The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(94)

Hundreds died in battle today, hundreds wounded. Including one of our own—

“Creelman’s been shot,” Hearst announces, not looking particularly troubled about it.

“Will he be all right?”

“He should be. They’re taking him to be cared for now.”

“Was anyone else wounded?” I ask carefully, my heart in my throat.

“No one else from our party,” Hearst replies.

Relief fills me, and still—it’s a somber affair.

We mount our horses once more to file our stories, and as we leave El Caney we ride past refugees pouring out of the surrounding towns, women and children who look as though they’ve lost everything. They’re sickly and thin, the toll of war etched on their faces.

Some of them appeal to the American soldiers for help along the way, but soon enough one of the commanders puts a stop to it, as though he’s concerned that whatever maladies plague these people will transfer to his men, too.

The Red Cross is on the battlefield tending to the wounded, some helping the refugees as they leave their homes that have now been destroyed. Between the countryside that had already been ravaged by the revolutionaries and the Spanish, and now the destruction war has wrought to the cities and towns, it is impossible to imagine it will be an easy recovery when this is all over.

As horrifying as the battle scenes are, watching men lose their lives before our very eyes, there’s another cost of war that is right in front of us and somehow even more horrific.

How much have these people endured for years? Is this what our push to war has wrought? Have we further destroyed their home, or have we helped them, as Hearst truly believes?

I don’t know. I thought coming here would give me the answers I sought, but I’m left with more questions than anything else.



* * *



—

After the battle at El Caney, we board the Sylvia and sail to rendezvous with the American naval ship, the Texas, in anticipation of an impending battle between the Spanish and American navies.

“How do you propose getting past the blockade?” I ask Hearst. “They won’t let press boats through.”

A gleam enters Hearst’s eyes at the challenge presented. “Surely, we have something that might entice them.”

In the end, our party settles on bananas as a bribe, heartily accepted even as we are warned that the bombardment on Morro Castle will begin at eight in the morning.

We leave the Sylvia and board a cutter. We sail outside of the battle lines and watch as eight American ships begin firing on the fortified castle from a couple thousand yards away, Spain returning fire from the shore, shells flying past. The noise is thunderous, the sky filling with smoke.

“Sail closer,” Hearst calls out to his crew. “We want the cameramen to be able to get better angles.”

The crew follows Hearst’s command.

“They’re saying we’re too close to the battlefield,” a crew member shouts.

“Don’t worry about that. Just stay where you are.”

A shell lands dangerously close to us, just a hundred feet away in the water.

“We need to get out of the way,” the man shouts back. “The Americans are telling us we’re directly in the line of fire.”

For a moment, I almost think Hearst is going to argue with the man, but he nods, allowing us to pull back slightly.

The tide of war has firmly shifted, and the Spanish fleet races along the coast, their decks on fire as the American navy pursues them. We follow behind the navy at a greater distance than before, a flotilla of newspaper boats behind us.

We all watch in shock as sailors leap overboard from the burning Spanish ships, trying to head for the shore.

“Go after them,” Hearst shouts, bending over.

When he rights himself, his trousers are rolled above the knees.

It shouldn’t surprise me anymore, nothing he does should, but I gape at the sight of Hearst jumping from the cutter, brandishing a revolver in one hand.

“Surely, he isn’t going to—”

“Stop,” Hearst shouts at the sailors attempting to escape through the shore, and miraculously, they do.

Hearst grabs a man and pulls him onto the cutter, and then another, and another, taking the Spanish sailors prisoner as though it is the most natural thing in the world and as if we are not here to report on the war, but rather to wage it.

When the cutter is filled with sailors, we return to the Sylvia, where the sailors are photographed and interviewed. In all, Hearst has captured seventeen of them.

For as much as we’ve written about their actions in Cuba, as close as we’ve been to the Junta, seeing the Spanish sailors places a human face to the stories we’ve told, and I almost feel sorry for how dazed they look by the entire proceedings, as we explain to them that we aren’t, in fact, members of the American navy, but newspaper reporters from New York City who have taken them prisoner.

Hundreds of their compatriots have died today, but their shocked expressions are also due to the blow we all watch unfold before our very eyes:

The Americans have just destroyed the Spanish fleet.



* * *



—

The siege on Santiago continues, but the more time I spend here, the more I’m convinced I’m following the wrong part of the story.