United States or Brazil ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I shall try, in another chapter, to show how it affected the health and fighting efficiency of the troops, and how near it came to wrecking not only the Fifth Army-Corps, but the whole Cuban expedition. Suffice it to say, for the present, that General Shafter sailed from Tampa without a sufficient number of mules, teamsters, and packers to supply, equip, and maintain his army in the field.
"A single fox skin fetching thousands of dollars!" remarked Steve, as if hardly able to grasp it as the truth. "Whew, that beats finding pearls in the shells of mussels all hollow!" "Yes," Owen broke in, "and even Ted Shafter and his crowd hunting wild ginseng roots and selling it to the wholesale drug house at big money doesn't cut so much of a figure after all, does it?"
It had been expected that the important military operations would take place around Havana and for that reason the officer commanding the army, General Nelson A. Miles, with most of the regular troops, were retained for the larger service. The command of the expedition to Santiago fell to General William E. Shafter.
The fact that ninety-nine per cent. or more of the diseases that prevail in the tropics are caused by germs was known, of course, to the surgeon-general of our army, and ought to have been known to General Shafter and the Secretary of War.
What none of the regular Army officers could afford to do, Roosevelt did. He wrote a letter to General Shafter, the commander of the expedition, explaining the state of things, and setting out how important it was, if any of the army was to be kept alive, that they should be sent away from Cuba, until the sickly season was over.
To this General Shafter replied: "It is impossible for me to say when I can take batteries at entrance of harbor. If they are as difficult to take as those which we have been pitted against it will be some time and at great loss of life. I am at a loss to see why the navy cannot work under a destructive fire as well as the army. My loss yesterday was over 500 men.
Upon receipt of these "rush" orders, General Shafter hastily embarked his army, amid great confusion and disorder, and telegraphed the Secretary of War that he would be ready to sail, with about seventeen thousand officers and men, on the morning of June 8.
It is said that the young men who shot them had orders to take them dead or alive." Mr. M.M. SHAFTER, of Townsend, Vermont, recently a graduate of the Wesleyan University at Middletown, Connecticut, makes the following statement: "Some of the events of the Southampton, Va. insurrection were narrated to me by Mr. Benjamin W. Britt, from Riddicksville, N.C. Mr.
It's just the same old harbor-mouth, and the same old Morro Castle, and same old ships, drifting up and down; the Brooklyn, full of smoke-stacks, and the New York, with her two bridges, and all the rest of them looking just as they've looked for the last four weeks. There's nothing in that. Why don't they send me to Tampa with the army and Shafter that's where the story is."
The army under command of General Shafter left Tampa on the fourteenth day of June, and arrived off the Cuban coast near Santiago on the 20th of the same month. Disembarkation began at Daiquiri on the 22d, and ended at Siboney on the 24th. On the morning of June 25 the whole army was ashore, and was then in a state of almost perfect health and efficiency.
Word Of The Day