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                          THE ROUGH RIDERS
                                 BY

                         THEODORE ROOSEVELT
                                1899

 ON BEHALF OF THE ROUGH RIDERS I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE FIVE REGULAR REGIMENTS WHICH TOGETHER WITH MINE MADE UP THE CAVALRY DIVISION AT SANTIAGO{{Pause=0.5}}

                              Chapter 1
                        RAISING THE REGIMENT
During the year preceding the outbreak of the Spanish War I was
Assistant Secretary of the Navy. While my party was in opposition, I
had preached, with all the fervor and zeal I possessed, our duty to
intervene in Cuba, and to take this opportunity of driving the
Spaniard from the Western World. Now that my party had come to power,
I felt it incumbent on me, by word and deed, to do all I could to
secure the carrying out of the policy in which I so heartily believed;
and from the beginning I had determined that, if a war came, somehow
or other, I was going to the front.

Meanwhile, there was any amount of work at hand in getting ready the
navy, and to this I devoted myself.

Naturally, when one is intensely interested in a certain cause, the
tendency is to associate particularly with those who take the same
view. A large number of my friends felt very differently from the way
I felt, and looked upon the possibility of war with sincere horror.
But I found plenty of sympathizers, especially in the navy, the army,
and the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. Commodore Dewey, Captain
Evans, Captain Brownson, Captain Davis--with these and the various
other naval officers on duty at Washington I used to hold long
consultations, during which we went over and over, not only every
question of naval administration, but specifically everything
necessary to do in order to put the navy in trim to strike quick and
hard if, as we believed would be the case, we went to war with Spain.
Sending an ample quantity of ammunition to the Asiatic squadron and
providing it with coal; getting the battle-ships and the armored
cruisers on the Atlantic into one squadron, both to train them in
manoeuvring together, and to have them ready to sail against either
the Cuban or the Spanish coasts; gathering the torpedo-boats into a
flotilla for practice; securing ample target exercise, so conducted as
to raise the standard of our marksmanship; gathering in the small
ships from European and South American waters; settling on the number
and kind of craft needed as auxiliary cruisers--every one of these
points was threshed over in conversations with officers who were
present in Washington, or in correspondence with officers who, like
Captain Mahan, were absent.

As for the Senators, of course Senator Lodge and I felt precisely
alike; for to fight in such a cause and with such an enemy was merely
to carry out the doctrines we had both of us preached for many years.
Senator Davis, Senator Proctor, Senator Foraker, Senator Chandler,
Senator Morgan, Senator Frye, and a number of others also took just
the right ground; and I saw a great deal of them, as well as of many
members of the House, particularly those from the West, where the
feeling for war was strongest.

Naval officers came and went, and Senators were only in the city while
the Senate was in session; but there was one friend who was steadily
in Washington. This was an army surgeon, Dr. Leonard Wood. I only met
him after I entered the navy department, but we soon found that we had
kindred tastes and kindred principles. He had served in General
Miles's inconceivably harassing campaigns against the Apaches, where
he had displayed such courage that he won that most coveted of
distinctions--the Medal of Honor; such extraordinary physical strength
and endurance that he grew to be recognized as one of the two or three
white men who could stand fatigue and hardship as well as an Apache;
and such judgment that toward the close of the campaigns he was given,
though a surgeon, the actual command of more than one expedition
against the bands of renegade Indians. Like so many of the gallant
fighters with whom it was later my good fortune to serve, he combined,
in a very high degree, the qualities of entire manliness with entire
uprightness and cleanliness of character. It was a pleasure to deal
with a man of high ideals, who scorned everything mean and base, and
who also possessed those robust and hardy qualities of body and mind,
for the lack of which no merely negative virtue can ever atone. He was
by nature a soldier of the highest type, and, like most natural
soldiers, he was, of course, born with a keen longing for adventure;
and, though an excellent doctor, what he really desired was the chance
to lead men in some kind of hazard. To every possibility of such
adventure he paid quick attention. For instance, he had a great desire
to get me to go with him on an expedition into the Klondike in
mid-winter, at the time when it was thought that a relief party would
have to be sent there to help the starving miners.

In the summer he and I took long walks together through the beautiful
broken country surrounding Washington. In winter we sometimes varied
these walks by kicking a foot-ball in an empty lot, or, on the rare
occasions when there was enough snow, by trying a couple of sets of
skis or snow-skates, which had been sent me from Canada.

But always on our way out to and back from these walks and sport,
there was one topic to which, in our talking, we returned, and that
was the possible war with Spain. We both felt very strongly that such
a war would be as righteous as it would be advantageous to the honor
and the interests of the nation; and after the blowing up of the
Maine, we felt that it was inevitable. We then at once began to try to
see that we had our share in it. The President and my own chief,
Secretary Long, were very firm against my going, but they said that if
I was bent upon going they would help me. Wood was the medical adviser
of both the President and the Secretary of War, and could count upon
their friendship. So we started with the odds in our favor.

At first we had great difficulty in knowing exactly what to try for.
We could go on the staff of any one of several Generals, but we much
preferred to go in the line. Wood hoped he might get a commission in
his native State of Massachusetts; but in Massachusetts, as in every
other State, it proved there were ten men who wanted to go to the war
for every chance to go. Then we thought we might get positions as
field-officers under an old friend of mine, Colonel--now General
--Francis V. Greene, of New York, the Colonel of the Seventy-first;
but again there were no vacancies.

Our doubts were resolved when Congress authorized the raising of three
cavalry regiments from among the wild riders and riflemen of the
Rockies and the Great Plains. During Wood's service in the Southwest
he had commanded not only regulars and Indian scouts, but also white
frontiersmen. In the Northwest I had spent much of my time, for many
years, either on my ranch or in long hunting trips, and had lived and
worked for months together with the cowboy and the mountain hunter,
faring in every way precisely as they did.

Secretary Alger offered me the command of one of these regiments. If I
had taken it, being entirely inexperienced in military work, I should
not have known how to get it equipped most rapidly, for I should have
spent valuable weeks in learning its needs, with the result that I
should have missed the Santiago campaign, and might not even have had
the consolation prize of going to Porto Rico. Fortunately, I was wise
enough to tell the Secretary that while I believed I could learn to
command the regiment in a month, that it was just this very month
which I could not afford to spare, and that therefore I would be quite
content to go as Lieutenant-Colonel, if he would make Wood Colonel.

This was entirely satisfactory to both the President and Secretary,
and, accordingly, Wood and I were speedily commissioned as Colonel and
Lieutenant-Colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry. This
was the official title of the regiment, but for some reason or other
the public promptly christened us the "Rough Riders." At first we
fought against the use of the term, but to no purpose; and when
finally the Generals of Division and Brigade began to write in formal
communications about our regiment as the "Rough Riders," we adopted
the term ourselves.

The mustering-places for the regiment were appointed in New Mexico,
Arizona, Oklahoma, and Indian Territory. The difficulty in organizing
was not in selecting, but in rejecting men. Within a day or two after
it was announced that we were to raise the regiment, we were literally
deluged with applications from every quarter of the Union. Without the
slightest trouble, so far as men went, we could have raised a brigade
or even a division. The difficulty lay in arming, equipping, mounting,
and disciplining the men we selected. Hundreds of regiments were being
called into existence by the National Government, and each regiment
was sure to have innumerable wants to be satisfied. To a man who knew
the ground as Wood did, and who was entirely aware of our national
unpreparedness, it was evident that the ordnance and quartermaster's
bureaus could not meet, for some time to come, one-tenth of the
demands that would be made upon them; and it was all-important to get
in first with our demands. Thanks to his knowledge of the situation
and promptness, we immediately put in our requisitions for the
articles indispensable for the equipment of the regiment; and then, by
ceaseless worrying of excellent bureaucrats, who had no idea how to do
things quickly or how to meet an emergency, we succeeded in getting
our rifles, cartridges, revolvers, clothing, shelter-tents, and horse
gear just in time to enable us to go on the Santiago expedition. Some
of the State troops, who were already organized as National Guards,
were, of course, ready, after a fashion, when the war broke out; but
no other regiment which had our work to do was able to do it in
anything like as quick time, and therefore no other volunteer regiment
saw anything like the fighting which we did.

Wood thoroughly realized what the Ordnance Department failed to
realize, namely, the inestimable advantage of smokeless powder; and,
moreover, he was bent upon our having the weapons of the regulars, for
this meant that we would be brigaded with them, and it was evident
that they would do the bulk of the fighting if the war were short.
Accordingly, by acting with the utmost vigor and promptness, he
succeeded in getting our regiment armed with the Krag-Jorgensen
carbine used by the regular cavalry.

It was impossible to take any of the numerous companies which were
proffered to us from the various States. The only organized bodies we
were at liberty to accept were those from the four Territories. But
owing to the fact that the number of men originally allotted to us,
780, was speedily raised to 1,000, we were given a chance to accept
quite a number of eager volunteers who did not come from the
Territories, but who possessed precisely the same temper that
distinguished our Southwestern recruits, and whose presence materially
benefited the regiment.

We drew recruits from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and many another
college; from clubs like the Somerset, of Boston, and Knickerbocker,
of New York; and from among the men who belonged neither to club nor
to college, but in whose veins the blood stirred with the same impulse
which once sent the Vikings over sea. Four of the policemen who had
served under me, while I was President of the New York Police Board,
insisted on coming--two of them to die, the other two to return unhurt
after honorable and dangerous service. It seemed to me that almost
every friend I had in every State had some one acquaintance who was
bound to go with the Rough Riders, and for whom I had to make a place.
Thomas Nelson Page, General Fitzhugh Lee, Congressman Odell, of New
York, Senator Morgan; for each of these, and for many others, I
eventually consented to accept some one or two recruits, of course
only after a most rigid examination into their physical capacity, and
after they had shown that they knew how to ride and shoot. I may add
that in no case was I disappointed in the men thus taken.

Harvard being my own college, I had such a swarm of applications from
it that I could not take one in ten. What particularly pleased me, not
only in the Harvard but the Yale and Princeton men, and, indeed, in
these recruits from the older States generally, was that they did not
ask for commissions. With hardly an exception they entered upon their
duties as troopers in the spirit which they held to the end, merely
endeavoring to show that no work could be too hard, too disagreeable,
or too dangerous for them to perform, and neither asking nor receiving
any reward in the way of promotion or consideration. The Harvard
contingent was practically raised by Guy Murchie, of Maine. He saw all
the fighting and did his duty with the utmost gallantry, and then left
the service as he had entered it, a trooper, entirely satisfied to
have done his duty--and no man did it better. So it was with Dudley
Dean, perhaps the best quarterback who ever played on a Harvard
Eleven; and so with Bob Wrenn, a quarterback whose feats rivalled
those of Dean's, and who, in addition, was the champion tennis player
of America, and had, on two different years, saved this championship
from going to an Englishman. So it was with Yale men like Waller, the
high jumper, and Garrison and Girard; and with Princeton men like
Devereux and Channing, the foot-ball players; with Larned, the tennis
player; with Craig Wadsworth, the steeple-chase rider; with Joe
Stevens, the crack polo player; with Hamilton Fish, the ex-captain of
the Columbia crew, and with scores of others whose names are quite as
worthy of mention as any of those I have given. Indeed, they all
sought entry into the ranks of the Rough Riders as eagerly as if it
meant something widely different from hard work, rough fare, and the
possibility of death; and the reason why they turned out to be such
good soldiers lay largely in the fact that they were men who had
thoroughly counted the cost before entering, and who went into the
regiment because they believed that this offered their best chance for
seeing hard and dangerous service. Mason Mitchell, of New York, who
had been a chief of scouts in the Riel Rebellion, travelled all the
way to San Antonio to enlist; and others came there from distances as
great.

Some of them made appeals to me which I could not possibly resist.
Woodbury Kane had been a close friend of mine at Harvard. During the
eighteen years that had passed since my graduation I had seen very
little of him, though, being always interested in sport, I
occasionally met him on the hunting field, had seen him on the deck of
the Defender when she vanquished the Valkyrie, and knew the part he
had played on the Navajoe, when, in her most important race, that
otherwise unlucky yacht vanquished her opponent, the Prince of Wales's
Britannia. When the war was on, Kane felt it his duty to fight for his
country. He did not seek any position of distinction. All he desired
was the chance to do whatever work he was put to do well, and to get
to the front; and he enlisted as a trooper. When I went down to the
camp at San Antonio he was on kitchen duty, and was cooking and
washing dishes for one of the New Mexican troops; and he was doing it
so well that I had no further doubt as to how he would get on.

My friend of many hunts and ranch partner, Robert Munro Ferguson, of
Scotland, who had been on Lord Aberdeen's staff as a Lieutenant but a
year before, likewise could not keep out of the regiment. He, too,
appealed to me in terms which I could not withstand, and came in like
Kane to do his full duty as a trooper, and like Kane to win his
commission by the way he thus did his duty.

I felt many qualms at first in allowing men of this stamp to come in,
for I could not be certain that they had counted the cost, and was
afraid they would find it very hard to serve--not for a few days, but
for months--in the ranks, while I, their former intimate associate,
was a field-officer; but they insisted that they knew their minds, and
the events showed that they did. We enlisted about fifty of them from
Virginia, Maryland, and the Northeastern States, at Washington. Before
allowing them to be sworn in, I gathered them together and explained
that if they went in they must be prepared not merely to fight, but to
perform the weary, monotonous labor incident to the ordinary routine
of a soldier's life; that they must be ready to face fever exactly as
they were to face bullets; that they were to obey unquestioningly, and
to do their duty as readily if called upon to garrison a fort as if
sent to the front. I warned them that work that was merely irksome and
disagreeable must be faced as readily as work that was dangerous, and
that no complaint of any kind must be made; and I told them that they
were entirely at liberty not to go, but that after they had once
signed there could then be no backing out.

Not a man of them backed out; not one of them failed to do his whole
duty.

These men formed but a small fraction of the whole. They went down to
San Antonio, where the regiment was to gather and where Wood preceded
me, while I spent a week in Washington hurrying up the different
bureaus and telegraphing my various railroad friends, so as to insure
our getting the carbines, saddles, and uniforms that we needed from
the various armories and storehouses. Then I went down to San Antonio
myself, where I found the men from New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma
already gathered, while those from Indian Territory came in soon after
my arrival.

These were the men who made up the bulk of the regiment, and gave it
its peculiar character. They came from the Four Territories which yet
remained within the boundaries of the United States; that is, from the
lands that have been most recently won over to white civilization, and
in which the conditions of life are nearest those that obtained on the
frontier when there still was a frontier. They were a splendid set of
men, these Southwesterners--tall and sinewy, with resolute,
weather-beaten faces, and eyes that looked a man straight in the face
without flinching. They included in their ranks men of every
occupation; but the three types were those of the cowboy, the hunter,
and the mining prospector--the man who wandered hither and thither,
killing game for a living, and spending his life in the quest for
metal wealth.

In all the world there could be no better material for soldiers than
that afforded by these grim hunters of the mountains, these wild rough
riders of the plains. They were accustomed to handling wild and savage
horses; they were accustomed to following the chase with the rifle,
both for sport and as a means of livelihood. Varied though their
occupations had been, almost all had, at one time or another, herded
cattle and hunted big game. They were hardened to life in the open,
and to shifting for themselves under adverse circumstances. They were
used, for all their lawless freedom, to the rough discipline of the
round-up and the mining company. Some of them came from the small
frontier towns; but most were from the wilderness, having left their
lonely hunters' cabins and shifting cow-camps to seek new and more
stirring adventures beyond the sea.

They had their natural leaders--the men who had shown they could
master other men, and could more than hold their own in the eager
driving life of the new settlements.

The Captains and Lieutenants were sometimes men who had campaigned in
the regular army against Apache, Ute, and Cheyenne, and who, on
completing their term of service, had shown their energy by settling
in the new communities and growing up to be men of mark. In other
cases they were sheriffs, marshals, deputy-sheriffs, and
deputy-marshals--men who had fought Indians, and still more often had
waged relentless war upon the bands of white desperadoes. There was
Bucky O'Neill, of Arizona, Captain of Troop A, the Mayor of Prescott,
a famous sheriff throughout the West for his feats of victorious
warfare against the Apache, no less than against the white road-agents
and man-killers. His father had fought in Meagher's Brigade in the
Civil War; and he was himself a born soldier, a born leader of men. He
was a wild, reckless fellow, soft spoken, and of dauntless courage and
boundless ambition; he was staunchly loyal to his friends, and cared
for his men in every way. There was Captain Llewellen, of New Mexico,
a good citizen, a political leader, and one of the most noted
peace-officers of the country; he had been shot four times in pitched
fights with red marauders and white outlaws. There was Lieutenant
Ballard, who had broken up the Black Jack gang of ill-omened
notoriety, and his Captain, Curry, another New Mexican sheriff of
fame. The officers from the Indian Territory had almost all served as
marshals and deputy-marshals; and in the Indian Territory, service as
a deputy-marshal meant capacity to fight stand-up battles with the
gangs of outlaws.

Three of our higher officers had been in the regular army. One was
Major Alexander Brodie, from Arizona, afterward Lieutenant-Colonel,
who had lived for twenty years in the Territory, and had become a
thorough Westerner without sinking the West Pointer--a soldier by
taste as well as training, whose men worshipped him and would follow
him anywhere, as they would Bucky O'Neill or any other of their
favorites. Brodie was running a big mining business; but when the
Maine was blown up, he abandoned everything and telegraphed right
and left to bid his friends get ready for the fight he saw impending.

Then there was Micah Jenkins, the captain of Troop K, a gentle and
courteous South Carolinian, on whom danger acted like wine. In action
he was a perfect game-cock, and he won his majority for gallantry in
battle.

Finally, there was Allyn Capron, who was, on the whole, the best
soldier in the regiment. In fact, I think he was the ideal of what an
American regular army officer should be. He was the fifth in descent
from father to son who had served in the army of the United States,
and in body and mind alike he was fitted to play his part to
perfection. Tall and lithe, a remarkable boxer and walker, a
first-class rider and shot, with yellow hair and piercing blue eyes,
he looked what he was, the archetype of the fighting man. He had under
him one of the two companies from the Indian Territory; and he so soon
impressed himself upon the wild spirit of his followers, that he got
them ahead in discipline faster than any other troop in the regiment,
while at the same time taking care of their bodily wants. His
ceaseless effort was so to train them, care for them, and inspire them
as to bring their fighting efficiency to the highest possible pitch.
He required instant obedience, and tolerated not the slightest evasion
of duty; but his mastery of his art was so thorough and his
performance of his own duty so rigid that he won at once not merely
their admiration, but that soldierly affection so readily given by the
man in the ranks to the superior who cares for his men and leads them
fearlessly in battle.

All--Easterners and Westerners, Northerners and Southerners, officers
and men, cowboys and college graduates, wherever they came from, and
whatever their social position--possessed in common the traits of
hardihood and a thirst for adventure. They were to a man born
adventurers, in the old sense of the word.

The men in the ranks were mostly young; yet some were past their first
youth. These had taken part in the killing of the great buffalo herds,
and had fought Indians when the tribes were still on the war-path. The
younger ones, too, had led rough lives; and the lines in their faces
told of many a hardship endured, and many a danger silently faced with
grim, unconscious philosophy. Some were originally from the East, and
had seen strange adventures in different kinds of life, from sailing
round the Horn to mining in Alaska. Others had been born and bred in
the West, and had never seen a larger town than Santa Fe or a bigger
body of water than the Pecos in flood. Some of them went by their own
name; some had changed their names; and yet others possessed but half
a name, colored by some adjective, like Cherokee Bill, Happy Jack of
Arizona, Smoky Moore, the bronco-buster, so named because cowboys
often call vicious horses "smoky" horses, and Rattlesnake Pete, who
had lived among the Moquis and taken part in the snake-dances. Some
were professional gamblers, and, on the other hand, no less than four
were or had been Baptist or Methodist clergymen--and proved
first-class fighters, too, by the way. Some were men whose lives in
the past had not been free from the taint of those fierce kinds of
crime into which the lawless spirits who dwell on the border-land
between civilization and savagery so readily drift. A far larger
number had served at different times in those bodies of armed men with
which the growing civilization of the border finally puts down its
savagery.

