Merline Lovelace (14 page)

“Yes.”

“It’s important to guard against foot rot in this climate. Have you a change of stockings?”

“Yes.”

“And under linens? I might be able to purchase some in Siboney if you—”

“I have everything I require at the moment, thank you.”

Biting back the reminder that neither she nor her under linens were his concern, Victoria set aside her plate.

“Did you find Mary? She was in the surgical tent the last time I saw her.”

His face tightened. “I didn’t trek through five miles of jungle to visit with Mary. I came to check on my men…and on you.”

“As you can see, I’m faring quite well. Shall I walk with you to the Rough Riders’ tent? I believe Private Holbrook is recovering well, but Trumpeter Sergeant O’Rourke took a turn for the worse last night.”

“Victoria—”

He checked her with a hand on her elbow. Annoyed at the way her skin leaped at his touch, she tipped him a cool look.

“Yes?”

“We got word this afternoon.” Under the brim of his gray slouch hat, his eyes held hers. “We’re moving forward at first light tomorrow.”

“Oh!”

It was one thing to stand on a train platform or a boat dock crammed with cheering crowds and send the man you loved off to war. It was another matter altogether to stand amid the tents that sheltered the victims of that war, to see the carnage bullets and cannon shells wrought on human flesh, and know he was going back into battle.

A lump lodged in Victoria’s throat and refused to budge no matter how hard she swallowed.

“Be careful.”

“I will. Like you, I have no particular wish to die.”

If nothing else, the hours she’d spent at the field hospital had taught her that a wish to live was small protection against a bullet or cannon.

“Don’t worry,” Sam said, trying to ease her fear. “Our men showed their pluck at Las Guásimas. Now that the rest of the expeditionary force is ashore and in position, we should take Santiago easily.”

“I hope so!”

“I’ll send word to you when I can.” His touch gentle, he cupped her cheek. “We’ll sort matters out between us when this is over, sweetheart.”

For the third night in a row, Victoria spent long stretches of darkness staring up at the gauzy netting that protected her from the insects buzzing around it.

Sam was going into battle.

Heat and dread of the coming dawn pressed down on her chest like an anvil. Every breath she drew in felt as heavy as lead, every thought brought her back to tomorrow.

Sam was going into battle.

The refrain echoed over and over in her mind until the reedy trill of a harmonica pierced her thoughts. It took only a few notes to identify Stephen Foster’s long-time favorite, “My Old Kentucky Home.” Tucking a hand under her head, Victoria listened to the haunting notes.

After the first verse, a solitary singer picked up the words. One voice after another gradually joined in. The chorus became an aching tribute to soldiers everywhere, and to the families they’d left behind.

Weep no more, my lady,

Oh, weep no more today.

We will sing one song

For the old Kentucky home,

For the old Kentucky home far away.

When the last verse died away, silence gripped the entire hospital. It was as if everyone at Siboney was thinking of the battle to come, and of the troops who would never see their homes again.

Just when Victoria thought she couldn’t hold back her tears, a soaring tenor broke the stillness. Lively and irreverent, he belted out the rousing song Sam’s regiment had adopted as its own. Once again a chorus of male voices joined in. Everyone, it seemed, was ready and eager for a hot time in the old town tonight!

The singers’ unquenchable spirit eased the burning behind Victoria’s lids. Slowly, her eyes closed. But she didn’t fall asleep until after the last stanza was sung and someone shouted out that they’d better shut up or they’d bring the whole damned Spanish army down on their heads.

The boom of cannons jerked her awake just after dawn.

N
one of Sam’s years on active duty or months of service with the First Volunteer Cavalry had prepared him for the battle that commenced on July 1.

Although the day dawned clear and cloudless, the damned jungle made it impossible to spot the enemy. The Spanish were in position atop the line of ridges that stood between Santiago and the Expeditionary Force. Occupying abandoned sugarcane factories, blockhouses and trenches dug into the hills, they had the advantage of an unobstructed view of the jungles below. Those struggling through the dense green undergrowth couldn’t see the man in front of him, much less the enemy above.

