“Yes, sir. Esau Jones, battalion sergeant major, 10th Cavalry, sir.” Jones saluted.
Patrick returned it. “Good to see you, Jones,” he said, although he couldn’t remember the man. He had spent only a few months as a young lieutenant with the 10th, and later they were the “other” unit that stormed San Juan Hill. History immortalized the Rough Riders and conveniently forgot the black soldiers of the 10th Cavalry who charged alongside them.
“Jones, steal a horse and come with me.”
Jones simply took one from a confused private and rode on with Patrick as he tried to halt the flow of men. After a while, they returned to the field where Major Harris, his face even redder than before, was trying to bring order from chaos. There were now several thousand men in the field, and dozens of officers marched back and forth hollering the names of their units and trying to attract followers. Had it not been so tragic, it would have been farcical.
Patrick saw casualties and realized that Harris’s group had been lucky. There were scores of moaning, crying wounded lying in rows and being attended to by volunteers who did their best in the face of horror. Some of the silent had already died. Patrick could only nod when Harris told him he’d sent to the nearby towns for medical help and to find permanent places to care for the wounded. There was nothing else to be done.
It was beginning to look as though Patrick had gathered up the greater portion of the “army” that had taken part in an abortive attack on an advancing German column. He could count six militia regiments represented on his field: three from Massachusetts, two from Connecticut, and one from New York.
In conversations with Harris, Jones, and others, Patrick learned that the major culprit was indeed a Massachusetts colonel named Charles Blaney. Blaney, whose brother-in-law was a congressman, had arrived from his home in Springfield, Massachusetts, at the head of his local regiment and was deferred to by the other Massachusetts officers because of his political influence. In all fairness to the man, Patrick realized he must have also been a natural leader who saw a job that needed to be done and tried to do it.
Upon being informed that a force of Germans was to his front, Blaney had prevailed upon all three of his state regiments and at least three others to advance against the enemy. He had foolishly believed that his force would prevail and he would be able to drive back the German force.
“Of course,” said Harris, “we did no scouting and had no artillery. We moved out for about an hour when we saw our first Germans. Skirmishers. We shot at them and they moved back. We stupidly thought they were retreating, then we stumbled onto the entire German column. Shit, they cut us to pieces.”
Sergeant Jones agreed. “Colonel, it was awful. One minute we were runnin’, whoopin’, and hollerin’, and the next minute machine guns and rifles we couldn’t see were cutting our men down. Then they started firing their cannon into us. Nothing missed. Some of us fired back for a few minutes, but it was too much. Then we all just ran.” He shook his head sadly. “Wasn’t nothin’ like Cuba. Nothin’ at all.”
Jones’s part of the tale had an even sadder ending than the simple defeat. He, along with three others from the 10th, had been in the area to recruit from the sizable colored population and had had the bad luck to be there when Colonel Blaney decided to forge an army. Blaney thought it appropriate for the four regular army men to accompany him as he led the assault. Although they didn’t think it right, they also knew better than to disobey the orders of white officers.
“Blaney stood there for a minute when the Germans opened fire,” Jones said. “It was like he never expected nothin’ like it. He wasn’t no coward, not at all. He just stood there until he took a bullet in the gut and started screamin’. Then the others ran off and left him. He has to be dead by now.”
German skirmish lines moved out to take the field back from the retreating Americans. It was then that Sergeant Jones realized the other three men weren’t with him. “I looked back and saw all three lying there. Two weren’t movin’, but one was tryin’ to get up. I started to run to him but I stumbled. When I got back up I saw that a couple of Germans had reached him and were stickin’ him with their bayonets. You know what? They was laughin’. Then someone blew a whistle and the Germans pulled back.”
Patrick wished the story had never been told. But then, was it so different from Cuba, where victorious Americans had killed Spanish wounded? He looked at the lengthening shadows and realized that night would come shortly. He gave orders to expand the area and form a defensive perimeter, with the wounded and unarmed men inside. Even though they had no digging implements, he told them to prepare such barricades as they could. If nothing else, it would give them something constructive to do and take their minds off the debacle.
He also had each unit send out reliable men as scouts and pickets to warn of any German advance. If the enemy came, Patrick would gather his flock and retreat in the general direction of Bridgeport, Connecticut.
The night was one of little or no sleep for most. Medical help finally began to arrive, and the wounded-those who could be transported in wagons-were sent out; the slightly wounded were patched up and returned to duty or left to rest through the night. The gravely wounded were given comfort; they would either get better or they would die.
On a more mundane level, there were the questions of food, water, and ammunition to resolve. Although the soldiers could go a little while without food, they desperately needed water to fill canteens gulped dry during the warm day. Units were assigned to bring back as much water as they could from nearby springs and wells. The food they would have to find tomorrow.
Ammunition was a problem-there wasn’t any. Each man had about ten rounds for his single-shot Springfield rifle. Both the rifle and the ammunition were old. The Springfield was totally outclassed in rate of fire by the five-shot magazines of the German Mausers. Worse, the Springfield used only black powder, which gave away the shooter’s location. In a duel with a Mauser, a man with a Springfield was at a serious disadvantage. Again Patrick realized that little had changed since the war with Spain.
Patrick was now better able to get a grip on the numbers of soldiers involved. According to senior officers remaining, the six regiments totaled about 8,500 officers and men. They could account for 116 definitely killed, including Blaney, and 170 wounded. There were almost 2,000 missing. Most of these, however, were simply runaways like the frightened boy he’d first seen. Some, however, were doubtless uncounted dead and abandoned wounded who would die if they were not found and treated. Patrick could only wonder if the Germans had taken any prisoners.
Morning finally came and with it reports from the scouts that the Germans had pulled back west of White Plains, although certainly not as a result of the fight. The Germans who had mauled the raw militia were probably only part of a large scouting force who had gathered all the information they needed. The American scouts also reported the disquieting news that there were no wounded on the battlefield, only dead-another eighty or so-and some appeared to have been executed.
More positively, additional runaways had started returning, often reduced to shamefaced tears by the hoots and curses of those who had stayed the course. Patrick allowed each regiment to send men to their prior encampment to retrieve supplies and gear left behind, and he tried further to get his little army organized.
It was near noon when they received the stunning news that President McKinley was dead of a heart attack and Teddy Roosevelt was now president of the United States. It seemed appropriate and comforting to have brief prayer services, and each regiment held its own. Patrick stayed quietly to himself and wondered about the man he’d met just a few days ago, and the startling fact that brash, young Teddy Roosevelt was now the president.