There was one characteristic and distinctive contingent which could
have appeared only in such a regiment as ours. From the Indian
Territory there came a number of Indians--Cherokees, Chickasaws,
Choctaws, and Creeks. Only a few were of pure blood. The others shaded
off until they were absolutely indistinguishable from their white
comrades; with whom, it may be mentioned, they all lived on terms of
complete equality.

Not all of the Indians were from the Indian Territory. One of the
gamest fighters and best soldiers in the regiment was Pollock, a
full-blooded Pawnee. He had been educated, like most of the other
Indians, at one of those admirable Indian schools which have added so
much to the total of the small credit account with which the White
race balances the very unpleasant debit account of its dealings with
the Red. Pollock was a silent, solitary fellow--an excellent penman,
much given to drawing pictures. When we got down to Santiago he
developed into the regimental clerk. I never suspected him of having a
sense of humor until one day, at the end of our stay in Cuba, as he
was sitting in the Adjutant's tent working over the returns, there
turned up a trooper of the First who had been acting as barber. Eyeing
him with immovable face Pollock asked, in a guttural voice: "Do you
cut hair?" The man answered "Yes"; and Pollock continued, "Then you'd
better cut mine," muttering, in an explanatory soliloquy: "Don't want
to wear my hair long like a wild Indian when I'm in civilized
warfare."

Another Indian came from Texas. He was a brakeman on the Southern
Pacific, and wrote telling me he was an American Indian, and that he
wanted to enlist. His name was Colbert, which at once attracted my
attention; for I was familiar with the history of the Cherokees and
Chickasaws during the eighteenth century, when they lived east of the
Mississippi. Early in that century various traders, chiefly Scotchmen,
settled among them, and the half-breed descendants of one named
Colbert became the most noted chiefs of the Chickasaws. I summoned the
applicant before me, and found that he was an excellent man, and, as I
had supposed, a descendant of the old Chickasaw chiefs.

He brought into the regiment, by the way, his "partner," a white man.
The two had been inseparable companions for some years, and continued
so in the regiment. Every man who has lived in the West knows that,
vindictive though the hatred between the white man and the Indian is
when they stand against one another in what may be called their tribal
relations, yet that men of Indian blood, when adopted into white
communities, are usually treated precisely like anyone else.

Colbert was not the only Indian whose name I recognized. There was a
Cherokee named Adair, who, upon inquiry, I found to be descended from
the man who, a century and a half ago, wrote a ponderous folio, to
this day of great interest, about the Cherokees, with whom he had
spent the best years of his life as a trader and agent.

I don't know that I ever came across a man with a really sweeter
nature than another Cherokee named Holderman. He was an excellent
soldier, and for a long time acted as cook for the head-quarters mess.
He was a half-breed, and came of a soldier stock on both sides and
through both races. He explained to me once why he had come to the
war; that it was because his people always had fought when there was a
war, and he could not feel happy to stay at home when the flag was
going into battle.

Two of the young Cherokee recruits came to me with a most kindly
letter from one of the ladies who had been teaching in the academy
from which they were about to graduate. She and I had known one
another in connection with Governmental and philanthropic work on the
reservations, and she wrote to commend the two boys to my attention.
One was on the Academy foot-ball team and the other in the glee-club.
Both were fine young fellows. The foot-ball player now lies buried
with the other dead who fell in the fight at San Juan. The singer was
brought to death's door by fever, but recovered and came back to his
home.

There were other Indians of much wilder type, but their wildness was
precisely like that of the cowboys with whom they were associated.
One or two of them needed rough discipline; and they got it, too. Like
the rest of the regiment, they were splendid riders. I remember one
man, whose character left much to be desired in some respects, but
whose horsemanship was unexceptionable. He was mounted on an
exceedingly bad bronco, which would bolt out of the ranks at drill. He
broke it of this habit by the simple expedient of giving it two
tremendous twists, first to one side and then to the other, as it
bolted, with the result that, invariably, at the second bound its legs
crossed and over it went with a smash, the rider taking the somersault
with unmoved equanimity.

The life histories of some of the men who joined our regiment would
make many volumes of thrilling adventure.

We drew a great many recruits from Texas; and from nowhere did we get
a higher average, for many of them had served in that famous body of
frontier fighters, the Texas Rangers. Of course, these rangers needed
no teaching. They were already trained to obey and to take
responsibility. They were splendid shots, horsemen, and trailers. They
were accustomed to living in the open, to enduring great fatigue and
hardship, and to encountering all kinds of danger.

Many of the Arizona and New Mexico men had taken part in warfare with
the Apaches, those terrible Indians of the waterless Southwestern
mountains--the most bloodthirsty and the wildest of all the red men of
America, and the most formidable in their own dreadful style of
warfare. Of course, a man who had kept his nerve and held his own,
year after year, while living where each day and night contained the
threat of hidden death from a foe whose goings and comings were
unseen, was not apt to lose courage when confronted with any other
enemy. An experience in following in the trail of an enemy who might
flee at one stretch through fifty miles of death-like desert was a
good school out of which to come with profound indifference for the
ordinary hardships of campaigning.

As a rule, the men were more apt, however, to have had experience in
warring against white desperadoes and law-breakers than against
Indians. Some of our best recruits came from Colorado. One, a very
large, hawk-eyed man, Benjamin Franklin Daniels, had been Marshal of
Dodge City when that pleasing town was probably the toughest abode of
civilized man to be found anywhere on the continent. In the course of
the exercise of his rather lurid functions as peace-officer he had
lost half of one ear--"bitten off," it was explained to me. Naturally,
he viewed the dangers of battle with philosophic calm. Such a man was,
in reality, a veteran even in his first fight, and was a tower of
strength to the recruits in his part of the line. With him there came
into the regiment a deputy-marshal from Cripple Creek named Sherman
Bell. Bell had a hernia, but he was so excellent a man that we decided
to take him. I do not think I ever saw greater resolution than Bell
displayed throughout the campaign. In Cuba the great exertions which
he was forced to make, again and again opened the hernia, and the
surgeons insisted that he must return to the United States; but he
simply would not go.

Then there was little McGinty, the bronco-buster from Oklahoma, who
never had walked a hundred yards if by any possibility he could ride.
When McGinty was reproved for his absolute inability to keep step on
the drill-ground, he responded that he was pretty sure he could keep
step on horseback. McGinty's short legs caused him much trouble on the
marches, but we had no braver or better man in the fights.

One old friend of mine had come from far northern Idaho to join the
regiment at San Antonio. He was a hunter, named Fred Herrig, an
Alsatian by birth. A dozen years before he and I had hunted mountain
sheep and deer when laying in the winter stock of meat for my ranch on
the Little Missouri, sometimes in the bright fall weather, sometimes
in the Arctic bitterness of the early Northern winter. He was the most
loyal and simple-hearted of men, and he had come to join his old
"boss" and comrade in the bigger hunting which we were to carry on
through the tropic midsummer.

The temptation is great to go on enumerating man after man who stood
pre-eminent, whether as a killer of game, a tamer of horses, or a
queller of disorder among his people, or who, mayhap, stood out with a
more evil prominence as himself a dangerous man--one given to the
taking of life on small provocation, or one who was ready to earn his
living outside the law if the occasion demanded it. There was tall
Proffit, the sharp-shooter, from North Carolina--sinewy, saturnine,
fearless; Smith, the bear-hunter from Wyoming, and McCann, the Arizona
book-keeper, who had begun life as a buffalo-hunter. There was
Crockett, the Georgian, who had been an Internal Revenue officer, and
had waged perilous war on the rifle-bearing "moonshiners." There were
Darnell and Wood, of New Mexico, who could literally ride any horses
alive. There were Goodwin, and Buck Taylor, and Armstrong the ranger,
crack shots with rifle or revolver. There was many a skilled packer
who had led and guarded his trains of laden mules through the
Indian-haunted country surrounding some out-post of civilization.
There were men who had won fame as Rocky Mountain stage-drivers, or
who had spent endless days in guiding the slow wagon-trains across the
grassy plains. There were miners who knew every camp from the Yukon to
Leadville, and cow-punchers in whose memories were stored the brands
carried by the herds from Chihuahua to Assiniboia. There were men who
had roped wild steers in the mesquite brush of the Nueces, and who,
year in and year out, had driven the trail herds northward over
desolate wastes and across the fords of shrunken rivers to the
fattening grounds of the Powder and the Yellowstone. They were
hardened to the scorching heat and bitter cold of the dry plains and
pine-clad mountains. They were accustomed to sleep in the open, while
the picketed horses grazed beside them near some shallow, reedy pool.
They had wandered hither and thither across the vast desolation of the
wilderness, alone or with comrades. They had cowered in the shelter of
cut banks from the icy blast of the norther, and far out on the
midsummer prairies they had known the luxury of lying in the shade of
the wagon during the noonday rest. They had lived in brush lean-tos
for weeks at a time, or with only the wagon-sheet as an occasional
house. They had fared hard when exploring the unknown; they had fared
well on the round-up; and they had known the plenty of the log
ranch-houses, where the tables were spread with smoked venison and
calf-ribs and milk and bread, and vegetables from the garden-patch.

Such were the men we had as recruits: soldiers ready made, as far as
concerned their capacity as individual fighters. What was necessary
was to teach them to act together, and to obey orders. Our special
task was to make them ready for action in the shortest possible time.
We were bound to see fighting, and therefore to be with the first
expedition that left the United States; for we could not tell how long
the war would last.

I had been quite prepared for trouble when it came to enforcing
discipline, but I was agreeably disappointed. There were plenty of
hard characters who might by themselves have given trouble, and with
one or two of whom we did have to take rough measures; but the bulk of
the men thoroughly understood that without discipline they would be
merely a valueless mob, and they set themselves hard at work to learn
the new duties. Of course, such a regiment, in spite of, or indeed I
might almost say because of, the characteristics which made the
individual men so exceptionally formidable as soldiers, could very
readily have been spoiled. Any weakness in the commander would have
ruined it. On the other hand, to treat it from the stand-point of the
martinet and military pedant would have been almost equally fatal.
From the beginning we started out to secure the essentials of
discipline, while laying just as little stress as possible on the
non-essentials. The men were singularly quick to respond to any appeal
to their intelligence and patriotism. The faults they committed were
those of ignorance merely. When Holderman, in announcing dinner to the
Colonel and the three Majors, genially remarked, "If you fellars don't
come soon, everything'll get cold," he had no thought of other than a
kindly and respectful regard for their welfare, and was glad to modify
his form of address on being told that it was not what could be
described as conventionally military. When one of our sentinels, who
had with much labor learned the manual of arms, saluted with great
pride as I passed, and added, with a friendly nod, "Good-evening,
Colonel," this variation in the accepted formula on such occasions was
meant, and was accepted, as mere friendly interest. In both cases the
needed instruction was given and received in the same kindly spirit.

One of the new Indian Territory recruits, after twenty-four hours'
stay in camp, during which he had held himself distinctly aloof from
the general interests, called on the Colonel in his tent, and
remarked, "Well, Colonel, I want to shake hands and say we're with
you. We didn't know how we would like you fellars at first; but you're
all right, and you know your business, and you mean business, and you
can count on us every time!"

That same night, which was hot, mosquitoes were very annoying; and
shortly after midnight both the Colonel and I came to the doors of our
respective tents, which adjoined one another. The sentinel in front
was also fighting mosquitoes. As we came out we saw him pitch his gun
about ten feet off, and sit down to attack some of the pests that had
swarmed up his trousers' legs. Happening to glance in our direction,
he nodded pleasantly and, with unabashed and friendly feeling,
remarked, "Ain't they bad?"

It was astonishing how soon the men got over these little
peculiarities. They speedily grew to recognize the fact that the
observance of certain forms was essential to the maintenance of proper
discipline. They became scrupulously careful in touching their hats,
and always came to attention when spoken to. They saw that we did not
insist upon the observance of these forms to humiliate them; that we
were as anxious to learn our own duties as we were to have them learn
theirs, and as scrupulous in paying respect to our superiors as we
were in exacting the acknowledgment due our rank from those below us;
moreover, what was very important, they saw that we were careful to
look after their interests in every way, and were doing all that was
possible to hurry up the equipment and drill of the regiment, so as to
get into the war.

Rigid guard duty was established at once, and everyone was impressed
with the necessity for vigilance and watchfulness. The policing of the
camp was likewise attended to with the utmost rigor. As always with
new troops, they were at first indifferent to the necessity for
cleanliness in camp arrangements; but on this point Colonel Wood
brooked no laxity, and in a very little while the hygienic conditions
of the camp were as good as those of any regular regiment. Meanwhile
the men were being drilled, on foot at first, with the utmost
assiduity. Every night we had officers' school, the non-commissioned
officers of each troop being given similar schooling by the Captain or
one of the Lieutenants of the troop; and every day we practised hard,
by squad, by troop, by squadron and battalion. The earnestness and
intelligence with which the men went to work rendered the task of
instruction much less difficult than would be supposed. It soon grew
easy to handle the regiment in all the simpler forms of close and open
order. When they had grown so that they could be handled with ease in
marching, and in the ordinary manoeuvres of the drill-ground, we began
to train them in open-order work, skirmishing and firing. Here their
woodcraft and plainscraft, their knowledge of the rifle, helped us
very much. Skirmishing they took to naturally, which was fortunate, as
practically all our fighting was done in open order.

Meanwhile we were purchasing horses. Judging from what I saw I do not
think that we got heavy enough animals, and of those purchased
certainly a half were nearly unbroken. It was no easy matter to handle
them on the picket-lines, and to provide for feeding and watering; and
the efforts to shoe and ride them were at first productive of much
vigorous excitement. Of course, those that were wild from the range
had to be thrown and tied down before they could be shod. Half the
horses of the regiment bucked, or possessed some other of the amiable
weaknesses incident to horse life on the great ranches; but we had
abundance of men who were utterly unmoved by any antic a horse might
commit. Every animal was speedily mastered, though a large number
remained to the end mounts upon which an ordinary rider would have
felt very uncomfortable.

My own horses were purchased for me by a Texas friend, John Moore,
with whom I had once hunted peccaries on the Nueces. I only paid fifty
dollars apiece, and the animals were not showy; but they were tough
and hardy, and answered my purpose well.

Mounted drill with such horses and men bade fair to offer
opportunities for excitement; yet it usually went off smoothly enough.
Before drilling the men on horseback they had all been drilled on
foot, and having gone at their work with hearty zest, they knew well
the simple movements to form any kind of line or column. Wood was busy
from morning till night in hurrying the final details of the
equipment, and he turned the drill of the men over to me. To drill
perfectly needs long practice, but to drill roughly is a thing very
easy to learn indeed. We were not always right about our intervals,
our lines were somewhat irregular, and our more difficult movements
were executed at times in rather a haphazard way; but the essential
commands and the essential movements we learned without any
difficulty, and the men performed them with great dash. When we put
them on horseback, there was, of course, trouble with the horses; but
the horsemanship of the riders was consummate. In fact, the men were
immensely interested in making their horses perform each evolution
with the utmost speed and accuracy, and in forcing each unquiet,
vicious brute to get into line and stay in line, whether he would or
not. The guidon-bearers held their plunging steeds true to the line,
no matter what they tried to do; and each wild rider brought his wild
horse into his proper place with a dash and ease which showed the
natural cavalryman.

In short, from the very beginning the horseback drills were good fun,
and everyone enjoyed them. We marched out through the adjoining
country to drill wherever we found open ground, practising all the
different column formations as we went. On the open ground we threw
out the line to one side or the other, and in one position and the
other, sometimes at the trot, sometimes at the gallop. As the men grew
accustomed to the simple evolutions, we tried them more and more in
skirmish drills, practising them so that they might get accustomed to
advance in open order and to skirmish in any country, while the horses
were held in the rear.

Our arms were the regular cavalry carbine, the "Krag," a splendid
weapon, and the revolver. A few carried their favorite Winchesters,
using, of course, the new model, which took the Government cartridge.
We felt very strongly that it would be worse than a waste of time to
try to train our men to use the sabre--a weapon utterly alien to them;
but with the rifle and revolver they were already thoroughly familiar.
Many of my cavalry friends in the past had insisted to me that the
revolver was a better weapon than the sword--among them Basil Duke, the
noted Confederate cavalry leader, and Captain Frank Edwards, whom I
had met when elk-hunting on the head-waters of the Yellowstone and the
Snake. Personally, I knew too little to decide as to the comparative
merits of the two arms; but I did know that it was a great deal better
to use the arm with which our men were already proficient. They were
therefore armed with what might be called their natural weapon, the
revolver.

As it turned out, we were not used mounted at all, so that our
preparations on this point came to nothing. In a way, I have always
regretted this. We thought we should at least be employed as cavalry
in the great campaign against Havana in the fall; and from the
beginning I began to train my men in shock tactics for use against
hostile cavalry. My belief was that the horse was really the weapon
with which to strike the first blow. I felt that if my men could be
trained to hit their adversaries with their horses, it was a matter of
small amount whether, at the moment when the onset occurred, sabres,
lances, or revolvers were used; while in the subsequent melee I
believed the revolver would outclass cold steel as a weapon. But this
is all guesswork, for we never had occasion to try the experiment.

It was astonishing what a difference was made by two or three weeks'
training. The mere thorough performance of guard and police duties
helped the men very rapidly to become soldiers. The officers studied
hard, and both officers and men worked hard in the drill-field. It
was, of course, rough and ready drill; but it was very efficient, and
it was suited to the men who made up the regiment. Their uniform also
suited them. In their slouch hats, blue flannel shirts, brown
trousers, leggings and boots, with handkerchiefs knotted loosely
around their necks, they looked exactly as a body of cowboy cavalry
should look. The officers speedily grew to realize that they must not
be over-familiar with their men, and yet that they must care for them
in every way. The men, in return, began to acquire those habits of
attention to soldierly detail which mean so much in making a regiment.
Above all, every man felt, and had constantly instilled into him, a
keen pride of the regiment, and a resolute purpose to do his whole
duty uncomplainingly, and, above all, to win glory by the way he
handled himself in battle.

Chapter 2

                              TO CUBA

Up to the last moment we were spending every ounce of energy we had in
getting the regiment into shape. Fortunately, there were a good many
vacancies among the officers, as the original number of 780 men was
increased to 1,000; so that two companies were organized entirely
anew. This gave the chance to promote some first-rate men.

One of the most useful members of the regiment was Dr. Robb Church,
formerly a Princeton foot-ball player. He was appointed as Assistant
Surgeon, but acted throughout almost all the Cuban campaign as the
Regimental Surgeon. It was Dr. Church who first gave me an idea of
Bucky O'Neill's versatility, for I happened to overhear them
discussing Aryan word-roots together, and then sliding off into a
review of the novels of Balzac, and a discussion as to how far Balzac
could be said to be the founder of the modern realistic school of
fiction. Church had led almost as varied a life as Bucky himself, his
career including incidents as far apart as exploring and elk-hunting
in the Olympic Mountains, cooking in a lumber-camp, and serving as
doctor on an emigrant ship.

