A Story of the Red Cross; Glimpses of Field Work

VIII

CUBA

1898

On our return to "civilization" we were rejoiced to find that as a result of our three months' labors, the former tumult of Armenia had died away into a peaceful echo, but a new murmur fast growing to clamor had taken its place. Cuba had entered the ceaseless arena of American, gladiatorial, humanitarian contest. The cruelties of the reconcentrado system of warfare had become apparent, and methods of relief were uppermost in the minds of all persons.

These methods were twofold and might well be classed under two distinct heads: those who for mere pity's sake sought simple relief; those who with a further forecast sought the removal of a cause as well as its effect, and "Cuba Libre" was its muffled cry. They asked money for arms as well as bread, and the struggle between the two held the country in a state of perplexed contradiction for months running into years.

Our great-hearted President asked simple aid and was distressed at the doubtful response. At length he suggested and we proffered the aid of the Red Cross on a call to the country, and the establishment of the "Central Cuban Relief Committee" in New York, within three days, was the result.

The activity and success of that committee are too fresh in the minds of all our people to require the smallest description from me. Too much praise can not be given to our Auxiliary Societies from the Atlantic to the Pacific for the splendid work in the camps at home, in Cuba, Porto Rico, and in the care of our soldiers in transit to the Philippines. Their full and complete reports show the great work accomplished. The memory of the work of the busy men and tireless women who joined heart and hand in this Heaven-sent task still brings tears to the eyes of a nation at its recall.

The service assigned me by our anxious President, and gladly accepted, was the distribution on the pitiful fields of Cuba. These scenes I would not recall. The starving mothers and motherless babes, the homelessness and squalor, the hopelessness and despair, are beyond all words and all conception, save to those who saw and lived among them. It is past and let it rest.

Then followed the declaration of hostilities, the blockade, the fleets of war, and the stately, glistening white ships of relief that dotted the sea – our navy after forty years of peace again doing service in its own waters – and among them one inconspicuous, black-hulled sea-going craft, laden with food for the still famishing reconcentrados, when they could be reached.

Day after day, in its weary, waiting cruise, it watched out for an opening to that closed-in suffering island, till at length the thunder of the guns, Siboney, San Juan, opened the track, and the wounded troops of our own army, hungering on their own fields, were the reconcentrados of the hour.

Tampa became the gathering-point of the army. Its camps filled like magic, first with regulars, then volunteers, as if the fiery torch of Duncraigen had spread over the hills and prairies of America. The great ships gathered in the waters, the transports, with decks dark with human life, passed in and out, and the battleships of the sea held ever their commanding sway. It seemed a strange thing, this gathering for war. Thirty years of peace had made it strange to all save the veterans of the days of the old war, long passed into history. Could it be possible that we were to learn this anew? Were men again to fall, and women weep? Were the youth of this generation to gain that experience their fathers had gained, to live the war-lives they had lived, and die the deaths they had died?

At length the fleet moved on, and we prepared to move with, or rather after it. The quest on which it had gone, and the route it had taken, bordered something on the mystery shrouding the days when Sherman marched to the sea. Where were the Spanish ships? What would be the result when found and met? Where were we to break that Cuban wall and let us in?

Always present in our minds were the food we carried, the willing hands that waited, and the perishing thousands that needed. We knew the great hospital ships were fitting for the care of the men of both Army and Navy. Surely they could have no need of us.

We had taken possession of our ship at Key West on the 29th of April. It was now the 20th of June and the national records of two countries at least will always give the history of those days. It is our part to keep as clearly, truthfully, and kindly as possible, the record of the little that fell to us to perform in this great drama.

Weighing anchor at Key West the State of Texas steamed for the open Caribbean, we having first taken the official advice of Commodore Remy to find Admiral Sampson and report to him.

Sunrise of the twenty-fifth gave us our first view of the water at Santiago. Our transports and battle-ships were gathered there. The advice of Admiral Sampson was that we proceed to Guantanamo, where the marines had made a landing and were camped on the shore. There had been some fighting at Guantanamo. The naval hospital ship Solace was there.

