Six thousand troops wade ashore at Daiquirí; Spain watches and holds its fire

By late June 1898, the U.S. had been at war with Spain for two months but had not yet put a significant ground force on Cuban soil. On June 22, 1898, 6,000 men of the U.S. Fifth Army Corps under General William Rufus Shafter came ashore at Daiquirí, a coastal village roughly sixteen miles east of Santiago de Cuba — in a chaotic scramble of overcrowded boats, spooked horses, and surf-battered equipment. Spanish Lieutenant General Arsenio Linares y Pombo, commanding a force nearly twice their size, watched and did not fire a shot. That decision handed the Americans a foothold that nine days later put U.S. troops on the heights above Santiago…