“I saw the commander of that force a few days later in Santiago, and in talking about it he said to me:  ’Your men behaved very strange.  We were much surprised.  They were whipped, but they didn’t seem to know it; they continued to advance (laughter and applause), and we had to go away.’  He was quite right about it.  They did have to go away.

“On the 29th we had reached the immediate vicinity of the peaks in front of Santiago, about a mile and a half from the city.  On the 30th I carefully reconnoitered the ground as much as one could in the dense undergrowth, and determined where I would make my attack, which was simply directed in front, and to make a direct assault.  There was no attempt at strategy, and no attempt at turning their flanks.  It was simply going straight for them.  In that I did not misjudge my men, and that is where I succeeded so well. (Applause.) If we had attempted to flank them out or dig them out by regular parallels and get close to them my men would have been sick before it could have been accomplished, and the losses would have been many times greater than they were.

“The only misfortune, as I judged it, of the first day’s fight,but which I have since learned was for the best, was that immediately on our right, and what would be in our rear when we attacked the town, was a little village called El Caney, four miles and a half from Santiago, and whence the best road in the country connected with Santiago.  I did not know the exact force there, but it was estimated to be 1,000, and perhaps a little more, and it would, of course, have been very hazardous to have left that force so near in our rear.

“Instead of finishing the affair by 9 o’clock, as we expected, it took until 4:30 o’clock in the afternoon before the last shot was fired, and then after a loss of nearly a hundred killed and 250 wounded on our side and the almost total annihilation of the force opposed to us.  They had an idea that they would be killed, and when men believe that it is hard to capture them.  Just at the close of the battle three or four hundred did attempt to escape, but ran out in front of a brigade that they did not see, and in the course of about three or four hundred yards most of them were dead or mortally wounded, so that probably not more than twenty men on the other side escaped from that battle.  It was a most desperate struggle.

“Men were killed in the trenches by being knocked on the head with muskets, and one man I was shown two days later with what would be called a tremendous head on him, and the interpreter asked him how that had occurred, and he doubled up his fist and spoke of the soldier that had hit him as a black man, that he had dropped his gun and hit him in the head with his fist.  That was pretty close work.