1901

Major Harris blinked and took in the fact that the man on horseback was not only his senior but regular army and immediately decided to obey. “Yes, sir,” Harris said as he smiled slightly and actually saluted. “What’ya have in mind?”

Patrick ordered Harris to take his men and fan out in a screen to gather in as many of the retreating soldiers as possible. They were to direct them to a large and reasonably open field, where officers were to identify themselves and begin rounding up men in their units.

Patrick watched for a few minutes until he was confident that his orders were being obeyed. He was puzzled by the absence of actual casualties. Had everyone run before the guns could do much damage? There was only a handful of wounded, but most of the men looked scared. It did not appear to have been a good day for American arms.

Patrick then galloped hard down the dirt road and repeated the performance every time he found a good-sized group of men who appeared to have a leader. He was surprised at how readily he was obeyed, the major’s first reaction notwithstanding. The men were, of course, confused and in desperate need of direction.

“Colonel Mahan, sir.”

Patrick turned. Who the hell besides Harris knew his name? The speaker was a stocky black man with the uniform and insignia of a sergeant major in the 10th Cavalry. “You know me, Sergeant?”

“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.