killed I called you're not impressing anyone by doing that Crane as I hoped he would he instantly dropped to his knees when he crawled over to where we lay I explained I knew that would fetch you and he grinned and said oh was that it a captain of the cavalry came up to Wood and asked permission to withdraw his troop from the top of the hill to a trench 40 feet below the one they were in they can't possibly live where they are now he explained and they're doing no good there in that lower trench they would be out of range themselves and would be able to fire back yes said Wood but all the other men in the first trench would see them withdraw and the moral effect would be bad they need an attempt to return the enemy's fire but they must not retreat the officer looked as though he would like to argue he was a West Point graduate and a full fledged captain in the regular army to him Wood in spite of his volunteer rank of Colonel which that day owing to the illness of General Young had placed him in command of a brigade was still a doctor but discipline was strong in him and though he looked many things he rose from his knees and grimly saluted but at that moment without waiting for the permission of anyone the men leapt out of the trench and ran it looked as though they were going to run all the way to the sea and the sight was sickening but they had no intention of running to the sea they ran only to the trench 40 feet further down and jumped into it and instantly turning began pumping lead at the enemy since five that morning Wood had been running about on his feet his clothes stuck to him with sweat and the mud and water afforded streams and as he rose he limped slightly my but I'm tired he said in a tone of the most acute surprise and as though that fact was the only one that was weighing on his mind he limped over to the trench in which the men were now busily firing off their rifles and waved a riding crop he carried at the trench they had abandoned he was standing as Crane had been standing in silhouette against the skyline come back boys we heard him shouting the other men can't withdraw and so you mustn't it looks bad come on get out of that what made it more amusing was that although Wood had like everyone else discarded his coat and wore a strange uniform of grey shirt white riding breeches and a cowboy stetson with no insignia of rank not even strips pinned to his shirt still the men instantly accepted his authority they looked at him on the crest of the hill waving his stick persuasively at the grave like trench at his feet and then with a shout scampered back to it after that as I had a bad attack of sciatica and no place to sleep and nothing to eat I accepted Crane's offer of a blanket and coffee at his bivouac near El Posso on account of the sciatica I was not able to walk fast and although for over a mile of the way the trail was under fire Crane and Hare each insisted on giving me an arm and kept step with my stumblings whenever I protested and refused their sacrifice and pointed out the risk they were taking they smiled as at the ravings of a naughty child and when I lay down in the road and refused to budge unless they left me Crane called the attention of Hare to the effect of the setting sun behind the palm trees to the reader all these little things that one remembers seem very little indeed but they were vivid at the moment and I've always thought of them as stretching over a long extent of time and territory before I revisited San Juan I would have said that the distance along the road from the point where I left the artillery to where I joined Wood was three quarters of a mile when I paced it later I found the distance was about 75 yards I do not urge my stupidity or my extreme terror as a proof that others would be as greatly confused but if only for the sake of the stupid ones it seems a pity that the landmarks of San Juan should not be rescued from the jungle and a few signposts placed upon the hills it is true that the great battles of the Civil War and those of the one in Manchuria where the men killed and wounded in a day outnumber all those you fought on both sides at San Juan make that battle read like a skirmish but the Spanish War had its results at least it made Cuba into a republic and so enriched or burdened us with colonies that our republic changed into something like an empire but I do not urge that it will never be because San Juan changed our foreign policy that people will visit the spot and will send from it picture postal cards the human interest alone will keep San Juan alive the men who fought there came from every state in our country and from every class of our social life we sent there the best of our regular army and with them cowboys clerks bricklayers football players three future commanders of the greater army that followed that war the future governor of Cuba future commanders of the Philippines the commander of our forces in China a future president of the United States and whether these men when they returned to their homes again became clerks and millionaires and dentists or rose to be presidents and mounted policemen they all remember very kindly the days they lay huddled together in the trenches on that hot and glaring skyline and there must