The Spanish-American War took place between April 25, 1898, and August 13, 1898. Battles were fought in the Philippines and Puerto Rico, but most of the fighting was in Cuba. Public reaction to the oppressive Spanish rule of Cuba initiated the conflict, when the battleship USS _Maine_ exploded in February 1898. Although it was never proven, the widespread belief was that the ship had been torpedoed by the Spaniards. Clara Barton visited the _Maine_ a few days before the disaster, and was nearby when the explosion occurred: “The heavy clerical work of that fifteenth day of February held [us] ... busy at our writing tables until late at night. The house had grown still; the noises on the streets were dying away, when suddenly the table shook from under our hands, the great glass door opening on to the ... sea flew open; everything in the room was in motion or out of place, the deafening roar of such a burst of thunder as perhaps one never heard before, and off to the right, out over the bay, the air was filled with a blaze of light, and this in turn filled with black specks like huge specters flying in all directions. A few hours later came ... news of the _Maine_. “We proceeded to the Spanish hospital San Ambrosia, to find thirty to forty wounded—bruised, cut, burned; they had been crushed by timbers, cut by iron, scorched by fire, and blown sometimes high in the air, sometimes driven down through the red-hot furnace room and out into the water, senseless, to be picked up by some boat and gotten ashore.... Both men and officers are very reticent in regard to the cause, but all declare it could not have been the result of an internal explosion....” The earliest efforts of the Red Cross in Cuba were to aid the civilian _reconcentrados_ who were being detained by the Spaniards. Medical aid, clothing, and food were distributed, and hospitals and orphanages established. When fighting broke out, however, the Red Cross moved to supply the needs of the wounded. Clara Barton described the scene of one hospital camp in July 1898: “[We] reached here [General William Shafter’s headquarters] yesterday. Five more of us came today by army wagon and on foot. Eight hundred wounded have reached this hospital from front since Sunday morning. Surgeons and little squads have worked day and night. Hospital accommodations inadequate and many wounded on water-soaked ground without shelter or blankets. Our supplies a godsend. Have made barrels of gruel and malted milk and given food to many soldiers who have had none in three days.”