“We had the earnest and able support of the navy and their assistance in disembarking, and the next morning were bombarding the two little places and driving the few hundred Spanish soldiers, that were there away.  We began disembarking, and before the end of the day the men were on shore, with 2,000 horses and mules that we had to throw overboard to get ashore, and the artillery.”

The General noted the loss of 17,000 troops out of 24,000 in the English army that besieged Havana in 1762, at the same time of year that he landed at Santiago, and remarked: 

“I knew that my entire army would be sick if it stayed long enough; that it was simply a question of getting that town just as soon as possible.  I knew the strength, the courage, and the will of my men, or I thought I did, and the result shows that I was not mistaken.  It was a question of starting the moment we landed and not stopping until we reached the Spanish outposts, and, therefore, as soon as a division was put on shore it was started on the march.

“On the 24th the first engagement took place, in which we had between 800 and 900 men on the American side and probably 1,000 or 1,200 on the Spanish.  The enemy was strongly intrenched, showing only their heads, while the American forces had to march exposing their whole bodies to the fire of the enemy.

“It is announced by military experts as an axiom that trained troops armed with the present breech-loading and rapid-firing arm cannot be successfully assailed by any troops who simply assault.  Of course you can make the regular approaches and dig up to them.  The fallacy of that proposition was made very manifest that day when the men composing the advance marched as deliberately over those breastworks as they ever did when they fought with arms that you could only load about twice in a minute and of the range of only 200 or 300 yards.

“This army was an army of marksmen.  For fifteen years the greatest attention has been paid to marksmanship, and I suppose four-fifths of all the men in that army wore on their breasts the marksman’s badge.  I had given orders, knowing that the noise of firing is harmless and that shots put in the air are harmless—­I had given the strictest orders to all officers that their men should be told not to fire a shot unless they could see something moving, and the firing was to be by individuals, what is called file firing, individual firing.  The Spanish troops, not so well drilled in firing as ours, used volley firing, which is very effective against large bodies of troops massed and moving over a plain, but utterly inefficient when used against skirmishers moving over a rough country.  In that battle, which lasted two hours, less than ten rounds of ammunition per man was fired by my men, and the losses, notwithstanding my men were exposed, their whole bodies, while the enemy were in trenches, where only their heads could be seen, were about equal.