Cuban Pacification

Occupation

On 6 October, the first army soldiers landed from the transport Sumner. The force was originally called the Army of Cuban Intervention but Taft renamed it on 15 October the Army of Cuban Pacification. The U.S. Congress and Roosevelt authorized the deployment of 18,000 men to Cuba for the expedition but the number in Cuba never exceeded 425 officers and 6,196 enlisted men. About half of the troops were from the 11th Cavalry Regiment under Colonel Earl Thomas and half from the 2nd Regiment, 1st Expeditionary Brigade. In one historian's account, the "Army of Cuban Pacification served as a strong moral presence on the island to encourage stability and obedience to the provisional government." Many of the officers were veterans of the Filipino War and exercised strict discipline to prevent serious incidents of misconduct. Since the rebels had already laid down their arms, the Americans focused on building roads and outposts. A total of 92 kilometers of new roads were constructed during the occupation and the army manned about thirty different posts in both the rural and urban areas, including Guantanamo Bay. Headquarters was at Camp Columbia, west of Havana. The military administration worried about their troops contracting typhoid, malaria and gonorrhea, and ten percent of the soldiers contracted a venereal disease during the occupation.