Woodbury Kane was given a commission, and also Horace Devereux, of
Princeton. Kane was older than the other college men who entered in
the ranks; and as he had the same good qualities to start with, this
resulted in his ultimately becoming perhaps the most useful soldier in
the regiment. He escaped wounds and serious sickness, and was able to
serve through every day of the regiment's existence.

Two of the men made Second Lieutenants by promotion from the ranks
while in San Antonio were John Greenway, a noted Yale foot-ball player
and catcher on her base-ball nine, and David Goodrich, for two years
captain of the Harvard crew. They were young men, Goodrich having only
just graduated; while Greenway, whose father had served with honor in
the Confederate Army, had been out of Yale three or four years. They
were natural soldiers, and it would be well-nigh impossible to
overestimate the amount of good they did the regiment. They were
strapping fellows, entirely fearless, modest, and quiet. Their only
thought was how to perfect themselves in their own duties, and how to
take care of the men under them, so as to bring them to the highest
point of soldierly perfection. I grew steadily to rely upon them, as
men who could be counted upon with absolute certainty, not only in
every emergency, but in all routine work. They were never so tired as
not to respond with eagerness to the slightest suggestion of doing
something new, whether it was dangerous or merely difficult and
laborious. They not merely did their duty, but were always on the
watch to find out some new duty which they could construe to be
theirs. Whether it was policing camp, or keeping guard, or preventing
straggling on the march, or procuring food for the men, or seeing that
they took care of themselves in camp, or performing some feat of
unusual hazard in the fight--no call was ever made upon them to which
they did not respond with eager thankfulness for being given the
chance to answer it. Later on I worked them as hard as I knew how, and
the regiment will always be their debtor.

Greenway was from Arkansas. We could have filled up the whole regiment
many times over from the South Atlantic and Gulf States alone, but
were only able to accept a very few applicants. One of them was John
McIlhenny, of Louisiana; a planter and manufacturer, a big-game
hunter and book-lover, who could have had a commission in the
Louisiana troops, but who preferred to go as a trooper in the Rough
Riders because he believed we would surely see fighting. He could have
commanded any influence, social or political, he wished; but he never
asked a favor of any kind. He went into one of the New Mexican troops,
and by his high qualities and zealous attention to duty speedily rose
to a sergeantcy, and finally won his lieutenancy for gallantry in
action.

The tone of the officers' mess was very high. Everyone seemed to
realize that he had undertaken most serious work. They all earnestly
wished for a chance to distinguish themselves, and fully appreciated
that they ran the risk not merely of death, but of what was infinitely
worse--namely, failure at the crisis to perform duty well; and they
strove earnestly so to train themselves, and the men under them, as to
minimize the possibility of such disgrace. Every officer and every man
was taught continually to look forward to the day of battle eagerly,
but with an entire sense of the drain that would then be made upon his
endurance and resolution. They were also taught that, before the
battle came, the rigorous performance of the countless irksome duties
of the camp and the march was demanded from all alike, and that no
excuse would be tolerated for failure to perform duty. Very few of the
men had gone into the regiment lightly, and the fact that they did
their duty so well may be largely attributed to the seriousness with
which these eager, adventurous young fellows approached their work.
This seriousness, and a certain simple manliness which accompanied it,
had one very pleasant side. During our entire time of service, I never
heard in the officers' mess a foul story or a foul word; and though
there was occasional hard swearing in moments of emergency, yet even
this was the exception.

The regiment attracted adventurous spirits from everywhere. Our chief
trumpeter was a native American, our second trumpeter was from the
Mediterranean--I think an Italian--who had been a soldier of fortune
not only in Egypt, but in the French Army in Southern China. Two
excellent men were Osborne, a tall Australian, who had been an officer
in the New South Wales Mounted Rifles; and Cook, an Englishman, who
had served in South Africa. Both, when the regiment disbanded, were
plaintive in expressing their fond regret that it could not be used
against the Transvaal Boers!

One of our best soldiers was a man whose real and assumed names I, for
obvious reasons conceal. He usually went by a nickname which I will
call Tennessee. He was a tall, gaunt fellow, with a quiet and
distinctly sinister eye, who did his duty excellently, especially when
a fight was on, and who, being an expert gambler, always contrived to
reap a rich harvest after pay-day. When the regiment was mustered out,
he asked me to put a brief memorandum of his services on his discharge
certificate, which I gladly did. He much appreciated this, and added,
in explanation, "You see, Colonel, my real name isn't Smith, it's
Yancy. I had to change it, because three or four years ago I had a
little trouble with a gentleman, and--er--well, in fact, I had to kill
him; and the District Attorney, he had it in for me, and so I just
skipped the country; and now, if it ever should be brought up against
me, I should like to show your certificate as to my character!" The
course of frontier justice sometimes moves in unexpected zigzags; so I
did not express the doubt I felt as to whether my certificate that he
had been a good soldier would help him much if he was tried for a
murder committed three or four years previously.

The men worked hard and faithfully. As a rule, in spite of the number
of rough characters among them, they behaved very well. One night a
few of them went on a spree, and proceeded "to paint San Antonio red."
One was captured by the city authorities, and we had to leave him
behind us in jail. The others we dealt with ourselves, in a way that
prevented a repetition of the occurrence.

The men speedily gave one another nicknames, largely conferred in a
spirit of derision, their basis lying in contrast. A brave but
fastidious member of a well-known Eastern club, who was serving in the
ranks, was christened "Tough Ike"; and his bunkie, the man who shared
his shelter-tent, who was a decidedly rough cow-puncher, gradually
acquired the name of "The Dude." One unlucky and simple-minded
cow-puncher, who had never been east of the great plains in his life,
unwarily boasted that he had an aunt in New York, and ever afterward
went by the name of "Metropolitan Bill." A huge red-headed Irishman
was named "Sheeny Solomon." A young Jew who developed into one of the
best fighters in the regiment accepted, with entire equanimity, the
name of "Pork-chop." We had quite a number of professional gamblers,
who, I am bound to say, usually made good soldiers. One, who was
almost abnormally quiet and gentle, was called "Hell Roarer"; while
another, who in point of language and deportment was his exact
antithesis, was christened "Prayerful James."

While the officers and men were learning their duties, and learning
to know one another, Colonel Wood was straining every nerve to get our
equipments--an effort which was complicated by the tendency of the
Ordnance Bureau to send whatever we really needed by freight instead
of express. Finally, just as the last rifles, revolvers, and saddles
came, we were ordered by wire at once to proceed by train to Tampa.

Instantly, all was joyful excitement. We had enjoyed San Antonio, and
were glad that our regiment had been organized in the city where the
Alamo commemorates the death fight of Crockett, Bowie, and their
famous band of frontier heroes. All of us had worked hard, so that we
had had no time to be homesick or downcast; but we were glad to leave
the hot camp, where every day the strong wind sifted the dust through
everything, and to start for the gathering-place of the army which was
to invade Cuba. Our horses and men were getting into good shape. We
were well enough equipped to warrant our starting on the campaign, and
every man was filled with dread of being out of the fighting. We had a
pack-train of 150 mules, so we had close on to 1,200 animals to carry.

Of course, our train was split up into sections, seven, all told;
Colonel Wood commanding the first three, and I the last four. The
journey by rail from San Antonio to Tampa took just four days, and I
doubt if anybody who was on the trip will soon forget it. To occupy my
few spare moments, I was reading M. Demolins's "Superiorite des
Anglo-Saxons." M. Demolins, in giving the reasons why the
English-speaking peoples are superior to those of Continental Europe,
lays much stress upon the way in which "militarism" deadens the power
of individual initiative, the soldier being trained to complete
suppression of individual will, while his faculties become atrophied
in consequence of his being merely a cog in a vast and perfectly
ordered machine. I can assure the excellent French publicist that
American "militarism," at least of the volunteer sort, has points of
difference from the militarism of Continental Europe. The battalion
chief of a newly raised American regiment, when striving to get into a
war which the American people have undertaken with buoyant and
light-hearted indifference to detail, has positively unlimited
opportunity for the display of "individual initiative," and is in no
danger whatever either of suffering from unhealthy suppression of
personal will, or of finding his faculties of self-help numbed by
becoming a cog in a gigantic and smooth-running machine. If such a
battalion chief wants to get anything or go anywhere he must do it by
exercising every pound of resource, inventiveness, and audacity he
possesses. The help, advice, and superintendence he gets from outside
will be of the most general, not to say superficial, character. If he
is a cavalry officer, he has got to hurry and push the purchase of his
horses, plunging into and out of the meshes of red-tape as best he
can. He will have to fight for his rifles and his tents and his
clothes. He will have to keep his men healthy largely by the light
that nature has given him. When he wishes to embark his regiment, he
will have to fight for his railway-cars exactly as he fights for his
transport when it comes to going across the sea; and on his journey
his men will or will not have food, and his horses will or will not
have water and hay, and the trains will or will not make connections,
in exact correspondence to the energy and success of his own efforts
to keep things moving straight.

It was on Sunday, May 29th, that we marched out of our hot, windy,
dusty camp to take the cars for Tampa. Colonel Wood went first, with
the three sections under his special care. I followed with the other
four. The railway had promised us a forty-eight hours' trip, but our
experience in loading was enough to show that the promise would not be
made good. There were no proper facilities for getting the horses on
or off the cars, or for feeding or watering them; and there was
endless confusion and delay among the railway officials. I marched my
four sections over in the afternoon, the first three having taken the
entire day to get off. We occupied the night. As far as the regiment
itself was concerned, we worked an excellent system, Wood instructing
me exactly how to proceed so as to avoid confusion. Being a veteran
campaigner, he had all along insisted that for such work as we had
before us we must travel with the minimum possible luggage. The men
had merely what they could carry on their own backs, and the officers
very little more. My own roll of clothes and bedding could be put on
my spare horse. The mule-train was to be used simply for food, forage,
and spare ammunition. As it turned out, we were not allowed to take
either it or the horses.

It was dusk when I marched my long files of dusty troopers into the
station-yard. I then made all dismount, excepting the troop which I
first intended to load. This was brought up to the first freight-car.
Here every man unsaddled, and left his saddle, bridle, and all that he
did not himself need in the car, each individual's property being
corded together. A guard was left in the car, and the rest of the men
took the naked horses into the pens to be fed and watered. The other
troops were loaded in the same way in succession. With each section
there were thus a couple of baggage-cars in which the horse-gear, the
superfluous baggage, and the travel rations were carried; and I also
put aboard, not only at starting, but at every other opportunity, what
oats and hay I could get, so as to provide against accidents for the
horses. By the time the baggage-cars were loaded the horses of the
first section had eaten and drunk their fill, and we loaded them on
cattle-cars. The officers of each troop saw to the loading, taking a
dozen picked men to help them; for some of the wild creatures, half
broken and fresh from the ranges, were with difficulty driven up the
chutes. Meanwhile I superintended not merely my own men, but the
railroad men; and when the delays of the latter, and their inability
to understand what was necessary, grew past bearing, I took charge of
the trains myself, so as to insure the horse-cars of each section
being coupled with the baggage-cars of that section.

We worked until long past midnight before we got the horses and
baggage aboard, and then found that for some reason the passenger-cars
were delayed and would not be out for some hours. In the confusion and
darkness men of the different troops had become scattered, and some
had drifted off to the vile drinking-booths around the stock-yards; so
I sent details to search the latter, while the trumpeters blew the
assembly until the First Sergeants could account for all the men. Then
the troops were arranged in order, and the men of each lay down where
they were, by the tracks and in the brush, to sleep until morning.

At dawn the passenger-trains arrived. The senior Captain of each
section saw to it that his own horses, troopers, and baggage were
together; and one by one they started off, I taking the last in
person. Captain Capron had at the very beginning shown himself to be
simply invaluable, from his extraordinary energy, executive capacity,
and mastery over men; and I kept his section next mine, so that we
generally came together at the different yards.

The next four days were very hot and very dusty. I tried to arrange so
the sections would be far enough apart to allow each ample time to
unload, feed, water, and load the horses at any stopping-place before
the next section could arrive. There was enough delay and failure to
make connections on the part of the railroad people to keep me
entirely busy, not to speak of seeing at the stopping-places that the
inexperienced officers got enough hay for their horses, and that the
water given to them was both ample in quantity and drinkable. It
happened that we usually made our longest stops at night, and this
meant that we were up all night long.

Two or three times a day I got the men buckets of hot coffee, and
when we made a long enough stop they were allowed liberty under the
supervision of the non-commissioned officers. Some of them abused the
privilege, and started to get drunk. These were promptly handled with
the necessary severity, in the interest of the others; for it was only
by putting an immediate check to every form of lawlessness or
disobedience among the few men who were inclined to be bad that we
were enabled to give full liberty to those who would not abuse it.

Everywhere the people came out to greet us and cheer us. They
brought us flowers; they brought us watermelons and other fruits, and
sometimes jugs and pails of milk--all of which we greatly appreciated.
We were travelling through a region where practically all the older
men had served in the Confederate Army, and where the younger men had
all their lives long drunk in the endless tales told by their elders,
at home, and at the cross-roads taverns, and in the court-house
squares, about the cavalry of Forrest and Morgan and the infantry of
Jackson and Hood. The blood of the old men stirred to the distant
breath of battle; the blood of the young men leaped hot with eager
desire to accompany us. The older women, who remembered the dreadful
misery of war--the misery that presses its iron weight most heavily on
the wives and the little ones--looked sadly at us; but the young girls
drove down in bevies, arrayed in their finery, to wave flags in
farewell to the troopers and to beg cartridges and buttons as
mementos. Everywhere we saw the Stars and Stripes, and everywhere we
were told, half-laughing, by grizzled ex-Confederates that they had
never dreamed in the bygone days of bitterness to greet the old flag
as they now were greeting it, and to send their sons, as now they were
sending them, to fight and die under it.

It was four days later that we disembarked, in a perfect welter of
confusion. Tampa lay in the pine-covered sand-flats at the end of a
one-track railroad, and everything connected with both military and
railroad matters was in an almost inextricable tangle. There was no
one to meet us or to tell us where we were to camp, and no one to
issue us food for the first twenty-four hours; while the railroad
people unloaded us wherever they pleased, or rather wherever the jam
of all kinds of trains rendered it possible. We had to buy the men
food out of our own pockets, and to seize wagons in order to get our
spare baggage taken to the camping ground which we at last found had
been allotted to us.

Once on the ground, we speedily got order out of confusion. Under
Wood's eye the tents were put up in long streets, the picket-line of
each troop stretching down its side of each street. The officers'
quarters were at the upper ends of the streets, the company kitchens
and sinks at the opposite ends. The camp was strictly policed, and
drill promptly begun. For thirty-six hours we let the horses rest,
drilling on foot, and then began the mounted drill again. The
regiments with which we were afterward to serve were camped near us,
and the sandy streets of the little town were thronged with soldiers,
almost all of them regulars; for there were but one or two volunteer
organizations besides ourselves. The regulars wore the canonical dark
blue of Uncle Sam. Our own men were clad in dusty brown blouses,
trousers and leggings being of the same hue, while the broad-brimmed
soft hat was of dark gray; and very workmanlike they looked as, in
column of fours, each troop trotted down its company street to form by
squadron or battalion, the troopers sitting steadily in the saddles as
they made their half-trained horses conform to the movement of the
guidons.

Over in Tampa town the huge winter hotel was gay with general officers
and their staffs, with women in pretty dresses, with newspaper
correspondents by the score, with military attaches of foreign powers,
and with onlookers of all sorts; but we spent very little time there.

We worked with the utmost industry, special attention being given by
each troop-commander to skirmish-drill in the woods. Once or twice we
had mounted drill of the regiment as a whole. The military attaches
came out to look on--English, German, Russian, French, and Japanese.
With the Englishman, Captain Arthur Lee, a capital fellow, we soon
struck up an especially close friendship; and we saw much of him
throughout the campaign. So we did of several of the newspaper
correspondents--Richard Harding Davis, John Fox, Jr., Caspar Whitney,
and Frederic Remington. On Sunday Chaplain Brown, of Arizona, held
service, as he did almost every Sunday during the campaign.

There were but four or five days at Tampa, however. We were notified
that the expedition would start for destination unknown at once, and
that we were to go with it; but that our horses were to be left
behind, and only eight troops of seventy men each taken. Our sorrow at
leaving the horses was entirely outweighed by our joy at going; but it
was very hard indeed to select the four troops that were to stay, and
the men who had to be left behind from each of the troops that went.
Colonel Wood took Major Brodie and myself to command the two
squadrons, being allowed only two squadron commanders. The men who
were left behind felt the most bitter heartburn. To the great bulk of
them I think it will be a life-long sorrow. I saw more than one, both
among the officers and privates, burst into tears when he found he
could not go. No outsider can appreciate the bitterness of the
disappointment. Of course, really, those that stayed were entitled to
precisely as much honor as those that went. Each man was doing his
duty, and much the hardest and most disagreeable duty was to stay.
Credit should go with the performance of duty, and not with what is
very often the accident of glory. All this and much more we explained,
but our explanations could not alter the fact that some had to be
chosen and some had to be left. One of the Captains chosen was Captain
Maximilian Luna, who commanded Troop F, from New Mexico. The Captain's
people had been on the banks of the Rio Grande before my forefathers
came to the mouth of the Hudson or Wood's landed at Plymouth; and he
made the plea that it was his right to go as a representative of his
race, for he was the only man of pure Spanish blood who bore a
commission in the army, and he demanded the privilege of proving that
his people were precisely as loyal Americans as any others. I was glad
when it was decided to take him.

It was the evening of June 7th when we suddenly received orders that
the expedition was to start from Port Tampa, nine miles distant by
rail, at daybreak the following morning; and that if we were not
aboard our transport by that time we could not go. We had no intention
of getting left, and prepared at once for the scramble which was
evidently about to take place. As the number and capacity of the
transports were known, or ought to have been known, and as the number
and size of the regiments to go were also known, the task of allotting
each regiment or fraction of a regiment to its proper transport, and
arranging that the regiments and the transports should meet in due
order on the dock, ought not to have been difficult. However, no
arrangements were made in advance; and we were allowed to shove and
hustle for ourselves as best we could, on much the same principles
that had governed our preparations hitherto.

We were ordered to be at a certain track with all our baggage at
midnight, there to take a train for Port Tampa. At the appointed time
we turned up, but the train did not. The men slept heavily, while Wood
and I and various other officers wandered about in search of
information which no one could give. We now and then came across a
Brigadier-General, or even a Major-General; but nobody knew anything.
Some regiments got aboard the trains and some did not, but as none of
the trains started this made little difference. At three o'clock we
received orders to march over to an entirely different track, and away
we went. No train appeared on this track either; but at six o'clock
some coal-cars came by, and these we seized. By various arguments we
persuaded the engineer in charge of the train to back us down the nine
miles to Port Tampa, where we arrived covered with coal-dust, but with
all our belongings.

The railway tracks ran out on the quay, and the transports, which had
been anchored in midstream, were gradually being brought up alongside
the quay and loaded. The trains were unloading wherever they happened
to be, no attention whatever being paid to the possible position of
the transport on which the soldiers were to go. Colonel Wood and I
jumped off and started on a hunt, which soon convinced us that we had
our work cut out if we were to get a transport at all. From the
highest General down, nobody could tell us where to go to find out
what transport we were to have. At last we were informed that we were
to hunt up the depot quartermaster, Colonel Humphrey. We found his
office, where his assistant informed us that he didn't know where the
Colonel was, but believed him to be asleep upon one of the transports.
This seemed odd at such a time; but so many of the methods in vogue
were odd, that we were quite prepared to accept it as a fact. However,
it proved not to be such; but for an hour Colonel Humphrey might just
as well have been asleep, as nobody knew where he was and nobody could
find him, and the quay was crammed with some ten thousand men, most of
whom were working at cross purposes.