Whoever has enjoyed this quiet, sheltered harbor, protected on three sides by beautiful wooded hills, will not require to be reminded of it. At six o'clock our anchor sunk in the deep, still waters and we had time to look about and see the beginning of the war. The marines were camped along the brow of a hill. On our right a camp of Cubans, and all about us the great war-ships with their guns, which told of forthcoming trouble. Captain McCalla, who was in command of Guantanamo, had sent his compliments and a launch, leading us in to our place of anchorage. The courtesies of the navy so early commenced at Key West were continued throughout the war.

By invitation of Commander Dunlap our entire company visited the Solace the following day. If that beautiful ship or its management had left room on the records of our country's meed of gratitude, for more words of appreciative praise, I should be glad to speak them. Only those familiar with the earliest history of the Red Cross in our country, and the methods by which our navy alone – of all the Red Cross nations – had gained even an approximately legal place, can judge what the sight of that first naval relief ship in American waters was to me. It brought back so vividly the memory of the day in 1881 when President Arthur called me to him to carefully explain the conditions of the treaty which he had just signed, and that, Congress having generously included the navy in its treaty for war, he would provide to hold it carefully until the probable widening of the original treaty would include the navies of the world, as well as the armies.

Before the day closed news came to us of a serious character. The daring Rough Riders had been hardly dealt by. Hamilton Fish and Allyn Capron had been killed, and the wounded needed help. Wherever they might be, it must be possible to reach them, and it was decided that no time be lost. Our men commenced work in the hold of the ship to get at medical supplies and dressings, and the captain took his orders. I find in my diary at the close of that day the following paragraph: "It is the Rough Riders we go to, and the relief may be also rough, but it will be ready. A better body of helpers could scarcely be gotten together."

Nine o'clock of the same night found us at Siboney, which can scarcely be called a harbor, for it has no anchorage. The next morning at daybreak we stood on deck to see the soldiers filing up over the hill, in heavy marching order, forming in lines by ones and twos, winding up, in and out among the hills, higher and higher. As we watched them they were a moving line trailing on toward the clouds, till lost in the mist, and we could only think, as we looked at them, on how many and on which, is set the mark of death? He knew no more than we – poor fellow – and with his swinging, steady gait, toils up and up and waits for – he knows not what.

The hospitals, both American and Cuban, located on the shore just to the right of us, were visited by our men that same evening. Some of their surgeons called on us. All seemed interested in the Red Cross, but none thought that a woman nurse would be in place in a soldiers' hospital – indeed, very much out of place. I suggested that that decision was hard for me, for I had spent a great deal of time in soldiers' hospitals myself. They appeared to understand that perfectly, but there seemed to be a later line which could not be crossed.

The Cubans who had just come into camp expressed a desire for any assistance we could give them. They would be glad to have the Red Cross Sisters in their little hospital, but begged us to wait just a day until it could be put in better order. The Sisters were not the persons to grant that day of preparation.

On the contrary they at once went to work, thoroughly cleaned the little three-room building – Garcia's abandoned headquarters, to be used as a hospital – and when the day closed the transformation showed clean rooms, clean cots, and the grateful occupants wondering whether Heaven itself could be more comfortable, or anything more desirable than the palatable food prepared for them by the Sisters.

Three days later the following letter was received:

"To Miss Clara Barton, President,

"American National Red Cross:

"I have the honor to request your assistance in caring for the patients in a so-called hospital near the landing at this point.

"The orders are to the effect that all patients now under treatment on the shore shall be transferred to the Iroquois and Olivette, but the facilities for carrying out this order are apparently inadequate. In order that the division hospital may remain unhampered for the care of the wounded in the engagement about to take place, it is necessary for me to request this favor of you, and I trust that you may find it possible to comply with said request.

"Your obedient servant,"Louis A. Le Garde,

"Major and Surgeon, U. S. A., Commanding Hospital."

