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Updated: July 9, 2025
It is only three weeks old and there are about 100 graves. Santiago is a dirty place. All the sewers are on top of the ground. This is Siboney, the town we burned about five weeks ago to keep out the fever. I have a few souvenirs I hope to take back to the States with me two Spanish gold pieces, one machete, a Krag gun, a set of prayer beads, and a piece of shell that struck me in the hip.
General Shafter was committed by the movements and the ground, as he says in his official report: "To approach Santiago from the east over a narrow road, at first in some places not better than a trail, running from Daiquiri through Siboney and Sevilla, and making attack from that quarter, was, in my judgment, the only feasible plan, and subsequent information and results confirmed my judgment."
Captain Mills, now General Mills, is the Superintendent of the West Point Military Academy. Three times in the first week I went over those terrible roads from the front to Siboney and return. Arriving at Siboney late one night, there was no way I could get on board the State of Texas and I was obliged to remain on shore.
General Chaffee, who had been directed to make a final assault on the fort when, in his judgment, the proper time had come, then gave the order to charge; and the Twelfth Infantry, closely followed by several regiments from General Miles's brigade, and the brigade of General Bates, which had just arrived from Siboney, swarmed up the steep slope of the hill, drove the Spaniards out of their rifle-pits, and took the fort by storm.
Captain Henry L. Marcotte, a retired officer of the Seventeenth Infantry, who went with General Shafter's army as correspondent for the "Army and Navy Journal," describes the condition of the road as follows: "The road from Daiquiri to Siboney, about seven miles, leads over the foot-hill slopes of the mountain-ranges and crosses a winding stream several times during that distance.
After a period of comparative idleness the campaign was opened in earnest Friday, July 1, when General Shafter's army began an attack at dawn upon the Spanish fortifications. Shatter had come from Cuero to El Caney with his army, making headquarters at Siboney.
It was picked up in the sand at Siboney after the medical corps, in an effort to wipe out the yellow-fever, had set fire to the post-office tent. She had written it some weeks before from her summer home at Newport, and in it she said: "When you went to the front, I thought no woman could love more than I did then. But, now I know. At least I know one girl who can. She cannot write it.
If we had had at Siboney on June 26 half a dozen army wagons, an equal number of saddle-horses, and forty or fifty mules of our own, we should have been in much better condition than we were to cope with the difficulties of the situation.
I have no doubt that there were some yellow-fever cases among the sick who were sent to the camp at the time when the village of Siboney was burned, but I did not happen to see any of them, and it is the opinion of many persons who are far better qualified to judge than I, that yellow-fever cases and calenture cases were lumped together without much discrimination, and that the latter greatly outnumbered the former.
The road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front did not become impassable for loaded wagons until the end of the second week in July. For ten days after the army landed it was comparatively dry and good; and for ten days or two weeks more it was at least passable, and was constantly traversed, not only by pack-trains, but by wagons with loads.
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