Spanish-American War’s Last Vets : Christian Steinle, 107, Is the Oldest of Only 10 Survivors

Veterans of the Spanish-American War now number fewer than a squad. Today there are only 10 men in the United States who were among the thousands answering President William McKinley’s call for volunteers in 1898.

If these survivors could muster on a parade ground, answering the roll call would be: Jaspar Garrison, 106, and S. Leroy Mandel, 102, from Illinois; Harry Embree, 106, from Kansas; Ralph W. Taylor, 104, and Wilson L. Dawson, 101, from Florida; Jesse A. Jackson, 104, from Indiana; Hickory E. Grace, 104, from Kentucky; John T. Fitzgerald, 104, from New Jersey; Nathaniel E. Cook, 101, from Arizona; and Christian Steinle, 107, of California.

The fact that Cook and Dawson were only 13 when they enlisted was not considered unusual. If a youth looked tall and strong enough to carry a pack and rifle, he generally was accepted. Recruiters were lax about asking to see birth certificates.

Steinle, the eldest survivor, was born May 3, 1878. For the past eight years he has been a patient at the Wadsworth VA Medical Center.

“He lived in Santa Monica and used to drive his 1946 Ford here frequently until he was 94,” said Dick Reid, chief of voluntary service at the Veterans Administration facility in West Los Angeles. “He would come to visit the veterans of World Wars I and II. He’d play cards with them and he brought a lot of cheer to the quarters where they live.”

Steinle has four daughters: Margaret Steinle, 79, Bertha Mosby, 81, Dorothy Klein, 73, and Betty Lou Terry, 62. Margaret Steinle, a retired school librarian, visits her father six days a week, while one of her sisters fills in on the seventh.

Steinle enlisted in the Army in Cleveland on March 16, 1899, and was sent to Manila the following month. “The only action he saw was when someone shot out a lantern he was holding while on guard duty,” said his daughter, Margaret.

Steinle settled with his family in Santa Monica in 1921, becoming a carpenter at Douglas Aircraft where he worked for many years. His wife, Amelia, died in 1972. While he still could pose for pictures on his 106th birthday and blow out the candles on a cake, hospital officials said that his health is deteriorating. Margaret Steinle coaxes him to sit up for his lunch, but said her father spends most of his time sleeping.

Perhaps Steinle dreams of the time when he, like other American youths, rallied around the flag for what they were told was a noble cause. For many years an insurrection had raged in Cuba as well as Puerto Rico, the goal being independence from Spanish rule.

On Feb. 15, 1898, the battleship Maine--which had been in Havana harbor on what could be interpreted as a courtesy visit or a show of sympathy for the rebellious Cubans--was blown up. The explosion killed 252 officers and enlisted men; eight more died of their wounds later. A naval inquiry revealed that the Maine had been destroyed by a submarine mine. Who was responsible for the explosion was never determined.

The American public was quick to blame Spain for the disaster. After Secretary of the Navy John D. Long left his post for a rest, his eager assistant Theodore Roosevelt sent a cable to Commodore George Dewey, who commanded the Asiatic squadron then in Hong Kong. Roosevelt advised Dewey that in case of war, it was his duty to prevent the Spanish squadron from leaving the Asiatic coast and to take offensive operations in the Philippines.

A barrage of propaganda stirred a growing demand for intervention in Cuba. In his “A History of the United States” (Henry Holt, 1934), Ralph Volney Harlow, a professor of history at Syracuse University, wrote: “Led by two newspapers in New York, the Journal and the World, the American press played upon popular feeling in order to bring about war. . . . Minor episodes were magnified into great issues, exceptional and rare incidents were described as though they were occurring every day, and in general every possible effort was made to rouse the American people to a frenzy over Cuba.”

(Joseph Pulitzer, owner of the World, was in fierce circulation battle with William Randolph Hearst, publisher of the Journal.)

On April 25, 1898, Congress declared war on Spain.

Roosevelt resigned his post to become a lieutenant colonel in a volunteer cavalry regiment commanded by Col. Leonard Wood, who had won the Medal of Honor in campaigns against the Apaches. Roosevelt supervised recruiting the regiment, drawing men from New Mexico and Arizona territories and the Indian Territory, which later became Oklahoma. He also added eager recruits from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other Ivy League colleges. Among them were football players, steeple chase riders, polo players, and socialites like Hamilton Fish of New York. He was fatally shot shortly after landing in Cuba at the battle of Las Guasimas.

Roosevelt’s regiment became known as the Rough Riders, although they were forced to leave their horses behind in Florida and would fight dismounted. The Rough Riders garnished most of the notoriety during the campaign, and Roosevelt became the most popular hero of the war.

Dewey led his fleet to Manila aboard his flagship, the cruiser Olympia. His squadron consisted of four additional cruisers, a gunboat, collier and a supply ship. Entering Manila harbor under darkness on May 1, 1898, the Spanish discovered the U.S. vessels as a dawn mist cleared. The battle was under way.

Standing on the Olympia’s conning tower, Dewey turned to the ship’s commander, Capt. Charles V. Gridley, and calmly gave the order that would become one of the most famous commands in U.S. naval history:

“You may fire when ready, Gridley.”

Guns from the U.S. ships thundered off Cavite. After creating havoc among their Spanish adversaries, Dewey ordered his squadron to withdraw. His sailors had breakfast, and at 11:15 returned to complete their destruction of the Spanish squadron, half of its entire fleet.

The United States had another hero.

Dewey had no landing force to occupy the Philippines. McKinley ordered troops sent to the islands from San Francisco. On May 6, 1,400 men of the 7th Regiment, California volunteers, paraded down Main Street in Los Angeles en route to the trains that would take them to San Francisco where they hoped to depart for Manila. Fifty-thousand civilians cheered their departure. The 7th Regiment joined other units at the Presidio anxiously awaiting sailing orders.

Combined Army and Navy figures show 392,000 men served during the Spanish-American War. Of those, 251,235 were Army personnel, and of that number only 38,000 left the United States.

Tampa, Fla., was the staging point for the troops in the Cuban campaign. It was the beginning of a series of logistical blunders that would make this the most mismanaged war in U.S. history. Uniforms issued to the soldiers were heavy wool, unsuitable for the tropics. There was a shortage of tents.

On June 14, a flotilla of 32 crowded makeshift transports with a Navy escort left Tampa for Santiago, Cuba, carrying 17,000 men.

The U.S. attack on Cuba was a two-pronged assault. The Navy would blockade Santiago harbor and trap the Spanish fleet inside. U.S. troops landed at Daiquiri, hiking overland toward Santiago. The jungle locales where the fighting took place would long be remembered by those who returned from Cuba: Las Guasimas, El Caney, and finally San Juan Heights. There were nearly 13,000 Spanish soldiers at Santiago and their outposts were deployed through the jungle. Using smokeless powder in their Mauser rifles, they were difficult to spot. The Americans were issued black-powder cartridges, resulting in dark puffs from their rifle muzzles and making them easy targets. Casualties mounted.

The final major assault was at San Juan Hill. Roosevelt was in the forefront of his Rough Riders and other cavalry regiments in the scramble to overrun the Spanish positions. He described the charge in his book, “The Rough Riders” (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1899):

“I was with Henry Bardshar (his orderly) running up at the double, and the two Spaniards leaped from the trenches and fired at us, not 10 yards away. As they turned to run I closed in and fired twice, missing the first and killing the second. . .