Who led the charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba in 1898?
Battle of San Juan Hill its new commander, Theodore Roosevelt, who eventually became vice president and later president of the United States, and who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2001 for his actions in Cuba. Spanish General Arsenio Linares ordered 760 Spanish Army regular troops to hold the San Juan heights against an American offensive on July 1, 1898. For unclear reasons, Linares failed to reinforce this position, choosing to hold nearly 10,000 Spanish reserves in the city of Santiago de Cuba. Spanish hilltop entrenchments, while typically well-concealed, were not all correctly positioned for plunging fire, which made return fire at the
San Juan Hill San Juan Hill San Juan Hill is a series of hills to the east of Santiago, Cuba, running north to south. The area is known as the San Juan Heights or in Spanish Alturas de San Juan before Spanish–American War of 1898, and are now part of Lomas de San Juan. These were the heights where Spanish soldiers entrenched themselves in the most famous battle of the Spanish–American War, the Battle of San Juan Hill. The Americans named the lesser heights, "Kettle Hill", and the higher southern hill, "San Juan Hill", after the battle of July 2, 1898. The two