Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 176 - The Spanish American War Part 3: The Stolen Valor of Teddy Roosevelt

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

The famed Rough Riders were a liability Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Buffalo Soldier Dreadlock Rastar Hello and welcome to yet another lovely episode of the Lions Head by Donkeys podcast. I almost said, we are the donkeys. We are the donkeys. But then it occurred to me, are we the donkeys? We're certainly not the lions. but we are the donkeys but then it like it occurred to me are we the donkeys we're certainly not the lions we're not the lions we're a mule team i think is what we basically are we're like the documentarian voice staring at lions and donkeys we're the quartermaster

enduring heavy fire to point out that you had to fill out the forms for that. Oh no, we are donkeys. Fuck. We're donkeys, buddy. We're the guys from the Zulu War episode like, nope, sorry, we can't open up the ammo until all the ammo's gone from the next one. It doesn't matter how many of you are getting speared in the face. Yeah, whatever. That's anti-imperialism in action.

On the bright side, that means we inadvertently killed Redcoats, which is good. I'm not saying I dislike the British people. I'm just saying I hate their army in Africa. Speaking of imperialism, we are on part three of our Spanish-American war, and this is the final episode. you know it's unfortunate i didn't get any like old-timey marching music for the the drops also i have is uh an air horn in the soviet union's uh national anthem never know you're gonna need them because because that one never runs out like well you can use it all the time and there's no communists in this one though because we're not quite to that Cuba yet, so I can't use it here, though. When we left you last time, the U.S. and Cuban rebel forces were tightening their grip around the Spanish-held towns of Santiago and Guantanamo. Not that Guantanamo.

Kind of that Guantanamo. It's not quite there yet. Well, the Spaniards were reduced to simply trying to defend wherever they happened to be held up while also trying not to die of yellow fever and malaria and failing at all of those things, I should point out. That war is not going especially well. The real winner of this war is the Mosquito. Yeah. Undefeated. Yeah, it's still winning to this day, putting up dubs on humanity. It's still winning to this day, putting up dubs on humanity.

However, before the U.S. could lay siege or assault Santiago, they had to capture a few surrounding positions, normally elevated positions, one of which would kind of hilariously and incorrectly go down in American military lore. And that is the Battle of San Juan Hill. I'm sure everybody's heard this this is like the the teddy roosevelt's triumphant rough rider charge up the hill and good god could that could the mythos around this and be more wrong wow that's crazy i can't believe we would have done that i mean like i i understand that like battles get turned into propaganda. Of course they do. Every battle we've ever talked about probably has been turned into propaganda for somebody. But normally under that, there is some grain of truth. Everybody talks about D-Day is the big one for World War II.

The Battle of Ardennes Forest for World War I. Those battles generally occurred the way we understand them to have occurred. This is not the case. This might as well be fan fiction or like an alternative history novel of the story that we are generally told for San Juan Hill. You should buy Joe's book, but you should also buy my Teddy Roosevelt M. Prey slash check, too. Yeah, that's right. Oh, God. Yeah, that's right, Joe.

In actuality, the battles around this time should probably, if they're correctly framed, be framed as a heroic victory of the Spanish soldier against overwhelming odds rather than a triumphant victory for the united states military but we do have to get there first as always there were two main targets on july 1st 1898 the main one was el canai or can a sorry cubans um you probably can if you're in cuba you probably can't legally listen to this anyway. But my bad. Now, there was garrisoned by around 500 lightly armed Spanish soldiers behind some small fortifications, kind of like block houses. But it seems like they're more half-assed because the soldiers that are stationed there were pretty fucking sick. They weren't going to be doing a whole lot of digging.

They're busy dying. Yeah, they're way too busy trying not to vomit themselves until they die of dehydration. They had no field guns. They had no real cannons. They had some small arms and two howitzers that were 80 millimeters or pretty small and very limited ammunition. The main force, thought to be around 1,000, was stationed on nearby San Juan Hill. The plan was to assault and take El Canaille and then use the elevation of that hill to haul American cannons up it and then shell San Juan Hill. At that point, San Juan Hill would then be assaulted.

So it's one leads into the other. And I'm going to say this is foreshadowing if you do not take el cana that means taking san juan hill will be very very hard oh boy yeah now for some reason again the spanish commander withheld 10 000 soldiers that are held back in reserves in santiago i didn't love doing that shit that's the one like through line of the cuban the Cuban campaign of this war specifically. It really didn't seem like the Spanish soldier wanted to fight too hard. And that's not the fault of the Spanish soldiers at all.

That's the fault of their commanders and their government. And I understand that I'm a little bit biased on the viewpoint of the soldier here. But the last episode episode they were waiting for marines to land so they could steal food right their uniforms are like rotting off their backs from marching through the jungle they're just just so sick with i mean i would say with no medical care but no medical care is kind of the baseline but like the government didn't seem to give a shit about them so they're not going to give a shit about the government too hard right they're like yeah i'm just going to sit back here and to be fair santiago was very very important uh they

didn't want like the commander didn't want to hemorrhage reinforcement trying to hold these hills though if i was the commander i would seem like you want to hold these hills um for reasons that we will get into. Because once cannons are put on those hills, Santiago is fucked. It just says bad thing. Take cover. Like I maybe never went to military academy, but I have figured that out is high ground with cannon on it. You have to be good enough. Yeah.

I mean, apparently that's more education than this Spanish military commander had. And to be fair, that actually is more education than most of the American military commanders had in Cuba at the time. They weren't going to send out any reinforcements from those. So everybody on the hills, San Juan Hill, Kettle Hill and Alkanai are all left out. No relief. all left out uh no relief now teddy at this point uh was now in command of the rough riders after colonel leonard wood had been sent elsewhere to a higher level of command because he was pretty good at his job unlike teddy now teddy only had one job that is to uh park his unit at the foot of uh between san juan and kettle hills and keep the enemy occupied and in place

so they couldn't run off to reinforce El Cana. To Kettle them, yeah. To perimeter check them, yeah. Now, keep that in mind. That was supposed to be his only job. Once El Cana was taken and they had their cannons dragged up on top of the hill, which just sounds miserable to me.

Because remember, there's really no horses. They all got left behind. So all of this is having to be done by hand. We're all mule teams now, baby. Yeah, everybody's donkeys when it comes to Elkanai. So yeah, he was going to wait until gunfire opened up from Elkanai onto Kettle and San Juan Hills and then assault. I'm bringing this up continuously because, of course, that does not happen,

which, of course, brings us right back to El Cana. Remember, there's only 500 Spaniards dug in kind of on top, most of them half dead from disease, and they would be fighting an enemy that numbered 8,000. Oh, geez. Under the command of General Henry Lawton. And they were also backed by some Cuban rebels, but not that many.

The Cuban rebels seemed to be mostly shifted over to the other hills. Lawton was also supported by four field guns and a near endless supply of ammo. So if you're a Spaniard on top of El Canaille... Just kill me, fam. Just retreat. I don't know. Go shared zone. You can leave. Yeah.

