San Juan Hill 1898: Lt. Ord's Charge, Buffalo Soldiers and Parker's Guns

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The famous image of Theodore Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill on horseback gets the battle almost entirely wrong. After the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor in 1898, killing 267 sailors, the United States went to war with Spain and landed troops to take Santiago de Cuba. On July 1, General William Shafter's Fifth Army Corps, about 15,000 strong, attacked the San Juan Heights, held by roughly 760 Spanish regulars under General Arsenio Linares. Shafter, ill and weighing over 300 pounds, could not mount his horse and directed the fight from El Pozo by messenger. General Joseph Wheeler was down with fever, and Henry Lawton's division was held up at El Caney. American troops packed into a low area at the base of the heights they called Hell's Pocket, where Spanish Mausers firing smokeless powder picked them off.

The Buffalo Soldiers of the 24th and 25th Infantry still carried single-shot 1873 Springfields, whose black powder smoke revealed every shooter. First Lieutenant Jules Garesche Ord asked General Hamilton Hawkins for permission to charge, received only God bless you and good luck, and led the 10th Cavalry and the 24th Infantry up the slope, with white and Black regiments soon mixing in the advance. Ord was shot dead at the crest. Lieutenant John Henry Parker's Gatling guns kept the Spanish pinned down during the climb, and Roosevelt's Rough Riders took neighboring Kettle Hill. When the Spanish counterattacked there, Parker ignored Colonel Leonard Wood's order to move his guns uphill and broke the attack with oblique fire from 600 yards. Roosevelt later said Parker deserved more credit than anyone, but yellow journalism made the Rough Rider the face of the battle.

• Sergeant George Berry of the 10th Cavalry reached the summit carrying both his own regiment's flag and that of the 3rd Cavalry.
• Parker's three Gatlings fired about 18,000 rounds in eight and a half minutes, and trooper Jesse D. Langdon recalled men cheering the Gatlings.
• Second Lieutenant Thomas H. Rynning, not Roosevelt, is credited as the first Rough Rider to reach the top of Kettle Hill.
• When Roosevelt charged toward San Juan Hill after taking Kettle Hill, only five men followed, and General Sumner ordered him back.
• More than 1,100 Americans fell that day, and the Army replaced its rifles with the M1903 Springfield, modeled closely on the Mauser.