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Updated: May 7, 2025
Colonel Babcock, Shafter's adjutant-general, told me on May 7 that the government had decided to send the army of invasion to the eastern end of the island, and to leave Havana and the western provinces unmolested until later in the season.
The very reason assigned for General Shafter's hurried advance toward Santiago is that he knew his army would soon be disabled by disease, and wished to strike a decisive blow while his men were still able to fight.
The American people, certainly, are both able and willing to pay for the proper support and equipment of their army. If it had cost five million dollars, or ten million dollars, to supply every company in General Shafter's command with hammocks, waterproof rain-sheets, extra clothing, and camp-kettles, the money would have been appropriated and paid without a grumble or a murmur.
Thus, by using the authority given him by his shoulder-straps, this officer took for his regiment that which had been won by the hearts' blood of some of the bravest, though black, soldiers of Shafter's army. The charge of El Caney has been little spoken of, but it was quite as great a show of bravery as the famous taking of San Juan Hill. A word more in regard to the charge.
If you want me, you'll find me at Jacob Shafter's on Sheridan Street, Vermissa; so I'm not hiding from you, am I? Day or night I dare to look the like of you in the face don't make any mistake about that!"
There had been so much mismanagement about the landing of the troops and the supplies, that General Shafter's army was without medicines or shelter for his wounded men. When he learned that the Red Cross ship had arrived, he sent word to Miss Barton to seize any empty army wagons and send him a load of hospital supplies and medical stores.
Saturday night is our meeting, and if you come then, we'll make you free forever of the Vermissa Valley." On the day following the evening which had contained so many exciting events, McMurdo moved his lodgings from old Jacob Shafter's and took up his quarters at the Widow MacNamara's on the extreme outskirts of the town.
And yet, every day for a week, copies of the daily papers that reached me had, under flaming headlines, the startling news that Shafter's fleet had sailed destination Havana, San Juan, Matanzas, yes even the Spanish coast. All this was announced from Washington, and made the correspondents snort; they made every excuse to let their papers know they were still there.
A quarter of an hour after the firing began from El Poso one of General Shafter's aides directed General Sumner to advance with his division down the Santiago trail, and to halt at the edge of the woods. "What am I to do then?" asked General Sumner. "You are to await further orders," the aide answered.
The insufficient and inadequate provision for the care and feeding of the wounded at the field-hospital of the Fifth Army-Corps, which I have tried to describe in the preceding chapter, was due largely to the inability of General Shafter's commissaries and quartermasters to cope successfully with the two great difficulties above indicated, namely, landing from the steamers and transportation to the front.
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