Honestly, it's kind of surprising they didn't. And that's one thing that despite the Spaniards getting steamrolled throughout the entirety of this war, for the most part, they didn't really ever seem to rout. They were like, I guess we just have to sit here and die now. Okay. Mosquitoes, Americans, what's the difference yeah honestly i'd rather get shot anyway at this point it's like i'm

choosing between getting catching a slug in the throat or catching a mosquito and dying a week later literally shitting my stomach lining out right yeah i know like this game of horrible russian roulette uh that we've just invented i know which one i hope i win take me to the execution chamber the execution chamber is just like a badly built shack full of mosquitoes oh yeah no fate words and death now seeing this force arrayed against them the spanish commander a guy uh brigadier general joaquin vera del rey saw saw that we might be fucked. Being outnumbered 10 to 1 and having limited supply of everything other than yellow fever, he knew that he was kind of not in a good position. They hadn't dug in as much as they wanted because they couldn't. And Del Rey, to his credit, knew that if he forces them into work any harder, they'd probably just start dropping dead.

Right. So they had this array of blockhouses, which, like we talked about, I believe in episode two. But these were pretty well positioned. There was more than one for one fact. And two, all of the gun ports intersected, so

they could all support one another. Hey, cover fire! Yeah! It's a thing that you generally don't think about which is also kind of a revolutionary military tactic every once in a while it's like of course all of these fighting positions should be able to support one another and then like it's 1898 and someone's like i have an idea i have an idea i know that like i said it sounds incredibly simple, but it's also very, very devastating and really hard to assault. He requested reinforcements from Santiago, which were denied, like I said.

And then because he was born in Ibiza, he got ready to party. I didn't even have to make that one up. He really was born in Ibiza. As the Americans advanced, they're quickly torn to shit. as the americans advanced they're quickly torn to shit despite the advent of smokeless powder not exactly being very new several units of the u.s volunteer force hadn't actually gotten equipped with it because remember like what like we pointed out teddy and the rough riders kind of got preferential treatment because teddy roosevelt was involved right so they were as about they got all the all the good shit everyone else just got a butt fuck.

They got hand-me-downs. And the further you went down the line, especially if you happen to be black, the worse your equipment got. So this was the second Massachusetts Volunteer and Infantry. And they were given the old weapon, not the Krag Jorgensen, but the weapon that the military got before them, which still used powder so every time they opened fire it was just like oh look there they are oh hey guys yeah it was a giant black spotlight on their position and every time they opened fire uh an eyewitness said quote the americans received such a shower of bullets it seemed at one time as if the company must be wiped out of existence. So they ran. Stop being racist. Yeah, they ran real, real fast because every Spanish gun was like, hey, look, look at those assholes and open fire on them.

It was also later revealed that this unit was largely green, meaning only levied for this, like made out of volunteers. I use the word levying correctly. We're not conscripted, but like largely only raised for this. Some other volunteer units were, did have some like veterans in them. This one did not. And only about half of them had ever been trained.

Terrific. So this is probably the first time they fired their weapons ever. Good stuff. Now, so this is probably the first time they fired their weapons ever good stuff now after realizing that they had sent a unit armed with 45 caliber black powder rifles commander william lobo realized maybe we should pull those guys back before we we kill them all right oh wow how noble yeah uh this is why he makes the big bucks like hmm black powder bad they're all dying and also the they're running. That's something I think we've talked about before in the past, but seeing a unit run for their life

is incredibly demoralizing for people who aren't there. That sounds demoralizing. Even though some units haven't been committed to battle, they're seeing this one unit break and run for their life, drop their weapons and run as fast as they can, completely unorganized it's it's really bad for an army and then they think themselves maybe i too should do that yeah like i don't want any of that smoke i'm getting the fuck out of here that's why most routes start as a trickle and end up as a flood so when a unit starts breaking you need to get them the fuck out of there even though the command like love

doesn't give a shit about their safety. I mean, of course he doesn't. He's a general, but he cares about the health of his army, and by health, I mean cohesiveness. Not getting your dicks punched in, right? Yes. That's a tactical term. Yeah, that is what they teach you

at West Point. Do not get your dicks punched in. It is then that the Americans figured out that their fire support was also equally fucked as lon ordered his cannons into action he realized that the single battery of field guns that he brought with him also used black powder this meant on top of them being very slow to fire uh on top of their new counterparts like we've talked about the group gun uh like the easiest way to compare that is breech-loading World War I artillery that could rapid fire.

It was revolutionary because you could fire it so quickly. Right. The Krupp guns are kind of like that, and that's what the Spanish have. Oh, dear. The Americans have Civil War hand-me-downs. Right. They were easy to spot uh because again firing massive clouds

of black powder uh they also carpeted the entire battlefield with black powder and since you were attacking up a hill that literally only hurts you yeah because you're just trying to charge with shit in your face yeah um and not to mention they have bad range uh you're firing up a hill so your range is already kind of fucked, and the black powder doesn't help. And because of the Spaniards using Mausers, the Spanish could just shoot at the Cannoneers, which is not a position you ever want your

artillery to be in. They're supposed to be out of small arms fire range. Right. And also, the giant cloud of smoke made it very, very easy for the Spaniards to dial in their howitzers. Right, because you just sort of point and click, if you will. Yeah, math has left the

equation at that point. Like, no, no, just that general area. Over there. So every time the American field guns opened fire, they got blasted with everything the Spanish had. And Lawton, being a bad commander, kept telling gun crews to rapidly

switch targets. This meant that instead of them focusing their guns on the block houses or maybe enemy artillery until it was destroyed they just hit things a couple of times and move. Hit things a couple of times and move.

And then the Spanish have time to rebuild. They hardly even needed to do that because the amount of cannon fire that he directed on the blockhouses wasn't even enough to destroy them. He destroyed nothing, all while getting shot to hell. Where's it going, asshole? And if to make a bad situation worse, Lawton decided that the best way to do this would be to just constantly order frontal assaults against the Spanish positions. Even wave attacks are famously known for working good. That's right.

And, I mean, when you have 8,000 soldiers against 500, you probably don't assume it's going to take very many, but it turns out the Spanish were ready to fight. After several hours of this, Lawton changed his mind again and then finally ordered his artillery to destroy the Spanish strongpoints one at a time

as he should have done in the first place before ever going into battle. Once breaking them open with artillery, he then ordered the infantry to advance without throwing themselves at gun ports. Again, should have done that in the first place. Well, he's learning.

That's important. It's important to learn from your mistakes, Joe. You know what? Here's the thing. We both, we both host shows based on disasters, right? And we happen to host two shows that trial and error is not the best way to learn from.