be many more besides who hold the place in memory there are few in the United States so poor in relatives and friends not in his or her heart send a substitute to Cuba for these it seems as though San Juan might be better preserved not as it is for already its aspect is far too changed to wish for that but as it was the efforts already made to keep the place in memory and to honour the Americans who died there are the public park which I have mentioned the monument on San Juan and one other monument at Guasimas to the regulars and rough riders who were killed there so these monuments the society of Santiago will add four more which will mark the landing place of the army at Dakiri and the fights at Guasimas El Caney and San Juan Hill but I believe even more than this might be done to preserve to the place its proper values these values are sentimental, historical and possibly to the military student educational if today they were erected at Dakiri Ziboni, Guasimas, El Poso El Caney and on and about San Juan a dozen iron or bronze tablets that would tell from where certain regiments advanced what posts they held how many or how few were the men who held those positions how near they were to the trenches of the enemy and by whom these men were commanded I am sure the place would reconstruct itself and would breathe with interest not only for the returning volunteer but for any casual tourist as it is the history of the fight and the reputation of the men who fought is now at the mercy of the caretaker of the park and the Cuban guides from the hotel the caretaker speaks only Spanish and considering the amount of misinformation the guides disseminate it is a pity when they are talking to the Americans they are not forced to use the same language when last I visited it Carlos Portuondo was the official guardian of San Juan Hill he is an aged Cuban and he fought through the 10 years war but during the last insurrection and the Spanish American war he not only was not near San Juan but was not even on the island of Cuba he is a charming old person their chief concern in life when I saw them was to sell me a pair of breeches made of palm fibre which Carlos had worn throughout the entire 10 years of battle the vicissitudes of these trousers he recited to me in great detail and he very properly regarded them as of historic value but of what happened at San Juan he knew nothing and when I asked him why he held his present post and occupied the block house he said to keep the cows out of the park when I asked him where the Americans had camped he pointed carefully from the back door of the block house to the foot of his kitchen garden I assured him that under no stress of terror could the entire American army have been driven into his backyard and pointed out where it had stretched along the ridge of hills for five miles he politely but unmistakably showed that he thought I was a liar from the Venus Hotel there were two guides Old Casanova and Jean Casanova his languid and good-natured son a youth of 16 years Old Casanova, like most Cubans is not inclined to give much credit for what they did in Cuba to the Americans after all he says they came only just as the Cubans themselves were about to conquer the Spaniards and by a lucky chance received the surrender and then claimed all the credit as other Cubans told me had the Americans left us alone a few weeks longer we would have ended the war how they were to have taken Havana and sunk Tvera's fleet and why they were not among those present when our men charged San Juan I did not inquire Old Casanova again like other Cubans ranks the fighting qualities of the Spaniard much higher than those of the American this is only human it must be annoying to be a Cuban to remember that after he had for three years fought the Spaniard the Yankee in eight weeks received his surrender and began to ship him home the way Casanova describes the fight at Alcani is as follows the Americans thought that they would capture Alcani in one day but the brave general Terral fought so good that it was six days after the Spanish surrender the statement is correct except as regards the length of time during which the fight lasted the Americans did make the mistake of thinking they could eat up Alcani in an hour and then march through it to San Juan owing to the splendid courage of Terral and his few troops our soldiers under two of the best generals were held in check from seven in the morning until two in the afternoon but the difference between seven hours of one day and six days is considerable still at present at San Juan that is the sort of information upon which the patriotic and puzzled American tourist is fed young Casanova the only other authority in Santiago is not so sure of his facts as his father and is willing to learn he went with me to hold my pony while I took the photographs that accompany this article and I listened with great interest to his accounts at the battle finally he made a statement that was correct how did you happen to get that right I asked yesterday he said I guided Colonel Hayes here and while I guided him he explained it to me end of the Spanish American war recording by Matt Judd section seven of notes of a war correspondent