To this the following reply was immediately returned:

"Steamship State of Texas,

"Siboney, Santiago de Cuba, June 30, 1898.

"Dr. Louis A. Le Garde,

"Major and Surgeon, U. S. A., Commanding Hospital.

"Major: Permit me to express the pleasure given me by your letter inviting the assistance of the persons here under my direction in the care of the sick and wounded of the engagement about to take place. Although not here as a hospital ship by any means – not legitimately fitted for the work – still we have some hospital supplies, a few intelligent workers, skill, experience, the willingness to serve, the readiness to obey, and I believe the true spirit of the Red Cross, that seeks to help humanity wherever its needs exist. I send them to you in the hope that they may be of service.

"Cordially yours,"Clara Barton,"President, American National Red Cross."

Our surgeons and assistants went on shore, where Dr. Le Garde and Dr. Lesser secured a small house, and in a few hours this had undergone the same transformation and by the same hands as the Cuban hospital. The Red Cross flag was hoisted, Dr. Lesser placed in charge, and scores of our soldiers who had been lying on the filthy floors of an adjacent building, with no food but army rations, were carried over, placed in clean cots, and given proper food. From that on, no distinction was made, the Red Cross flag floating over both the American and Cuban hospitals.

A few feet away, all the available army tents were put up as additional accommodation for the "wounded in the engagement about to take place." It did take place the following day, and, as will be well remembered, in those two days, Friday and Saturday, the first and second of July, the tents were more than filled with wounded in the battle of San Juan Hill. Three of the five Sisters went into the operating tent, and with the surgeons worked for thirty hours with only a few moments' rest now and then for a cup of coffee and a cracker or piece of bread. We heard nothing more about a woman nurse being out of place in a soldiers' hospital.

On Saturday evening, the second day of the San Juan battle, a slip of paper with these penciled words was brought to the door of the hospital:

"Send food, medicines, anything. Seize wagons from the front for transportation.

"Shafter."

The call for help was at once sent over to the State of Texas, and we worked all night getting out supplies and sending them ashore with a force of Cubans, only too glad to work for food.

I wish I could make apparent how difficult a thing it was to get supplies from our ship to the shore in a surf which, after ten o'clock in the morning, allowed no small boats to touch even the bit of a pier that was run out without breaking either the one or the other, and nothing in the form of a lighter save two dilapidated flat-boat pontoons. These had been broken and cast away by the engineer corps, picked up by ourselves, mended by the Cubans, and put in condition to float alongside of our ship, and receive perhaps three or four tons of material. This must then be rowed or floated out to the shore, run onto the sand as far as possible, the men jumping into the water from knee to waist deep, pulling the boat up from the surf, and getting the material on land. And this was what was meant by loading the "seized wagons from the front" and getting food to the wounded. After ten o'clock in the day even this was impossible, and we must wait until the calm of three o'clock next morning to commence work again and go through the same struggle to get something to load the wagons for that day. Our supplies had been gotten ashore, and among the last, rocking and tossing in our little boat, went ourselves, landing on the pier, which by that time was breaking in two, escaping a surf which every other moment threatened to envelop one from feet to head, we reached the land.

Our "seized" wagons had already gone on, loaded with our best hospital supplies – meal, flour, condensed milk, malted milk, tea, coffee, sugar, dried fruits, canned fruits, canned meats, and such other things as we had been able to get out in the haste of packing – entirely filling the two wagons already in advance.

An ambulance had been spoken of. We waited a little while by the roadside, but the ambulance did not appear. Then, halting a wagon loaded with bales of hay, we begged a ride of the driver, and our little party, Dr. and Mrs. Gardner, James McDowell, and myself, took our seats on the hay and made our way to the front, Dr. Hubbell following afoot. Four hours' ride brought us to the First Division Hospital of the Fifth Army Corps – General Shafter's headquarters.