At last, however, after over an hour's industrious and rapid search
through this swarming ant-heap of humanity, Wood and I, who had
separated, found Colonel Humphrey at nearly the same time and were
allotted a transport--the Yucatan. She was out in midstream, so Wood
seized a stray launch and boarded her. At the same time I happened to
find out that she had previously been allotted to two other regiments
--the Second Regular Infantry and the Seventy-first New York
Volunteers, which latter regiment alone contained more men than could
be put aboard her. Accordingly, I ran at full speed to our train; and
leaving a strong guard with the baggage, I double-quicked the rest of
the regiment up to the boat, just in time to board her as she came
into the quay, and then to hold her against the Second Regulars and
the Seventy-first, who had arrived a little too late, being a shade
less ready than we were in the matter of individual initiative. There
was a good deal of expostulation, but we had possession; and as the
ship could not contain half of the men who had been told to go aboard
her, the Seventy-first went away, as did all but four companies of the
Second. These latter we took aboard. Meanwhile a General had caused
our train to be unloaded at the end of the quay farthest from where
the ship was; and the hungry, tired men spent most of the day in the
labor of bringing down their baggage and the food and ammunition.

The officers' horses were on another boat, my own being accompanied
by my colored body-servant, Marshall, the most faithful and loyal
of men, himself an old soldier of the Ninth Cavalry. Marshall had
been in Indian campaigns, and he christened my larger horse
"Rain-in-the-Face," while the other, a pony, went by the name of
"Texas."

By the time that night fell, and our transport pulled off and
anchored in midstream, we felt we had spent thirty-six tolerably
active hours. The transport was overloaded, the men being packed like
sardines, not only below but upon the decks; so that at night it was
only possible to walk about by continually stepping over the bodies of
the sleepers. The travel rations which had been issued to the men for
the voyage were not sufficient, because the meat was very bad indeed;
and when a ration consists of only four or five items, which taken
together just meet the requirements of a strong and healthy man, the
loss of one item is a serious thing. If we had been given canned
corned beef we would have been all right, but instead of this the
soldiers were issued horrible stuff called "canned fresh beef." There
was no salt in it. At the best it was stringy and tasteless; at the
worst it was nauseating. Not one-fourth of it was ever eaten at all,
even when the men became very hungry. There were no facilities for the
men to cook anything. There was no ice for them; the water was not
good; and they had no fresh meat or fresh vegetables.

However, all these things seemed of small importance compared with
the fact that we were really embarked, and were with the first
expedition to leave our shores. But by next morning came the news that
the order to sail had been countermanded, and that we were to stay
where we were for the time being. What this meant none of us could
understand. It turned out later to be due to the blunder of a naval
officer who mistook some of our vessels for Spaniards, and by his
report caused consternation in Washington, until by vigorous scouting
on the part of our other ships the illusion was dispelled.

Meanwhile the troop-ships, packed tight with their living freight,
sweltered in the burning heat of Tampa Harbor. There was nothing
whatever for the men to do, space being too cramped for amusement or
for more drill than was implied in the manual of arms. In this we
drilled them assiduously, and we also continued to hold school for
both the officers and the non-commissioned officers. Each troop
commander was regarded as responsible for his own non-commissioned
officers, and Wood or myself simply dropped in to superintend, just as
we did with the manual of arms. In the officers' school Captain Capron
was the special instructor, and a most admirable one he was.

The heat, the steaming discomfort, and the confinement, together
with the forced inaction, were very irksome; but everyone made the
best of it, and there was little or no grumbling even among the men.
All, from the highest to the lowest, were bent upon perfecting
themselves according to their slender opportunities. Every book of
tactics in the regiment was in use from morning until night, and the
officers and non-commissioned officers were always studying the
problems presented at the schools. About the only amusement was
bathing over the side, in which we indulged both in the morning and
evening. Many of the men from the Far West had never seen the ocean.
One of them who knew how to swim was much interested in finding that
the ocean water was not drinkable. Another, who had never in his life
before seen any water more extensive than the headstream of the Rio
Grande, met with an accident later in the voyage; that is, his hat
blew away while we were in mid-ocean, and I heard him explaining the
accident to a friend in the following words: "Oh-o-h, Jim! Ma hat blew
into the creek!" So we lay for nearly a week, the vessels swinging
around on their anchor chains, while the hot water of the bay flowed
to and fro around them and the sun burned overhead.

At last, on the evening of June 13th, we received the welcome order
to start. Ship after ship weighed anchor and went slowly ahead under
half-steam for the distant mouth of the harbor, the bands playing, the
flags flying, the rigging black with the clustered soldiers, cheering
and shouting to those left behind on the quay and to their fellows on
the other ships. The channel was very tortuous; and we anchored before
we had gone far down it, after coming within an ace of a bad collision
with another transport. The next morning we were all again under way,
and in the afternoon the great fleet steamed southeast until Tampa
Light sank in the distance.

For the next six days we sailed steadily southward and eastward
through the wonderful sapphire seas of the West Indies. The thirty odd
transports moved in long parallel lines, while ahead and behind and on
their flanks the gray hulls of the war-ships surged through the blue
water. We had every variety of craft to guard us, from the mighty
battle-ship and swift cruiser to the converted yachts and the frail,
venomous-looking torpedo-boats. The war-ships watched with ceaseless
vigilance by day and night. When a sail of any kind appeared,
instantly one of our guardians steamed toward it. Ordinarily, the
torpedo-boats were towed. Once a strange ship steamed up too close,
and instantly the nearest torpedo-boat was slipped like a greyhound
from the leash, and sped across the water toward it; but the stranger
proved harmless, and the swift, delicate, death-fraught craft returned
again.

It was very pleasant, sailing southward through the tropic seas
toward the unknown. We knew not whither we were bound, nor what we
were to do; but we believed that the nearing future held for us many
chances of death and hardship, of honor and renown. If we failed, we
would share the fate of all who fail; but we were sure that we would
win, that we should score the first great triumph in a mighty
world movement. At night we looked at the new stars, and hailed the
Southern Cross when at last we raised it above the horizon. In the
daytime we drilled, and in the evening we held officers' school; but
there was much time when we had little to do, save to scan the
wonderful blue sea and watch the flying-fish. Toward evening, when the
officers clustered together on the forward bridge, the band of the
Second Infantry played tune after tune, until on our quarter the
glorious sun sunk in the red west, and, one by one, the lights blazed
out on troop-ship and war-ship for miles ahead and astern, as they
steamed onward through the brilliant tropic night.

The men on the ship were young and strong, eager to face what lay
hidden before them, eager for adventure where risk was the price of
gain. Sometimes they talked of what they might do in the future, and
wondered whether we were to attack Santiago or Porto Rico. At other
times, as they lounged in groups, they told stories of their past
--stories of the mining camps and the cattle ranges, of hunting bear
and deer, of war-trails against the Indians, of lawless deeds of
violence and the lawful violence by which they were avenged, of brawls
in saloons, of shrewd deals in cattle and sheep, of successful quests
for the precious metals; stories of brutal wrong and brutal appetite,
melancholy love-tales, and memories of nameless heroes--masters of men
and tamers of horses.

The officers, too, had many strange experiences to relate; none, not
even Llewellen or O'Neill, had been through what was better worth
telling, or could tell it better, than Capron. He had spent years
among the Apaches, the wildest and fiercest of tribes, and again and
again had owed his life to his own cool judgment and extraordinary
personal prowess. He knew the sign language, familiar to all the
Indians of the mountains and the plains; and it was curious to find
that the signs for different animals, for water, for sleep and death,
which he knew from holding intercourse with the tribes of the
Southeast, were exactly like those which I had picked up on my
occasional hunting or trading trips among the Sioux and Mandans of the
North. He was a great rifle shot and wolf hunter, and had many tales
to tell of the deeds of gallant hounds and the feats of famous horses.
He had handled his Indian scouts and dealt with the "bronco" Indians,
the renegades from the tribes, in circumstances of extreme peril; for
he had seen the sullen, moody Apaches when they suddenly went crazy
with wolfish blood-lust, and in their madness wished to kill whomever
was nearest. He knew, so far as white man could know, their ways of
thought, and how to humor and divert them when on the brink of some
dangerous outbreak. Capron's training and temper fitted him to do
great work in war; and he looked forward with eager confidence to what
the future held, for he was sure that for him it held either triumph
or death. Death was the prize he drew.

Most of the men had simple souls. They could relate facts, but they
said very little about what they dimly felt. Bucky O'Neill, however,
the iron-nerved, iron-willed fighter from Arizona, the Sheriff whose
name was a by-word of terror to every wrong-doer, white or red, the
gambler who with unmoved face would stake and lose every dollar he had
in the world--he, alone among his comrades, was a visionary, an
articulate emotionalist. He was very quiet about it, never talking
unless he was sure of his listener; but at night, when we leaned on
the railing to look at the Southern Cross, he was less apt to tell
tales of his hard and stormy past than he was to speak of the
mysteries which lie behind courage, and fear, and love, behind animal
hatred, and animal lust for the pleasures that have tangible shape. He
had keenly enjoyed life, and he could breast its turbulent torrent as
few men could; he was a practical man, who knew how to wrest personal
success from adverse forces, among money-makers, politicians, and
desperadoes alike; yet, down at bottom, what seemed to interest him
most was the philosophy of life itself, of our understanding of it,
and of the limitations set to that understanding. But he was as far as
possible from being a mere dreamer of dreams. A staunchly loyal and
generous friend, he was also exceedingly ambitious on his own account.
If, by risking his life, no matter how great the risk, he could gain
high military distinction, he was bent on gaining it. He had taken so
many chances when death lay on the hazard, that he felt the odds were
now against him; but, said he, "Who would not risk his life for a
star?" Had he lived, and had the war lasted, he would surely have won
the eagle, if not the star.

We had a good deal of trouble with the transports, chiefly because
they were not under the control of the navy. One of them was towing a
schooner, and another a scow; both, of course, kept lagging behind.
Finally, when we had gone nearly the length of Cuba, the transport
with the schooner sagged very far behind, and then our wretched
transport was directed by General Shafter to fall out of line and keep
her company. Of course, we executed the order, greatly to the wrath of
Captain Clover, who, in the gunboat Bancroft, had charge of the rear
of the column--for we could be of no earthly use to the other
transport, and by our presence simply added just so much to Captain
Clover's anxiety, as he had two transports to protect instead of one.
Next morning the rest of the convoy were out of sight, but we reached
them just as they finally turned.

Until this we had steamed with the trade-wind blowing steadily in
our faces; but once we were well to eastward of Cuba, we ran southwest
with the wind behind on our quarter, and we all knew that our
destination was Santiago. On the morning of the 20th we were close to
the Cuban coast. High mountains rose almost from the water's edge,
looking huge and barren across the sea. We sped onward past Guantanamo
Bay, where we saw the little picket-ships of the fleet; and in the
afternoon we sighted Santiago Harbor, with the great war-ships
standing off and on in front of it, gray and sullen in their
war-paint.

All next day we rolled and wallowed in the seaway, waiting until a
decision was reached as to where we should land. On the morning of
June 22nd the welcome order for landing came.

We did the landing as we had done everything else--that is, in a
scramble, each commander shifting for himself. The port at which we
landed was called Daiquiri, a squalid little village where there had
been a railway and iron-works. There were no facilities for landing,
and the fleet did not have a quarter the number of boats it should
have had for the purpose. All we could do was to stand in with the
transports as close as possible, and then row ashore in our own few
boats and the boats of the war-ships. Luck favored our regiment. My
former naval aide, while I was Assistant Secretary of the Navy,
Lieutenant Sharp, was in command of the Vixen, a converted yacht; and
everything being managed on the go-as-you-please principle, he steamed
by us and offered to help put us ashore. Of course, we jumped at the
chance. Wood and I boarded the Vixen, and there we got Lieutenant
Sharp's black Cuban pilot, who told us he could take our transport
right in to within a few hundred yards of the land. Accordingly, we
put him aboard; and in he brought her, gaining at least a mile and a
half by the manoeuvre. The other transports followed; but we had our
berth, and were all right.

There was plenty of excitement to the landing. In the first place,
the smaller war-vessels shelled Daiquiri, so as to dislodge any
Spaniards who might be lurking in the neighborhood, and also shelled
other places along the coast, to keep the enemy puzzled as to our
intentions. Then the surf was high, and the landing difficult; so that
the task of getting the men, the ammunition, and provisions ashore was
not easy. Each man carried three days' field rations and a hundred
rounds of ammunition. Our regiment had accumulated two rapid-fire Colt
automatic guns, the gift of Stevens, Kane, Tiffany, and one or two
others of the New York men, and also a dynamite gun, under the
immediate charge of Sergeant Borrowe. To get these, and especially the
last, ashore, involved no little work and hazard. Meanwhile, from
another transport, our horses were being landed, together with the
mules, by the simple process of throwing them overboard and letting
them swim ashore, if they could. Both of Wood's got safely through.
One of mine was drowned. The other, little Texas, got ashore all
right. While I was superintending the landing at the ruined dock, with
Bucky O'Neill, a boatful of colored infantry soldiers capsized, and
two of the men went to the bottom; Bucky O'Neill plunging in, in full
uniform, to save them, but in vain.

However, by the late afternoon we had all our men, with what
ammunition and provisions they could themselves carry, landed, and
were ready for anything that might turn up.

                           Chapter    3

               GENERAL YOUNG'S FIGHT AT LAS GUASIMAS

Just before leaving Tampa we had been brigaded with the First (white)
and Tenth (colored) Regular Cavalry under Brigadier-General S. B. M.
Young. We were the Second Brigade, the First Brigade consisting of the
Third and Sixth (white), and the Ninth (colored) Regular Cavalry under
Brigadier-General Sumner. The two brigades of the cavalry division
were under Major-General Joseph Wheeler, the gallant old Confederate
cavalry commander.

General Young was--and is--as fine a type of the American fighting
soldier as a man can hope to see. He had been in command, as Colonel,
of the Yellowstone National Park, and I had seen a good deal of him in
connection therewith, as I was President of the Boone and Crockett
Club, an organization devoted to hunting big game, to its
preservation, and to forest preservation. During the preceding winter,
while he was in Washington, he had lunched with me at the Metropolitan
Club, Wood being one of the other guests. Of course, we talked of the
war, which all of us present believed to be impending, and Wood and I
told him we were going to make every effort to get in, somehow; and he
answered that we must be sure to get into his brigade, if he had one,
and he would guarantee to show us fighting. None of us forgot the
conversation. As soon as our regiment was raised General Young applied
for it to be put in his brigade. We were put in; and he made his word
good; for he fought and won the first fight on Cuban soil.

Yet, even though under him, we should not have been in this fight at
all if we had not taken advantage of the chance to disembark among the
first troops, and if it had not been for Wood's energy in pushing our
regiment to the front.

On landing we spent some active hours in marching our men a quarter
of a mile or so inland, as boat-load by boat-load they disembarked.
Meanwhile one of the men, Knoblauch, a New Yorker, who was a great
athlete and a champion swimmer, by diving in the surf off the dock,
recovered most of the rifles which had been lost when the boat-load of
colored cavalry capsized. The country would have offered very great
difficulties to an attacking force had there been resistance. It was
little but a mass of rugged and precipitous hills, covered for the
most part by dense jungle. Five hundred resolute men could have
prevented the disembarkation at very little cost to themselves. There
had been about that number of Spaniards at Daiquiri that morning, but
they had fled even before the ships began shelling. In their place we
found hundreds of Cuban insurgents, a crew of as utter tatterdemalions
as human eyes ever looked on, armed with every kind of rifle in all
stages of dilapidation. It was evident, at a glance, that they would
be no use in serious fighting, but it was hoped that they might be of
service in scouting. From a variety of causes, however, they turned
out to be nearly useless, even for this purpose, so far as the
Santiago campaign was concerned.

We were camped on a dusty, brush-covered flat, with jungle on one
side, and on the other a shallow, fetid pool fringed with palm-trees.
Huge land-crabs scuttled noisily through the underbrush, exciting much
interest among the men. Camping was a simple matter, as each man
carried all he had, and the officers had nothing. I took a light
mackintosh and a tooth-brush. Fortunately, that night it did not rain;
and from the palm-leaves we built shelters from the sun.

General Lawton, a tall, fine-looking man, had taken the advance. A
thorough soldier, he at once established outposts and pushed
reconnoitring parties ahead on the trails. He had as little baggage as
the rest of us. Our own Brigade-Commander, General Young, had exactly
the same impedimenta that I had, namely, a mackintosh and a
tooth-brush.

Next morning we were hard at work trying to get the stuff unloaded
from the ship, and succeeded in getting most of it ashore, but were
utterly unable to get transportation for anything but a very small
quantity. The great shortcoming throughout the campaign was the
utterly inadequate transportation. If we had been allowed to take our
mule-train, we could have kept the whole cavalry division supplied.

In the afternoon word came to us to march. General Wheeler, a regular
game-cock, was as anxious as Lawton to get first blood, and he was
bent upon putting the cavalry division to the front as quickly as
possible. Lawton's advance-guard was in touch with the Spaniards, and
there had been a skirmish between the latter and some Cubans, who were
repulsed. General Wheeler made a reconnaissance in person, found out
where the enemy was, and directed General Young to take our brigade
and move forward so as to strike him next morning. He had the power to
do this, as when General Shafter was afloat he had command ashore.

I had succeeded in finding Texas, my surviving horse, much the worse
for his fortnight on the transport and his experience in getting off,
but still able to carry me.

It was mid-afternoon and the tropic sun was beating fiercely down when
Colonel Wood started our regiment--the First and Tenth Cavalry and
some of the infantry regiments having already marched. Colonel Wood
himself rode in advance, while I led my squadron, and Major Brodie
followed with his. It was a hard march, the hilly jungle trail being
so narrow that often we had to go in single file. We marched fast, for
Wood was bound to get us ahead of the other regiments, so as to be
sure of our place in the body that struck the enemy next morning. If
it had not been for his energy in pushing forward, we should certainly
have missed the fight. As it was, we did not halt until we were at the
extreme front.

The men were not in very good shape for marching, and moreover they
were really horsemen, the majority being cowboys who had never done
much walking. The heat was intense and their burdens very heavy. Yet
there was very little straggling. Whenever we halted they instantly
took off their packs and threw themselves on their backs. Then at the
word to start they would spring into place again. The captains and
lieutenants tramped along, encouraging the men by example and word. A
good part of the time I was by Captain Llewellen, and was greatly
pleased to see the way in which he kept his men up to their work. He
never pitied or coddled his troopers, but he always looked after them.
He helped them whenever he could, and took rather more than his full
share of hardship and danger, so that his men naturally followed him
with entire devotion. Jack Greenway was under him as lieutenant, and
to him the entire march was nothing but an enjoyable outing, the
chance of fight on the morrow simply adding the needed spice of
excitement.

It was long after nightfall when we tramped through the darkness
into the squalid coast hamlet of Siboney. As usual when we made a
night camp, we simply drew the men up in column of troops, and then
let each man lie down where he was. Black thunder-clouds were
gathering. Before they broke the fires were made and the men cooked
their coffee and pork, some frying the hard-tack with the pork. The
officers, of course, fared just as the men did. Hardly had we finished
eating when the rain came, a regular tropic downpour. We sat about,
sheltering ourselves as best we could, for the hour or two it lasted;
then the fires were relighted and we closed around them, the men
taking off their wet things to dry them, so far as possible, by the
blaze.