Speak for yourself. I think it's funny. That's what makes me money, Joe. Like, well, there's your problem in engineering disasters. There's your plug. It's like, you should know how to build a bridge before you build it. And you're like, whoopsie doodle doodle killed 50 people won't do that again and like military tactics like hmm i've seemed to have lost an entire division what if i do this like you could have done that in the

first place like we're not talking we see you we hear you we will listen and learn from our mistakes you are valid we We see you. We hear you dying in the barbed wire in front of that machine gun nest. Oh, you're being shelled. Oh, that's a shame. And these aren't revolutionary things we're talking about. These are very, very simple. People have learned before the Spanish-American War that frontal assaults aren't the best

choice. Now, Del Rey was commanding his soldiers from the front because his soldiers were fighting very hard. And of course, that got him a shot in both legs. With like that fucking skit from Ace Ventura when he gets the spear in both legs. Now, he went down. Show you the hands-on commander, dickhead.

Like, every time I always hear about this like and of course as a soldier i'm always like yeah why isn't the commander up here fighting like because when he gets his fuck when he gets kneecapped and we have no leadership they target him because they target him a little bit shoot the most flamboyantly dressed man with all the medals on his chest eight kerchiefs. Get him. Now, he was loaded onto a stretcher because when you catch two slugs to the legs, you tend to go down like a sack of shit. And his

deputy commander was actually his son. Aw. They were walking the stretcher back to the rear to evacuate him with some of his other officers giving his parting commands because he knew the battle was lost it was all about how long they could hold on right

that it happened to be when Americans breached the top of the hill and immediately gunned them all down and killed them now war crimes weren't really a thing yet but I do have to point out it was considered incredibly bad taste to murder a

wounded enemy commander um like this is this is the gentlemanly era of warfare now with the asterisks assuming both sides are white yeah the same thing was not afforded to uh minority soldiers or native armies yeah exactly. But if two white armies fought one another, it's one of those like, ah, we will simply walk you back to our camp. We'll talk about this a little bit later of how well prisoners of war in this era are treated, especially if you're an officer.

Mostly if you're an officer, like kind of going back to bounty days, like you capture a knight rather than murdering them because they're worth a lot of money and then you just murder all the foot soldiers because they're worthless but yeah they just the Americans breach the top like look at that motherfucker shoot him and while

they're on a strip they murder him and his son dick move man not cool I mean whatever I'm not gonna cry for the wounded Spanish guy but also it's like even even for warfare of the time Americans are just throwing up dick moves

as far as they can see despite his death the Spanish still horribly outnumbered and now without a commander or deputy commander continued to fight for and over every single strong point until they finally ran out of ammo 12 hours after they started.

Now, of the 500 or so Spanish soldiers who were on the hill, about 200 dipped out the back, escaping north and leaving the Americans to stand triumphantly over a smoldering pile of shit. All the fortifications had been destroyed. And not to mention, remember the whole point of the battle.

It was to support the attacks on San Juan and Kettle Hills. This just took 12 fucking hours. The battle already started. They just moved. They're like, oh, El Cana is pointless. Like none of this shit mattered. Not to mention, if the Spanish would counterattack and they wouldn't, there's nothing to defend from anymore because they destroyed them all.

Now, the commander at San Juan realized that Lawton was just never going to win the battle or something. And they waited only two hours before launching the attack. Sorry, three hours after launching the attack on San Juan and Kettle Hill. So all of that was for nothing. Absolutely nothing. Cool.

Cool, cool, cool. Now, if they left the spanish in place with their howitzer and you know 500 more soldiers could they have ran off and supported san juan kettle hills maybe but probably not the spanish really didn't try to support one another um they probably would have just sat there that seems to be more of what they were about not to mention force marching their soldiers in their condition that distance to flank the Americans. Seems very unrealistic. They probably would have just dropped dead. You don't have to exert yourself too hard if you're just sitting in a hole shooting at a guy in a blue jacket as he runs by.

Or diarrhea sitting. Yeah. I mean, what you do is you pop a squat just keep your pants down and just constantly keep the flow of diarrhea going into the dirt as you shoot at the americans thank you joe that's the image i wanted hell yeah new shirt design idea thanks buddy um now during the previous three hours while the battle of can i was still ongoing and they were waiting for lawton to win, the soldiers had moved into position at San Juan and Kettle Hills, assuming at any point they would eventually hear his guns on the top of the neighboring hill and know they were about ready to go ahead. But they didn't.

So they just kind of sat around. But since they'd moved up, they were now in the range of Spanish snipers and the occasional bout of heat stroke in one place that would become known as Hell's Pocket the Spanish chewed through the command structure of an entire American brigade have you ever watched We Were Soldiers? Yeah yeah

you remember the scene where they're all trapped in the bush and they're like follow me I'll get us out of here and every single person stands up and immediately gets murdered that happened so it began with Colonel Charles A. Wyckoff. Wyckoff began heading down a trail and 30 minutes later he emerged from the woods and was shot

he died as the staff officers carried him to the rear. Lieutenant Colonel William S. Worth next in command assumed leadership and within 5 minutes he was also shot. Lieutenant Colonel Emerson Liskum, again, they just don't name him like they used to. No, they don't. Assumed command within another

five minutes, he was shot. Lieutenant Colonel Ezra P. Hewers, fourth in command of the brigade, finally assumed brigade command and managed to keep it this time. This is burning through an entire brigade command structure. All of this by snipers. The juan heights are made of two hills like i said kettle hill and then san juan hill um they were right next to one another after being shut up for a few hours

and doing nothing american junior commanders began complaining wondering what the fuck they were doing and demanding they be allowed to attack. Now I say junior commanders like this is captain and below like yelling at generals like why the fuck can't we attack? Like we're just sitting here getting picked off and honestly the true hero of this battle if we're going to pick a hero

Teddy Roosevelt is hell God, I wish at least like American history wouldn't be so stupid then I'm not saying that that would make Teddy Roosevelt good. It would just make him not a liar. Fair enough. Now, the true hero of this battle, if we were to pick one from the American side,

is actually going to be Lieutenant Jules Ord. Wow. Man, they really do not know what they used to. No. His actual full name is much longer than that, and I just this the shorter version now jules ord asked general hawkins remember a general he's a lieutenant he's the lowest ranking officer you can possibly be he walked up to a general who was sitting around hoping

lawton would finally do his job and said quote general if you're if you will order a charge i will lead it hawkins remember, remember, a general, responded to the lieutenant saying, quote, I will not ask for volunteers and I will not give permission and I will not refuse it. Which means, like, you do you, bro. Good luck.

Yeah, it's the biggest fucking cop-out I've ever heard in military history. That's some real mistakes were made shit. Like, that is, if you do it, I won't stop you, but if you succeed, I will definitely take credit, which is exactly what happened. Now, to be fair, Teddy Roosevelt got most of the credit for dumber

reasons. When Orda ordered the charge, he was supported by the 10th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers. These black cavalry troopers were supported by other black infantrymen from the 6th Infantry Regiment. Now I say cavalry, but remember, everybody's on foot. And their fire support didn't come from cannons. Because remember, Elkanai is still going on next door.