this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Jean Loft notes of a war correspondent by Richard Harding Davis the South African war part one with Buller's column three the night before the battle were you the station master here before this I asked the man in the straw hat at Colenso I mean before this war no fear stormed at the station master stormfully why we didn't know Colenso was on the line until Buller fought a battle here that's how it is with all these way stations now everybody's talking about them we never took no notice to them he might have been forgiven his point of view and his start of surprise when he found Chivelli a place of only half dozen corrugated zinc huts and Colenso a scattered gathering of a dozen shattered houses of battered brick Chivelli seemed so insignificant in contrast with its fame to those who had followed the war on maps and in the newspapers that one was not sure he was on the right road until he saw from the car window the armored train still lying on the embankment the graves beside it and the donga into which Winston Churchill pulled and carried the wounded and as the train bumped and halted before the blue and white enamel sign that marks Colenso station the places which have made that spot familiar and momentous fell into line like the boys which marked the entrance to a harbor we know that the high bare ridge to the right must be Fort Wiley that the plane on the left was where Colonel Long had lost his artillery and three officers gained at the Victoria Cross and that the swift muddy stream in which the iron railroad bridge lay humped and sprawling was the Takula river six hours before at a freight station the station master had awakened us to say that Lady Smith would be relieved at any moment this had but just come over the wire it was official indeed he added with local pride that the village band was still awake in its readiness to celebrate the imminent event he found I fear an unsympathetic audience the train was carrying philanthropic gentlemen who were members of champagne and marmalade for the besieged city they did not want to be relieved until they were there to substitute pâté de foie gras for horse flush and there were officers too who wanted a look in and who had been kept waiting at Cape Town for commissions gladdening the guests of the Mount Nelson hotel the while with their new Kaki and Gators and there were Tommy's who wanted relief of Lady Smith in the claps of their medals as they had seen relief of luck now on the medals of the Chelsea Pensioners and 15,000 miles to see Lady Smith relieved and who was apparently going to miss that sight after five weeks of travel by a margin of five hours we all growled, that's good as we had done for the last two weeks every time we had heard it was relieved but our tone was not enthusiastic and when the captain of the Natal Carbeners said, I'm afraid the good news is too premature we all said hopefully we were afraid it was we had seen nothing yet that was like a real war that night at Peter Martzburg the officers at the hotel were in mess jackets the officers' wives and dinner gowns it was like Shepherd's Hotel at the top of the season but only six hours after that dinner we looked out of the car windows we saw galloping across the high grass like men who had lost their way in silhouetted black against the red sunrise countless horsemen scouting ahead of our train and guarding it against the fate of the armored one lying wrecked at Chevelli the darkness was still heavy on the land and the only lights were the red eyes of the armored train creeping in advance of ours and the red sun which showed our silent escort appearing suddenly against the skyline on a ridge or galloping toward us through the dew to order us with a wave of the hand to greater speed one hour after sunrise the train drew up at Colenso and from only a mile away we heard the heavy thud of naval guns the hammering of the boar pom-poms and the maxims and colt automatics spanking the air we smiled at each other guiltily we were on time it was most evident that Lady Smith had not been relieved this was the twelfth day of a battle that Buller's column was waging against the boars in their mountain ranges or disarranges as someone described them without having gained more than three miles of hostile territory he had tried to force his way through them six times and had been repulsed six times and now he was to try it again no map nor photograph nor written description can give an idea between Buller and his goal it was an eruption of high hills linked together at every point without order or sequence in most countries mountains and hills follow some natural law the Cordilleras can be traced from the Amazon River to Guatemala City they make the watershed of two continents the Great Divide forms the backbone of the states but these Natal Hills have no lineal descent they are illegitimate children of no line abandoned broadcast over the country with no family likeness and no home they stand alone or shoulder to shoulder or at right angles or at a tangent or join hands across the valley they never appear the same some run to a sharp point some stretch out forming a table land others are gigantic ant hills others perfectly and accurately modeled ramparts in a