Wood had gone off to see General Young, as General Wheeler had
instructed General Young to hit the Spaniards, who were about four
miles away, as soon after daybreak as possible. Meanwhile I strolled
over to Captain Capron's troop. He and I, with his two lieutenants,
Day and Thomas, stood around the fire, together with two or three
non-commissioned officers and privates; among the latter were Sergeant
Hamilton Fish and Trooper Elliot Cowdin, both of New York. Cowdin,
together with two other troopers, Harry Thorpe and Munro Ferguson, had
been on my Oyster Bay Polo Team some years before. Hamilton Fish had
already shown himself one of the best non-commissioned officers we
had. A huge fellow, of enormous strength and endurance and dauntless
courage, he took naturally to a soldier's life. He never complained
and never shirked any duty of any kind, while his power over his men
was great. So good a sergeant had he made that Captain Capron, keen to
get the best men under him, took him when he left Tampa--for Fish's
troop remained behind. As we stood around the flickering blaze that
night I caught myself admiring the splendid bodily vigor of Capron and
Fish--the captain and the sergeant. Their frames seemed of steel, to
withstand all fatigue; they were flushed with health; in their eyes
shone high resolve and fiery desire. Two finer types of the fighting
man, two better representatives of the American soldier, there were
not in the whole army. Capron was going over his plans for the fight
when we should meet the Spaniards on the morrow, Fish occasionally
asking a question. They were both filled with eager longing to show
their mettle, and both were rightly confident that if they lived they
would win honorable renown and would rise high in their chosen
profession. Within twelve hours they both were dead.

I had lain down when toward midnight Wood returned. He had gone over
the whole plan with General Young. We were to start by sunrise toward
Santiago, General Young taking four troops of the Tenth and four
troops of the First up the road which led through the valley; while
Colonel Wood was to lead our eight troops along a hill-trail to the
left, which joined the valley road about four miles on, at a point
where the road went over a spur of the mountain chain and from thence
went down hill toward Santiago. The Spaniards had their lines at the
junction of the road and the trail.

Before describing our part in the fight, it is necessary to say a
word about General Young's share, for, of course, the whole fight was
under his direction, and the fight on the right wing under his
immediate supervision. General Young had obtained from General
Castillo, the commander of the Cuban forces, a full description of the
country in front. General Castillo promised Young the aid of eight
hundred Cubans, if he made a reconnaissance in force to find out
exactly what the Spanish strength was. This promised Cuban aid did
not, however, materialize, the Cubans, who had been beaten back by the
Spaniards the day before, not appearing on the firing-line until the
fight was over.

General Young had in his immediate command a squadron of the First
Regular Cavalry, two hundred and forty-four strong, under the command
of Major Bell, and a squadron of the Tenth Regular Cavalry, two
hundred and twenty strong, under the command of Major Norvell. He also
had two Hotchkiss mountain guns, under Captain Watson of the Tenth. He
started at a quarter before six in the morning, accompanied by Captain
A. L. Mills, as aide. It was at half-past seven that Captain Mills,
with a patrol of two men in advance, discovered the Spaniards as they
lay across where the two roads came together, some of them in pits,
others simply lying in the heavy jungle, while on their extreme right
they occupied a big ranch. Where General Young struck them they held a
high ridge a little to the left of his front, this ridge being
separated by a deep ravine from the hill-trail still farther to the
left, down which the Rough Riders were advancing. That is, their
forces occupied a range of high hills in the form of an obtuse angle,
the salient being toward the space between the American forces, while
there were advance parties along both roads. There were stone
breastworks flanked by block-houses on that part of the ridge where
the two trails came together. The place was called Las Guasimas, from
trees of that name in the neighborhood.

General Young, who was riding a mule, carefully examined the Spanish
position in person. He ordered the canteens of the troops to be
filled, placed the Hotchkiss battery in concealment about nine hundred
yards from the Spanish lines, and then deployed the white regulars,
with the colored regulars in support, having sent a Cuban guide to try
to find Colonel Wood and warn him. He did not attack immediately,
because he knew that Colonel Wood, having a more difficult route,
would require a longer time to reach the position. During the delay
General Wheeler arrived; he had been up since long before dawn, to see
that everything went well. Young informed him of the dispositions and
plan of attack he made. General Wheeler approved of them, and with
excellent judgment left General Young a free hand to fight his battle.

So, about eight o'clock Young began the fight with his Hotchkiss
guns, he himself being up on the firing-line. No sooner had the
Hotchkiss one-pounders opened than the Spaniards opened fire in
return, most of the time firing by volleys executed in perfect time,
almost as on parade. They had a couple of light guns, which our people
thought were quick firers. The denseness of the jungle and the fact
that they used absolutely smokeless powder, made it exceedingly
difficult to place exactly where they were, and almost immediately
Young, who always liked to get as close as possible to his enemy,
began to push his troops forward. They were deployed on both sides of
the road in such thick jungle that it was only here and there that
they could possibly see ahead, and some confusion, of course, ensued,
the support gradually getting mixed with the advance. Captain Beck
took A Troop of the Tenth in on the left, next Captain Galbraith's
troop of the First; two other troops of the Tenth were on the extreme
right. Through the jungle ran wire fences here and there, and as the
troops got to the ridge they encountered precipitous heights. They
were led most gallantly, as American regular officers always lead
their men; and the men followed their leaders with the splendid
courage always shown by the American regular soldier. There was not a
single straggler among them, and in not one instance was an attempt
made by any trooper to fall out in order to assist the wounded or
carry back the dead, while so cool were they and so perfect their fire
discipline, that in the entire engagement the expenditure of
ammunition was not over ten rounds per man. Major Bell, who commanded
the squadron, had his leg broken by a shot as he was leading his men.
Captain Wainwright succeeded to the command of the squadron. Captain
Knox was shot in the abdomen. He continued for some time giving orders
to his troops, and refused to allow a man in the firing-line to assist
him to the rear. His First Lieutenant, Byram, was himself shot, but
continued to lead his men until the wound and the heat overcame him
and he fell in a faint. The advance was pushed forward under General
Young's eye with the utmost energy, until the enemy's voices could be
heard in the entrenchments. The Spaniards kept up a very heavy firing,
but the regulars would not be denied, and as they climbed the ridges
the Spaniards broke and fled.

Meanwhile, at six o'clock, the Rough Riders began their advance. We
first had to climb a very steep hill. Many of the men, foot-sore and
weary from their march of the preceding day, found the pace up this
hill too hard, and either dropped their bundles or fell out of line,
with the result that we went into action with less than five hundred
men--as, in addition to the stragglers, a detachment had been left to
guard the baggage on shore. At the time I was rather inclined to
grumble to myself about Wood setting so fast a pace, but when the
fight began I realized that it had been absolutely necessary, as
otherwise we should have arrived late and the regulars would have had
very hard work indeed.

Tiffany, by great exertions, had corralled a couple of mules and was
using them to transport the Colt automatic guns in the rear of the
regiment. The dynamite gun was not with us, as mules for it could not
be obtained in time.

Captain Capron's troop was in the lead, it being chosen for the most
responsible and dangerous position because of Capron's capacity. Four
men, headed by Sergeant Hamilton Fish, went first; a support of twenty
men followed some distance behind; and then came Capron and the rest
of his troop, followed by Wood, with whom General Young had sent
Lieutenants Smedburg and Rivers as aides. I rode close behind, at the
head of the other three troops of my squadron, and then came Brodie at
the head of his squadron. The trail was so narrow that for the most
part the men marched in single file, and it was bordered by dense,
tangled jungle, through which a man could with difficulty force his
way; so that to put out flankers was impossible, for they could not
possibly have kept up with the march of the column. Every man had his
canteen full. There was a Cuban guide at the head of the column, but
he ran away as soon as the fighting began. There were also with us, at
the head of the column, two men who did not run away, who, though
non-combatants--newspaper correspondents--showed as much gallantry as
any soldier in the field. They were Edward Marshall and Richard
Harding Davis.

After reaching the top of the hill the walk was very pleasant. Now
and then we came to glades or rounded hill-shoulders, whence we could
look off for some distance. The tropical forest was very beautiful,
and it was a delight to see the strange trees, the splendid royal
palms and a tree which looked like a flat-topped acacia, and which was
covered with a mass of brilliant scarlet flowers. We heard many
bird-notes, too, the cooing of doves and the call of a great brush
cuckoo. Afterward we found that the Spanish guerillas imitated these
bird-calls, but the sounds we heard that morning, as we advanced
through the tropic forest, were from birds, not guerillas, until we
came right up to the Spanish lines. It was very beautiful and very
peaceful, and it seemed more as if we were off on some hunting
excursion than as if were about to go into a sharp and bloody little
fight.

Of course, we accommodated our movements to those of the men in
front. After marching for somewhat over an hour, we suddenly came to a
halt, and immediately afterward Colonel Wood sent word down the line
that the advance guard had come upon a Spanish outpost. Then the order
was passed to fill the magazines, which was done.

The men were totally unconcerned, and I do not think they realized
that any fighting was at hand; at any rate, I could hear the group
nearest me discussing in low murmurs, not the Spaniards, but the
conduct of a certain cow-puncher in quitting work on a ranch and
starting a saloon in some New Mexican town. In another minute,
however, Wood sent me orders to deploy three troops to the right of
the trail, and to advance when we became engaged; while, at the same
time, the other troops, under Major Brodie, were deployed to the left
of the trail where the ground was more open than elsewhere--one troop
being held in reserve in the centre, besides the reserves on each
wing. Later all the reserves were put into the firing-line.

To the right the jungle was quite thick, and we had barely begun to
deploy when a crash in front announced that the fight was on. It was
evidently very hot, and L Troop had its hands full; so I hurried my
men up abreast of them. So thick was the jungle that it was very
difficult to keep together, especially when there was no time for
delay, and while I got up Llewellen's troops and Kane's platoon of K
Troop, the rest of K Troop under Captain Jenkins which, with Bucky
O'Neill's troop, made up the right wing, were behind, and it was some
time before they got into the fight at all.

Meanwhile I had gone forward with Llewellen, Greenway, Kane and
their troopers until we came out on a kind of shoulder, jutting over a
ravine, which separated us from a great ridge on our right. It was on
this ridge that the Spaniards had some of their intrenchments, and it
was just beyond this ridge that the Valley Road led, up which the
regulars were at that very time pushing their attack; but, of course,
at the moment we knew nothing of this. The effect of the smokeless
powder was remarkable. The air seemed full of the rustling sound of
the Mauser bullets, for the Spaniards knew the trails by which we were
advancing, and opened heavily on our position. Moreover, as we
advanced we were, of course, exposed, and they could see us and fire.
But they themselves were entirely invisible. The jungle covered
everything, and not the faintest trace of smoke was to be seen in any
direction to indicate from whence the bullets came. It was some time
before the men fired; Llewellen, Kane, and I anxiously studying the
ground to see where our opponents were, and utterly unable to find
out.

We could hear the faint reports of the Hotchkiss guns and the reply
of two Spanish guns, and the Mauser bullets were singing through the
trees over our heads, making a noise like the humming of telephone
wires; but exactly where they came from we could not tell. The
Spaniards were firing high and for the most part by volleys, and their
shooting was not very good, which perhaps was not to be wondered at,
as they were a long way off. Gradually, however, they began to get the
range and occasionally one of our men would crumple up. In no case did
the man make any outcry when hit, seeming to take it as a matter of
course; at the outside, making only such a remark as: "Well, I got it
that time." With hardly an exception, there was no sign of flinching.
I say with hardly an exception, for though I personally did not see an
instance, and though all the men at the front behaved excellently, yet
there were a very few men who lagged behind and drifted back to the
trail over which we had come. The character of the fight put a premium
upon such conduct, and afforded a very severe test for raw troops;
because the jungle was so dense that as we advanced in open order,
every man was, from time to time, left almost alone and away from the
eyes of his officers. There was unlimited opportunity for dropping out
without attracting notice, while it was peculiarly hard to be exposed
to the fire of an unseen foe, and to see men dropping under it, and
yet to be, for some time, unable to return it, and also to be entirely
ignorant of what was going on in any other part of the field.

It was Richard Harding Davis who gave us our first opportunity to
shoot back with effect. He was behaving precisely like my officers,
being on the extreme front of the line, and taking every opportunity
to study with his glasses the ground where we thought the Spaniards
were. I had tried some volley firing at points where I rather
doubtfully believed the Spaniards to be, but had stopped firing and
was myself studying the jungle-covered mountain ahead with my glasses,
when Davis suddenly said: "There they are, Colonel; look over there; I
can see their hats near that glade," pointing across the valley to our
right. In a minute I, too, made out the hats, and then pointed them
out to three or four of our best shots, giving them my estimate of the
range. For a minute or two no result followed, and I kept raising the
range, at the same time getting more men on the firing-line. Then,
evidently, the shots told, for the Spaniards suddenly sprang out of
the cover through which we had seen their hats, and ran to another
spot; and we could now make out a large number of them.

I accordingly got all of my men up in line and began quick firing.
In a very few minutes our bullets began to do damage, for the
Spaniards retreated to the left into the jungle, and we lost sight of
them. At the same moment a big body of men who, it afterward turned
out, were Spaniards, came in sight along the glade, following the
retreat of those whom we had just driven from the trenches. We
supposed that there was a large force of Cubans with General Young,
not being aware that these Cubans had failed to make their appearance,
and as it was impossible to tell the Cubans from the Spaniards, and as
we could not decide whether these were Cubans following the Spaniards
we had put to flight, or merely another troop of Spaniards retreating
after the first (which was really the case) we dared not fire, and in
a minute they had passed the glade and were out of sight.

At every halt we took advantage of the cover, sinking down behind
any mound, bush, or tree trunk in the neighborhood. The trees, of
course, furnished no protection from the Mauser bullets. Once I was
standing behind a large palm with my head out to one side, very
fortunately; for a bullet passed through the palm, filling my left eye
and ear with the dust and splinters.

No man was allowed to drop out to help the wounded. It was hard to
leave them there in the jungle, where they might not be found again
until the vultures and the land-crabs came, but war is a grim game and
there was no choice. One of the men shot was Harry Heffner of G Troop,
who was mortally wounded through the hips. He fell without uttering a
sound, and two of his companions dragged him behind a tree. Here he
propped himself up and asked to be given his canteen and his rifle,
which I handed to him. He then again began shooting, and continued
loading and firing until the line moved forward and we left him alone,
dying in the gloomy shade. When we found him again, after the fight,
he was dead.

At one time, as I was out of touch with that part of my wing
commanded by Jenkins and O'Neill, I sent Greenway, with Sergeant
Russell, a New Yorker, and trooper Rowland, a New Mexican cow-puncher,
down in the valley to find out where they were. To do this the three
had to expose themselves to a very severe fire, but they were not men
to whom this mattered. Russell was killed; the other two returned and
reported to me the position of Jenkins and O'Neill. They then resumed
their places on the firing-line. After awhile I noticed blood coming
out of Rowland's side and discovered that he had been shot, although
he did not seem to be taking any notice of it. He said the wound was
only slight, but as I saw he had broken a rib, I told him to go to the
rear to the hospital. After some grumbling he went, but fifteen
minutes later he was back on the firing-line again and said he could
not find the hospital--which I doubted. However, I then let him stay
until the end of the fight.

After we had driven the Spaniards off from their position to our
right, the firing seemed to die away so far as we were concerned, for
the bullets no longer struck around us in such a storm as before,
though along the rest of the line the battle was as brisk as ever.
Soon we saw troops appearing across the ravine, not very far from
where we had seen the Spaniards whom we had thought might be Cubans.
Again we dared not fire, and carefully studied the new-comers with our
glasses; and this time we were right, for we recognized our own
cavalry-men. We were by no means sure that they recognized us,
however, and were anxious that they should, but it was very difficult
to find a clear spot in the jungle from which to signal; so Sergeant
Lee of Troop K climbed a tree and from its summit waved the troop
guidon. They waved their guidon back, and as our right wing was now in
touch with the regulars, I left Jenkins and O'Neill to keep the
connection, and led Llewellen's troop back to the path to join the
rest of the regiment, which was evidently still in the thick of the
fight. I was still very much in the dark as to where the main body of
the Spanish forces were, or exactly what lines the battle was
following, and was very uncertain what I ought to do; but I knew it
could not be wrong to go forward, and I thought I would find Wood and
then see what he wished me to do. I was in a mood to cordially welcome
guidance, for it was most bewildering to fight an enemy whom one so
rarely saw.

I had not seen Wood since the beginning of the skirmish, when he
hurried forward. When the firing opened some of the men began to
curse. "Don't swear--shoot!" growled Wood, as he strode along the path
leading his horse, and everyone laughed and became cool again. The
Spanish outposts were very near our advance guard, and some minutes of
the hottest kind of firing followed before they were driven back and
slipped off through the jungle to their main lines in the rear.

Here, at the very outset of our active service, we suffered the loss
of two as gallant men as ever wore uniform. Sergeant Hamilton Fish at
the extreme front, while holding the point up to its work and firing
back where the Spanish advance guards lay, was shot and instantly
killed; three of the men with him were likewise hit. Captain Capron,
leading the advance guard in person, and displaying equal courage and
coolness in the way that he handled them, was also struck, and died a
few minutes afterward. The command of the troop then devolved upon the
First Lieutenant, young Thomas. Like Capron, Thomas was the fifth in
line from father to son who had served in the American army, though in
his case it was in the volunteer and not the regular service; the four
preceding generations had furnished soldiers respectively to the
Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Civil
War. In a few minutes Thomas was shot through the leg, and the command
devolved upon the Second Lieutenant, Day (a nephew of "Albemarle"
Cushing, he who sunk the great Confederate ram). Day, who proved
himself to be one of our most efficient officers, continued to handle
the men to the best possible advantage, and brought them steadily
forward. L Troop was from the Indian Territory. The whites, Indians,
and half-breeds in it, all fought with equal courage. Captain
McClintock was hurried forward to its relief with his Troop B of
Arizona men. In a few minutes he was shot through the leg and his
place was taken by his First Lieutenant, Wilcox, who handled his men
in the same soldierly manner that Day did.

Among the men who showed marked courage and coolness was the tall
color-sergeant, Wright; the colors were shot through three times.

When I had led G Troop back to the trail I ran ahead of them,
passing the dead and wounded men of L Troop, passing young Fish as he
lay with glazed eyes under the rank tropic growth to one side of the
trail. When I came to the front I found the men spread out in a very
thin skirmish line, advancing through comparatively open ground, each
man taking advantage of what cover he could, while Wood strolled about
leading his horse, Brodie being close at hand. How Wood escaped being
hit, I do not see, and still less how his horse escaped. I had left
mine at the beginning of the action, and was only regretting that I
had not left my sword with it, as it kept getting between my legs when
I was tearing my way through the jungle. I never wore it again in
action. Lieutenant Rivers was with Wood, also leading his horse.
Smedburg had been sent off on the by no means pleasant task of
establishing communications with Young.

Very soon after I reached the front, Brodie was hit, the bullet
shattering one arm and whirling him around as he stood. He had kept on
the extreme front all through, his presence and example keeping his
men entirely steady, and he at first refused to go to the rear; but
the wound was very painful, and he became so faint that he had to be
sent. Thereupon, Wood directed me to take charge of the left wing in
Brodie's place, and to bring it forward; so over I went.

I now had under me Captains Luna, Muller, and Houston, and I began
to take them forward, well spread out, through the high grass of a
rather open forest. I noticed Goodrich, of Houston's troop, tramping
along behind his men, absorbed in making them keep at good intervals
from one another and fire slowly with careful aim. As I came close up
to the edge of the troop, he caught a glimpse of me, mistook me for
one of his own skirmishers who was crowding in too closely, and called
out, "Keep your interval, sir; keep your interval, and go forward."