There is no cannon support here. Just guys being dudes. Just guys vibing out on Elkanai. Now, they did have some cannons with them, but they were black powder cannons like the ones at Elkanai, and even the artillerists were like, yeah, we might as well not even roll these motherfuckers out. So instead

they rolled out Gatling guns, the crank ones. Peppergrinders, yeah. Nice. We talked about potato digger machine guns. These are the old crank Gatling guns from the West. Now, these were originally tasked with rear security, defending supply convoys and stuff like that.

The boldest ass motherfucker on earth, a guy named Lieutenant John Parker, got a brilliant fucking idea. Because there's a lot of people listening right now that maybe you're not super familiar with crank Gatling guns. They don't have great range and they're kind of unreliable. They're hard to use. They're black powder as well. But Lieutenant John Parker, the detachment's commander, looked at all of that like, no, no, no, I got an idea. Hold my beer.

Oh, boy. Remember, they don't have pack animals. So his crewmen are pushing these up the hill to get them into position right they've just got dudes yeah and they're just getting shot by the diarrhea core now a few of his soldiers did drop out from disease as they're pushing the guns up the hill yeah that makes sense or in my opinion just played dead i don't know now imagine there's all this gunfire going like uh i don't feel so good and you just lay down and everybody

now normally around six of these men uh were needed to work each gun and parker already didn't have that because so many of his guys had dropped out so he ordered his fourth gun to be abandoned and crew uh the remaining gaps in the other one. Once in position, his gunners were able to start churning through ammo so quickly, though kind of inaccurately, that the sheer volume of fire was enough to send the Spanish running away

from the parapet of the hill. The Gatling guns weren't really hitting anything. It's just like the sound and it's suppressing fire. Right. You know, it's suppressing fire in an era where that concept is still kind of foreign. Nobody expects to get a machine gun or a Gatling gun turned on them while you're defending a hill. Now, once Parker was in position, the Rough Riders, along with the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, began their assault on Kettle Hill. And here's where the Spanish

kind of fucked themselves. I think you meant where pregnant Teddy Roosevelt once again, please buy my slashback. Ugh. I hate it so much. I know you do, Joe. That's what I'm here for.

It's only Liam. Teddy shouldn't be running up a hill. He's so pregnant. Preggers Teddy assaulting the hill. Put that on a shirt. Don't put that on a shirt. Please don't put pregnant Teddy Roosevelt assaulting of San Juan Hill. Absolutely nobody will understand that design, which means it's perfect.

The guy who came up with the design for the trenches and the dugouts and San Juan and Kettle Hills didn't actually look at the hills. He looked at a map. So when he ordered the lines be dug in, they're actually too far back on the hill, not on the edge of the hill. Meaning the soldiers in the lines had to lean out and over the lines to shoot down at Americans, kind of defeating the purpose of the lines in general. So they're like half exposed or they're just like out in the open? They're almost completely out in the open. They have to stand up and lean all the way over to completely exposing themselves to rifles

and also Lieutenant Parker's Gatling guns, who had been firing the whole time, unbroken at 700 rounds a minute. Now, even with this advance up Kettle Hill, it began to slow down and bog down as the Rough Riders and other soldiers and officers began to kind of bunch up, slow down, losing the cohesion of their charge. Also, soldiers began to drop mid-battle from heat stroke and exhaustion. Because remember, they're wearing

like cowboy clothes running up through 28 herdships. Boots with wool trousers, presumably, because they're riddled with disease. I mean, remember, there's not a ton of potable water, so they're already dehydrated. Even during

this battle, the vast majority of casualties are from disease in the middle of battle yeah there was the occasional bullet wound a lot of americans got winged in this battle that is when the buffalo soldiers under the command of wait for it john no nickname given Pershing. He's back, baby! This is where he got his nickname. God damn it, man. His nickname was literally N-Word Pershing.

Which was then downgraded slightly to Blackjack. Because even back then, saying the N-Word as a part of military record was known to be bad wasn't there a dog named that at some point i'm pretty sure maybe just the first three letters i want to say i think it was hp lovecraft's cat this cat's name was n-word i yeah i this stupid that's right there's a cat or a dog is but I know it's H.P. Lovecraft.

You know, I sometimes ask myself, why do the terrorists hate us? And then I'm just like, oh, yeah, all right. Uh, yeah. Thankfully terrorists are never racist. Yeah, famously. Famously not racist. No, I do have to say that Pershing is the least bad person in this battle. And we will unfortunately have to hand it to Pershing a little bit later on.

I don't want to have to hand it to fucking Pershing, man. I will say in comparison to Teddy Roosevelt, I will hand it to Pershing. And we'll explain why in a little bit. Now, Pershing was leading the Buffalo Soldiers. Again, that's where he got his nickname. And as they advanced, the Gatling gun fire got too close to them. And some Americans began to panic that the Spanish might actually have some of their own or maybe some machine guns, but quickly realized that, nope, we're just getting shot by friendly fire. The Gatling guns were called off by a guy again doing a wig wag

which is you know waving a handkerchief real fancy like I'd say boy he's giving me the vapors. This allowed the soldiers to assault over the top of Kettle Hill and begin to fight along the trenches. Now the first soldier

to crest Kettle Hill by all reports was Sergeant George Berry a black man of the Buffalo Soldiers, dual wielding standards of the 10th and 3rd Cavalry. This man was armed with only flags. Two of them, though. You want to know how we know that this black guy was the first one to breach enemy lines? Because Pershing wrote it in his notes. Pershing gave him credit well that censored boy for all of the problems going on that and all of the history that gets buried

during this battle it wasn't because of pershing pershing wrote openly that how well his soldiers fought i mean granted of course he was in command of them so this reflects positively on them but he didn't lie there was a plenty of white officers in the unit do you like the idea of like sharpening flagpoles to like like rusty knife and just like going to hack and slash and like lizzie borden with the two sharpened edge ends of your flagpoles i mean they probably had spear tips on them i mean we still have spear tips on flat like flags in the military today that obviously they're just for looks today that's a shame you should yeah go back maybe they were more practical back then i imagine being the one

spaniard that gets speared to death of the fucking battle standard can you imagine having to like write home to his wife and be like you're not gonna fucking believe this he got stabbed in the fucking chest your dumbass husband right now I shouldn't have to point this out to longtime listeners of the show that how whitewashed American

history has become but like even John N word Pershing didn't try to cover up the achievements of black soldiers during this battle. Now, the reason why I bring up whitewashing again is because most Americans don't even know there were black soldiers present at the battle, let alone they had been the ones to win it. This revision of history goes so deep that there's a very famous picture of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders on the hill after capturing it. It's cropped.

