# A Recent Campaign in Puerto Rico/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II
The First Day's March
Disposition of our column — The road to Sabana Grande — The infantrymen's burden — Wayside hospitality — Hard tack and repartee — Into camp and under blankets — Arrival of Macomb's troop — A smoke-talk.
THE disposition and arrangement of our forces on the first day's march can best be shown by the following document: —
Headquarters Independent Brigade (Regulars), Camp at Yauco, Puerto Rico,
Aug. 8, 1898.
GENERAL ORDERS
No. 13.
This command will move out on the road to Sabana Grande at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. It will observe the following rules and order of march: — ​ Plaza Principal, Mayaguez. Town Hall in Background. ​1. Macomb's troop of cavalry will act as a screen, and will march about two miles in advance of the point of the advance-guard. The extent of the front to be covered by, and the disposition of the cavalry, will depend upon the nature of the country, and will be left to the judgment of the troop commander. He will communicate freely by means of orderlies with the commander of the advance-guard, who will at once transmit all messages to the commanding general. Three mounted orderlies, to be furnished by the troop, will march with the advance-guard.
​3. The main body will consist of nine companies of infantry, one battery and two platoons of artillery, and two Gatling guns.
4. The trains following the main body will be under the direction of the brigade quartermaster, and their order of march will be: —
Hospital train. Ammunition column. Supply and baggage wagons.
The rear-guard will be composed of one company of infantry. A detachment from it will protect exposed flanks of the train. If horses can be procured for them, the commanders of the advance and rear guards will be mounted.
The above disposition for each day's march will be conformed to, unless otherwise ordered.
By command of Brigadier-General Schwan.
Grote Hutcheson,
Captain and Assistant Adjutant-General.
The route from Yauco to Sabana Grande lies for some two miles along the level and creditable road leading to Guanica, suddenly going off at right angles just beyond a picturesque sugar-mill into as uneven, crooked, and hilly a highway as can well be imagined.
I cannot tell you in adequate language just how the tropical sun punishes the unacclimated Northerner, especially if he be a foot-soldier tramping along in a blinding dust, parched of throat, empty of belly, and loaded down with a pack that would make a quartermaster's mule to fake the glanders. If you have been there, it needs no words of mine to galvanize your memory; and, if you have not, you cannot understand. This matter of the soldier's pack and what to do with it became a subject of serious ​consideration during the recent war, in both Cuba and Puerto Rico. On the march, in the charge or pursuit or retreat, it is a senseless, clogging, spirit-shackling incubus, a rank absurdity, and an utter impossibility. As a result, after three days of active campaign the infantryman is seen gayly stalking along with no burden save his rifle, ammunition-belt, and a wisp of gray blanket, which seems to me to be a fatuous and footless condition of affairs that might well be quickly remedied for the benefit of all concerned.
As we passed the occasional little hacienda, set in its grove of cocoanut palms or orange-trees, dusky and wrinkled women came forth from the doors, bearing upon their heads huge jars, from which we filled our ever-parched canteens with cool, sweet water. They also brought us mangoes and other native fruits, and queer cigars of most abominable flavor. Because we were forbidden to eat of the fruit, we stuffed ourselves with it, and looked for more. From ​ Plaza Principal, Mayaguez. A Public Celebration of the New Flag's Advent, under the Auspices of the Local School-teachers and their Pupils. ​time to time a weary or sick soldier would lay himself down by the roadside, to be picked up later on by an ambulance; but, as the day wore on, the intervals of rest grew longer and more frequent. We had but one opportunity to water the sweating horses of the artillery, and then it was a painful matter of buckets. We munched hard-tack for our noonday meal, and made merry over it, talking of the day when we should go home and feast on beans and beefsteak and countless other things of which the heathen wot not. We were intensely voluble or silent by turns, and invented new nicknames for each other, which were so apt, spite of being touched with bitterness, that they stuck forevermore. And never, so far as I can remember, did any one mention the "Maine" or Cuba Libre.
At last, shortly after sunset, we descended a long, steep hillside, and went into camp in the valley of the Rio Grande, just without the gates of a small town, uninteresting in character, and Sabana Grande by name. We had marched only twelve miles, but ​were hungry, limp, and ugly. So, having crammed down a hasty supper of nothing in particular, we made short shift of absent tents, and, pulling our blankets to our chins, lay face upward to the stars that made us homesick, and slept the sleep of tired little children.
​ The Plaza of San German on Market-day.