St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1899-07-05
r S IN AT SAN JUAN.

Fort San Juan. But there is happily no
question as to which command was first
in the attack or which lost the heaviest
in the encounter. Official figures are not
tables. The honor belongs to the Sixth
United States infantry.
After all that has been written in a
general way about the physical hard
ships of the soldiers in Cuba the pic
ture is incomplete without those little
details that linger in the memory of
soldiers who faced everything, hour by
hour and day by day, from gnawing
hunger to battle wounds. My first in
terview with a man of the Sixth regu-
lars was at the headquarters of Camp
Wikoff, where the commandment, Cap
tain w. H. FL. Crowell, spoke for the
regiment. The captain had served in
the western army during the civil war.
He said that he had never seen any
thing in all his 81 years experience to
equal the hardships in Cuba.
The Sixth led the infantry division,
but before it reached the crossing of
the Aguadorres creek the column halted
to give the dismounted cavalry the road.
This halt in the torrid jungle was
enough to sap the fervor Of soldiers
who needed all the fire of their fresh
enthusiasm for what lay ahead. During
the wait General Hawkins, the brigade
commander, had been to the front across
San Juan river to look the ground over.
Confident of success, he told General
Kent, the division leader, that he could
take the San Juan b%lockhouse by flank
attack. An aid sped back along the
road to summon the Sixth and Six
teenth forward. Reaching the ford,
General Hawkins pointed toward the
slope and the Spanish position and said
to Lieutenant Colonel Egbert of the
Sixth, Somewhat beyond here you can
get an enflade fire upon those works"
At this time the leaders were waiting
for the Seventy-first to march forward
and clear the road for Wikof's brigade,
these two commands of six regiments
having been assigned to the capture of
the fort.
Hawkins orders meant that the Sixth
was to get into position and open at
long range on the Spaniards to reduce
the %ierceness of the fire then pouring
down the slope into the jungle. One
battalion of the regiment went forward
to help the cavalry skirmishers in their
attempt to cope with the Mausers, and
as soon as the Sixteenth regiment
reached the fording place Colonel Egg
bert led Company E, Captain S. w. V.
kennon, to the river and waded to the
opposite bank. Seven companies fol-
lowed, and in n few minutes the two
battalions were lined up at a wire fence
~inclosing a road which ran between the
river and the blockhouse.
There were then no skirmishers in
front of the Sixth, for it had left the
cavalry to its right and rear. A bat
talon of the Sixteenth crossed the river
and formed on the left of the Sixth, and
in this position Colonel Egbert held his
regiment an hour, trying to carry out
the orders to enfilade Fort San Juan.
Finding the range a long one and par
TALLY INSTRUCTED, the colonel decided to
cross the road to a ridge covered with
tall grass just beyond. This forward
march of the Sixth was to be the first
direct attempt upon the blockhouse.
Meanwhile the little column had had
its taste of Mauser fire. Captain Gro
well told of following in the wake of
the balloon and coming under Spanish
view while deploying at the creek t.
advance. He says the line found itself
in a hornets nest in the tangled I'M
derbrush and that men dropped on all
sides, This deadly fire from the Span
iards on the hill was mainly at random.
Their Mausers were set at fixed ranges,
and they fired because they saw the
Americans massing in the valley of San
Juan river.
As the Sixth moved forward after
crossing San Juan river it marched
directly from the positions where the
Americans were deployed toward the
b%lockhouse. In its direction, therefore,
the Spaniards' eyes we're fixed, looking
for the enemy. They did not look in
vain.
Captain Crowell says that the barbed
wire fence, the first encountered by the
infantry, was four to five feet high and
the strands of wire about ten inches
apart. The men had no tools for cutting
the wire, but a Cuban negro solved the
case for them in short order, He was
described as a giant in size, with
strength to match. Captain Crowell
said that he was amazed to see the
negro's machete cleave through all the
strands at a single blow. The man
seemed to understand exactly what was
needed, for he cut first one gap, then
another, and when the companies had
all passed through took his place at the
mead of the line, supposing there was
70 be a charge at once upon Fort San
Juan,
But Colonel Egbert had his orders,
and the result showed that a precipitate
attack upon the position at that hour
would have ended in a terrible disas-
ter The cavalry on the right of the in
iantry had not carried the spur of the
ridge, known as "Kettle" hill, and
there were no Judgements for reserves
or for machine guns on the Spanish
side of San Juan river. The fire of
Grimes battery, back upon Ell Poso
NIL, had haop ptornittent nm to that