But if the defenders are entrenched, as the Spanish were, they are harder to hit, especially if both sides are relying almost exclusively on rifles, as both sides were. When they are hit, though, the wound is likely to be fatal, because it would usually be in the head. Attackers were harder to hit, too. American troops had learned in the Civil War to advance by rushes, dropping down behind shelter and firing to cover other soldiers’ advances. Attackers, when hit, are less likely to be hit fatally, because hits would not be confined to the head. All their rifles — repeaters and single-shots — were breech-loaders, so a soldier need not expose himself to reload.
Even with all these qualifications, though, 10-to-one odds gave the larger group a tremendous advantage. As the previous propositions show, the longer the fight goes on, the more heavily the weaker side is outnumbered. An old rule of thumb is that an attacker should have a 3-to-one numerical advantage over the defender. Lawton had better than 10-to-one.
Artillery support for the American attackers was virtually nonexistent.
Lawton’s artillery fired about one round every five minutes, and they fired from long range without much accuracy. It may be that they were trying to avoid the troubles being suffered by the main force artillery. Those four guns were emplaced on a hilltop, because the Americans had no guns capable of indirect fire. Each time a gun fired, it generated an enormous cloud of thick white smoke that made it impossible to see the target. It also made the guns obvious to the Spanish, who had two Krupp quick-firing pieces using smokeless powder. The Americans couldn’t locate the Spanish guns if the air were clear. It wasn’t clear. Their gunners were blinded by their own smoke. Finally, they were driven off the hill.
Back at El Caney, the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, a volunteer outfit, advanced and opened fire on the Spaniards. The Spanish soldiers were hidden in trenches, fox holes, wooden block houses, and a stone fort, so the Yankee volunteers could only fire at the general area. The Spanish, though, knew that behind each puff of smoke was an enemy rifleman. Their return fire was so heavy the volunteers were forced back. The regulars in the division, including the 24th and 25th Regiments, “Buffalo Soldier” (African-American) infantry, had smokeless powder, but there were so many volunteers among them that the Spanish soldiers could easily see where to concentrate their fire.
Troops in the main body were told to march up to the San Juan River and wait for further orders. The “further orders” were presumably to advance when Lawton had taken El Caney and moved south. They waited, some standing in the river. The trouble was compounded when an American observation balloon, which had been observing the area from a half-mile behind the front line, was moved to the front line and then its anchor ropes became entangled in the treetops. Stuck 50 feet above the front line, the balloon showed the Spanish exactly where the American troops were, even though they were hidden in the jungle. The Spanish fired into that area.
Eventually, doing nothing but taking casualties got to be too much for the Americans. They moved up the hills. Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders got the credit for taking Kettle Hill, but the black “Buffalo Soldiers” of the 9th Cavalry got to the summit first. San Juan Hill proved to be a tougher proposition. The turning point was provided by a maverick second lieutenant. John H. Parker, six years out of West Point, was considered a machine gun fanatic by his comrades. When he saw that the expedition to Cuba was leaving behind four Gatling guns, he begged his commanding officer to take them. He was refused. Although Gatling guns had been used effectively in the Civil War, the army still didn’t believe in machine guns. Parker went through channels until he found a general who let him form a machine gun battery and take the Gatlings with him.
With the American troops pinned down on the slopes of San Juan Hill, Parker’s mule-drawn Gatling guns galloped up and his troops unlimbered them.
The four guns opened fire, each squirting out bullets at the rate of 900 rounds a minute. Fortunately, Parker’s guns used the.30 smokeless Krag cartridges. His men could see what they were shooting at. The American troops saw the dust kicked up by the spray of bullets as they swept across the Spanish trenches. The Spanish began to withdraw. By this time, many of the American officers had been killed or wounded, but their troops spontaneously charged up the hill and took the fort at its summit.
El Caney had still not been taken. The hill that was to have been taken in two hours held out for 10. Finally, the Spanish troops began to run out of ammunition. The Spanish commanding general, Arsenio Linares, kept the bulk of his army in Santiago and sent Vara de Ray neither men nor more ammunition.
The American stormed the fort. They took 120 prisoners. Of the 520 men in the garrison, 215, including General Vara de Ray, had been killed and some 300 wounded. American casualties came to 205 killed and almost 1,200 wounded.
Both the Spanish and Americans at El Caney were brave soldiers. And both had been let down by their leaders — the Spanish by their commander’s refusal to reinforce or even resupply them; the Americans by their leaders’ failure to amend the order to wait at the San Juan River, by their neglect of what proved to be the decisive weapon — the Gatling gun — and by the government’s failure to obtain smokeless powder.
Smokeless powder had been invented in 1885 by Paul Vieille, a French chemist, and the French put it into service almost immediately, bringing out a new 8
mm rifle to use the new powder in 1886. That was 12 years before the Spanish-American War. The development of smokeless powder was part of a chemical revolution that began in the mid-19th century and included, among other things, dyes from coal tar, anaesthetics, aspirin, heroin, and dynamite.
Dynamite, patented in 1866, was made in many varieties, some, such as gelatine dynamite, extremely powerful, all extremely sensitive. Dynamite is based on an early explosive, nitroglycerin, which is too sensitive for almost any use.
Alfred Nobel first mixed nitroglycerin with an absorbent earth to desensitize it.
He later mixed it with other explosives, such as ammonium nitrate, potassium chlorate, or nitro cotton to obtain a very powerful explosive that was still safe to handle (with care). Gun-makers tried to use dynamite for a shell filling (Chapter 19) but it proved to be too dangerous. It could never be used as a propellant.
It is what is called a high explosive: one that almost instantly decomposes into a huge amount of gas, whether it is confined or unconfined. This reaction is called detonation. Propellants, like black powder or smokeless powder, decompose more slowly. They are said to burn, although smokeless powder, if confined tightly enough, may also detonate.
Nitroglycerin is a compound of nitric acid and glycerin. About the time Nobel was experimenting with nitroglycerin, other chemists were nitrating other organic substances. Nitrating cotton a little produced nitro cotton, a component of gelatine dynamite. Nitrating it a lot produced guncotton, a rather sensitive explosive once used as a filling for torpedoes, but now an ingredient of smokeless powder.
TNT, or trinitrotoluene, became extremely popular as a filling for shells, torpedoes, aerial bombs, and hand grenades because it combines great power with a reasonable lack of sensitivity. It was widely used in both world wars.
Many new high explosives have been developed since the war. They are never used as propellants — the many varieties of smokeless powder handle that chore — but they have completely replaced “low explosives,” such as black powder as fillings for shells and bombs. When a black powder shell exploded, it burst into a few large pieces, none with enough velocity to carry far. High explosives shatter a shell into thousands of tiny, sharp metal fragments traveling at high velocity. These fragments are so effective against personnel that they have completely replaced shrapnel. Against solid objects — forts, tanks, ships, and so on — high explosives are infinitely more effective than black powder. And they make possible the shaped charge.