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Updated: June 8, 2025
General Young had already started toward Guasimas the First and Tenth dismounted Cavalry, and according to the agreement of the night before had taken the eastern trail to our right, while the Rough Riders climbed the steep ridge above Siboney and started toward the rendezvous along the trail to the west, which was on high ground and a half mile to a mile distant from the trail along which General Young and his regulars were marching.
After the battery returned to the United States, Lieutenant Henly, after saying that the battery was in every battle on Cuban soil except that at Las Guasimas, continued: "We were peculiarly fortunate in escaping the bullets. The only man killed in our battery was a horse I suppose we can count him as a man.
With these Colonel Wood and his Rough Riders, advancing over the hill-trail, were to form a junction at the forks, locally known as Las Guasimas, three miles away. So at earliest dawn the troops detailed for this duty were astir, after but three hours of troubled sleep.
The first is that they did not know certainly whether General Shafter would make his main attack by way of Guasimas and Sevilla, or along the sea-coast by way of Aguadores; and they feared that if they sent the greater part of their small army to check an advance by the former route, the city, which would be left almost undefended, might be attacked suddenly by a column moving rapidly along the sea-coast and up the Aguadores ravine, or, possibly, by a force which should land at Cabanas and march around the bay.
General Wheeler, a former Confederate who was now in command of the cavalry, met and defeated a Spanish force at Las Guasimas. Further advance met difficulties that were more serious. On the left of the American line was San Juan Hill, an eminence which commanded the country toward the east; on the right was El Caney, a fortified village held by a small force of Spaniards.
Bonsal's account of the Guasimas fight, Mr. Richard Harding Davis writes me as follows: We had already halted several times to give the men a chance to rest, and when we halted for the last time I thought it was for this same purpose, and began taking photographs of the men of L Troop, who were so near that they asked me to be sure and save them a photograph.
The road, after it enters the hills, abounds in strong defensive positions, and if General Chaffee or General Wood, with five thousand American regulars, had held it, as General Linares attempted to hold it at Guasimas, a Spanish army would not have fought its way through to Santiago in a month.
After the fight of Las Guasimas, its heroes rested and waited for six days, while the remainder of the army effected its landing and made its slow way to the position they had won over the narrow trails they had cleared.
I had supposed, before I left the ship, that Guasimas and Sevilla were villages as, indeed, they are represented to be on all the Spanish maps of the country. But I soon learned not to put my trust in Spanish maps. Most of them have not been revised or corrected in half a century, and they were full of errors in the first place.
General Wheeler, guided by the Cubans, reconnoitred this trail on the 23rd of June, and with the position of the enemy fully explained to him, returned to Siboney and informed General Young and Colonel Wood that on the following morning he would attack the Spanish position at Guasimas.
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