San Juan Hill, 1 July 1898

The battle, stage by stage

1. 1 July 1898, about 8 AM

   Smoke over El Pozo

   General William Shafter's Fifth Army Corps, landed at Daiquirí and Siboney in late June, moves on Santiago de Cuba. While Lawton's division attacks El Caney to the north-east (not shown), Captain George Grimes's four guns on El Pozo hill open on the San Juan blockhouse at about 2,600 yards. Their black powder raises a cloud of white smoke, Spanish shrapnel answers almost at once, and men near the battery — among them some of the Rough Riders — are hit. The cavalry division and Kent's infantry wait in column on the narrow road behind. On the heights ahead, General Arsenio Linares has only a few hundred men — about 520 by one count, 760 or more by others — with some 10,000 more in the city.

2. About 9 AM to noon

   Down the jungle trail

   The army squeezes down a single trail through thick jungle under fire it can barely see. Above the column, a Signal Corps balloon towed by soldiers marks its position for every Spanish gunner until it is shot full of holes. Before it comes down, Lt. Col. George Derby spots a second trail branching left toward a lower ford, which eases the jam. The dismounted cavalry wades the San Juan River and files right; Kent sends the 71st New York, carrying single-shot black-powder .45-70 Springfields, down the new trail, where under fire it stalls and breaks apart.

3. About 12:30 PM

   Hell's Pocket

   The regulars deploy along the far bank, in tall grass about 600 yards below the trenches. Spanish Mausers — smokeless 7 mm — reach them while the shooters stay almost invisible; every volley from the volunteers' trapdoors puts up a puff of smoke that draws fire back. The crossing becomes the 'Bloody Ford'. Colonel Charles Wikoff, bringing his brigade past the 71st to form on Hawkins's left, is killed; his two successors are hit within minutes. With no new orders from Shafter, the line waits and bleeds. Many of the 71st attach themselves to whatever unit is nearest.

4. About 1 PM

   Up Kettle Hill

   On the right the cavalry starts forward without waiting longer. Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, mounted on Little Texas, pushes the Rough Riders through the 9th Cavalry, and the Rough Riders, the 9th and 10th, the 3rd, 6th and 1st Cavalry go up the low hill the troopers name for a sugar-refining kettle found on top. Black regulars of the 9th and 10th are in the charge from the start; Sergeant George Berry of the 10th is said to carry two regiments' colours to the crest. The small Spanish outpost falls back across the valley.

5. 1:15–1:23 PM

   'It's the Gatlings, men!'

   Lieutenant John H. Parker runs his mule-hauled Gatling guns into the open beyond the ford, one on the road itself, about 600 yards from the blockhouse; of his four, three are in action. Firing the same smokeless .30 Army round as the Krag, they rake the crest for about eight minutes — roughly 18,000 rounds by one count — throwing up yellow dust along the Spanish trenches. On Kettle Hill, Roosevelt's men take the drumming for Spanish machine guns until he shouts that they are 'our Gatlings'. The infantry rushes forward across the open valley to the foot of the hill. At 1:23, an officer waves a white handkerchief and the guns cease fire.

6. 1:23–1:50 PM

   The blockhouse

   Hawkins's and Wikoff's brigades go up the steep face, with men of the 10th Cavalry and the scattered 71st among them, through wire to the crest. Lieutenant Jules Ord, who had asked to lead the charge, is among the first to the top and is killed there (accounts place the wound in the throat or face). Because Linares dug his trenches on the very top rather than the forward slope, the attackers were partly hidden from fire on the last stretch. Private Arthur Agnew of the 13th Infantry pulls down the flag on the blockhouse at about 1:50; on the left, Pearson's 10th and 2nd Infantry take a green knoll. The Spanish fall back toward the city.

7. About 2–4 PM

   Holding the heights

   From Kettle Hill, Roosevelt leads a mixed force across the narrow valley, past a small lagoon, onto the northern part of the heights; the fuller picture is that the cavalry took Kettle Hill and the regular infantry carried San Juan Hill itself. Two Gatlings come up onto the ridge, and two of them silence a Spanish 16-cm gun about 2,000 yards away — Parker's men later bring home its range table and rear sight. A Spanish counterattack later in the afternoon is beaten back with the Gatlings' help. In the 71st New York, men who have picked up Krags from the fallen regulars are ordered to hand them back.

8. Night of 1 July — 17 July 1898

   The cost

   Shafter considers pulling back; Wheeler persuades Kent and Sumner to hold, and the line is entrenched overnight. Parker takes the wheels off his guns and sets them into the trenches beside the Rough Riders, a spot that becomes 'Fort Roosevelt'. Including El Caney, American losses on 1 July are about 205 killed and 1,200 wounded (26 of the dead from the 10th Cavalry, by one count); Spanish losses roughly 215 killed and 376 wounded. The 71st New York loses 15 dead to wounds and 79 to disease. Santiago surrenders on 17 July, after talks under a ceiba tree just west of the heights — the Surrender Tree.