ride of half a mile every hill completely loses its original aspect and character each can be infallotted by the other and not one gives up the secret of its strategic value until its crest has been carried by the bayonet to add to this confusion the river Tagula has selected the hills around Lady Smith as occupying the country through which it will endeavor to throw off its pursuers it darts through them as those striving to escape it doubles on its tracks it sinks out of sight between them and in the open plain rises to the dignity of waterfalls it runs uphill it remains motionless on an incline and on the level ground twists and turns so frequently that when one says he has crossed the Tagula he means he has crossed it once at a drift once at a wrecked railroad bridge and once over a pontoon and then he is not sure that he is still on the same side from which he started some of these hills are green but the greater part are a yellow or dark red against which at 200 yards the man in khaki is indistinguishable from the rocks around him indeed the khaki is the English soldier's sole protection it saves him in spite of himself for he apparently cannot learn to advance under cover and a skyline is the one place where he selects to stand erect and stretch his weary limbs I have come to within 100 yards of a hill before I saw that scattered among its red and yellow boulders was the better part of a regiment as closely packed together as the crowd on the boards at baseball match into this maze and confusion of nature's fortifications boulders column has been twisting and turning marching and counter marching capturing one position after another to find it was infallotted for many hills and abandoning it only to retake it a week later the greater part of the column has abandoned its tents and is provoking in the open it is a wonderful and impressive sight at the first view an army and being when it is spread out as it is in the tegula basin back of the hills seems a hopelessly and irrevocably entangled mob an army in the field is not regiments of armed men marching with a gun on shoulder or crouching behind trenches that is the least even if it seems the most important part of it before one reaches the firing line he must pass villages of men camps of men, buvaks of men who are feeding, mending, repairing and burying the men at the front it is these latter that make the mob of gypsies which is apparently without head or order or organization they stretched across the great basin of the tegula like children of Israel their campfires rising to the sky at night like the reflection of great searchlights by day they swarmed across the plain like hundreds of moving circus fans in every direction with as little obvious intention as herds of buffalo but each had his appointed work to the battle going forward a mile away hundreds of teams of 16 oxen each crawled like great black water snakes across the drifts the kefir drivers naked and black lashing them with whips as long as lariots shrieking, beseeching and howling and falling upon the oxen's horns to drag them into place mules from Spain and Texas loaded with ammunition kicked and plunged more oxen drew more soberly the great naval guns which lurched as though in a heavy sea throwing the blue jackets who hung upon the drag ropes from one high side of the trail to the other across the plain and making toward the tail wagons loaded with fodder, with rations, with camp equipment with tents and cooking stoves crowded each other as closely as cable cars on Broadway. Scattered among them were fixed lines of tethered horses rows of dog tents, camps of kefir hospital stations with the red cross waving from the nearest and highest tree water carts with as many spigots as the regiment had companies, howitzer guns guided by as many ropes as a maypole crowded past these to the trail or gave way to the ambulances filled with men half dressed and bound in the zinc blue bandages that made the color detestable forever after troops of the irregular horse gallop threw this multitude with the jangling of spurs and sling belts and tommys in close order fight their way among the oxen or help pull them to one side as the stretchers pass each with its burden each with its blue bandage stained a dark brownish crimson it is only when the figure and the structure lies under a blanket the tumult and push and sweltering mass comes to a quick pause while the dead man's comrade stands at attention and the officer raises his fingers to his helmet then the mass surges on again with cracking of whips and shouts and implications while the yellow dust rises and thick clouds and buries a picture and a glaring fog this moving struggling mass that fights the light of the way along the road is within easy distance of the shells those from their own guns pass over them with a shrill crescendo those from the enemy burst among them at rare intervals or seek impotently in the soft soil and a dozen tommys rush to dig them out as keepsakes up at the front brown and yellow regiments are lying crouched behind brown and yellow rocks and stones as far as you can see the hills are sewn with them with a glass you distinguish them against the hill for over three miles away sometimes the men rise in fire and there