The battle plan called for the infantry division to launch the major offensive up the ridge at El Caney, several miles to the right. An artillery battery and the cavalry division would provide a diversion by
attacking the hills above the San Juan River. Since only the officers had been allowed to bring their mounts on the jam-packed troop transports, the cavalry would fight on foot.

Unfortunately, the artillery was ordered into position directly behind Wood’s brigade. As soon as the cannons at El Caney began to boom, the battery behind the cavalry division opened fire. The Spanish guns on the ridges above answered with a devastating shower of shrapnel.

With metal and death raining down all around them, Wood and Roosevelt leaped onto their horses and rushed to lead the men to safer positions. Wood’s horse took a piece of shrapnel and went down, as did a good number of troops. One shell exploded right in the middle of the Cuban rebels, killing and wounding dozens. Another landed just yards away from Sam’s company. Deadly metal fragments sliced through the leaves, beheading the captain at the head of the troop.

As the next senior ranking officer, Sam instantly assumed command. “Move out! Follow the colonel!”

He’d no sooner shouted the command than another shell detonated. Sam dropped like a stone, then picked himself up to find that one of the New Mexicans in his company had lost his left leg below the knee. Sweat pouring down his face, Sam shoved his borrowed service pistol into its holster and
dragged the man to a giant palm, where he propped him against the trunk. The trooper’s belt made a crude but effective tourniquet.

“Thanks, Captain.” His face gray, he shouted hoarsely over the din of the artillery barrage. “I’ll just sit here in the shade until the orderlies come.”

“They’ll be here soon. I’ll send someone back to look for you when I can.”

Sam sprinted through the brush, bent double to avoid the bullets singing overheard. By the time he and his men rejoined the regiment, it was spread all to hell and back. Burrowing in where they could, the men waited for the artillery barrage to cease.

It continued for more than half an hour, after which Wood reformed his Second Brigade with the Rough Riders’ regiment in front. Shouting an order to Roosevelt, Wood instructed them to follow the First Brigade, which was to move down the trail to the ford of the San Juan River.

The sunken, muddy trail ran between two hills covered in dense jungle. Fortified blockhouses crowned the hill to the right. Ruins of buildings that once must have been a sugar-refining station topped the more distant one to the left. Both were occupied by companies of Spanish, who fired continual volleys at the advancing troops.

They were in the thick of it now. Bullets ripped through the leaves with a peculiar whizzing sound. The heat was so intense the men began to drop with
it, too. Sam left his canteen beside a trooper from Oklahoma Territory who crumpled in a heap, cursing as he went down for fear he’d miss the fight.

The San Juan River provided some relief. With bullets singing all around them, the men dug into the muddy banks and waited for the order to charge the hills.

It didn’t come.

Sam ranged back and forth to inspect the condition and placement of his men, keeping his head low—unlike the commander of Arizona’s A Troop, Bucky O’Neill. The former sheriff and mayor of Prescott, Arizona, famous throughout the West for his battles against Apaches and road agents alike, strolled up and down in front of his lines, smoking a cigarette.

“Get down, Captain!” one of the men pleaded. “You’re going to get hit.”

O’Neill laughed and blew a cloud of smoke.

A few minutes later, he and Sam went to consult with another officer concerning the placement of their troops. As they turned to head back to their companies, O’Neill took a bullet through the mouth. It came out the back of his head. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Still no order came to charge.

Losing men like O’Neill and dozens more hit Roosevelt almost as hard as the enforced inaction. He sent messengers to both General Wood and
General Shafter, requesting permission to advance. Just when the colonel was ready to take action on his own authority, General Shafter’s aide rode through a storm of bullets with the welcome order to charge the hills.

