Theodore Roosevelt

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"I think that the bulk of the Spanish fire was practically unaimed, or at least not aimed at any particular man…but they swept the whole field of battle up to the edge of the river, and man after man in our ranks fell dead or wounded."

Theodore Roosevelt

Excerpt fromThe Rough Riders

Published in 1899

The deadliest battle of the Spanish-American War (April-August 1898) took place outside the city of Santiago, Cuba, on July 1, 1898. To capture the city, the U.S. Army needed to fight its way through the town of El Caney and the surrounding hills called San Juan Heights. The evening before, thousands of troops, commanded by U.S. general William R. Shafter (1835-1906; see entry in Biographies section), had begun to march down a ten-foot-wide path to attack Spain at those targets.

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919; see also entry in Biographies section) was among the troops that arrived outside San Juan Heights in the early morning hours of July 1. Roosevelt led a regiment of volunteers called the Rough Riders. Anxious to begin the assault on San Juan Heights, Roosevelt instead found his regiment in a serious predicament.

General Shafter was miles behind the battle lines because his obesity and gout, a painful medical condition, prevented him from joining the fight. Messengers on horses galloped between Shafter's tent and the front to deliver reports to the general and orders to the officers. As Roosevelt and the other regiments reached San Juan Heights on July 1, their orders were to hold their fire until they were told to attack.

This put the American troops in jeopardy. When they emerged from the narrow jungle path into the clearings near San Juan Heights, they became easy targets for Spanish soldiers hiding atop the hills. Troops marching behind the Americans made retreat impossible. Stuck as they were, the U.S. soldiers began falling dead into a curve in the San Juan River that became known as Bloody Bend. In his history of the war, The Rough Riders, Roosevelt recalls the death that surrounded him as his men waited for their orders to attack San Juan Heights.

Things to remember while reading the excerpt from The Rough Riders:

• While Roosevelt's men hid from their attackers in the jungle grasses, Roosevelt spent much of his time on horseback, which increased his risk of injury and death. In fact, as a cavalry, the entire volunteer regiment was supposed to be on horseback. A shortage of transport vessels, however, had forced most of the soldiers to leave their horses behind in Tampa, Florida.

Excerpt from The Rough Riders

The fight was now on in good earnest, and the Spaniards on the hills were engaged in heavy volley firing. The Mauser bullets drovein sheets through the trees and the tall jungle grass, making a peculiar whirring or rustling sound; some of the bullets seemed to pop in the air, so that we thought they were explosive; and, indeed, many of those which were coated with brass did explode, in the sense that the brass coat was ripped off, making a thin plate of hard metal with a jagged edge, which inflicted a ghastly wound. These bullets were shot from a 45-calibre rifle carrying smokeless powder, which was much used by the guerillas and irregular Spanish troops. The Mauser bullets themselves made a small, clean hole, with the result that the wound healed in a most astonishing manner. One or two of our men who were shot in the head had the skull blown open, but elsewhere the wounds from the minute steel-coated bullet, with its very high velocity, were certainly nothing like as serious as those made by the old large-calibre, low-power rifle. If a man was shot through the heart, spine, or brain he was, of course, killed instantly; but very few wounded died—even under the appalling conditions which prevailed, owing to the lack of attendance and supplies in the field-hospitals with the army.

While we were lying in reserve we were suffering nearly as much as afterward when we charged. I think that the bulk of the Spanish fire was practically unaimed, or at least not aimed at any particular man, and only occasionally at a particular body of men; but they swept the whole field of battle up to the edge of the river, and man after man in our ranks fell dead or wounded, although I had the troopers scattered out far apart, taking advantage of every scrap of cover.

Devereux was dangerously shot while he lay with his men on the edge of the river. A young West Point cadet, Ernest Haskell, who had taken his holiday with us as an acting second lieutenant, was shot through the stomach. He had shown great coolness and gallantry, which he displayed to an even more marked degree after being wounded, shaking my hand and saying, "All right, Colonel, I'm going to get well. Don't bother about me, and don't let any man come away with me." When I shook hands with him I thought he would surely die; yet he recovered.

The most serious loss that I and the regiment could have suffered befell [us] just before we charged. Bucky O'Neill was strolling up and down in front of his men, smoking his cigarette, for he was inveterately addicted to the habit. He had a theory that an officer ought never to take cover—a theory which was, of course, wrong, though in a volunteer organization the officers should certainly expose themselves very fully, simply for the effect on the men; our regimentaltoast on the transport running, "The officers; may the war last until each is killed, wounded, or promoted." As O'Neill moved to and fro, his men begged him to lie down, and one of the sergeants said, "Captain, a bullet is sure to hit you." O'Neill took the cigarette out of his mouth, and blowing out a cloud of smoke laughed and said,"Sergeant, the Spanish bullet isn't made that will kill me." A little later he discussed for a moment with one of the regular officers the direction from which the Spanish fire was coming. As he turned on his heel a bullet struck him in the mouth and came out the back of his head; so that even before he fell his wild and gallant soul had gone out into the darkness.

What happened next…

Impatience grew among the troops until Roosevelt almost ordered his regiment to charge Kettle Hill without permission from Shafter. Before that happened, as retold by Roosevelt, "Lieutenant-Colonel Dorst came riding up through the storm of bullets with the welcome command 'to move forward and support the regulars in the assault on this hills in front.'" The Rough Riders then made their famous run up Kettle Hill, taking it by the sheer force of their charge along with African Americans in two regular army regiments. By the end of the day, the Americans controlled both San Juan Heights and El Caney, which, together with a July 3 naval victory, led to Spanish surrender on July 17.

Did you know…

Of the four hundred Rough Riders who fought at San Juan Heights on July 1, eighty-six were killed or wounded.
General Shafter received much criticism for his conduct of the Cuban operations during the war. According to Ivan Musicant in Empire by Default, a soldier of the 16th Infantry wrote, "General Shafter is a fool and I believe he should be shot." After the victory at San Juan Heights on July 1, thousands of American soldiers died from diseases that they had caught in Cuba's humid summer jungles. Roosevelt compared it to the epidemic of malaria that had killed thousands of British soldiers on the island of Walcherin after their failed invasion at the Belgian seaport of Antwerp in 1809: "Not since the campaign of Crassus against the Parthians has there been so criminally incompetent a General as Shafter, and not since the expedition against Walcherin has there been a grosser mismanagement than this," Roosevelt wrote to Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, according to Musicant.