There's a bigger picture of it that includes a lot of buffalo soldiers. They crop all of them out. No way. Yep. I mean, I'm not surprised, but I didn't know that. I don't know. I guess maybe the a bit smart guy answer would be,

well, they just wanted to make it a closeup of Teddy. Fuck off. Yeah. Well, there's a reason why Teddy made sure the black guys are always on the fringes. Like,

uh, but they were all cropped out. Uh, and then centered it on the all white rough riders. I don't know how that works. In my opinion, like I already said, if we're going to lavish praise on anyone in this battle,

it should probably be the guy that went over the top armed only with flags. Failing that, Lieutenant Ord, who came up with the charge in general. And it was him

who asked Teddy to support him. Yelling at Colonel Roosevelt, again, a lieutenant saying, support the regulars as he ran over the top. And then again remember the rough

riders fucking failed they like they stopped their charge and had to be rallied by the buffalo soldiers right and lieutenant ward died in the battle so like you know posthumously he should have gotten something and he had been like shot multiple fucking times and just kept running up the hill and the spaniards had had to fucking put one in his head like he was a zombie to finally put him down. Oh, Jesus Christ. He was also the first officer over the top of the hill before he went

down. So, like, Teddy Roosevelt, fucking is the lightweight here, right? Ord was never given shit for his service, and most people think that's because he died on the rolls of an all-black unit and in a less shocking turn of events neither were any of the soldiers ever given credit for anything that they did it was only if you like dig deep in a u.s military history because like the military itself didn't censor this like it's all of the dispatches

and letters are freely available because it wasn't uncommon for black units led by white soldiers to accomplish incredible things. The thing that the military always did was award the white guys, but they never buried the unit history. That was all done by Teddy Roosevelt because the history of this battle and most of the propaganda around this battle was written and directed by Teddy Roosevelt. The very most racist Boy Scout. He wrote his unit's history, which became canon and cut out everyone else. Ward was recommended for various other awards by his commanders because they knew what he accomplished. They are all quietly rejected. Again, most people believe it's because he was fighting with black men. Teddy's name also came up for awards,

which were also rejected for reasons we'll talk about later. Now, the reason why this battle immediately blew up is because Teddy could play the press like a fiddle and he was a celebrity. People knew who he was. So people continuously, mostly the press and the various battlefield journalists that were there would not stop talking about him. Not to mention, Teddy loved some Teddy. He would never stop talking about himself. He never spared any line or any expense making him and his soldiers look like they had won the entire war. But the army kind of knew what happened and teddy was not popular in military

command mostly because he made him look bad for we'll talk about a little bit later but that was until 2001 when teddy was given the medal of honor for some reason what was making him the only president about a dead one to ever have one now Now, his citation is probably the funniest Medal of Honor citation I have ever read because it is the most inaccurate one I've ever read. It says, quote,

at the risk above life and above the call of duty, Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt distinguished himself in acts of bravery on the 1st of July 1898, near Santiago de Cuba, Republic of Cuba, while leading a daring charge up San Juan Hill. There's a lot wrong there. For one, Teddy did not charge up San Juan Hill.

He charged up Kettle Hill. And remember, he did not lead it. Quote, facing the enemy's heavy fire, he displayed extraordinary bravery throughout the charge and was the first to reach the enemy trenches. Did he though? He was not. We also know this is not true due to the notes of now dead General Pershing, who said the first was his Buffalo soldiers.

In short, this must be the only Medal of Honor citation where the main notes of reference is the guy being rewarded the Medal of Honor, even if he was dead in this case. Anyway, fuck Teddy. Moving on. Fuck Teddy? Yeah. I mean, on this show, we could...

You could give us any guy from history and we'll find a way to say fuck that guy. Generally, yeah. If you're notable from history, it's probably for bad reasons. But imagine any soldier today being rewarded the Medal of Honor and citation, dude, trust me, bro. I wrote the book like imagine me getting a

reward in military service based on shit that I wrote in the hooligans of Kandar that's pretty much what happened it would be tight though granted my book is significantly more accurate than Teddy's or what's his name I mean they all write books now but uh what was the seal book

uh you have to be way more specific there's so many. Which is the one, the guy that killed Bin Laden, allegedly. Oh, Robert O'Neill. Yeah. There we go. I mean, like, his is inaccurate, but I think the most inaccurate one is American Sniper. Oh, yeah.

That one is, like, demonstrably false in a lot of places. Even people, his unit commander is like, no, that never happened. Anyway, don't read it. It's really bad. Chris Scott, notable, not great guy. Yeah, not great. As soldiers got to the top

of the hill, the Spanish attempted to fight them off with bayonets for a few minutes before deciding this hill is not fucking worth it and retreating. At this point, San hill had had not yet been taken remember this is kettle hill and spanish and american soldiers began exchanging shots across the distance until a third brigade whose battered fuckers had gone through seemingly their entire chain of command had finally been ordered to attack and capture it now at, at some point during this battle, Teddy ordered his unit to assault between the two hills in order to assist the fighting at San Juan,

but did so without orders, and so hastily, only about half of his unit even knew what was happening. He was caught halfway by General Sumner, who was kind of hanging out there, and yelled at and screamed at in order to go back to the fucking hill he was supposed to be on. Now, by this time, even if he had made it to the Battle of San Juan, it was mostly over and he had wasted his time.

More than that, he had wasted his men. Remember, they had just charged up Kettle Hill with no supplies and no water. They were also riddled with disease, so they were exhausted. And the second march completely put the rest of his unit out of commission. That's what you're just shitting out of your own mouth. I cannot imagine being this fucked. Like, I've been exhausted. I've been dehydrated.

I've never been riddled with internal parasites and then all of those things. I've had pretty bad diarrhea, but not like active threat to my like life and, and live diarrhea. Like I've had dysentery to the point. I almost had to be taken like medevac to a hospital. And even that is nothing in comparison to what I think most soldiers were fighting through at this point. Cause like I could still walk,

I could still do things under my own strength. Cause like I was getting IVs and stuff. These guys weren't even getting water to drink. Right. So like at this point, the rough riders like can't fight anymore, at least not for this battle, which would be a real motherfucker of say the Spaniards are about ready to

counterattack, which they were. Oh, Hey, are the Spaniards about ready to counter? Now the Spanish counterattack on San Juan was mostly turned aside with their main effort being against Kettle. This included 600 soldiers

and it was probably more than enough to win and dislodge the tired soldiers who had just taken it and been preoccupied since with filling the remaining area with their pants full of shit or also just dropping from disease, which was still happening like the battle

is over people are still keeling over not to mention there's a lot of wounded like a lot of americans got shot during this battle who are pooping out of their mouths at the moment poop and vomit coming into your nose eyes and ears yes yes thank you joe rapidly your skin cracking open and a mosquito's coming out poop coming out yeah now serious military history podcast this would have been the case if it would not have been for again lieutenant parker bailing the entire unit out he ordered two of his gatling guns to be dragged up to the top of the hill over overlooking the advance of any attacking enemy. Imagine the guy doing the drag and just like, fuck you, man! Like, we did it! We won!

Like, do you want the good news or the bad news? He's dead. Very steep. He positioned them on either side and, like, one facing Kettle Hill, one facing San Juan, under the command of a sergeant. And they had a right angle to down the hill,

so on the backside of the hill. As the attackers rushed up the backside of Kettle Hill, they ran directly into a Gatling gun. At a range of only 500 meters, that single Gatling gun tore into the Spanish, who assumed the guns had still been down at the foot of the hill because only a fucking asshole would have dragged them to the top. Well, it turns out Lieutenant Parker was just that kind of asshole.

