“Run,” he screamed as he got to his feet. He jumped over the low wall at the rear of the fort and ran for his life. The rest of the tiny garrison ran with him. None of them had their rifles and they frantically tore at their uniforms. In seconds they were almost naked. He would get clothes from his mother and hide in the bushes until the war passed him.
He laughed when he saw that his old teacher was buck naked and running faster than any of them.
* * *
Major General Darius Couch stepped more nimbly out of the small boat and into the ankle deep water than he thought he would. The idea of leading an army once again was exhilarating. He felt at least ten years younger than his age.
The bombardment of the pitiful shore defenses had been violent but short. The little earthen walled fort almost seemed to disappear under the impact. The men of Gordon’s division had landed in reasonably good order and were moving inward towards the road that connected Matanzas with Havana. Chamberlain’s would land shortly. He would soon have a full fifteen thousand men to hurl at the enemy’s rear. It would be like Chancellorsville again, except that he would play the role of Stonewall Jackson and not the inept Joe Hooker. He reminded himself not to get shot by his own men like Jackson had.
The landing had been well organized and had gone off almost without a hitch. Only a couple of boats had capsized and spilled their passengers and only a handful of their passengers had drowned. It was regrettable, a tragedy, but a necessary price to pay. He thought it was a shame that so few people, including sailors who should know better, knew how to swim.
Couch’s attack would not be as sudden and dramatic as when Jackson’s force fell on an unsuspecting Union flank and destroyed it. No, he could easily imagine scores of messengers heading to General Weyler at Matanzas with the terrible news that a large new enemy was in his rear. Other messengers would be riding to inform Villate in Havana. He assumed that the Spanish had telegraph lines operating between Havana and Matanzas. If the lines existed, the American army would be able to cut the one that ran parallel to the road running from Matanzas to Havana. Weyler would have to contend with the fact that, in order to fight the new American army, he would have to pull men away from the siege lines at Matanzas. If that happened, he was confident that Nelson Miles, spurred on by Hancock, would launch his own counter-attack; hopefully catching the Spanish in a pincers.
There had been serious discussions about what should be the main thrust of the American invasion. Some advisors had said they should strike directly towards Havana, the head of the Spanish snake. Hancock had been adamant. Their goal was the destruction of Weyler’s army. Hadn’t they learned anything, Hancock had wondered out loud, from the Civil War? While generals on both sides had striven to conquer capitals, large cities, and vast tracts of land, only Grant and Sherman had understood that you won a war by destroying the enemy’s ability to fight and today that meant killing Weyler’s army. Havana, like Washington or Richmond, would always be there.
There was another real fear. On hearing that an enemy was behind him, it was possible, even likely, that Weyler would attack Matanzas with a desperate fury. The smaller American force could be overwhelmed and massacred. Worse, thousands of Americans could wind up as prisoners.
The Second Corps had to get there in a hurry. So too did the navy. Already empty American transports were heading back to Florida where they would reload with more men and supplies. In the meantime, he would request Admiral Dixon to send a number of his smaller gunboats east to Matanzas where their guns might help blunt a Spanish attack.
* * *
Manuel Garcia leaned on his shovel and contemplated his miserable fate and the likelihood that God hated him. What made him think that he could simply run away from the Spanish Army? He hadn’t gotten more than a couple of miles from the smoldering and bloody ruins of the fort at Santa Cruz del Norte before he’d been captured by a Spanish patrol. His protestations that he was fleeing for his life and simply looking to rejoin his unit were laughed at for the lies they were. He had wanted to find his way home and hide under his bed until this miserable war was over.
The Spanish took him and his old teacher to Havana where justice was meted out. The old man was hanged. Manuel had watched in horror as his teacher’s skinny legs kicked and his feet scraped at the earth that was cruelly and tantalizingly barely beneath his reach. His face turned black and his eyes almost bugged out of their sockets while he danced. The soldiers had laughed hysterically as he both emptied his bowels and ejaculated before he died. Manuel had despised Professor Sanchez, but he did not deserve to be murdered.
“That one burst of pleasure will have to last him for all eternity,” said a skinny sergeant. “You, however, will have a choice. You can choose to be hanged and dance just like your old friend did or you can join a labor battalion.”
There was no real choice. He joined the battalion. He even thought that he’d be safer than in an army unit since he wouldn’t be involved in any fighting. Events had proven him wrong in that regard as well. He and a number of boys his age and younger in the battalion were out in the open while the shelling occurred. They had dug slit trenches to dive in to if the shelling got too bad, but their overseers generally jumped in first and told the laborers to keep working. When the shelling got too bad, the boys lay on the ground and whimpered, or ignored the orders and simply piled in.
When it was safe enough to continue, their eyes were greeted with more scenes of death and destruction. While it was evident that the Americans wanted only to destroy fortifications, their shells sometimes landed in nearby buildings, killing and maiming. He was beginning to grow used to the sight of dismembered bodies and the sounds of the screaming wounded and that frightened him. He never wanted to get accustomed to his new nightmare life.
Their sergeant, a fat pig who said he was from Barcelona and thereby superior to mere Cubans, screamed and ordered them back to work. Manuel and the other boys fantasized about driving one of their shovels up his ass. Along with being a pig, the sergeant was also a coward. Even when the bombardment was clearly not in their area, he was always the first one into a trench.
An explosion ripped through the nearby fortress of Castillo del Principe. The massive and oddly shaped stone structure jutted out from the Spanish defenses and, as someone had explained, was designed to provide flanking fire against an attacking enemy. Manual thought that was funny. The century-old stone structure would be a pile of rubble before long and the Americans would simply either ignore it or walk over what would soon be a jumble of rocks. Once, Manuel had been an unsophisticated farm boy. Now he was learning more about the world and war than he ever wanted to or thought possible.
Another explosion sent him reeling. For a moment he thought he was dead, but then he realized he was choking on dust. Dead men don’t choke, he told himself. He managed to get to a standing position. Several bodies lay near him along with a number of bloody body parts and other chunks of human meat. He gagged. He recognized the fat sergeant from Barcelona by his head. The rest of his body was nowhere to be seen. A couple of his young co-workers grabbed him and dragged him away while yelling at him. He had a hard time hearing but he understood their meaning if not their words. Flee, they were saying. Run for your life.
Manuel’s shovel had been broken by the blast, but the blade and a decent portion of the shaft remained. He reached down and grabbed it. If all else failed, it would serve as some kind of weapon.
“Grab your tools,” he yelled at them. The boys nodded their comprehension and grabbed shovels and anything else that could be used to defend themselves. When they were armed, they were all looking at him. By virtue of giving an order that made sense, he had just become their leader.