The Roughest Riders by Jerome Tuccille Page A

against any possible Spanish rearguard assault. Each of them had trouble containing his urge to be in the middle of the fighting, one to enhance his military career and the other his political one. Fighting Joe decided to take action on his own, defying Shafter’s orders. He left Daiquiri with a squad of scouts early on June 23, and Young followed closely behind with some white regulars and some black soldiers from the Ninth and Tenth. Wheeler infuriated Roosevelt all the more with his order for Roosevelt to stay behind with his band of Rough Riders.
    Wheeler was surprised to see that the Spaniards had not defended the route to Siboney at several locations where they could have had a distinct advantage over the Americans grinding their way along the trail. Lawton was almost speechless when he saw Wheeler and his scouts tromping unannounced into his campsite. Wheeler informed Lawton that he had learned from Cuban rebels on the way that Spanish forces lay well entrenched at a fork in the trail three or four miles inland. Wheeler wanted to march uphill and assault the position directly, but Lawton viewed the situation differently. Lawton preferred to take a more circuitous route along the seacoast and attack the Spanish flank, forcing them toward Santiago at the risk of being cut off from their main line of defense. The two generals stood there at loggerheads, one obeying his commander’s orders, the other in open defiance of them.
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    G eneral Shafter sat hobbled by gout on his ship, observing the activity on the coast the best he could through field glasses. Richard Harding Davis, a reporter for the
New York Herald
, vividly captured the scene during the landing:
    It was one of the most weird and remarkable scenes of the war, probably of any war. An army was being landed on an enemy’s coast at the dead of night, but with somewhat more of cheers and shrieks and laughter than rise from the bathers in the surf at Coney Island on a hot Sunday. It was a pandemonium of noises. The men still to be landed from the “prison hulks,” as they called the transports, were singing in chorus, the men already on shore were dancing naked around the camp fires on the beach, or shouting with delight as they plunged into the first bath that had been offered in seven days, and those in the launches as they were pitched head-first at the soil of Cuba, signalized their arrival by howls of triumph. On either side rose black, overhanging ridges, in the lowland between were white tents and burning fires, and from the ocean came the blazing, dazzling e y es of the search-lights shaming the quie t moonlight.
    For his part, Shafter sat immobilized by his throbbing foot and the oppressive heat and humidity bearing down on him. He tried to make what sense he could of the men milling about on the shore, but he couldn’t be sure which troops were Lawton’s and which were Wheeler’s amid the chaos. His mood was soured all the more by the lack of communication from his men on land.

    The place that lay a few miles uphill at the crossroads was called Las Guasimas, named for the fruit-bearing trees that adorned the hill. Before the Spanish had chased them out, the locals used to pluck the fruit and feed it to their pigs. Richard Harding Davis, one of the handful of writers who reported from the scene, depicted the site as “not even a village, nor even a collection of houses.” Two trails came together there, forming the apex of a V. The site was located about three miles inland from Siboney. From the point where they met, the trails merged and continued along a single trail toward Santiago. General Wheeler took it upon himself to reconnoiter the area in the company of some Cuban rebels. He declared openly that he intended to attack Las Guasimas in the morning, whether Shafter authorized it or not.
    While Lawton and Wheeler debated military strategy, Roosevelt sat stewing with his Rough Riders on the