In only a few minutes, only 40 Spanish survivors ran back down the hill after their counterattack had failed. Now, with the famed Battle of San Juan Hill over, and taking a look at the numbers, it really shouldn't be respected in American military history as it is. For one, it started with the fuck up at El Canaille, which is just a

series of badly thought out frontal assaults. Like, we should celebrate Lawton about as much as we celebrate Cadorna. If it wasn't for a lieutenant who decided to wing it with some Gatling guns, there's a good chance that none of this shit even works out. Or if it does, the Americans are fucking savage trying to pull it off.

Not to mention the Spanish soldiers, most of them very fresh conscripts, were outnumbered 16 to 1. And they're pooping out of their mouths. I cannot emphasize that enough. Just drooling and foaming at the mouth of various kinds of disease. And inflicted twice as many casualties

on the Americans. Now, throughout this battle, you probably assume there's thousands dead, but there wasn't. Only 144 Americans were dead, but also 1,000 wounded. Not great. No, it's real bad. That's not counting people who had

to take a knee because they were dying from internal parasites or whatever. Take a knee. they were dying from internal parasites or whatever take a knee give me five I'll be right back in get a cord get a cord on the other side this is fine officer

I'm gonna kill this like vomiting yeah you go get him tiger sprinting up the hill vomit freely flowing out both sides of your mouth. Yes, sir! Just imagine what that looks like if you're one of the Spaniards who's not

dying, surrounded by people who are ill, being ran at by people who are screaming and vomiting everywhere. We've made the worst battlefield on Earth. Didn't we do that at the Battle of Bellow One? Have you ever watched blue mountain state hell yeah man you remember the episode where he injected himself with rabies yes it's that everybody has rabies now for the spaniards they lost 114 killed and only 350 wounded now the casualties were so

lopsided this actually forced the army to start immediately moving away from the Krag-Jorgensen rifle and towards the 30 at 6 Springfield, because they were starting to understand they brought some shitty Western pop guns to a European-style war. At the close of these battles, the US had finally gotten into the position that they had wanted. They have the elevated position over the city city and about two days after the battles were over they sent a letter to the spanish general arsenio linares who was the commander of the garrison within the city to surrender or they'd said blowing the hell out of it now linares was backed by the naval commander pascal savara who thought he was in a decent position to hold on at least for a little bit.

No. Already that. Now, he figured that he would just have to hold on in Santiago until the 10,000 or so soldiers stationed in Guantanamo City sallied forth out of the siege and relieved them. Now, there was a few problems with these assertions. Savara knew that his naval squadron was fucked. He knew the entire Spanish Navy was fucked in the advent of war, and he'd been trying to tell the government for that for a very long time.

So, while the US spent the several years prior to this updating their fleet, the Spanish Navy was in a state of disrepair as a whole, and were still in its colonies. When Savera took command in cuba just before the outbreak of war he realized that nobody had trained any of the spanish navy crews in three years just lack of money lack of desire like i think it's just the rot uh certainly a lack of money an overextension of fight. Because the war in Cuba and the war in the Philippines and a very low simmering conflict in Puerto Rico was just stretching them thin. The government didn't really know what they were doing. The military was mostly a hollowed out shell.

So things just started falling apart. Sure. In the months since the war had begun, he had been arguing with the Spanish government about the use of the squadron that he had in port. They wanted him to charge out and fight the American blockade, which was making things worse. Like the Spaniards could not resupply Cuba, even if they wanted to, which they didn't have the ability. Right. And while that makes sense on paper, he knew they were never going to succeed. And it was potentially a pointless suicide attack. As the government in Madrid could not tell him what to do as he fell under the

governor general of Cuba, him telling the government to fuck off was fine for at least the first month until the heights fell, at which point Governor General Blanco panicked and ordered him to do it anyway. So he, after telling Blanco, it was nice working with him. He got on his boats and let a few light cruisers that he had out of the bay running directly into a line of American battleships and cruisers. Oh, what happened then? So the American signaled alarm at zero nine 30 AM within an hour at 10

30, the battle was over. Oh, okay. The Spanish fleet was effectively destroyed. Most of the ships had taken some damage and ran aground with American sailors actually running over to try to save them

in a gesture of old-timey high seas respect. Severina's officers were taken aboard the USS Iowa. No, not that one. There's more than one. Nope, same one. Nope, there's only one. They just change it out every few years. Just a World War II battleship hanging out in the

1800s, where they officially surrendered and they were taking his POWs back to Annapolis, the Naval Military Academy, and allowed to just wander around without guards, making friends with their other seabros until the end of the war. What are they going to do in Annapolis?

Why imprison them? What are they going to do? Attend some classes, I don't know. Congratulations. You're actually starting at fullback next week, Enrique. Congrats at starting at D4. And that's like one of the unique things. You see how well they're treated.

It's like, no, you can just hang out at the college. It's fine. You should do that again. Just unload Gitmo into Michigan State. I love the idea of like, you know, if you're captured, you do get to attend classes, but like you also have to line up at halfback. Like we're going to get every last ounce of work out of you, bud. I really like the idea that after all this of like,

all right, well, Mr. Severo, the war is over. You have to go back to Spain. Here's your bill. We expect you to pay off your student loans as quickly as possible. Like, fuck! lines had been severed by Cuban rebels. And the last order that the garrison commander had given to Guantanamo city was to hold the city at all costs. So they weren't leaving it. Ah, classic. Now Linares didn't know that part. And he was finally coming to the conclusion that he was all on his own.

Now, somewhat thankfully for him. And also very conveniently, may I add Linares got violently ill. And also during this point, he went to go check out what was going on at San Juan Hill, like during the battle. and also very conveniently, may I add, Linares got violently ill. And also during this point, he went to go check out what was going on at San Juan Hill during the battle and caught a bullet in the shoulder. Oh no, I've been grievously wounded.

It hurts so bad. He went back and as the illness got worse, and it's 1800ss even late 1800s when you get winged with a bullet you slowly start to die and he had to pass off command to General Jose Velazquez now Velazquez took command of the situation while the battles

on the hills were still wrapping up and sent multiple runners out to Guantanamo City figuring that Linares must just be wrong about not being able to talk to them now obviously Velazquez is looking for reinforcements. And he wasn't unaware of what Linares was trying to do. But soon the attitude within Santiago was becoming common knowledge to the Americans and the Cubans because all of his runners that he sent out

towards the city were captured by rebels. And they had, you know, taken their letters and stuff. Right. But because all of his runners were captured, he was like, I don't understand. Why isn't Guantanamo answering me? Guys? Probably just assuming his buddy was ghosting him or whatever.