The sight that met us on going into the so-called hospital grounds was something indescribable. The land was perfectly level; no drainage whatever; covered with long, tangled grass; skirted by trees, brush, and shrubbery; a few little dog-tents not much larger than could have been made of an ordinary table-cloth thrown over a short rail, and under these lay huddled together the men fresh from the field or from the operating-tables, with no covering over them save such as had clung to them through their troubles, and in the majority of cases no blanket under them.

Those who had come from the tables, having been compelled to leave all the clothing they had, as too wet, muddy, and bloody to be retained, were entirely nude, lying on the stubble grass, the sun fitfully dealing with them, sometimes clouding over and again streaming out in a blaze above them. Fortunately, among our supplies were some bolts of unbleached cotton, and this we cut in sheet lengths, and the men of our party went about and covered the poor fellows, who lay there with no shelter either from the elements or the eyes of the passers-by.

A half dozen bricks laid about a yard apart, a couple of pieces of wagon-tire laid across these, so low and so near the ground that no fire of any strength or benefit could be made – the bits of wet wood put under crosswise, with the smoke streaming a foot out on either side, two kettles of coffee or soup, and a small frying-pan with some meat in it – appeared to be the cook-house for these men. They told us there were about eight hundred men under the tents and lying in the grass, and more constantly coming in.

After a few moments' consultation as to the best methods to be pursued, we too gathered stones and bricks and constructed a longer, higher fireplace, got more wagon-tires, found the water, and soon our great agate kettles of seven and ten gallons were filled.

The rain, that had been drizzling more or less all day, increased. Our supplies were taken from the wagons, a piece of tarpaulin found to protect them, and as the fire began to blaze and the water to heat, Mrs. Gardner and I found the way into the bags and boxes of flour, salt, milk, and meal, and got material for the first gallons of gruel. I had not thought to ever make gruel again over a camp-fire. I can not say how far it carried me back in the lapse of time, or really where, or who I felt that I was.

It did not seem to be me, and still I seemed to know how to do it.

When the bubbling contents of our kettle thickened and grew white with the condensed milk, and we began to give it out – putting it into the hands of men detailed as nurses, and our own men, to take around to the poor sufferers, shivering and naked in the rain – I felt that perhaps it was not in vain that history had repeated itself. When the nurses came back and told us of the surprise with which it was received, and the tears that rolled down the sun-burned, often bloody face, into the cup as the poor fellow drank his hot gruel, and asked where it came from, who sent it, and said it was the first food he had tasted in three days (for they had gone into the fight hungry), I felt that it was again the same old story and wondered what gain there had been in the last thirty years.

The fires burned, the gruel steamed and boiled – bucket after bucket went out – until those eight hundred men had each a cup of gruel and knew that he could have another and as many as he wanted. The day waned, the darkness came, and still the men were unsheltered, uncovered, naked, and wet – scarcely a groan, no word of complaint – no man said he was not well treated.

The operating-tables were full of the wounded. Man after man was taken off, brought on his litter and laid beside other men, and something given him to keep the little life in his body that seemed fast oozing out. All night it went on. It grew cold – for naked men bitter cold – before morning. We had no blankets, nothing to cover them, only the strips of cotton cloth.

Early in the morning ambulances started, and such of the wounded as could be loaded in were taken to be carried back over that rough, pitiless road, down to Siboney, to the hospitals there – that we had done the best we could toward fitting up – where our hundred cots, hundred and fifty blankets had gone, cups, spoons, and delicacies, that would help to strengthen these poor, fainting men, if they could get there, and where also the Sisters would care for them.

They brought man after man, stretcher after stretcher, to the waiting ambulances, and they took out seventeen who had died in the night, unattended, save by the nurse.

More supplies arrived, and this time came large tarpaulins, more utensils, more food, and more things to make it a little comfortable. We removed our first kitchens across the road, up alongside the headquarter tent of Major Wood, in charge of the camp. Words can not do justice to his kind-hearted generosity. He strove in every way to do all that could be done, and the night before had given us a small tent in which we had huddled from the pouring rain, for a couple of hours, in the middle of the night, the water rushing through like a rivulet.