A perfect hail of bullets was sweeping over us as we advanced. Once
I got a glimpse of some Spaniards, apparently retreating, far in the
front, and to our right, and we fired a couple of rounds after them.
Then I became convinced, after much anxious study, that we were being
fired at from some large red-tiled buildings, part of a ranch on our
front. Smokeless powder, and the thick cover in our front, continued
to puzzle us, and I more than once consulted anxiously the officers as
to the exact whereabouts of our opponents. I took a rifle from a
wounded man and began to try shots with it myself. It was very hot and
the men were getting exhausted, though at this particular time we were
not suffering heavily from bullets, the Spanish fire going high. As we
advanced, the cover became a little thicker and I lost touch of the
main body under Wood; so I halted and we fired industriously at the
ranch buildings ahead of us, some five hundred yards off. Then we
heard cheering on the right, and I supposed that this meant a charge
on the part of Wood's men, so I sprang up and ordered the men to rush
the buildings ahead of us. They came forward with a will. There was a
moment's heavy firing from the Spaniards, which all went over our
heads, and then it ceased entirely. When we arrived at the buildings,
panting and out of breath, they contained nothing but heaps of empty
cartridge-shells and two dead Spaniards, shot through the head.

The country all around us was thickly forested, so that it was very
difficult to see any distance in any direction. The firing had now
died out, but I was still entirely uncertain as to exactly what had
happened. I did not know whether the enemy had been driven back or
whether it was merely a lull in the fight, and we might be attacked
again; nor did I know what had happened in any other part of the line,
while as I occupied the extreme left, I was not sure whether or not my
flank was in danger. At this moment one of our men who had dropped
out, arrived with the information (fortunately false) that Wood was
dead. Of course, this meant that the command devolved upon me, and I
hastily set about taking charge of the regiment. I had been
particularly struck by the coolness and courage shown by Sergeants
Dame and McIlhenny, and sent them out with small pickets to keep watch
in front and to the left of the left wing. I sent other men to fill
the canteens with water, and threw the rest out in a long line in a
disused sunken road, which gave them cover, putting two or three
wounded men, who had hitherto kept up with the fighting-line, and a
dozen men who were suffering from heat exhaustion--for the fighting and
running under that blazing sun through the thick dry jungle was
heart-breaking--into the ranch buildings. Then I started over toward
the main body, but to my delight encountered Wood himself, who told me
the fight was over and the Spaniards had retreated. He also informed
me that other troops were just coming up. The first to appear was a
squadron of the Ninth Cavalry, under Major Dimick, which had hurried
up to get into the fight, and was greatly disappointed to find it
over. They took post in front of our lines, so that our tired men were
able to get a rest, Captain McBlain, of the Ninth, good-naturedly
giving us some points as to the best way to station our outposts. Then
General Chaffee, rather glum at not having been in the fight himself,
rode up at the head of some of his infantry, and I marched my squadron
back to where the rest of the regiment was going into camp, just where
the two trails came together, and beyond--that is, on the Santiago side
of--the original Spanish lines.

The Rough Riders had lost eight men killed and thirty-four wounded,
aside from two or three who were merely scratched and whose wounds
were not reported. The First Cavalry, white, lost seven men killed and
eight wounded; the Tenth Cavalry, colored, one man killed and ten
wounded; so, out of 964 men engaged on our side, 16 were killed and 52
wounded. The Spaniards were under General Rubin, with, as second in
command, Colonel Alcarez. They had two guns, and eleven companies of
about a hundred men each: three belonging to the Porto Rico regiment,
three to the San Fernandino, two to the Talavero, two being so-called
mobilized companies from the mineral districts, and one a company of
engineers; over twelve hundred men in all, together with two guns.*

  * Note: See Lieutenant Muller y Tejeiro, "Combates y Capitulacion
  de Santiago de Cuba," page 136. The Lieutenant speaks as if only one
  echelon, of seven companies and two guns, was engaged on the 24th.
  The official report says distinctly, "General Rubin's column," which
  consisted of the companies detailed. By turning to page 146, where
  Lieutenant Tejeiro enumerates the strength of the various companies,
  it will be seen that they averaged over 110 men apiece; this
  probably does not include officers, and is probably an
  under-statement anyhow. On page 261 he makes the Spanish loss at Las
  Guasimas, which he calls Sevilla, 9 killed and 27 wounded. Very
  possibly he includes only the Spanish regulars; two of the Spaniards
  we slew, over on the left, were in brown, instead of the light blue
  of the regulars, and were doubtless guerillas.

General Rubin reported that he had repulsed the American attack, and
Lieutenant Tejeiro states in his book that General Rubin forced the
Americans to retreat, and enumerates the attacking force as consisting
of three regular regiments of infantry, the Second Massachusetts and
the Seventy-first New York (not one of which fired a gun or were
anywhere near the battle), in addition to the sixteen dismounted
troops of cavalry. In other words, as the five infantry regiments each
included twelve companies, he makes the attacking force consist of
just five times the actual amount. As for the "repulse," our line
never went back ten yards in any place, and the advance was
practically steady; while an hour and a half after the fight began we
were in complete possession of the entire Spanish position, and their
troops were fleeing in masses down the road, our men being too
exhausted to follow them.

General Rubin also reports that he lost but seven men killed. This
is certainly incorrect, for Captain O'Neill and I went over the ground
very carefully and counted eleven dead Spaniards, all of whom were
actually buried by our burying squads. There were probably two or
three men whom we missed, but I think that our official reports are
incorrect in stating that forty-two dead Spaniards were found; this
being based upon reports in which I think some of the Spanish dead
were counted two or three times. Indeed, I should doubt whether their
loss was as heavy as ours, for they were under cover, while we
advanced, often in the open, and their main lines fled long before we
could get to close quarters. It was a very difficult country, and a
force of good soldiers resolutely handled could have held the pass
with ease against two or three times their number. As it was, with a
force half of regulars and half of volunteers, we drove out a superior
number of Spanish regular troops, strongly posted, without suffering a
very heavy loss. Although the Spanish fire was very heavy, it does not
seem to me it was very well directed; and though they fired with great
spirit while we merely stood at a distance and fired at them, they did
not show much resolution, and when we advanced, always went back long
before there was any chance of our coming into contact with them. Our
men behaved very well indeed--white regulars, colored regulars, and
Rough Riders alike. The newspaper press failed to do full justice to
the white regulars, in my opinion, from the simple reason that
everybody knew that they would fight, whereas there had been a good
deal of question as to how the Rough Riders, who were volunteer
troops, and the Tenth Cavalry, who were colored, would behave; so
there was a tendency to exalt our deeds at the expense of those of the
First Regulars, whose courage and good conduct were taken for granted.
It was a trying fight beyond what the losses show, for it is hard upon
raw soldiers to be pitted against an unseen foe, and to advance
steadily when their comrades are falling around them, and when they
can only occasionally see a chance to retaliate. Wood's experience in
fighting Apaches stood him in good stead. An entirely raw man at the
head of the regiment, conducting, as Wood was, what was practically an
independent fight, would have been in a very trying position. The
fight cleared the way toward Santiago, and we experienced no further
resistance.

That afternoon we made camp and dined, subsisting chiefly on a load
of beans which we found on one of the Spanish mules which had been
shot. We also looked after the wounded. Dr. Church had himself gone
out to the firing-line during the fight, and carried to the rear some
of the worst wounded on his back or in his arms. Those who could walk
had walked in to where the little field-hospital of the regiment was
established on the trail. We found all our dead and all the badly
wounded. Around one of the latter the big, hideous land-crabs had
gathered in a gruesome ring, waiting for life to be extinct. One of
our own men and most of the Spanish dead had been found by the
vultures before we got to them; and their bodies were mangled, the
eyes and wounds being torn.

The Rough Rider who had been thus treated was in Bucky O'Neill's
troop; and as we looked at the body, O'Neill turned to me and asked,
"Colonel, isn't it Whitman who says of the vultures that 'they pluck
the eyes of princes and tear the flesh of kings'?" I answered that I
could not place the quotation. Just a week afterward we were shielding
his own body from the birds of prey.

One of the men who fired first, and who displayed conspicuous
gallantry was a Cherokee half-breed, who was hit seven times, and of
course had to go back to the States. Before he rejoined us at Montauk
Point he had gone through a little private war of his own; for on his
return he found that a cowboy had gone off with his sweetheart, and
in the fight that ensued he shot his rival. Another man of L Troop who
also showed marked gallantry was Elliot Cowdin. The men of the plains
and mountains were trained by life-long habit to look on life and
death with iron philosophy. As I passed by a couple of tall, lank,
Oklahoma cow-punchers, I heard one say, "Well, some of the boys got it
in the neck!" to which the other answered with the grim plains proverb
of the South: "Many a good horse dies."

Thomas Isbell, a half-breed Cherokee in the squad under Hamilton
Fish, was among the first to shoot and be shot at. He was wounded no
less than seven times. The first wound was received by him two minutes
after he had fired his first shot, the bullet going through his neck.
The second hit him in the left thumb. The third struck near his right
hip, passing entirely through the body. The fourth bullet (which was
apparently from a Remington and not from a Mauser) went into his neck
and lodged against the bone, being afterward cut out. The fifth bullet
again hit his left hand. The sixth scraped his head and the seventh
his neck. He did not receive all of the wounds at the same time, over
half an hour elapsing between the first and the last. Up to receiving
the last wound he had declined to leave the firing-line, but by that
time he had lost so much blood that he had to be sent to the rear. The
man's wiry toughness was as notable as his courage.

We improvised litters, and carried the more sorely wounded back to
Siboney that afternoon and the next morning; the others walked. One of
the men who had been most severely wounded was Edward Marshall, the
correspondent, and he showed as much heroism as any soldier in the
whole army. He was shot through the spine, a terrible and very painful
wound, which we supposed meant that he would surely die; but he made
no complaint of any kind, and while he retained consciousness
persisted in dictating the story of the fight. A very touching
incident happened in the improvised open-air hospital after the fight,
where the wounded were lying. They did not groan, and made no
complaint, trying to help one another. One of them suddenly began to
hum, "My Country 'tis of Thee," and one by one the others joined in
the chorus, which swelled out through the tropic woods, where the
victors lay in camp beside their dead. I did not see any sign among
the fighting men, whether wounded or unwounded, of the very
complicated emotions assigned to their kind by some of the realistic
modern novelists who have written about battles. At the front everyone
behaved quite simply and took things as they came, in a
matter-of-course way; but there was doubtless, as is always the case,
a good deal of panic and confusion in the rear where the wounded, the
stragglers, a few of the packers, and two or three newspaper
correspondents were, and in consequence the first reports sent back to
the coast were of a most alarming character, describing, with minute
inaccuracy, how we had run into ambush, etc. The packers with the
mules which carried the rapid-fire guns were among those who ran, and
they let the mules go in the jungle; in consequence the guns were
never even brought to the firing-line, and only Fred Herrig's skill as
a trailer enabled us to recover them. By patient work he followed up
the mules' tracks in the forest until he found the animals.

Among the wounded who walked to the temporary hospital at Siboney
was the trooper, Rowland, of whom I spoke before. There the doctors
examined him, and decreed that his wound was so serious that he must
go back to the States. This was enough for Rowland, who waited until
nightfall and then escaped, slipping out of the window and making his
way back to camp with his rifle and pack, though his wound must have
made all movement very painful to him. After this, we felt that he was
entitled to stay, and he never left us for a day, distinguishing
himself again in the fight at San Juan.

Next morning we buried seven dead Rough Riders in a grave on the
summit of the trail, Chaplain Brown reading the solemn burial service
of the Episcopalians, while the men stood around with bared heads and
joined in singing, "Rock of Ages." Vast numbers of vultures were
wheeling round and round in great circles through the blue sky
overhead. There could be no more honorable burial than that of these
men in a common grave--Indian and cowboy, miner, packer, and college
athlete--the man of unknown ancestry from the lonely Western plains,
and the man who carried on his watch the crests of the Stuyvesants and
the Fishes, one in the way they had met death, just as during life
they had been one in their daring and their loyalty.

On the afternoon of the 25th we moved on a couple of miles, and
camped in a marshy open spot close to a beautiful stream. Here we lay
for several days. Captain Lee, the British attache, spent some time
with us; we had begun to regard him as almost a member of the
regiment. Count von Gotzen, the German attache, another good fellow,
also visited us. General Young was struck down with the fever, and
Wood took charge of the brigade. This left me in command of the
regiment, of which I was very glad, for such experience as we had had
is a quick teacher. By this time the men and I knew one another, and I
felt able to make them do themselves justice in march or battle. They
understood that I paid no heed to where they came from; no heed to
their creed, politics, or social standing; that I would care for them
to the utmost of my power, but that I demanded the highest performance
of duty; while in return I had seen them tested, and knew I could
depend absolutely on their courage, hardihood, obedience, and
individual initiative.

There was nothing like enough transportation with the army, whether
in the way of wagons or mule-trains; exactly as there had been no
sufficient number of landing-boats with the transports. The officers'
baggage had come up, but none of us had much, and the shelter-tents
proved only a partial protection against the terrific downpours of
rain. These occurred almost every afternoon, and turned the camp into
a tarn, and the trails into torrents and quagmires. We were not given
quite the proper amount of food, and what we did get, like most of the
clothing issued us, was fitter for the Klondyke than for Cuba. We got
enough salt pork and hardtack for the men, but not the full ration of
coffee and sugar, and nothing else. I organized a couple of
expeditions back to the seacoast, taking the strongest and best
walkers and also some of the officers' horses and a stray mule or two,
and brought back beans and canned tomatoes. These I got partly by
great exertions on my part, and partly by the aid of Colonel Weston of
the Commissary Department, a particularly energetic man whose services
were of great value. A silly regulation forbade my purchasing canned
vegetables, etc., except for the officers; and I had no little
difficulty in getting round this regulation, and purchasing (with my
own money, of course) what I needed for the men.

One of the men I took with me on one of these trips was Sherman
Bell, the former Deputy Marshal of Cripple Creek, and Wells-Fargo
Express rider. In coming home with his load, through a blinding storm,
he slipped and opened the old rupture. The agony was very great and
one of his comrades took his load. He himself, sometimes walking, and
sometimes crawling, got back to camp, where Dr. Church fixed him up
with a spike bandage, but informed him that he would have to be sent
back to the States when an ambulance came along. The ambulance did not
come until the next day, which was the day before we marched to San
Juan. It arrived after nightfall, and as soon as Bell heard it coming,
he crawled out of the hospital tent into the jungle, where he lay all
night; and the ambulance went off without him. The men shielded him
just as school-boys would shield a companion, carrying his gun, belt,
and bedding; while Bell kept out of sight until the column started,
and then staggered along behind it. I found him the morning of the San
Juan fight. He told me that he wanted to die fighting, if die he must,
and I hadn't the heart to send him back. He did splendid service that
day, and afterward in the trenches, and though the rupture opened
twice again, and on each occasion he was within a hair's breadth of
death, he escaped, and came back with us to the United States.

The army was camped along the valley, ahead of and behind us, our
outposts being established on either side. From the generals to the
privates all were eager to march against Santiago. At daybreak, when
the tall palms began to show dimly through the rising mist, the scream
of the cavalry trumpets tore the tropic dawn; and in the evening, as
the bands of regiment after regiment played the "Star-Spangled
Banner," all, officers and men alike, stood with heads uncovered,
wherever they were, until the last strains of the anthem died away in
the hot sunset air.

Chapter 4

                      THE CAVALRY AT SANTIAGO

On June 30th we received orders to hold ourselves in readiness to
march against Santiago, and all the men were greatly overjoyed, for
the inaction was trying. The one narrow road, a mere muddy track along
which the army was encamped, was choked with the marching columns. As
always happened when we had to change camp, everything that the men
could not carry, including, of course, the officers' baggage, was left
behind.

About noon the Rough Riders struck camp and drew up in column beside
the road in the rear of the First Cavalry. Then we sat down and waited
for hours before the order came to march, while regiment after
regiment passed by, varied by bands of tatterdemalion Cuban
insurgents, and by mule-trains with ammunition. Every man carried
three days' provisions. We had succeeded in borrowing mules sufficient
to carry along the dynamite gun and the automatic Colts.

At last, toward mid-afternoon, the First and Tenth Cavalry, ahead of
us, marched, and we followed. The First was under the command of
Lieutenant-Colonel Veile, the Tenth under Lieutenant-Colonel Baldwin.
Every few minutes there would be a stoppage in front, and at the halt
I would make the men sit or lie down beside the track, loosening their
packs. The heat was intense as we passed through the still, close
jungle, which formed a wall on either hand. Occasionally we came to
gaps or open spaces, where some regiment was camped, and now and then
one of these regiments, which apparently had been left out of its
proper place, would file into the road, breaking up our line of march.
As a result, we finally found ourselves following merely the tail of
the regiment ahead of us, an infantry regiment being thrust into the
interval. Once or twice we had to wade streams. Darkness came on, but
we still continued to march. It was about eight o'clock when we turned
to the left and climbed El Poso hill, on whose summit there was a
ruined ranch and sugar factory, now, of course, deserted. Here I found
General Wood, who was arranging for the camping of the brigade. Our
own arrangements for the night were simple. I extended each troop
across the road into the jungle, and then the men threw down their
belongings where they stood and slept on their arms. Fortunately,
there was no rain. Wood and I curled up under our rain-coats on the
saddle-blankets, while his two aides, Captain A. L. Mills and
Lieutenant W. N. Ship, slept near us. We were up before dawn and
getting breakfast. Mills and Ship had nothing to eat, and they
breakfasted with Wood and myself, as we had been able to get some
handfuls of beans, and some coffee and sugar, as well as the ordinary
bacon and hardtack.

We did not talk much, for though we were in ignorance as to
precisely what the day would bring forth, we knew that we should see
fighting. We had slept soundly enough, although, of course, both Wood
and I during the night had made a round of the sentries, he of the
brigade, and I of the regiment; and I suppose that, excepting among
hardened veterans, there is always a certain feeling of uneasy
excitement the night before the battle.

Mills and Ship were both tall, fine-looking men, of tried courage,
and thoroughly trained in every detail of their profession; I remember
being struck by the quiet, soldierly way they were going about their
work early that morning. Before noon one was killed and the other
dangerously wounded.

General Wheeler was sick, but with his usual indomitable pluck and
entire indifference to his own personal comfort, he kept to the front.
He was unable to retain command of the cavalry division, which
accordingly devolved upon General Samuel Sumner, who commanded it
until mid-afternoon, when the bulk of the fighting was over. General
Sumner's own brigade fell to Colonel Henry Carroll. General Sumner led
the advance with the cavalry, and the battle was fought by him and by
General Kent, who commanded the infantry division, and whose foremost
brigade was led by General Hawkins.

As the sun rose the men fell in, and at the same time a battery of
field-guns was brought up on the hill-crest just beyond, between us
and toward Santiago. It was a fine sight to see the great horses
straining under the lash as they whirled the guns up the hill and into
position.

Our brigade was drawn up on the hither side of a kind of half basin,
a big band of Cubans being off to the left. As yet we had received no
orders, except that we were told that the main fighting was to be done
by Lawton's infantry division, which was to take El Caney, several
miles to our right, while we were simply to make a diversion. This
diversion was to be made mainly with the artillery, and the battery
which had taken position immediately in front of us was to begin when
Lawton began.