New garrison, who dis? After the destruction of the Spanish squadron, the Americans realized, like, now we really have Velazquez dead to rights. So they ordered him to surrender and he refused. Now, this also opened up negotiations. Now, Velazquez is mostly trying to buy time, assuming that at some point, Guantanamo would come and save him or the Spanish would send a new fleet with reinforcements. He was just trying to buy time. Now, one of the things that he offered was, I'll give you the city, but you have to allow me and all of my men to withdraw to go to Guantanamo.

And now President McKinley got personally involved at this point. Remember telegraphs exist now? So, their telegrams exist. So, news travels much quicker now. So like their telegrams exist. So news travels much quicker now. So President McKinley is probably more involved in this war than any other war in American history. Even things moved slower to Lincoln during the Civil War when he was in the United States. So he got personally involved and said that any surrender of the city would have to be unconditional.

So on July 10th, the American forces began shelling the city only for a couple hours and stopped the next day. And once again, demanded that Velazquez surrender. Probably shocked that they actually shelled the city, it was decided to surrender to save the city from any further bombardment. Like, oh, wow, you guys actually did it.

Well, you got us. A week later, the final surrender was negotiated. And this is true. The generals all got together and got drunk. Like all the Spanish general, the Spanish officers all got together with the American officers after surrendering the city and got fucked up on whiskey. It's a rich man's war and a poor man's fight, chow. Now, this pretty much ended the land war in Cuba. While the Navy is occasionally still shot at one another as the final terms were being worked on,

there was also a couple more American attempts to land some supplies west of Havana for Cuban rebels. But the war wasn't technically over. While all of this fighting in Cuba was going on, the U.S. and Spain had been fighting over Puerto Rico. Much like Cuba, Puerto Rico had long been on the menu in regards to American ambitions in the region. Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote almost a decade prior to the war that setting up naval stations on Puerto Rico was the best way to expand American

power throughout the Caribbean. Not to mention all the sugar plantations and other equally shitty reasons. This is not the first time America's like, maybe we should steal that. Right. Through much of the preparations of the war in Cuba while talking to Cuban revolutionaries

fully on the fuck Spain train, they also managed to infiltrate the island with spies and follow some pretty useful intel on the Spanish military force back on the island. Though the spying effort was much dumber than you think. This isn't Cold War levels of spying here, but it also somehow worked. And this is honestly one of my favorite stories of military spying in

human history. Edwin Emerson went down to Puerto Rico pretending to be a German journalist and went to the German consul on the island asking for any other Germans who had lived there that he might be able to interview for a story. The consul gave him a name of a family, the Rycole family, and said, yeah, go talk to him. He then went to the village where the family lived and ran to their 14-year-old son. He then asked the 14-year-old if he had a map

of the island, and the kid did, but it was too big for Emerson to take back with him, but the kid was very, very nice and told him that you just draw him a smaller one because he had memorized it. This included various Spanish forts and harbors and fortifications that had just been part of the island if you're a child like oh no it's just like the big block house that i like uh he drew all of this in detail i gave it to emerson and emerson took this map straight to general nelson miles

who used it to plan future military missions and landings. So, yeah. That's good. Amphibious landings, so easy a 14-year-old can plan them on accident. Don't ask us how the Battle of Gallipoli went. Yeah, they needed more 14-year-olds, obviously. It turns out a 14-year-old is significantly

smarter than Winston Churchill, in case anybody needed more evidence of that. Now, strange side note to that story that 14 year old name Rudolph Guillermo Refkel ended up becoming an officer in the US Army and fought in World War I and his brother ended up becoming the first

Puerto Rican to go to the Naval Academy so I'm just saying that maybe they were in on the whole thing I'm kidding or am I? It was 14. Now, meanwhile, Dr. Julio Hena, who is one of the Puerto Rican leaders of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, also asked that the U.S. include Puerto Rico on whatever plans they had for Cuba in regards to kicking out the Spanish, not the all the other parts that we had plans for for Cuba. The imperialism, right?

Yeah. Now, on the outbreak of war in April, the island was put under martial law. The Spanish, for some reason, didn't quite fully understand the scope of American ambitions and sent most of their military assets that were stationed in Puerto Rico to Cuba. That meant the military campaign of Puerto Rico was almost over as soon as it began. This was mostly naval battles limited to bombardments of oceanside towns and forts. At one point, the US squadron under the command of Rear Admiral William Sampson rolled into the port of San Juan, Puerto Rico, expecting to find the Spanish squadron there. He actually expected to find Severa's squadron, which we now know was sent down to Santiago, Cuba.

So instead of, I don't know, turning around and leaving, Samson remembered that nobody had trained the crew in a while. So he parked it in the port and just ordered them to train gunnery skills by blowing up various buildings in the city before leaving which is certainly uh uh on the job training you see that orphanage blasted oh god thankfully they mostly targeted spanish like military buildings but like since they were

training they missed a fair amount of those shots. It just blew up random shit. Someone's orphanage got blown up. Yeah. But after the land war in Cuba was over, the president ordered the land invasion of Puerto Rico. The first American invasion was welcomed by civilians but confronted by local militia. Despite numbering fewer than 10 guys and facing 1,300 Marines and soldiers armed with machine guns and naval support. The ten guys attempted a counterattack. It did not go well.

Bless their fucking hearts. Also, the location of the invasion was changed at the last minute by General Nelson Miles, without talking or consulting to anybody to include the entire American government. Now, this generally isn't a problem, in my opinion.

Doing war is his job. I believe in a civilian oversight of the military. However, once you pull that trigger, you kind of have to just let the military fight a war. But this is kind of a funny situation because the Secretary of War, Russell Alger,

only found out where his army was when he read the newspaper the next day he's like oh they they invaded fuck okay the invasion ended up going incredibly well probably a bit too well uh for this exact reason uh you know miles changed the invasion route for his soldiers to land the south of the island and advance west. This also happened to accidentally be the parts of the island that had the most hatred towards the Spanish. So there's virtually no resistance. Everybody's like,

oh, thank God they're kicking the Spaniards out. Unfortunately, the Americans are like, just wait, we got plans homie. It's worse. Yeah. Or at least just as bad. The Spaniards were certainly worse, but this isn't a competition I want to get in.

Nobody wins this. Well, US fruit might. That's true. Domino's sugar certainly won. Yeah. Well, that didn't mean there weren't some battles. Nearly all of them ended with one or two people killed as the Spanish just didn't have a will to fight

which is funny because of course the spaniards blame the puerto ricans um despite the fact that the spaniards had thousands of soldiers stationed in puerto rico and they just were like i guess the game's up it was just weird because especially when you hear the the words coming out of the spanish government like no no, this is part of Spain. This isn't a colony. The Spanish soldier's like, fuck this. I just want to go home. Nobody gave a shit.

The Spanish force had tripled the amount captured and killed with another 10,000 serving at the end of the campaign. The Spanish blamed their defeat on the native population of Puerto Rico, as racist empires have a tendency to do. One Spanish soldier wrote, calling the Puerto Ricans, quote, servile and ungrateful. This led to him nearly being lynched as a shitty racist later on. Unfortunately, his life was spared. Bummer. Yeah.