is a feverish flutter of musketry sometimes they lie motionless for hours while the guns make the way straight anyone who has seen epsom downs in a derby day with its thousands of vans and tents and lines of horses and moving mobs can form some kind of idea of what it is like but while at the derby all is interest and excitement and everyone is pushing and struggling and the air palpitates with the intoxication of the event, the winning of a horse race here where men are killed every hour and no one of them knows when this turn may come the fact that most impresses you is their indifference to it all what strikes you most is the board air of the tommys the undivided interest of the engineers and the construction of a pontoon bridge the solicitude of the medical staff over the long lines of wounded the rage of the naked kafirs at their lumbering steers the fact that everyone is intent on something, anything but the battle is buried with battles the tommys stretch themselves in the sun to dry the wet khaki in which they have lain out in the cold night for weeks and yawn at battles or if you climb to the hill where the officers are seated you will find men steeped even deeper in boredom they are burned a dark red their brown mustaches look white by contrast theirs are the same faces you have met with in Piccadilly which you see across the tables if they were bored then they are unbearably bored now below them the men of their regiment like crouched amid the boulders hardly distinguishable from the brown and yellow rock they are sleeping or dozing and yawning a shell passes over them like the shaking of many telegraph wires and neither officer nor tommy raises his head to watch it strike they are tired and body and in mind with cramped limbs and aching eyes they have had twelve nights of battle and it has lost its power to amuse when the sergeants call the companies together they are eager enough anything is better than lying still looking up at the sunny and screwtable hills or down into the plain crawling with black oxen among the group of staff officers someone has lost a cigar holder it has slipped from between his fingers and with the vindictiveness of inanimate things has slid and jumped under a pile of rocks the interest of all around is instantly centered on the lost cigar holder the tommys begin to roll the rocks away endangering the limbs of the men below them and half of the copchi is obliterated they are as keen as terriers after a rat the officers sit above and give advice and disagree as to where that cigar holder has hit himself over their heads not twenty feet above the shells chase each other fiercely but the officers have become accustomed to shells a search for a lost cigar holder which is going on under their very eyes is of greater interest and when at last a tommy pounces upon it with a laugh of triumph the officers look their disappointment and with a sigh of resignation pick up their field glasses it is all a question of familiarity on broadway if a building is going up where there is a chance of a loose brick falling on someone's head the contractor puts up red signs marked danger and you dodge over to the other side but if you have been in battle for twelve days you must have the soldiers of bullars column passing shells would interest you no more than do passing cable cars after twelve days you would forget that shells are dangerous even as you forget when crossing broadway that cable cars can kill and mingle up on the highest hills seated among the highest rocks are general bullar and his staff the hill is all of rocks, sharp brown rocks as clearly cut as foundation stones they are thrown about at irregular angles and shaded only by stiff bayonet like cacti above is a blue glaring sky into which the top of the copchi seems to reach and to draw and to concentrate upon itself all of the sun's heat this little jagged point of blistering rocks holds the forces that press the button which sets the struggling mass below and the thousands of men upon the surrounding hills in motion it is the conning tower of the relief column only unlike a conning tower there is no protection, no seclusion no peace today commanding generals under the new conditions which this war has developed do not charge up hills waving flashing swords they sit on rocks and wink out their orders by flashing a hand mirror the swords have been left at the base or coated deep with mud so that they shall not flash and with this column everyone under the rank of general carries a rifle on purpose to disguise the fact that he is entitled to carry a sword the copchi is the central station of the system from its uncomfortable eminence the commanding general watches the developments of his attack and directs it by heliograph and ragged bits of bunting a sweaty dirty tommy turns his back on a hill a mile away and slaps the air with his signal flag another tommy with the front visor of his helmet cocked over the back of his neck watches an answering bit of bunting through a glass the bit of bunting a mile away flashes patiently once to the right and once to the left and the tommy with the glass says they understand sir and the other tommy who has not as yet even cast an interested glance at the regiment he has ordered into