"A Perfect Hailstorm of Bullets": A Black Sergeant Remembers the Battle of San Juan Hill in 1899

Background: The well-known but erroneous image of Teddy Roosevelt charging with his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba displaced attention from the role of African American soldiers in Cuba such as Sergeant-Major Frank W. Pullen, Jr . Black soldiers made up almost 25 percent of the U.S. force in Cuba., In this excerpt, Pullen describes how Black soldiers almost seemed to have two enemies during the battle of El Caney and the capture of Santiago: the Spaniards and white American soldiers.

No one knows who started the charge; one thing is certain, at the time it was made excitement was running high; each man was a captain for himself and fighting accordingly. Brigadier Generals, Colonels, Lieutenant-Colonels, Majors, etc., were not needed at the time the 25th Infantry made the charge on El Caney, and those officers simply watched the battle from convenient points, as Lieutenants and enlisted men made the charge alone. It has been reported that the 12th U.S. Infantry made the charge, assisted by the 25th Infantry, but it is a recorded fact that the 25th Infantry fought the battle alone, the 12th Infantry coming up after the firing had nearly ceased. Private T. C. Butler, Company H, 25th Infantry, was the first man to enter the blockhouse at El Caney, and took possession of the Spanish flag for his regiment. An officer of the 12th Infantry came up while Butler was in the house and ordered him to give up the flag, which he was compelled to do, but not until he had torn a piece off the flag to substantiate his report to his Colonel of the injustice which had been done to him. Thus, by using the authority given him by his shoulder-straps, this officer took for his regiment that which had been won by the hearts’ blood of some of the bravest, though black, soldiers of Shafter’s army.

A word more in regard to the charge. It was not the glorious run from the edge of some nearby thicket to the top of a small hill, as many may imagine. This particular charge was a tough, hard climb, over sharp, rising ground, which, were a man in perfect physical strength, he would climb slowly. Part of the charge was made over soft, plowed ground, a part through a lot of prickly pineapple plants and barbed-wire entanglements. It was slow, hard work, under a blazing July sun and a perfect hailstorm of bullets, which, thanks to the poor marksmanship of the Spaniards, “went high.”

Frank W. Pullen, Jr.
Ex-Sergeant-Major 25th U.S. Infantry. Enfield, N.C., March 23,1899

Source: Edward A. Johnson, History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War (Raleigh, 1899), 29–32. Reprinted in William Loren Katz, Eyewitness: The Negro in American History (New York: Pittman Publishing, 1967), 383–384.