American Gun: A History of the U.S. In Ten Firearms (16 page)

Cuba, 1898: a sensationalized depiction of Teddy Roosevelt leading the Rough Riders up the San Juan Heights.

Library of Congress

Screw that,
said TR.
Move or get your butt out of the way.

Not in those exact words. But he did pull rank.

“Charge!” barked TR.

Roosevelt galloped around the field cursing and cheering his cavalry forward. The infantry troops around and in front of them realized it was their best option, too. Soon they were all rushing up Kettle Hill.

“The entire command moved forward as coolly as though the buzzing of bullets was the humming of bees,” recalled Lieutenant John J. Pershing, who would lead the American Army in World War I and the years that followed. “White regiments, black regiments, regulars and Rough Riders, representing the young manhood of the North and the South, fought shoulder to shoulder, unmindful of race or color, unmindful of whether commanded by ex-Confederate or not, and mindful of only their common duty as Americans.”

But as the Americans advanced, the gunfire intensified, both on Kettle Hill and the nearby San Juan Heights, where the main American assault was focused. Soldiers dropped in bunches. Not only did the enemy have artillery pieces in position, they had better rifles. Though the Spanish were vastly outnumbered, they commanded the high ground, and had a serious edge in firearms.

The main Spanish infantry rifle, the German-made Spanish Model 1893 Mauser rifle, was a fast-firing, speed-loading, repeating firearm of excellent reliability and smooth, safe, and effective performance. It was close to a masterpiece of a gun. It fired a high-velocity 7 × 57mm full-metal jacket cartridge with a spitzer—or pointed—bullet at its tip. The ammo fed smoothly from an integrated five-round staggered box magazine that could be loaded via stripper clips. The bullets were nicknamed “Spanish Hornets” by American troops who heard the supersonic rounds zipping by their ears. The weapon was so efficient that it served as the starting blueprint for many of the world’s infantry rifles for the next fifty years.

“The Spanish Hornet”: the Spanish Mauser, Model 1893, which bedeviled American troops in Cuba.

The Americans had their own bolt-action weapon, the magazine-fed Krag-Jorgensen, officially named “U.S. magazine Rifle (or Carbine), .30 caliber, Model 1896.” While the Krag was a step up from the past, the Norwegian-designed gun wasn’t in the same league as the Mauser. Worse, most of the regular U.S. Army troops on the battlefield were carrying the 1873 Trapdoor Springfields, which fired dangerously obsolete, shorter-range .45–70 black powder cartridges. Yes, those are the same rifles Custer’s men used at Little Bighorn. The clouds of smoke they shed were “bullet magnets” letting the enemy know where they were. Let me tell you, I don’t recommend announcing your position like that when there are snipers around.

“In the trenches on San Juan Hill, Cuba.” American Krag rifles (shown here) proved inferior, launching the quest that lead to the M1903.

Library of Congress

Before arriving in Cuba, Roosevelt had decided the trapdoor Springfield was “antiquated” and “almost useless in the battle.” He wasn’t too sure about the Krags, either. He had shelled out money from his own pocket to buy his officers some of his favorite Winchester repeaters, but his force was still hopelessly outgunned.

And stuck, with only one way to go—up the hill, toward the bullets.

“Spanish fire,” remembered Roosevelt later, “swept the whole field of battle up to the edge of the river, and man after man in our ranks fell dead or wounded.” The Mauser’s smokeless powder made it harder for the Americans to find targets. “The Mauser bullets drove in sheets through the trees and the tall jungle grass, making a peculiar whirring or rustling sound,” said Roosevelt. “Some of the bullets seemed to pop in the air, so that we thought they were explosive; and, indeed, many of those which were coated with brass did explode, in the sense that the brass coat was ripped off, making a thin plate of hard metal with a jagged edge, which inflicted a ghastly wound.”

Lines of American soldiers, led by Roosevelt, climbed the hills like streams of ants into the carpets of Spanish bullets. It was a slow-motion charge, with the Americans fighting not just the Spanish bullets and the slope, but also the intense heat. Some fell; others dropped for cover. The assault crawled along.

With his men hugging the ground, an American officer stood up and paced in the open to inspire his troops. “Captain, a bullet is sure to hit you,” protested one of his men. The officer took his cigarette out of his mouth, blew out a smoke cloud, and laughed. “Sergeant, the Spanish bullet isn’t made that will kill me!”

Roosevelt witnessed what happened next: “As he turned on his heel, a bullet struck him in the mouth and came out at the back of his head; so that even before he fell his wild and gallant soul had gone out into the darkness.”

Reporter Richard Harding Davis recalled, “They walked to greet death at every step, many of them, as they advanced, sinking suddenly or pitching forward and disappearing in the high grass, but the others waded on, stubbornly, forming a thin blue line that kept creeping higher and higher up the hill. It was as inevitable as the rising tide. It was a miracle of self-sacrifice, a triumph of bulldog courage, which one watched breathless with wonder.”