It was about six o'clock that the first report of the cannon from El
Caney came booming to us across the miles of still jungle. It was a
very lovely morning, the sky of cloudless blue, while the level,
shimmering rays from the just-risen sun brought into fine relief the
splendid palms which here and there towered above the lower growth.
The lofty and beautiful mountains hemmed in the Santiago plain, making
it an amphitheatre for the battle.

Immediately our guns opened, and at the report great clouds of white
smoke hung on the ridge crest. For a minute or two there was no
response. Wood and I were sitting together, and Wood remarked to me
that he wished our brigade could be moved somewhere else, for we were
directly in line of any return fire aimed by the Spaniards at the
battery. Hardly had he spoken when there was a peculiar whistling,
singing sound in the air, and immediately afterward the noise of
something exploding over our heads. It was shrapnel from the Spanish
batteries. We sprung to our feet and leaped on our horses. Immediately
afterward a second shot came which burst directly above us; and then a
third. From the second shell one of the shrapnel bullets dropped on my
wrist, hardly breaking the skin, but raising a bump about as big as a
hickory-nut. The same shell wounded four of my regiment, one of them
being Mason Mitchell, and two or three of the regulars were also hit,
one losing his leg by a great fragment of shell. Another shell
exploded right in the middle of the Cubans, killing and wounding a
good many, while the remainder scattered like guinea-hens. Wood's lead
horse was also shot through the lungs. I at once hustled my regiment
over the crest of the hill into the thick underbrush, where I had no
little difficulty in getting them together again into column.

Meanwhile the firing continued for fifteen or twenty minutes, until
it gradually died away. As the Spaniards used smokeless powder, their
artillery had an enormous advantage over ours, and, moreover, we did
not have the best type of modern guns, our fire being slow.

As soon as the firing ceased, Wood formed his brigade, with my
regiment in front, and gave me orders to follow behind the First
Brigade, which was just moving off the ground. In column of fours we
marched down the trail toward the ford of the San Juan River. We
passed two or three regiments of infantry, and were several times
halted before we came to the ford. The First Brigade, which was under
Colonel Carroll--Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton commanding the Ninth
Regiment, Major Wessels the Third, and Captain Kerr the Sixth--had
already crossed and was marching to the right, parallel to, but a
little distance from, the river. The Spaniards in the trenches and
block-houses on top of the hills in front were already firing at the
brigade in desultory fashion. The extreme advance of the Ninth Cavalry
was under Lieutenants McNamee and Hartwick. They were joined by
General Hawkins, with his staff, who was looking over the ground and
deciding on the route he should take his infantry brigade.

Our orders had been of the vaguest kind, being simply to march to
the right and connect with Lawton--with whom, of course, there was no
chance of our connecting. No reconnaissance had been made, and the
exact position and strength of the Spaniards was not known. A captive
balloon was up in the air at this moment, but it was worse than
useless. A previous proper reconnaissance and proper look-out from the
hills would have given us exact information. As it was, Generals Kent,
Sumner, and Hawkins had to be their own reconnaissance, and they
fought their troops so well that we won anyhow.

I was now ordered to cross the ford, march half a mile or so to the
right, and then halt and await further orders; and I promptly hurried
my men across, for the fire was getting hot, and the captive balloon,
to the horror of everybody, was coming down to the ford. Of course, it
was a special target for the enemy's fire. I got my men across before
it reached the ford. There it partly collapsed and remained, causing
severe loss of life, as it indicated the exact position where the
Tenth and the First Cavalry, and the infantry, were crossing.

As I led my column slowly along, under the intense heat, through the
high grass of the open jungle, the First Brigade was to our left, and
the firing between it and the Spaniards on the hills grew steadily
hotter and hotter. After awhile I came to a sunken lane, and as by
this time the First Brigade had stopped and was engaged in a stand-up
fight, I halted my men and sent back word for orders. As we faced
toward the Spanish hills my regiment was on the right with next to it
and a little in advance the First Cavalry, and behind them the Tenth.
In our front the Ninth held the right, the Sixth the centre, and the
Third the left; but in the jungle the lines were already overlapping
in places. Kent's infantry were coming up, farther to the left.

Captain Mills was with me. The sunken lane, which had a wire fence
on either side, led straight up toward, and between, the two hills in
our front, the hill on the left, which contained heavy block-houses,
being farther away from us than the hill on our right, which we
afterward grew to call Kettle Hill, and which was surmounted merely by
some large ranch buildings or haciendas, with sunken brick-lined walls
and cellars. I got the men as well-sheltered as I could. Many of them
lay close under the bank of the lane, others slipped into the San Juan
River and crouched under its hither bank, while the rest lay down
behind the patches of bushy jungle in the tall grass. The heat was
intense, and many of the men were already showing signs of exhaustion.
The sides of the hills in front were bare; but the country up to them
was, for the most part, covered with such dense jungle that in
charging through it no accuracy of formation could possibly be
preserved.

The fight was now on in good earnest, and the Spaniards on the hills
were engaged in heavy volley firing. The Mauser bullets drove in
sheets through the trees and the tall jungle grass, making a peculiar
whirring or rustling sound; some of the bullets seemed to pop in the
air, so that we thought they were explosive; and, indeed, many of
those which were coated with brass did explode, in the sense that the
brass coat was ripped off, making a thin plate of hard metal with a
jagged edge, which inflicted a ghastly wound. These bullets were shot
from a .45-calibre rifle carrying smokeless powder, which was much
used by the guerillas and irregular Spanish troops. The Mauser bullets
themselves made a small clean hole, with the result that the wound
healed in a most astonishing manner. One or two of our men who were
shot in the head had the skull blown open, but elsewhere the wounds
from the minute steel-coated bullet, with its very high velocity, were
certainly nothing like as serious as those made by the old
large-calibre, low-power rifle. If a man was shot through the heart,
spine, or brain he was, of course, killed instantly; but very few of
the wounded died--even under the appalling conditions which prevailed,
owing to the lack of attendance and supplies in the field-hospitals
with the army.

While we were lying in reserve we were suffering nearly as much as
afterward when we charged. I think that the bulk of the Spanish fire
was practically unaimed, or at least not aimed at any particular man,
and only occasionally at a particular body of men; but they swept the
whole field of battle up to the edge of the river, and man after man
in our ranks fell dead or wounded, although I had the troopers
scattered out far apart, taking advantage of every scrap of cover.

Devereux was dangerously shot while he lay with his men on the edge
of the river. A young West Point cadet, Ernest Haskell, who had taken
his holiday with us as an acting second lieutenant, was shot through
the stomach. He had shown great coolness and gallantry, which he
displayed to an even more marked degree after being wounded, shaking
my hand and saying: "All right, Colonel, I'm going to get well. Don't
bother about me, and don't let any man come away with me." When I
shook hands with him, I thought he would surely die; yet he recovered.

The most serious loss that I and the regiment could have suffered
befell just before we charged. Bucky O'Neill was strolling up and down
in front of his men, smoking his cigarette, for he was inveterately
addicted to the habit. He had a theory that an officer ought never to
take cover--a theory which was, of course, wrong, though in a volunteer
organization the officers should certainly expose themselves very
fully, simply for the effect on the men; our regimental toast on the
transport running, "The officers; may the war last until each is
killed, wounded, or promoted." As O'Neill moved to and fro, his men
begged him to lie down, and one of the sergeants said, "Captain, a
bullet is sure to hit you." O'Neill took his cigarette out of his
mouth, and blowing out a cloud of smoke laughed and said, "Sergeant,
the Spanish bullet isn't made that will kill me." A little later he
discussed for a moment with one of the regular officers the direction
from which the Spanish fire was coming. As he turned on his heel a
bullet struck him in the mouth and came out at the back of his head;
so that even before he fell his wild and gallant soul had gone out
into the darkness.

My orderly was a brave young Harvard boy, Sanders, from the quaint
old Massachusetts town of Salem. The work of an orderly on foot, under
the blazing sun, through the hot and matted jungle, was very severe,
and finally the heat overcame him. He dropped; nor did he ever recover
fully, and later he died from fever. In his place I summoned a trooper
whose name I did not know. Shortly afterward, while sitting beside the
bank, I directed him to go back and ask whatever general he came
across if I could not advance, as my men were being much cut up. He
stood up to salute and then pitched forward across my knees, a bullet
having gone through his throat, cutting the carotid.

When O'Neill was shot, his troop, who were devoted to him, were for
the moment at a loss whom to follow. One of their number, Henry
Bardshar, a huge Arizona miner, immediately attached himself to me as
my orderly, and from that moment he was closer to me, not only in the
fight, but throughout the rest of the campaign, than any other man,
not even excepting the color-sergeant, Wright.

Captain Mills was with me; gallant Ship had already been killed.
Mills was an invaluable aide, absolutely cool, absolutely unmoved or
flurried in any way.

I sent messenger after messenger to try to find General Sumner or
General Wood and get permission to advance, and was just about making
up my mind that in the absence of orders I had better "march toward
the guns," when Lieutenant-Colonel Dorst came riding up through the
storm of bullets with the welcome command "to move forward and support
the regulars in the assault on the hills in front." General Sumner had
obtained authority to advance from Lieutenant Miley, who was
representing General Shafter at the front, and was in the thick of the
fire. The General at once ordered the first brigade to advance on the
hills, and the second to support it. He himself was riding his horse
along the lines, superintending the fight. Later I overheard a couple
of my men talking together about him. What they said illustrates the
value of a display of courage among the officers in hardening their
soldiers; for their theme was how, as they were lying down under a
fire which they could not return, and were in consequence feeling
rather nervous, General Sumner suddenly appeared on horseback,
sauntering by quite unmoved; and, said one of the men, "That made us
feel all right. If the General could stand it, we could."

The instant I received the order I sprang on my horse and then my
"crowded hour" began. The guerillas had been shooting at us from the
edges of the jungle and from their perches in the leafy trees, and as
they used smokeless powder, it was almost impossible to see them,
though a few of my men had from time to time responded. We had also
suffered from the hill on our right front, which was held chiefly by
guerillas, although there were also some Spanish regulars with them,
for we found their dead. I formed my men in column of troops, each
troop extended in open skirmishing order, the right resting on the
wire fences which bordered the sunken lane. Captain Jenkins led the
first squadron, his eyes literally dancing with joyous excitement.

I started in the rear of the regiment, the position in which the
colonel should theoretically stay. Captain Mills and Captain McCormick
were both with me as aides; but I speedily had to send them off on
special duty in getting the different bodies of men forward. I had
intended to go into action on foot as at Las Guasimas, but the heat
was so oppressive that I found I should be quite unable to run up and
down the line and superintend matters unless I was mounted; and,
moreover, when on horseback, I could see the men better and they could
see me better.

A curious incident happened as I was getting the men started forward.
Always when men have been lying down under cover for some time, and
are required to advance, there is a little hesitation, each looking
to see whether the others are going forward. As I rode down the line,
calling to the troopers to go forward, and rasping brief directions
to the captains and lieutenants, I came upon a man lying behind a
little bush, and I ordered him to jump up. I do not think he
understood that we were making a forward move, and he looked up at me
for a moment with hesitation, and I again bade him rise, jeering him
and saying: "Are you afraid to stand up when I am on horseback?" As I
spoke, he suddenly fell forward on his face, a bullet having struck
him and gone through him lengthwise. I suppose the bullet had been
aimed at me; at any rate, I, who was on horseback in the open, was
unhurt, and the man lying flat on the ground in the cover beside me
was killed. There were several pairs of brothers with us; of the two
Nortons one was killed; of the two McCurdys one was wounded.

I soon found that I could get that line, behind which I personally
was, faster forward than the one immediately in front of it, with the
result that the two rearmost lines of the regiment began to crowd
together; so I rode through them both, the better to move on the one
in front. This happened with every line in succession, until I found
myself at the head of the regiment.

Both lieutenants of B Troop from Arizona had been exerting
themselves greatly, and both were overcome by the heat; but Sergeants
Campbell and Davidson took it forward in splendid shape. Some of the
men from this troop and from the other Arizona troop (Bucky O'Neill's)
joined me as a kind of fighting tail.

The Ninth Regiment was immediately in front of me, and the First on
my left, and these went up Kettle Hill with my regiment. The Third,
Sixth, and Tenth went partly up Kettle Hill (following the Rough
Riders and the Ninth and First), and partly between that and the
block-house hill, which the infantry were assailing. General Sumner in
person gave the Tenth the order to charge the hills; and it went
forward at a rapid gait. The three regiments went forward more or less
intermingled, advancing steadily and keeping up a heavy fire. Up
Kettle Hill Sergeant George Berry, of the Tenth, bore not only his own
regimental colors but those of the Third, the color-sergeant of the
Third having been shot down; he kept shouting, "Dress on the colors,
boys, dress on the colors!" as he followed Captain Ayres, who was
running in advance of his men, shouting and waving his hat. The Tenth
Cavalry lost a greater proportion of its officers than any other
regiment in the battle--eleven out of twenty-two.

By the time I had come to the head of the regiment we ran into the
left wing of the Ninth Regulars, and some of the First Regulars, who
were lying down; that is, the troopers were lying down, while the
officers were walking to and fro. The officers of the white and
colored regiments alike took the greatest pride in seeing that the men
more than did their duty; and the mortality among them was great.

I spoke to the captain in command of the rear platoons, saying that
I had been ordered to support the regulars in the attack upon the
hills, and that in my judgment we could not take these hills by firing
at them, and that we must rush them. He answered that his orders were
to keep his men lying where they were, and that he could not charge
without orders. I asked where the Colonel was, and as he was not in
sight, said, "Then I am the ranking officer here and I give the order
to charge"--for I did not want to keep the men longer in the open
suffering under a fire which they could not effectively return.
Naturally the captain hesitated to obey this order when no word had
been received from his own Colonel. So I said, "Then let my men
through, sir," and rode on through the lines, followed by the grinning
Rough Riders, whose attention had been completely taken off the
Spanish bullets, partly by my dialogue with the regulars, and partly
by the language I had been using to themselves as I got the lines
forward, for I had been joking with some and swearing at others, as
the exigencies of the case seemed to demand. When we started to go
through, however, it proved too much for the regulars, and they jumped
up and came along, their officers and troops mingling with mine, all
being delighted at the chance. When I got to where the head of the
left wing of the Ninth was lying, through the courtesy of Lieutenant
Hartwick, two of whose colored troopers threw down the fence, I was
enabled to get back into the lane, at the same time waving my hat, and
giving the order to charge the hill on our right front. Out of my
sight, over on the right, Captains McBlain and Taylor, of the Ninth,
made up their minds independently to charge at just about this time;
and at almost the same moment Colonels Carroll and Hamilton, who were
off, I believe, to my left, where we could see neither them nor their
men, gave the order to advance. But of all this I knew nothing at the
time. The whole line, tired of waiting, and eager to close with the
enemy, was straining to go forward; and it seems that different parts
slipped the leash at almost the same moment. The First Cavalry came up
the hill just behind, and partly mixed with my regiment and the Ninth.
As already said, portions of the Third, Sixth, and Tenth followed,
while the rest of the members of these three regiments kept more in
touch with the infantry on our left.

By this time we were all in the spirit of the thing and greatly
excited by the charge, the men cheering and running forward between
shots, while the delighted faces of the foremost officers, like
Captain C. J. Stevens, of the Ninth, as they ran at the head of their
troops, will always stay in my mind. As soon as I was in the line I
galloped forward a few yards until I saw that the men were well
started, and then galloped back to help Goodrich, who was in command
of his troop, get his men across the road so as to attack the hill
from that side. Captain Mills had already thrown three of the other
troops of the regiment across this road for the same purpose. Wheeling
around, I then again galloped toward the hill, passing the shouting,
cheering, firing men, and went up the lane, splashing through a small
stream; when I got abreast of the ranch buildings on the top of Kettle
Hill, I turned and went up the slope. Being on horseback I was, of
course, able to get ahead of the men on foot, excepting my orderly,
Henry Bardshar, who had run ahead very fast in order to get better
shots at the Spaniards, who were now running out of the ranch
buildings. Sergeant Campbell and a number of the Arizona men, and
Dudley Dean, among others, were very close behind. Stevens, with his
platoon of the Ninth, was abreast of us; so were McNamee and Hartwick.
Some forty yards from the top I ran into a wire fence and jumped off
Little Texas, turning him loose. He had been scraped by a couple of
bullets, one of which nicked my elbow, and I never expected to see him
again. As I ran up to the hill, Bardshar stopped to shoot, and two
Spaniards fell as he emptied his magazine. These were the only
Spaniards I actually saw fall to aimed shots by any one of my men,
with the exception of two guerillas in trees.

Almost immediately afterward the hill was covered by the troops,
both Rough Riders and the colored troopers of the Ninth, and some men
of the First. There was the usual confusion, and afterward there was
much discussion as to exactly who had been on the hill first. The
first guidons planted there were those of the three New Mexican
troops, G, E, and F, of my regiment, under their Captains, Llewellen,
Luna, and Muller, but on the extreme right of the hill, at the
opposite end from where we struck it, Captains Taylor and McBlain and
their men of the Ninth were first up. Each of the five captains was
firm in the belief that his troop was first up. As for the individual
men, each of whom honestly thought he was first on the summit, their
name was legion. One Spaniard was captured in the buildings, another
was shot as he tried to hide himself, and a few others were killed as
they ran.

Among the many deeds of conspicuous gallantry here performed, two,
both to the credit of the First Cavalry, may be mentioned as examples
of the others, not as exceptions. Sergeant Charles Karsten, while
close beside Captain Tutherly, the squadron commander, was hit by a
shrapnel bullet. He continued on the line, firing until his arm grew
numb; and he then refused to go to the rear, and devoted himself to
taking care of the wounded, utterly unmoved by the heavy fire. Trooper
Hugo Brittain, when wounded, brought the regimental standard forward,
waving it to and fro, to cheer the men.

No sooner were we on the crest than the Spaniards from the line of
hills in our front, where they were strongly intrenched, opened a very
heavy fire upon us with their rifles. They also opened upon us with
one or two pieces of artillery, using time fuses which burned very
accurately, the shells exploding right over our heads.

On the top of the hill was a huge iron kettle, or something of the
kind, probably used for sugar refining. Several of our men took
shelter behind this. We had a splendid view of the charge on the San
Juan block-house to our left, where the infantry of Kent, led by
Hawkins, were climbing the hill. Obviously the proper thing to do was
to help them, and I got the men together and started them
volley-firing against the Spaniards in the San Juan block-house and in
the trenches around it. We could only see their heads; of course this
was all we ever could see when we were firing at them in their
trenches. Stevens was directing not only his own colored troopers, but
a number of Rough Riders; for in a melee good soldiers are always
prompt to recognize a good officer, and are eager to follow him.

We kept up a brisk fire for some five or ten minutes; meanwhile we
were much cut up ourselves. Gallant Colonel Hamilton, than whom there
was never a braver man, was killed, and equally gallant Colonel
Carroll wounded. When near the summit Captain Mills had been shot
through the head, the bullet destroying the sight of one eye
permanently and of the other temporarily. He would not go back or let
any man assist him, sitting down where he was and waiting until one of
the men brought him word that the hill was stormed. Colonel Veile
planted the standard of the First Cavalry on the hill, and General
Sumner rode up. He was fighting his division in great form, and was
always himself in the thick of the fire. As the men were much excited
by the firing, they seemed to pay very little heed to their own
losses.