With a flagrant disregard for his own safety, Roosevelt spurred his mount up and down the line to relay the order. The Rough Riders surged to their feet. They were ready, more than ready, to engage the enemy. Whooping and cheering, they plunged into the jungle and ran right through the troops deployed ahead of them. Utter confusion reigned for a few moments as regimental lines merged. Then the First Regulars-White and the famed Buffalo Soldiers of the Ninth Regulars-Colored jumped up and raced alongside the First Volunteers.

Sweat poured down Sam’s face. Smoke stung his eyes. Spiky leaves slapped at his face and neck as he struggled up the steep hill. Finally, he and his troop broke out of the jungle.

The rifle fire that had been lethal before became murderous. Roosevelt’s horse stumbled and went down. Jumping out of the saddle, the colonel panted alongside his men. The blue-spotted neckerchief tucked under the back of his hat flapped like a signal flag. The regimental standard bearer followed hard on his heels, streaming blood from two wounds and waving the colors madly.

Sam fixed his sights on a huge, overturned black
kettle lying outside the ruins atop the hill. His throat raw from smoke and thirst, he echoed the roar pouring out of a thousand troops.

“Remember the
Maine,
boys! Remember the
Maine!
”

The first casualties started to trickle in to the field hospital at Siboney just after nine in the morning. By noon the trickle had become a steady stream. By three, litters were jammed end to end and the walking wounded slumped wherever they could find space. The surgeons and nurses sorted through the casualties with ruthless efficiency, identifying those who required immediate attention and leaving the rest to the care of the orderlies.

Victoria would never have imagined men could sustain such horrible injuries and still breathe. Or that they’d take their pain with such stoicism. Only those with the most ghastly, gaping wounds moaned. A few were out of their heads and screamed and writhed on their litters. But as Victoria sweated alongside the orderlies and offered what aid she could to those men the nurses and surgeons indicated must wait their turn, an astounding number declined her services.

“See to Benji, ma’am,” an Illinois infantryman begged, holding a bloody bandage over the mangled side of his face with one hand while gesturing
with the other to the soldier he’d carried in over his shoulder. “He’s worse off than me.”

Every time Victoria spotted a man wearing a polka-dot neckerchief, or khaki trousers instead of regulation blue, her heart would stop. There seemed to be so many Rough Riders among the wounded! Far more in proportion to the other regiments. Each man she asked could say only that Captain Garrett was alive last time he saw him. One reported that he’d taken control of his company after the commander was killed.

As the long, agonizing afternoon slipped toward dusk, Victoria pieced the bits together to form a hazy picture. The infantry had conducted a frontal assault of the fortified Spanish emplacements in the hills above Santiago. The cavalry had flanked the infantry. The talk was all of El Caney. El Pozo. San Juan Hill. Some place called Kettle Hill. Of heavy concentrations of Spanish troops. Of digging into the crests or jumping into captured trenches or lying flat on their bellies to return fire.

Night dropped. In the distance, cannons continued to boom. Every nurse and doctor and orderly labored on, working by lamplight, by firelight, by torches made of bundled cane stalks. Patients whose uniforms had been soaked in sweat and blood now shivered in the wet, dewy night.

The next day brought more wounded back to Siboney.

So did the next.

Late on July 3, two bits of news electrified the entire camp. Wild cheers erupted. Victoria dashed outside one of the tents, her face and hair dripping with sweat, and grabbed the arm of a man waving his crutch in the air.

“What’s happened?”

“The Spanish fleet tried to break through the blockade of Santiago harbor,” he exclaimed, hopping gleefully on his one good leg. “Our boys done sent every last one of their ships to the bottom of the bay.”

Shortly after that came the news that a cease-fire had been declared and a delegation had gone in under a flag of truce to demand Santiago’s surrender.

“It’s all over now but the shouting,” the young artillery man Victoria was giving water to predicted with a grin. “Sure glad I got my licks in at El Pozo.”

Since he was lying on bare ground, with the stump of his right hand wrapped in bloody bandages, she could only marvel at his insouciance.