action folds his flag and curls up against a hot rock and instantly sleeps stuck on the crest 20 feet from where general bowler is seated are two iron rods like those in the putting green of a golf course they mark the line of direction which a shell must take in order to seek out the enemy back of the copchi where they cannot see the enemy where they cannot even see the hill upon which he is entrenched are their howitzers their duty is to aim at the iron rods and vary their aim to either side of them as they are directed to do by an officer on the crest their shells pass a few yards over the heads of staff but the staff has confidence those three yards are as safe a margin as a hundred their confidence is that of the lady in spangles at a music hall who permits her husband in buckskin to shoot apples from the top of her head from the other direction comes the shells of the bore seeking out the hidden howitzers they pass somewhat higher crashing into the base of the copchi sometimes killing sometimes digging their own ignominious graves the staff regard them with the same indifference one of them tears the overcoat upon which colonel stewardly is seated another destroys his diary his men lying at his feet among the rocks observe this with wide eyes but he does not shift his position his answer is that his men cannot shift theirs on friday february twenty-third the innist killings doublins and canots were sent to take a trench halfway up railway hill the attack was one of those frontal attacks which in this war against the new weapons have added so much to the lists of killed and wounded into the prestige of the men while it has an inverse you hurt the prestige of the men by whom the attack was ordered the result of this attack was peculiarly disastrous it was made at night and as soon as it developed the bores retreated to the trenches on the crest of the hill and threw men around the sides to bring across fire to bear on the Englishman in the morning the innist killings found they had lost four hundred men and ten out of their fifteen officers the other regiments lost as heavily the following tuesday which was the anniversary of the hill three brigades instead of a regiment were told off to take the same railway hill or pieters as it was later called on the flank and with it to capture two others on the same day nineteen years before the English had lost Majuba hill and their hope was to take these three from the bores for the one they had lost and open the way to Buwana mountain which was the last bar that held them back from lady smith the first two of the three hills they wanted were shoulder to shoulder was separated from them by a deep ravine this last was the highest and in order that the attack should be successful it was necessary to seize it first the hill stretch for three miles they were about one thousand two hundred yards high for three hours a single line of men slipped and stumbled forward along the muddy bank of the river and for three hours the artillery crashed spluttered and stabbed the three hills above them scattering the rocks and bursting over the bore trenches on the crest as is their custom the bores remained invisible and made no reply and though we knew they were there it seemed inconceivable that anything human could live under such bombardment of shot, bullets and shrapnel a hundred yards distant on our right the navy guns were firing lidite that burst with a thick yellow smoke on the other side cult automatics were putt-a-putt putting a stream of bullets the field guns and the howitzers were playing from a hill half a mile behind us and scattered among the rocks about us and for two miles on either hand the infantry and reserve were firing off ammunition at any part of the three hills they happened to dislike the roar of the navy's four point stevens their crash their rush as they passed the shrill whine of the shrapnel the barking of the howitzers and the mechanical regular rattle of the quick-firing maxims which sounded like the clicking of many mowing machines on a hot summer's day tore the air with such hideous noises that one skull ached from the concussion and one could only be heard by shouting but more impressive by far than this hot chorus of mighty thunder and petty hammering was the roar of the wind which was driven down into the valley beneath and which swept up again in enormous waves of sound it roared like a wild hurricane at sea the illusion was so complete that you expected by looking down to see the tegola lashing at her banks tossing the spray hundreds of feet in air and battling with her sides of rock it was like the roar of Niagara and Agale and yet when you did look below not a leaf was stirring and the tegola was slipping forward flat and sluggish and in peace the long procession of yellow figures was still advancing along the bottom of the valley toward the right when on the crest of the far the most hill fourteen of them appeared suddenly and ran forward and sprung into the trenches perched against the blue sky on the highest and most distant of the three hills they looked terribly lonely and insufficient and they ran about this way and that as though they were very much surprised to find themselves where they were then they settled down into