The war ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1898, which ceded the remaining Spanish empire to the United States. This included the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico directly, while the U.S. also got to outline their occupation of Cuba. Meanwhile, U.S. forces on Cuba, who were still there, were dropping dead from disease by the thousands from yellow fever, malaria, and typhoid. Though a small side note here, because this is literally the endless amount of test subjects all around him. This is when the first studies were done by General Walter Reed, who the hospital

is named after, that confirmed that for the first time yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes. Where's yellow? So we did it. Anyway, the rate of death and suffering led to what became known as the Round Robin letter. This letter was penned by the commanding officers of the U.S. Fifth Corps to demand that they and their soldiers be sent back to the U.S.

as they are all dying from malaria and yellow fever and the war is fucking over. They need to be in Cuba anymore. Right. This letter was drafted by Teddy Roosevelt and sent to U.S. Army headquarters in D.C. And he purposely leaked it to the press in order to get the people on his side. Now, Teddy was picked to do this over everyone else because he had no military career to worry about. Remember, he was a volunteer officer. He was going home at the end of this and he's a politician. He did not give a single fuck. And people have pointed out that the Secretary of War, Alger, absolutely knew that he wrote this, which is why he got no awards until 2001.

Yeah, there was, I guess there were some repercussions. Now, unlike another cry for help by an officer in the throes of an uncontrolled and easily preventable pandemic, this one actually worked. The soldiers in Cuba were almost immediately withdrawn and new occupation soldiers were dropped off on the island instead. The army decided that black soldiers from the south would be much better acclimated for the heat and the diseases of Cuba, which is weird and racist as that is. It actually kind of worked. God damn it. Yeah. Fuck me, I guess.

Right. Like, I mean, occupation soldiers bad, obviously, but like their switch actually with like the disease transmission rate was much much lower um and also they had an idea of how to control the spread now they would have had to be the ones to work out what to do about mosquitoes i guess but yeah like as shitty and racist as it is like fuck it worked god damn it okay by the end of the war thousands of soldiers tens of thousands on the spanish side were dead virtually all of them from disease of the round 2460 dead on the american side a full 2061 died from disease on the spanish side of the 15 800 that were dead 15 000,000 were from disease.

Jesus. In the end, both the Cubans and Puerto Ricans assumed that the U.S. had declared them independent and leave. But, unfortunately, as we know, that did not happen. Even though it was promised, the Senate passed the Platt Amendment as a rider to an Army Appropriations Bill, forcing

a peace treaty in Cuba which prohibited them from signing treaties with other nations or contracting public debt. It also gave the U.S. the right to invade Cuba whenever it wanted under the guise of stabilization. It would go on to do that several times over the years and of course it gave the U.S.

Guantanamo Bay forever in perpetuity. I can't understand why there was a revolution. This war would eventually leave the groundworks and the eventual rise of dictator Bautista, which would be overthrown by Fidel Castro's revolution. So congratulations, America, you fucking played yourself. Just give them

independence. Imagine how different everything would be. Put a quarter in your house because you played yourself. As for Puerto Rico, it was part of the rule of army officers in the Department of Indian Affairs of all people, at which point the same process that was done to the natives of the West was done to the Puerto Ricans, just shy of genocide. The protections laid out in the U.S. Constitution did not apply to the people of the island because they belonged to the United States. They were not part of it. People saw their society changed by force with no democratic outlet or representation of any kind. In 1899, U.S. Senator George Frisbee Hauer described Puerto Ricans as, quote,

uneducated, simple-minded, and harmless people who are only interested in wine, women, music, and dancing, and recommended that Spanish should be abolished from the island's schools and only English should be taught. Schools became the primary vehicle of Americanization and initially all classes were taught in English. As you can imagine, this led to an incredible downslide in education levels as people did not fucking speak English. Funny how that works.

Military rule was replaced by civilian government by way of the Foraker Act of 1900. However, the act stipulated the governor, chief of police, and top officials were presidentially appointed, and they were all to be Americans, which remember, Puerto Ricans, not Americans. In 1901, the first U.S. civilian governor of Puerto Rico, Charles Herbert Allen, also became president of the largest sugar refining

company in the world, American Sugar Refining Company. In effect, Charles Allen leveraged his governorship of Puerto Rico into a controlling interest in the entire Puerto Rican economy, and this just continued forever. It wasn't until after World War II that Puerto Rico was allowed to elect its own governor while still not being a state, which it still isn't. Same for Guam, for that matter. And American Samoa.

And American Samoa and the Marshall Islands and so on and so forth. Anyway, give Puerto Rico independence. That's the end of the series. Or at the very least, let them determine to do whatever the hell they want. Yes. Yeah.

That, that, that, that should not be the realm of American decisions to make. Anyway, that is the Spanish American War. Liam, we do a segment on this podcast

called Questions from the Legion, and this one is good. I think this one is the first one that was actually made with you specifically in mind. Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question from the Legion, donate to the show. Ask us a question. Give us your money. Give us your money. Through Discord,

through Patreon, shove it into a bottle. Fire it out of a cannon up a hill towards a Spaniard. And we will answer it on the show. This one is, what building in the world do you think makes the best supervillain fortress? And it

says in parentheses, not the Pentagon. So I assume they want us to to be imaginative here okay so there's a couple answers that are good the people's palace in romania which we just did an episode oh that one is incredible yeah uh for sure you know what i bet would actually kind of be a good one is the hagia sofia oh yeah Not that it ever was a fortress, but you could fortify that shit real quick. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's got the vibe. It does have the vibe. Let's see here.

That creepy looking AT&T building in Nashville, for sure. The one that kind of looks like Batman. Yeah. There's two that come to mind for me. There is the very, very creepy Ryongyang Hotel in Pyongyang, North Korea. Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I believe it's a hotel. I could be wrong. Maybe it's a casino in Macau. I played Just Cause 3. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's Macau, so it's probably a casino. But both of those look like there should be lightning strikes behind them all the time and like angry music from afar the patronus towers in kuala lumpur kind of freaked me out i don't know

if that's really the same answer but i don't know they're always giving me the heebie-jeebies they all feel like they should be backlit by red and black only yeah anyway thank you unnamed person for your question from the legion uh i don't normally say who the questions are from if you want me to do that uh give me a name uh and i will actually do that i've never thought of actually asking that before um liam thank you for joining me on this wonderful series of lovely american history incompetence, diarrhea, death. I love a good time where Spain and the US can shake hands about very fucking stupid history. So good on us, I guess.

Anyway, plug your show. Oh, well, there's your problem. It's a leftist engineering disasters podcast with slides and jokes. You're listening to my only podcast, but buy my book. Buy his book. Yeah, you can find the whole series. They're literally free for some of you. So download them. It helps.

My time travel, Teddy Roosevelt, I'm prank fanfic about him and Frederick the Great. Of course, that's Teddy and Freddy will be available don't cut me off will be available oh god and until next time don't make Teddy fanfic

don't make Mpreg Teddy fanfic yes