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Captain Henry L. Marcotte, a retired officer of the Seventeenth Infantry, who went with General Shafter's army as correspondent for the "Army and Navy Journal," describes the condition of the road as follows: "The road from Daiquiri to Siboney, about seven miles, leads over the foot-hill slopes of the mountain-ranges and crosses a winding stream several times during that distance.
There was only one line of very bad road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front, and along that line had to be carried, with an utterly insufficient train of mules and wagons, all the food and ammunition needed by an advancing army of more than sixteen thousand men.
The road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front did not become impassable for loaded wagons until the end of the second week in July. For ten days after the army landed it was comparatively dry and good; and for ten days or two weeks more it was at least passable, and was constantly traversed, not only by pack-trains, but by wagons with loads.
The almost complete absence of landing equipment, in the shape of surf-boats, lighters, and launches, eventually proved, as I shall hereafter show, to be disastrous in the extreme; and if the navy had not come to the rescue, at Daiquiri and Siboney, it is not at all certain that General Shafter could have landed his army.
The army did not have sufficient small vessels to effect a landing; but the navy came to its assistance, and on the 22d of June the first American troops began to disembark at Daiquiri, though it was not until the 26th that the entire expedition was on shore. On the second day Siboney, which had a better anchorage and was some six miles closer to Santiago, was made the base.
Disembarkation continued throughout the 23d and 24th, at both Daiquiri and Siboney, and before dark on the afternoon of the 24th nine tenths of the army of invasion had landed, with no other accident than the loss of two men drowned.
It is my purpose, in the concluding chapters of this volume, to review as fully and dispassionately as I can the series of military operations known collectively as "the Santiago campaign," including, first, the organization and equipment of the expedition of General Shafter at Tampa; second, the disembarkation of troops and the landing of supplies at Daiquiri and Siboney; third, the strategic plan of the campaign and its execution; and, fourth, the wrecking of the army by disease after the decisive battle of July 1-2.
In fact, the road, all the way to Santiago, proved equal to most country roads, and there was not the slightest excuse for not using the hundred or more wagons stowed in the hold of the Cherokee to transport tentage, medical and other supplies close upon the heels of the slow-moving Fifth Corps.... There is a mystery about the 'condition of the road' that may remain so unless it is fixed upon as the scape-goat for the lack of transportation.... The condition of the road at no time would have prevented a farmer from taking a load of hay to market.... There was no point from Daiquiri to the trenches which could not have been as easily reached by wagons as by pack-mules between June 22 and July 18."
When General Shafter returned, he ordered the soldiers to sail on fifteen miles beyond Santiago, to a point called Daiquiri. This was their landing-place. It was harder to land in Cuba than it had been to leave Florida. Admiral Sampson sent some of his ships to fire upon the shore and drive away the Spaniards, and he also sent small boats to take our soldiers from the ships to the land.
The Spanish bark Maria Dolores, laden with coal and patent fuel, was captured by the cruiser Minneapolis twelve miles off San Juan de Porto Rico. June 10. A battalion of marines was landed in the harbour of Guantanamo, forty miles east of Santiago. A blockhouse at Daiquiri shelled by the transport steamer Panther. June 11–12.
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