Vera Cruz, April 25th. Morning
On board the Minnesota, in the very comfortable quarters of the admiral. We were awakened by the band playing the “Star-spangled Banner,” “God Save the King,” the beautiful Spanish national air, the “Marseillaise”—all according to the order of the arrival of the ships in the harbor. A delightful breeze is blowing and the electric fans are at work.
The last word I scribbled yesterday afternoon was when I was waiting in my state-room for Nelson to come back to our Mexican train, with our officers, under the white flag. I was delighted and deeply moved when suddenly big, agreeable, competent Captain Huse appeared at the door and said, “Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, I am glad to see you safely arrived and to welcome you to our lines.”
Poor General Corona stood by at the meeting, and I turned to him with a more than hearty handshake. He kissed my hand, and his eyes filled. Poor, poor people! As Captain Huse helped me out of the train, to my joy and surprise I saw Hohler standing by the track. He had taken down a trainful of agitated Germans, English, and Americans, two days before, and was to go back to Mexico City with our returning train and escort. I had a few words with him, amid the dry cactus of the parched field, and commended to his courage and good sense our poor, distracted compatriots left in the volcanic city. There may be no concerted massacre of Americans, but the day will come when there will be other horrors. Hohler said he had not slept for three nights, and only prayed for a couple of hours of oblivion before tackling anything else. I wished him Godspeed, and gave him a handclasp to match the temperature.
Then Captain Huse came up to me, saying: “We must go. Time is passing, and we are unarmed.”
As I turned to walk down the track with him I saw the pathetic spectacle of Madame Maass, whom I had parted from on that starry night of the Fletcher dinner, four months or more ago. She had walked, bareheaded, up that dusty stretch of track, from one train to the other, to go to join her husband at Soledad. The step on to the train by the steep embankment was so high I could not get up, nor could she descend; so she leaned down to me and I reached up to her. Tears were streaming down her grimy face; her black skirt was torn and rusty, her other clothing nondescript, to say the least; a pathetic, stout, elderly woman caught out in the troubles of war—or of peace, as they tell me it is called in Washington.
Then Captain Huse and two of his officers, Lieutenant Fletcher, nephew of Admiral Fletcher, and Ensign Dodd, walked down the track with me about two kilometers. The rails were torn up, but the road-bed was undestroyed, and as we walked along in the blazing sun, with scrubby, dusty palms and cactus in the grayish fields on either side, my back turned to the Mexican train, I was divided between joy and sorrow—joy to see and be with my own again and the haunting thought of poor, distracted Mexico, and of our own people, whom we had been obliged to leave to Heaven knows what fate. It is easy to be the last out of the danger zone, but very, very hard to be the first; I hope that another time, if fate puts us again in such strange places, we will be the last to go.
We finally got to our own train, which was run by a poor, dilapidated, leaking, propped-up engine, all that was left. The Mexicans had been quick about the machines, and every locomotive had been seized by them and sent away, after which they had destroyed those kilometers of track. Everybody climbed into the relief-train, and there came the question of getting our luggage from one train to another. Captain Huse had been obliged to come without an escort, accompanied only by Fletcher and Dodd, unarmed. Until they had us they could not make terms. So, to make a very long story short, several cutthroat-looking peons, casting deadly glances at los Gringos, transferred a lot of the hand-luggage, aided by the men of the party. All I possess of value, except that left at the Embassy, is contained in a single, large trunk, now reposing in the cactus-fields in the enemy’s lines, watched over by the same shambling, dark-browed, cutthroat Mexicans who helped to transfer the small baggage.
Captain Huse, finding himself with a broken-down engine and a lot of unarmed civilians, and with sundown approaching, was too anxious to get into his own lines to think of such trifles. He said, afterward, “You didn’t realize what danger we were in.” I remember that I saw his face suddenly light up, as we slowly moved along. He had caught sight of the outposts that Admiral Fletcher, with vigilant forethought, had placed five miles out of town, with guns and telescopes, ready to rush to our aid, if necessary. Then he knew all was well, and, in spite of the fact that I had not been able to realize any danger, my eyes filled again at the sight of our brave men, some looking through their telescopes, others ready with their guns.
I asked Captain Huse, “Are we at war with Mexico?”
And he answered, “I don’t know.” Adding, “They say not; but when one armed force opposes another armed force, and many are killed, we are rather of the opinion that it is war.”
He had just come from the thick of the fray. We had sixty-three wounded, seventeen killed, and several hundred Mexicans were killed and wounded. The Cadet Academy made a fine defense. There would have been more casualties for us, but at the critical moment the San Francisco, the Chester, and the Prairie opened fire on the Academy, a few feet only above the heads of their own men, neatly piercing the windows of the broad, low façade, as they would bulls’-eyes. All the officers are agreed that the immense sums spent in target practice by the navy in the past five years were amply compensated by that moment.
As we neared Vera Cruz our men in khaki (or white clothes dyed in coffee, according to the hurry order) were seen in big detachments in classic poses—standing, leaning on their guns, or sitting in groups on the ground, drinking coffee and smoking. I must say it looked very cozy and safe. Admiral Fletcher met us at the station, and I was glad indeed to clasp that brave, friendly hand again. He has done splendid work along all lines, passive or active, ever since he came to Mexican waters. Shortly afterward I said good-by to him and to Captain Huse, who is his chief of staff, and we went out in the admiral’s barge over the glistening harbor, a thousand lights still lighting it, as when I last saw it, but all else changed. Captain Simpson, of the Minnesota, is on land duty, but the second in command, Commander Moody, met us at the gangway and we were shown into these most comfortable quarters. I have heard so much of the discomfort and heat of the men-of-war that I am most agreeably surprised. The electric fan is working ten thousand revolutions a moment; some one has called the new fan la Mexicana, for obvious reasons. Admiral Badger came to welcome us last night, a great, powerful, steam-engine of a man—a “dictator” (pardon the awful word)! It is a big thing to have complete charge of so powerful a combination as the North Atlantic fleet. He also said he didn’t know whether we were at war or not, but that armed, opposing forces with heavy casualties on both sides was generally considered to be war; that we now “enjoyed all the disadvantages of both peace and war.” He had heard we were arriving with eight hundred refugees, and had chartered the Mexico, of the Ward Line, to take them away.
He asked, “Where are all the others?”
We said, “We are all that were allowed to come.” Apropos of that, if it isn’t war, it is, as some one remarked, “sufficiently Shermanically synonymous” for those left in the interior!