the board trench from our side of it and began firing their officer as his habit is standing up behind them the hill they had taken had evidently been abandoned to them by the enemy and the fourteen men khaki had taken it by default but they disappeared so suddenly into the trench that we knew they were not enjoying their new position in peace and everyone looked below them to see the arriving reinforcements they came at last to the number of ten scampered about just as the others had done looking for cover it seemed as if we could almost hear the singing of the bullet when one of them was dodged and it was with a distinct sense of relief and a freedom from further responsibility that we saw the ten disappears also and become part of the yellow stones about them then a very wonderful movement began to agitate the men upon the two remaining hills they began to creep up them as you have seen seaweed rise with a tide and envelop a rock they moved in regiments but each man was as distinct as as a letter of the alphabet in each word on this page black with letters we began to follow the fortune of individual letters it was a most selfish and cowardly occupation for you knew you were in no great danger would be in looking through the glasses of a mutoscope the battle unrolled before you like a panorama the guns on our side of the valley had ceased the hurricane in the depths below had instantly spent itself and the birds and insects had again begun to fill our hill with drowsy twitter and song but on the other half the men were wrapping the base of the hill in khaki which rose higher and higher growing looser and less tightly wrapped as it spun upward halfway to the crest there was a broad open space of green grass and above that a yellow bank of earth which supported the track of the railroad this green space spurred it with tiny geysers of yellow dust where the bullets came from or who sent them we could not see but the loose ends of the bandage of khaki were stretching across this green space and the yellow spurts of dust rose all around them the men crossed this fire zone warily looking to one side or the other as the bullets struck the earth heavily like drops of rain for a shower the men had their heads and shoulders bent as though they thought a roof was about to fall on them some ran from rock to rock seeking cover properly others scamper toward the safe vantage ground behind the railroad embankment others advanced leisurely like men playing golf the silence after the hurricane of sounds was painful we could not hear even the bore rifles the men moved like figures in a dream without firing a shot they seemed each to be acting on his own account without unison or organization as I have said you cease considering the scattered hole and became intent on the adventures of individuals these fell so suddenly that you waited with great anxiety to learn whether they had dropped to dodge a bullet or whether one had found them the men came at last from every side and from out of every bridge and dried up waterway open spaces which had been green a moment before where suddenly died yellow with them where a company had been clinging to the railroad embankment holding it and another sweeping over it heights that it seemed the goal became the resting place of the stretcher bearers until at last no part of the hill remained unpopulated save a high bulging ramp part of unprotected and open ground and then suddenly coming from the earth itself apparently one man ran across this open space and leaped on top of the trench which crowned the hill he was fully 15 yards in advance of all the rest entirely unsupported and alone and he had evidently planned it so for he took off his helmet and waved it and stuck it on his rifle and waved it again and then suddenly clapped it on his head and threw his gun to his shoulder he stood so pointing down into the trench and it seemed as though we could hear him calling upon the bores behind it to surrender a few minutes later the last of the three hills was mounted by the west yorks who were mistaken by their own artillery for bores and fired upon both by the bores and by their own shrapnel and lidite four men were wounded and to say themselves a line of them stood up at full length on the trench and cheered and waved with the artillery until it ceased to play upon them the bores continued to fire upon them with rifles for over two hours but it was only a demonstration to cover the retreat of the greater number and at daybreak the hills were in complete and peaceful possession of the English these hills were a part of the same railway hill which four nights before the innest killings and a composite regiment had attempted to take by a frontal attack with the loss of six hundred men among whom were three colonels by this flank attack and by using nine regiments instead of one the same hills and two others were taken with two hundred casualties the fact that this battle which was called the battle of pietrus hill and the surrender of colonel crongy and his forces to lord roberts both took place on the anniversary of the battle of majuba hill made the whole of bullers column feel that the ill memory of that disaster had been effaced in dove with bullers column recording by Jean Luft