The almost complete absence of landing equipment, in the shape of surf-boats, lighters, and launches, eventually proved, as I shall hereafter show, to be disastrous in the extreme; and if the navy had not come to the rescue, at Daiquiri and Siboney, it is not at all certain that General Shafter could have landed his army. In a telegram to the War Department dated "Playa del Este, June 25," he frankly admits this, and says: "Without them [the navy] I could not have landed in ten days, and perhaps not at all."
Now, it seems to me that the responsibility for this lack of boats, which came near ruining the expedition at the outset and which hampered and embarrassed it for three weeks afterward, can be definitely fixed. The difficulty to be overcome was one that might have been foreseen and provided for. If General Shafter did not foresee and provide for it, as General Scott did at Vera Cruz, he, manifestly, is the person to blame; while, on the other hand, if he did foresee it, but failed to get from the War Department the necessary boats, the department is to blame. The committee of investigation which is holding its sessions at the time this book goes to press ought to have no trouble in putting the responsibility for this deficiency where it belongs.
Boats, however, were not the only things that were lacking in the equipment of General Shafter's army. Next in importance to landing facilities come facilities for moving supplies of all kinds from the sea-coast to the front, or, in other words, means of land transportation. In his official report of the campaign General Shafter says: "There was no lack of transportation, for at no time, up to the surrender, could all the wagons I had be used." If I were disposed to be captious, I should say that the reason why the general could not use the wagons he had was that a large number of them lay untouched in the holds of the transports. He might have said, with equal cogency, that there was no lack of food, because at no time could all the hard bread and bacon in his ships be eaten. The usefulness of food and wagons is dependent to some extent upon their location. A superfluity of wagons on board a steamer, five miles at sea, is not necessarily a proof that there are more than enough wagons on shore.