The tarpaulins were put over supplies, a new fireplace made near us – magnificent in its dimensions – shelter given for boxes and barrels that by this time had accumulated about us, and there was even something that looked like a table, on which Mrs. Gardner prepared her delicacies.

Early in the day there came to our improvised headquarters an officer in khaki uniform showing hard service, and a bandanna handkerchief hanging from his hat, to protect the back of his head and neck from the fierce rays of the sun.

It was Colonel Roosevelt, and we were very glad to meet the gallant leader of the "Rough Riders." After a few moments conversation he said:

"I have some sick men with the regiment who refuse to leave it. They need such delicacies as you have here, which I am ready to pay for out of my own pocket. Can I buy them from the Red Cross?"

"Not for a million dollars," Dr. Gardner replied.

"But my men need these things," he said, his tone and face expressing anxiety. "I think a great deal of my men. I am proud of them."

"And we know they are proud of you, Colonel. But we can't sell Red Cross supplies," answered Dr. Gardner.

"Then, how can I get them? I must have proper food for my sick men," he said.

"Just ask for them, Colonel," replied Dr. Gardner.

"Oh," he said, his face suddenly lighting up with a bright smile; "then I do ask for them."

"All right, Colonel; what is your list?"

The list included malted milk, condensed milk, oatmeal, cornmeal, canned fruits, dried fruits, rice, tea, chocolate, and even prepared beefsteak and vegetables, and other things good for men who could not eat army rations.

"Now, Colonel, when will you send for these supplies?" asked Dr. Gardner. "They will be ready any time."

"Lend me a sack and I'll take them right along," he answered with characteristic decision.

Mrs. Gardner at once looked up a sack, and when filled it must have held a good many pounds of supplies. Before we had recovered from our surprise, the incident was closed by the future President of the United States slinging the big sack over his shoulders, striding off, and out of sight through the jungle.

The gruel still remained the staple, but malted milk, chocolate, rice, and tea had come in, and little by little various things were added by which our menage quite resembled a hotel. The wounded were still being taken away by ambulance and wagon, assorted and picked over like fruit. Those who would bear transportation were taken away, the others left where they were. By the third day our patients seemed strong enough that we might risk giving them food as solid as rice, and the great kettles were filled with that, cooked soft, mixed with condensed and malted milk. The number of wounded grew less day by day, and better care could be taken of them.

At Siboney, the great needs of the hour were met by the little band of surgeons and nurses, working night and day. The following is from a letter in the Times-Herald, now Record-Herald, of Chicago, by Miss Janet Jennings, who volunteered her service in the hospital. One gets from this simple, direct picture, a better appreciation of that heroism which lives after excitement, which survives the rush and shouting of assault, which is sustained without comradeship:

"Siboney, July 8, 1898.

"Above hospital tents Red Cross flags are flying, and here is the real life – the suffering and heroism. Everybody who can do even so little as carry a cup of water lends willing hands to help the wounded. Most of the wounded are from the first day's engagement, when the infantry was ordered to lead the attack on Santiago, instead of using the artillery.

"And it all came at once – a quick blow – with little or no preparation to meet it. I mentioned in a former letter the lack of preparation on the part of the army to care for the sick. There was then almost nothing – no cots, bedding or proper food, for less than one hundred sick men.

"Two days later, when the wounded came in, the needs of the hour were overwhelming. The situation can not be described. Thousands of our men had been hurried to the front to fight. It was well understood that it would be a hard fight. The dead would need only burial, but the wounded would need care. And yet, with the exception of a limited number of stretchers, a medicine-chest and a few bandages, no preparation had been made – neither cots nor food – practically no hospital supplies.

"It is not strange that surgeons were desperate and nurses distressed. The force of each was wholly inadequate. The exact number of wounded may never be known. But the estimate at this time is about 1,000 wounded – some 1,500 killed and wounded.