ish blockhouses and rifle-pits had been reinforced July 1 instead of
July 3 by the five thousand regulars from Manzanillo, the Santiago
campaign might have ended in a great disaster. Fortunately for General
Shafter, and unfortunately for General Toral, "Socorro de Espana o tarde
o nunca" ("Spanish reinforcements arrive late or never ").

CHAPTER XXI

THE SANTIAGO CAMPAIGN (_Concluded_)

IV. The wrecking of the army by disease after the decisive battle of
July 1-2.

The army under command of General Shafter left Tampa on the fourteenth
day of June, and arrived off the Cuban coast near Santiago on the 20th
of the same month. Disembarkation began at Daiquiri on the 22d, and
ended at Siboney on the 24th. On the morning of June 25 the whole army
was ashore, and was then in a state of almost perfect health and
efficiency. One week later the soldiers at the front began to sicken
with malarial and other fevers, and two weeks later, according to
General Shafter's report, "sickness was increasing very rapidly, and the
weakness of the troops was becoming so apparent that I was anxious to
bring the siege to an end." On July 21, less than four weeks after the
army landed, Colonel Roosevelt told me that not more than one quarter of
his men were fit for duty, and that when they moved five miles up into
the hills, a few days before, fifty per cent. of the entire command fell
out of the ranks from exhaustion. On July 22 a prominent surgeon
attached to the field-hospital of the First Division stated to me that
at least five thousand men in the Fifth Army-Corps were then ill with
fever, and that there were more than one thousand sick in General Kent's
division alone. On August 3 eight general officers in Shafter's command
signed a round-robin in which they declared that the army had been so
disabled by malarial fevers that it had lost its efficiency; that it was
too weak to move back into the hills; that the epidemic of yellow fever
which was sure to occur would probably destroy it, and that if it were
not moved North at once it "must perish." At that time, according to
General Shafter's telegram of August 8 to the War Department,
"seventy-five per cent. of the command had been ill with a very
weakening malarial fever, which leaves every man too much broken down to
be of any use." In the short space of forty days, therefore, an army of
sixteen thousand men had lost three fourths of its efficiency, and had
been reduced to a con