For all their bravery, the assault might have failed except for an ace of a weapon. A battery of three hand-cranked Colt M-1895 Gatling guns swept the Spanish-held heights with sheets of .30-caliber gunfire, covering the advance and clearing paths for the American assault.

The drum of the guns was like no other sound on the battlefield. The sound cheered the Americans even as it mowed down the Spanish. The Gatlings would lay down an impressive 18,000 rounds in support of the U.S. troops that day.

The assault picked up steam. Roosevelt was grazed by bullets twice. He waved his bloody hand in the air to rally his troops forward. Finally the Spanish, realizing they were about to be overrun, retreated from their Kettle Hill fortifications.

Forty yards from the crest, a wire barrier blocked Teddy’s stallion. Roosevelt spun out of the saddle like the rancher he once was, climbed over the wire, and dashed to the top. For a moment, he stood atop Kettle Hill nearly alone, his troops climbing to meet him.

Over on San Juan Heights, the main force sent the Spanish reeling. Roosevelt reinforced Kettle Hill, surveying a horrible sight.

The Spanish fortifications, Roosevelt recalled, were “filled with dead bodies in the light blue and white uniform of the Spanish regular army.” He came across very few wounded, as “most of the fallen had little holes in their heads from which their brains were oozing.”

Suddenly, two Spanish soldiers popped up from the piles of bodies, leveled their Mausers at Roosevelt, and fired from ten yards away.

They missed. Roosevelt jerked his Colt revolver and held it at hip level as they turned to run. He fired twice, missing the first and killing the second.

A reporter watching the Americans consolidate their positions atop San Juan Heights at about 2 p.m. remembered the scene: “They drove the yellow silk flags of the cavalry and the Stars and Stripes of their country into the soft earth of the trenches, and then sank down and looked back at the road they had climbed and swung their hats in the air.” The reporter heard a faint, tired cheer. The battle was won, and over.

Colonel Roosevelt and the Rough Riders at the top of San Juan Heights, after weathering the storm of Spanish Mauser fire. TR’s holster contains a Colt revolver that was recovered from the wreck of the
Maine
.

Library of Congress

American losses were immense: over two hundred dead and nearly another twelve hundred wounded. The Spanish lost 215 dead and another 376 wounded. The real story of the numbers, though, is this: the American force was 15,000; the Spanish started with 750. The fact that the Spanish could hold off such a large force at all is a testament not only to their weapons but their courage and skill as warriors.

The charges up Kettle Hill and San Juan Heights alone did not win the Spanish-American War. But it had numerous effects. With the hills taken, Santiago could not be held. The admiral who headed the Spanish fleet had been sitting on his ass for days, debating whether to go out and face the American fleet or not. Now he had no choice. His ships sailed out to their destruction in Santiago Bay July 3. The city of Santiago surrendered July 17; game over.

The Spanish sued for peace. The Treaty of Paris was signed on August 12, and the Americans were granted authority over the Spanish colonies of Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. Just like that, the United States was an international power. The epic images of Roosevelt and the Rough Riders’ actions that day were celebrated by the press. His fame propelled him into the governorship of New York State in a few short months. Then came the vice presidency, and after William McKinley’s assassination in September 1901, the presidency itself, at the tender age of forty-two.

The episode also marked a turning point in American guns: the shift from antiquated military rifles to cutting-edge, modern weapons that could dominate the battlefield. The road ahead would continue to be filled with curves and detours, but change would no longer be resisted on the grounds that proven technology was still too new.

And one of the prime movers of the new direction was Teddy Roosevelt, who as president helped push the American military to adopt what was essentially a bootleg copy of the gun that had done so much damage to his forces on Kettle Hill.

For more than sixty years, America had been cursed by bad decisions coming out of one office in Washington, D.C.: the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps. The head shed there controlled the nation’s weapons arsenals, including the biggest ones at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

The men in charge were the bureaucrats and generals who were supposed to equip our fighting men with the latest firearms and the top technology. Instead, as we’ve seen, they managed to do their best to condemn American soldiers to failure and death. They pissed away opportunities to get superior weapons and consistently chose clunkers, again and again.

When George Washington ordered his artillery chief Henry Knox to start an American weapons arsenal in Springfield in 1776, he helped spark the stirrings of the American Industrial Revolution. But by the Civil War, the arsenal was stuck in the past. The arteries were so clogged it affected the Army’s brain. Bad weapons mandated bad tactics; bad tactics encouraged bad training; bad training justified bad weapons.

“The armory also spawned a culture of obdurate bureaucracy that has afflicted parts of the U.S. military establishment down to the present day,” wrote John Lehman, who served as secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration. “Having made a vital contribution to winning independence, the Springfield armory had great prestige in the new republic. Unfortunately, the armory and the Ordnance Corps developed an autonomy within the new War Department that rapidly hardened into orthodoxy and an aversion to new weapons technology.”