The Politics of Intervention

122 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION

As well as the General Staff had been warned and as
expeditiously as the Army sailed from the United States, the
five-thousand-man expeditionary force took a month to assem­
ble in Cuba. There a thousand waiting Marines joined it. The
movement, nevertheless, was a notable achievement in Army
history, for the rapidity and efficiency of the deployment,
planned and supervised by the General Staff, demon­
strated the value of contingency planning and the improved
readiness of the Army.^3
The Fifth Infantry arrived first in Havana on October 6,
having left New York City five days earlier aboard the Army
transport "Sumner." Meanwhile at Newport News, the quar­
termasters built an embarkation depot at the end of a spur of
the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. In the next two weeks,
sixteen merchant vessels under government contract sailed
with troops for Havana. The press of the ships at Newport
News (first come, first contracted) slowed the movement, for
each had to be inspected and, in some cases, modified to meet
Army regulations. The loading of supplies was not well organ­
ized and much equipment was lost. Still the expedition began
to leave Newport News on October 10 and the deployment
was completed by the end of the month. In Havana the
transports were unloaded at the Western Railway wharf,
where lines of khaki-clad Americans queued down the gang­
planks to the waiting trains which carried them to Camp
Columbia west of the city. With the Marines no doubt com­
menting freely on the Army's "speedy" reaction, the soldiers
then headed inland to their posts. By October 29, the Army
of Cuban Pacification (which included the First Provisional
Marine Regiment) garrisoned the island with six thousand
men. The second military occupation of Cuba had begun.
4

Cuba Pacified

The Army of Cuban Pacification was the muscle and steel

behind the Provisional Government, and from the outset its

mission was to deter insurrection in Cuba. Roosevelt hoped