Cuba Libre 1898

Lou sipped her frosty root beer. It was a brutally hot day in Dellrose, Lincoln County, Tennessee, fifteen miles west of the county seat of Fayetteville. The soda parlor in the drug store of Sherrill - Stone Company, an expansive two-story dry goods, grocery, hardware and drug store, offered cool treats that would help with the heat and humidity. The Fayetteville Observer, weekly county newspaper, had come in on the 11AM freight wagon. Lou was at the loading dock to meet the wagon. She took the paper back to her booth.

Oblivious of the fan's whirl were the busy, heated clerks and customers. Twenty feet away in the dry goods department of the store, Lou adjusted her round silver wire glasses, lifting her head so as to use the bifocals' lower half. Focusing on the folded paper she read the lead story across the top fold.

"Special Report to The Observer from The New York Herald: by Richard Harding Davis.

June 28 - Los Guasimas, Cuba. 'Rousing Victory. Rough Riders Rout Spanish Regulars. Wheeler's V Cavalry Corp Clear Road to Santiago.

Theodore Roosevelt, late assistant Navy Secretary, Police Commissioner of New York City, Dakota Territory rancher, and his volunteer 'Rough Riders', joined by regular US cavalry troops fought jungle and Imperial Spanish might at a ridge called Las Guasimas at sunrise June 24. This location is eleven miles from the US Army landing site on the beaches at Daiquiri. Las Guasimas is just west of Siboney, a small village on the road from Daiquiri to Santiago. The outnumbered liberation forces, fighting uphill against intense rifle volleys and artillery, pushed the soldiers of Imperial Spain off this critical ridge northwest of the American landing site. Enemy batteries were posed to rain shot and shell on the thousands of landed and landing warriors of the V Corp.