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In five minutes the sea was alive with flotillas of small boats, headed by launches, speeding for the Baiquiri dock. Some of the boats were manned by crews of sailors, while others were rowed by the soldiers themselves. Each boat contained sixteen men, every one in fighting trim and carrying three days' rations, a shelter tent, a gun and 200 cartridges.
Three hours' waiting made the men on the transports impatient to get ashore and in action, and every move of the warships was closely watched by the soldiers. A little before 9 o'clock the bombardment of the batteries of Juragua was begun. This was evidently a feint to cover the real point of attack, Juragua being about half-way between Baiquiri and Santiago.
Garcia remaining at Aserraderos were to be transferred to Baiquiri or Siboney on the 24th. This was successfully accomplished at Siboney. These movements committed me to approaching Santiago from the east over a narrow road, at first in some places not better than a trail, running from Baiquiri through Siboney and Sevilla, and making attack from that quarter.
On June 1st I received verbal instruction to assist Lieut. On June 6th I took my men and guns aboard the transport Cherokee, and on June 11th, per special orders No. 16 of that date, my detail was increased to thirty-seven men, all told, of whom one was left sick in hospital at Tampa. About twelve of these did not join me, however, until after debarkation at Baiquiri, Cuba.
This, in my judgment, was the only feasible plan, and subsequent information and results confirmed my judgment. On the morning of the 22d the Army commenced to disembark at Baiquiri.
On the contrary, they had from the 23d of June, when the landing began, at Baiquiri, until the 1st of July, to accomplish a distance of less than twenty miles; and it would seem reasonable that they might have had their medicine-cases up where they were needed by that time. These gentlemen pose as the most learned, expert, scientific, highly trained body of medical men in the world.
So I wrote it to you in the will I made at Baiquiri, the night before the landing. If you hadn't come now, you would have learned it in that way. You would have read there that there never was any one but you; the rest were all dream people, foolish, silly mad. There is no one else in the world but you; you have been the only thing in life that has counted.
Wood again walked down the trail with Capron and disappeared, and one of the officers informed us that the scouts had seen the outposts of the enemy. It did not seem reasonable that the Spaniards, who had failed to attack us when we landed at Baiquiri, would oppose us until they could do so in force, so, personally, I doubted that there were any Spaniards nearer than Santiago.
I seem to have gained in weight and full flushed in the face. This letter was written just before the battle of Santiago: Ten Miles North of Baiquiri, June 29, 1898. Dear Jim: I am writing this on picket. My troop was sent to the front and we are bivouacked in the woods. Oranges, lemons and cocoanuts are plentiful, and every trooper has his canteen full of lemonade all the time.
Yellow fever broke out in the army on July 11, spreading with frightful rapidity among the men, but it fortunately proved to be of a mild type, and in comparatively few instances was the dreaded disease attended with fatal results. When the landings at Baiquiri and Juragua were made there were many men to be handled, the facilities were limited and the landings were made in great haste.
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