The gunner’s prediction proved overly optimistic.

Negotiations for Santiago’s surrender dragged on for more than a week. During the prolonged negotiations, the troops of both sides faced each other
from the trenches that scarred the hills around the city. The shaky cease-fire broke down repeatedly, resulting in fierce skirmishes and repeated artillery barrages.

Casualties continued to mount, and word came that the regimental surgeons at the staging hospitals right behind the lines were running desperately short of supplies and help. Many of their orderlies had gone down from either wounds or heat prostration.

Although short of supplies and near dropping with exhaustion themselves, the staff at the Siboney field hospital immediately organized a relief expedition. Two of the surgeons, six orderlies and four nurses would go forward with the heavily laden mules. At the same time, they learned, Miss Barton was sending in supplies of food and medicines from the Red Cross base she’d established at Daiquirí.

Victoria caught up with Mary just as she was gathering a satchel of precious medicines. The widow had traded her linen nurse’s cap for a slouch hat, borrowed, Victoria guessed, from one of the dead troopers. She’d also discarded her skirts in favor of a pair of trousers held up by suspenders. Her black hair hung in a thick braid down her back. To Victoria’s startled eyes, she looked far more like the full-blood Arapaho she was than the cultured widow of a Philadelphia physician.

“You can’t go with us,” the nurse said with a
quick shake of her head. “The colonel won’t allow it.”

“I know. I’m not asking to go. But if you should see Sam, will you give him a message for me?”

“Of course.” Her dark eyes flicked over Victoria’s face. “What is it?”

A hundred thoughts tumbled through her head. A dozen urgent cautions trembled on her tongue. But she decided Sam didn’t need the burden of her fears.

“Tell him I heard he was given command of his company. And that I’m proud of him.”

Mary didn’t encounter Sam during her trip to the forward staging hospitals. He was with his men on the front line and exercising all his leadership skills to minimize their wretched conditions.

Like the rest of the Expeditionary Force, the Rough Riders slept on blankets on the ground at night, or simply scooped a hole in the mud if they’d lost their blankets. With no wagons to bring forward extra baggage or supplies, they had only the clothes they wore on their backs. The tough canvas trousers held up well enough, but shirts soon became frayed and socks shredded inside boots.

Since the Cowboy Cavalry boasted a number of sharpshooters among their ranks, they managed to augment their field rations of salted pork and hardtack with a bit of fresh guinea hen or quail. Huddled
together in small groups, they’d fry the meat while the hardtack soaked, then pound a handful of coffee beans with the butts of their revolvers and toss them shells and all, into tin cups.

Although it went against his grain, Sam was forced to harden his heart and order his men to limit the rations they shared with the thousands of refugees who’d streamed out of Santiago in anticipation of heavy bombardment and street-to-street fighting. Half-starved, the refugees now wandered behind the American lines begging for food.

“It’s just a bit of hardtack,” one of the troopers muttered as he gave the last of his rations to a thin, big-eyed child.

Since Sam himself had already emptied his ration kit, he could hardly discipline the man.

Summer storms severely aggravated the problem of resupply. It rained every day, great drenching downpours that turned the trenches to quagmires and made the rivers impassible. It also contributed to the spread of disease and illness that decimated the ranks. During those long days of negotiations, the army lost ten times the number of men to sickness than they had to bullets.

Like the other commanders, Sam snatched a few hours whenever he could to go to the hospital and check on his men. Unlike the other commanders, his gut twisted with worry whenever he thought of
the two very different, very determined women he knew at Siboney.

And he thought of them often in the long stretches of quiet between skirmishes and firefights. During the day, when he’d sink down beside one of his troops in the trenches for a brief rest. At night, lying on his blanket with his arm bent under his head and his unseeing gaze on the stars hanging brilliant in the onyx sky.

Mary had known what she’d face in Cuba. She’d trained in medicine, had worked alongside her husband during the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged Philadelphia.