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When, on June 14, General Shafter's army sailed for the southeastern coast of Cuba, without adequate facilities for disembarkation, and without a sufficient number of mules, packers, teamsters, and army wagons to insure its proper equipment, subsistence, and maintenance in the field, it was, ipso facto, predestined to serious embarrassment and difficulty, if not to great suffering and peril.
We also went into the "palace," now used as General Shafter's headquarters. It is one of the best buildings in the city, but doesn't compare with the more ordinary public buildings in our country. There are no street cars few, if any electric lights, and the surface of many streets is so rough and uneven that you can have no conception of them.
Instead of resisting General Shafter's advance, however, with obstinate pertinacity on the Siboney road, he abandoned his strong position at Guasimas, after a single sharp but inconclusive engagement, and retreated almost to Santiago without striking another blow.
Nothing, perhaps, is more important, so far as its influence upon health is concerned, than food, and the rations of General Shafter's army were deficient in quantity and unsatisfactory in quality from the very first. With a few exceptions, the soldiers had nothing but hard bread and bacon after they left the transports at Siboney, and short rations at that.
The whole regular army, consisting of seven regiments of cavalry, twenty-two regiments of infantry, and fourteen batteries of artillery, had been mobilized and transported to the Gulf coast; the quartermaster's department had, under charter, twenty-seven steamers, with a carrying capacity of about twenty thousand men; immense quantities of food and munitions of war had been bought and sent to Tampa, and there seemed to be no good reason why General Shafter's command should not embark for Cuba, if necessary, at twenty-four hours' notice.
On the hills above Santiago the American Army had now only the land forces of the Spaniards to contend with. Shafter's demand for unconditional surrender met with a refusal, and there ensued a week of military quiet.
After that he gave a long sigh of satisfaction; for it seemed to him that he was safe. And yet the danger must still have pressed somewhat upon him; for on his way to the lodge he stopped at old man Shafter's. The house was forbidden him; but when he tapped at the window Ettie came out to him. The dancing Irish deviltry had gone from her lover's eyes. She read his danger in his earnest face.
Cuban fever waits for no man, and before the boats that should have landed more supplies and the mules that should have carried them to the front reached Siboney, seventy-five per cent. of General Shafter's command had been prostrated by disease, due, as he himself admits, to insufficient food, "without change of clothes, and without any shelter whatever."
The fleet of transports which conveyed General Shafter's command to the southern coast of Cuba arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor at midday on the 20th of June, after a tedious and uneventful voyage of five days from the Dry Tortugas around the eastern end of the island.
Shafter's recommendation that the troops be allowed to carry their arms back to Spain with them was properly refused by the War Department. Arrangements were made for Spanish ships paid by the United States to take the men immediately to Spain. This extraordinary operation was begun on the 8th of August, while the war was still in progress, and was accomplished before peace was established.
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