Captain Marcotte, as a retired officer of the regular army, is better qualified than I am to express an opinion with regard to the availability of a road for military purposes, and he does not hesitate to say that the road from Daiquiri and Siboney to the front was practicable for loaded wagons up to July 18, or for a period of nearly a month subsequent to the landing of the army. During a part of that time, he says, its condition was not such as to prevent a farmer from taking a load of hay over it.
I myself went over this road from Siboney to the front four times between June 26 and July 9,--twice on foot, once in an ambulance, and once in an army wagon,--and my own judgment is that for ten days after the disembarkation of the army the road was comparatively dry and good. After that it became muddy and bad, but was by no means impassable, even for heavily loaded wagons, when I traversed it for the last time, five days before the surrender of Santiago. With the fall of that city the army's base of supplies was transferred from Siboney to Santiago harbor, and the condition of the Siboney road ceased to be a factor in the transportation problem. When a dozen steamers, loaded with supplies of all kinds, anchored off the Santiago piers, on July 15, the bulk of the army was within two miles of them, and there ought to have been no difficulty in getting to the troops everything that they needed.
If the road from Siboney to the front was practicable for both pack-mules and wagons from the time when the army landed to the time when its base of supplies was transferred to Santiago, and if, as General Shafter asserts, "the facilities were all there, and the transportation equipment provided was all that it should have been," why was the army left for almost a month without suitable tents, without adequate hospital supplies, without camp-kettles, without cooking-utensils other than tin plates, coffee-cups, and old tomato-cans, without hammocks, without extra clothing or spare blankets, and with only a limited supply of food? That this was the state of the army is beyond question.
Lieutenant John H. Parker of the Gatling-gun battery reported to Adjutant-General Corbin, under date of July 23, that he and his men had been entirely without tents for a period of twenty-eight days.