Suddenly, above the cracking of the carbines, rose a peculiar
drumming sound, and some of the men cried, "The Spanish machine-guns!"
Listening, I made out that it came from the flat ground to the left,
and jumped to my feet, smiting my hand on my thigh, and shouting aloud
with exultation, "It's the Gatlings, men, our Gatlings!" Lieutenant
Parker was bringing his four gatlings into action, and shoving them
nearer and nearer the front. Now and then the drumming ceased for a
moment; then it would resound again, always closer to San Juan hill,
which Parker, like ourselves, was hammering to assist the infantry
attack. Our men cheered lustily. We saw much of Parker after that, and
there was never a more welcome sound than his Gatlings as they opened.
It was the only sound which I ever heard my men cheer in battle.

The infantry got nearer and nearer the crest of the hill. At last we
could see the Spaniards running from the rifle-pits as the Americans
came on in their final rush. Then I stopped my men for fear they
should injure their comrades, and called to them to charge the next
line of trenches, on the hills in our front, from which we had been
undergoing a good deal of punishment. Thinking that the men would all
come, I jumped over the wire fence in front of us and started at the
double; but, as a matter of fact, the troopers were so excited, what
with shooting and being shot, and shouting and cheering, that they did
not hear, or did not heed me; and after running about a hundred yards
I found I had only five men along with me. Bullets were ripping the
grass all around us, and one of the men, Clay Green, was mortally
wounded; another, Winslow Clark, a Harvard man, was shot first in the
leg and then through the body. He made not the slightest murmur, only
asking me to put his water canteen where he could get at it, which I
did; he ultimately recovered. There was no use going on with the
remaining three men, and I bade them stay where they were while I went
back and brought up the rest of the brigade. This was a decidedly cool
request, for there was really no possible point in letting them stay
there while I went back; but at the moment it seemed perfectly natural
to me, and apparently so to them, for they cheerfully nodded, and sat
down in the grass, firing back at the line of trenches from which the
Spaniards were shooting at them. Meanwhile, I ran back, jumped over
the wire fence, and went over the crest of the hill, filled with anger
against the troopers, and especially those of my own regiment, for not
having accompanied me. They, of course, were quite innocent of
wrong-doing; and even while I taunted them bitterly for not having
followed me, it was all I could do not to smile at the look of injury
and surprise that came over their faces, while they cried out, "We
didn't hear you, we didn't see you go, Colonel; lead on now, we'll
sure follow you." I wanted the other regiments to come too, so I ran
down to where General Sumner was and asked him if I might make the
charge; and he told me to go and that he would see that the men
followed. By this time everybody had his attention attracted, and when
I leaped over the fence again, with Major Jenkins beside me, the men
of the various regiments which were already on the hill came with a
rush, and we started across the wide valley which lay between us and
the Spanish intrenchments. Captain Dimmick, now in command of the
Ninth, was bringing it forward; Captain McBlain had a number of Rough
Riders mixed in with his troop, and led them all together; Captain
Taylor had been severely wounded. The long-legged men like Greenway,
Goodrich, sharp-shooter Proffit, and others, outstripped the rest of
us, as we had a considerable distance to go. Long before we got near
them the Spaniards ran, save a few here and there, who either
surrendered or were shot down. When we reached the trenches we found
them filled with dead bodies in the light blue and white uniform of
the Spanish regular army. There were very few wounded. Most of the
fallen had little holes in their heads from which their brains were
oozing; for they were covered from the neck down by the trenches.

It was at this place that Major Wessels, of the Third Cavalry, was
shot in the back of the head. It was a severe wound, but after having
it bound up he again came to the front in command of his regiment.
Among the men who were foremost was Lieutenant Milton F. Davis, of the
First Cavalry. He had been joined by three men of the Seventy-first
New York, who ran up, and, saluting, said, "Lieutenant, we want to go
with you, our officers won't lead us." One of the brave fellows was
soon afterward shot in the face. Lieutenant Davis's first sergeant,
Clarence Gould, killed a Spanish soldier with his revolver, just as
the Spaniard was aiming at one of my Rough Riders. At about the same
time I also shot one. I was with Henry Bardshar, running up at the
double, and two Spaniards leaped from the trenches and fired at us,
not ten yards away. As they turned to run I closed in and fired twice,
missing the first and killing the second. My revolver was from the
sunken battle-ship Maine, and had been given me by my brother-in-law,
Captain W. S. Cowles, of the Navy. At the time I did not know of
Gould's exploit, and supposed my feat to be unique; and although Gould
had killed his Spaniard in the trenches, not very far from me, I never
learned of it until weeks after. It is astonishing what a limited area
of vision and experience one has in the hurly-burly of a battle.

There was very great confusion at this time, the different regiments
being completely intermingled--white regulars, colored regulars, and
Rough Riders. General Sumner had kept a considerable force in reserve
on Kettle Hill, under Major Jackson, of the Third Cavalry. We were
still under a heavy fire and I got together a mixed lot of men and
pushed on from the trenches and ranch-houses which we had just taken,
driving the Spaniards through a line of palm-trees, and over the crest
of a chain of hills. When we reached these crests we found ourselves
overlooking Santiago. Some of the men, including Jenkins, Greenway,
and Goodrich, pushed on almost by themselves far ahead. Lieutenant
Hugh Berkely, of the First, with a sergeant and two troopers, reached
the extreme front. He was, at the time, ahead of everyone; the
sergeant was killed and one trooper wounded; but the lieutenant and
the remaining trooper stuck to their post for the rest of the
afternoon until our line was gradually extended to include them.

While I was re-forming the troops on the chain of hills, one of
General Sumner's aides, Captain Robert Howze--as dashing and gallant
an officer as there was in the whole gallant cavalry division, by the
way--came up with orders to me to halt where I was, not advancing
farther, but to hold the hill at all hazards. Howze had his horse, and
I had some difficulty in making him take proper shelter; he stayed
with us for quite a time, unable to make up his mind to leave the
extreme front, and meanwhile jumping at the chance to render any
service, of risk or otherwise, which the moment developed.

I now had under me all the fragments of the six cavalry regiments
which were at the extreme front, being the highest officer left there,
and I was in immediate command of them for the remainder of the
afternoon and that night. The Ninth was over to the right, and the
Thirteenth Infantry afterward came up beside it. The rest of Kent's
infantry was to our left. Of the Tenth, Lieutenants Anderson, Muller,
and Fleming reported to me; Anderson was slightly wounded, but he paid
no heed to this. All three, like every other officer, had troopers of
various regiments under them; such mixing was inevitable in making
repeated charges through thick jungle; it was essentially a troop
commanders', indeed, almost a squad leaders', fight. The Spaniards who
had been holding the trenches and the line of hills, had fallen back
upon their supports and we were under a very heavy fire both from
rifles and great guns. At the point where we were, the grass-covered
hill-crest was gently rounded, giving poor cover, and I made my men
lie down on the hither slope.

On the extreme left Captain Beck, of the Tenth, with his own troop,
and small bodies of the men of other regiments, was exercising a
practically independent command, driving back the Spaniards whenever
they showed any symptoms of advancing. He had received his orders to
hold the line at all hazards from Lieutenant Andrews, one of General
Sumner's aides, just as I had received mine from Captain Howze.
Finally, he was relieved by some infantry, and then rejoined the rest
of the Tenth, which was engaged heavily until dark, Major Wint being
among the severely wounded. Lieutenant W. N. Smith was killed. Captain
Bigelow had been wounded three times.

Our artillery made one or two efforts to come into action on the
firing-line of the infantry, but the black powder rendered each
attempt fruitless. The Spanish guns used smokeless powder, so that it
was difficult to place them. In this respect they were on a par with
their own infantry and with our regular infantry and dismounted
cavalry; but our only two volunteer infantry regiments, the Second
Massachusetts and the Seventy-first New York, and our artillery, all
had black powder. This rendered the two volunteer regiments, which
were armed with the antiquated Springfield, almost useless in the
battle, and did practically the same thing for the artillery wherever
it was formed within rifle range. When one of the guns was discharged
a thick cloud of smoke shot out and hung over the place, making an
ideal target, and in a half minute every Spanish gun and rifle within
range was directed at the particular spot thus indicated; the
consequence was that after a more or less lengthy stand the gun was
silenced or driven off. We got no appreciable help from our guns on
July 1st. Our men were quick to realize the defects of our artillery,
but they were entirely philosophic about it, not showing the least
concern at its failure. On the contrary, whenever they heard our
artillery open they would grin as they looked at one another and
remark, "There go the guns again; wonder how soon they'll be shut up,"
and shut up they were sure to be. The light battery of Hotchkiss
one-pounders, under Lieutenant J. B. Hughes, of the Tenth Cavalry, was
handled with conspicuous gallantry.

On the hill-slope immediately around me I had a mixed force composed
of members of most of the cavalry regiments, and a few infantrymen.
There were about fifty of my Rough Riders with Lieutenants Goodrich
and Carr. Among the rest were perhaps a score of colored infantrymen,
but, as it happened, at this particular point without any of their
officers. No troops could have behaved better than the colored
soldiers had behaved so far; but they are, of course, peculiarly
dependent upon their white officers. Occasionally they produce
non-commissioned officers who can take the initiative and accept
responsibility precisely like the best class of whites; but this
cannot be expected normally, nor is it fair to expect it. With the
colored troops there should always be some of their own officers;
whereas, with the white regulars, as with my own Rough Riders,
experience showed that the non-commissioned officers could usually
carry on the fight by themselves if they were once started, no matter
whether their officers were killed or not.

At this particular time it was trying for the men, as they were
lying flat on their faces, very rarely responding to the bullets,
shells, and shrapnel which swept over the hill-top, and which
occasionally killed or wounded one of their number. Major Albert G.
Forse, of the First Cavalry, a noted Indian fighter, was killed about
this time. One of my best men, Sergeant Greenly, of Arizona, who was
lying beside me, suddenly said, "Beg pardon, Colonel; but I've been
hit in the leg." I asked, "Badly?" He said, "Yes, Colonel; quite
badly." After one of his comrades had helped him fix up his leg with a
first-aid-to-the-injured bandage, he limped off to the rear.

None of the white regulars or Rough Riders showed the slightest sign
of weakening; but under the strain the colored infantrymen (who had
none of their officers) began to get a little uneasy and to drift to
the rear, either helping wounded men, or saying that they wished to
find their own regiments. This I could not allow, as it was depleting
my line, so I jumped up, and walking a few yards to the rear, drew my
revolver, halted the retreating soldiers, and called out to them that
I appreciated the gallantry with which they had fought and would be
sorry to hurt them, but that I should shoot the first man who, on any
pretence whatever, went to the rear. My own men had all sat up and
were watching my movements with utmost interest; so was Captain Howze.
I ended my statement to the colored soldiers by saying: "Now, I shall
be very sorry to hurt you, and you don't know whether or not I will
keep my word, but my men can tell you that I always do;" whereupon my
cow-punchers, hunters, and miners solemnly nodded their heads and
commented in chorus, exactly as if in a comic opera, "He always does;
he always does!"

This was the end of the trouble, for the "smoked Yankees"--as the
Spaniards called the colored soldiers--flashed their white teeth at
one another, as they broke into broad grins, and I had no more
trouble with them, they seeming to accept me as one of their own
officers. The colored cavalry-men had already so accepted me; in
return, the Rough Riders, although for the most part Southwesterners,
who have a strong color prejudice, grew to accept them with hearty
good-will as comrades, and were entirely willing, in their own
phrase, "to drink out of the same canteen." Where all the regular
officers did so well, it is hard to draw any distinction; but in the
cavalry division a peculiar meed of praise should be given to the
officers of the Ninth and Tenth for their work, and under their
leadership the colored troops did as well as any soldiers could
possibly do.

In the course of the afternoon the Spaniards in our front made the
only offensive movement which I saw them make during the entire
campaign; for what were ordinarily called "attacks" upon our lines
consisted merely of heavy firing from their trenches and from their
skirmishers. In this case they did actually begin to make a forward
movement, their cavalry coming up as well as the marines and reserve
infantry,* while their skirmishers, who were always bold, redoubled
their activity. It could not be called a charge, and not only was it
not pushed home, but it was stopped almost as soon as it began, our
men immediately running forward to the crest of the hill with shouts
of delight at seeing their enemies at last come into the open. A few
seconds' firing stopped their advance and drove them into the cover of
the trenches.

  * Note: Lieutenant Tejeiro, p. 154, speaks of this attempt to
  retake San Juan and its failure.

They kept up a very heavy fire for some time longer, and our men
again lay down, only replying occasionally. Suddenly we heard on our
right the peculiar drumming sound which had been so welcome in the
morning, when the infantry were assailing the San Juan block-house.
The Gatlings were up again! I started over to inquire, and found that
Lieutenant Parker, not content with using his guns in support of the
attacking forces, had thrust them forward to the extreme front of the
fighting-line, where he was handling them with great effect. From this
time on, throughout the fighting, Parker's Gatlings were on the right
of my regiment, and his men and mine fraternized in every way. He kept
his pieces at the extreme front, using them on every occasion until
the last Spanish shot was fired. Indeed, the dash and efficiency with
which the Gatlings were handled by Parker was one of the most striking
features of the campaign; he showed that a first-rate officer could
use machine-guns, on wheels, in battle and skirmish, in attacking and
defending trenches, alongside of the best troops, and to their great
advantage.

As night came on, the firing gradually died away. Before this
happened, however, Captains Morton and Boughton, of the Third Cavalry,
came over to tell me that a rumor had reached them to the effect that
there had been some talk of retiring and that they wished to protest
in the strongest manner. I had been watching them both, as they
handled their troops with the cool confidence of the veteran regular
officer, and had been congratulating myself that they were off toward
the right flank, for as long as they were there, I knew I was
perfectly safe in that direction. I had heard no rumor about retiring,
and I cordially agreed with them that it would be far worse than a
blunder to abandon our position.

To attack the Spaniards by rushing across open ground, or through
wire entanglements and low, almost impassable jungle, without the help
of artillery, and to force unbroken infantry, fighting behind
earthworks and armed with the best repeating weapons, supported by
cannon, was one thing; to repel such an attack ourselves, or to fight
our foes on anything like even terms in the open, was quite another
thing. No possible number of Spaniards coming at us from in front
could have driven us from our position, and there was not a man on the
crest who did not eagerly and devoutly hope that our opponents would
make the attempt, for it would surely have been followed, not merely
by a repulse, but by our immediately taking the city. There was not an
officer or a man on the firing-line, so far as I saw them, who did not
feel this way.

As night fell, some of my men went back to the buildings in our rear
and foraged through them, for we had now been fourteen hours charging
and fighting without food. They came across what was evidently the
Spanish officers' mess, where their dinner was still cooking, and they
brought it to the front in high glee. It was evident that the Spanish
officers were living well, however the Spanish rank and file were
faring. There were three big iron pots, one filled with beef-stew, one
with boiled rice, and one with boiled peas; there was a big demijohn
of rum (all along the trenches which the Spaniards held were empty
wine and liquor bottles); there were a number of loaves of rice-bread;
and there were even some small cans of preserves and a few salt fish.
Of course, among so many men, the food, which was equally divided, did
not give very much to each, but it freshened us all.

Soon after dark, General Wheeler, who in the afternoon had resumed
command of the cavalry division, came to the front. A very few words
with General Wheeler reassured us about retiring. He had been through
too much heavy fighting in the Civil War to regard the present fight
as very serious, and he told us not to be under any apprehension, for
he had sent word that there was no need whatever of retiring, and was
sure we would stay where we were until the chance came to advance. He
was second in command; and to him more than to any other one man was
due the prompt abandonment of the proposal to fall back--a proposal
which, if adopted, would have meant shame and disaster.

Shortly afterward General Wheeler sent us orders to intrench. The
men of the different regiments were now getting in place again and
sifting themselves out. All of our troops who had been kept at Kettle
Hill came forward and rejoined us after nightfall. During the
afternoon Greenway, apparently not having enough to do in the
fighting, had taken advantage of a lull to explore the buildings
himself, and had found a number of Spanish intrenching tools, picks,
and shovels, and these we used in digging trenches along our line. The
men were very tired indeed, but they went cheerfully to work, all the
officers doing their part.

Crockett, the ex-Revenue officer from Georgia, was a slight man, not
physically very strong. He came to me and told me he didn't think he
would be much use in digging, but that he had found a lot of Spanish
coffee and would spend his time making coffee for the men, if I
approved. I did approve very heartily, and Crockett officiated as cook
for the next three or four hours until the trench was dug, his coffee
being much appreciated by all of us.

So many acts of gallantry were performed during the day that it is
quite impossible to notice them all, and it seems unjust to single out
any; yet I shall mention a few, which it must always be remembered are
to stand, not as exceptions, but as instances of what very many men
did. It happened that I saw these myself. There were innumerable
others, which either were not seen at all, or were seen only by
officers who happened not to mention them; and, of course, I know
chiefly those that happened in my own regiment.

Captain Llewellen was a large, heavy man, who had a grown-up son in
the ranks. On the march he had frequently carried the load of some man
who weakened, and he was not feeling well on the morning of the fight.
Nevertheless, he kept at the head of his troop all day. In the
charging and rushing, he not only became very much exhausted, but
finally fell, wrenching himself terribly, and though he remained with
us all night, he was so sick by morning that we had to take him behind
the hill into an improvised hospital. Lieutenant Day, after handling
his troop with equal gallantry and efficiency, was shot, on the summit
of Kettle Hill. He was hit in the arm and was forced to go to the
rear, but he would not return to the States, and rejoined us at the
front long before his wound was healed. Lieutenant Leahy was also
wounded, not far from him. Thirteen of the men were wounded and yet
kept on fighting until the end of the day, and in some cases never
went to the rear at all, even to have their wounds dressed. They were
Corporals Waller and Fortescue and Trooper McKinley of Troop E;
Corporal Roades of Troop D; Troopers Albertson, Winter, McGregor, and
Ray Clark of Troop F; Troopers Bugbee, Jackson, and Waller of Troop A;
Trumpeter McDonald of Troop L; Sergeant Hughes of Troop B; and Trooper
Gievers of Troop G. One of the Wallers was a cow-puncher from New
Mexico, the other the champion Yale high-jumper. The first was shot
through the left arm so as to paralyze the fingers, but he continued
in battle, pointing his rifle over the wounded arm as though it had
been a rest. The other Waller, and Bugbee, were hit in the head, the
bullets merely inflicting scalp wounds. Neither of them paid any heed
to the wounds except that after nightfall each had his head done up in
a bandage. Fortescue I was at times using as an extra orderly. I
noticed he limped, but supposed that his foot was skinned. It proved,
however, that he had been struck in the foot, though not very
seriously, by a bullet, and I never knew what was the matter until the
next day I saw him making wry faces as he drew off his bloody boot,
which was stuck fast to the foot. Trooper Rowland again distinguished
himself by his fearlessness.

For gallantry on the field of action Sergeants Dame, Ferguson,
Tiffany, Greenwald, and, later on, McIlhenny, were promoted to second
lieutenancies, as Sergeant Hayes had already been. Lieutenant Carr,
who commanded his troop, and behaved with great gallantry throughout
the day, was shot and severely wounded at nightfall. He was the son of
a Confederate officer; his was the fifth generation which, from father
to son, had fought in every war of the United States. Among the men
whom I noticed as leading in the charges and always being nearest the
enemy, were the Pawnee, Pollock, Simpson of Texas, and Dudley Dean.
Jenkins was made major, Woodbury Kane, Day, and Frantz captains, and
Greenway and Goodrich first lieutenants, for gallantry in action, and
for the efficiency with which the first had handled his squadron, and
the other five their troops--for each of them, owing to some accident
to his superior, found himself in command of his troop.

Dr. Church had worked quite as hard as any man at the front in
caring for the wounded; as had Chaplain Brown. Lieutenant Keyes, who
acted as adjutant, did so well that he was given the position
permanently. Lieutenant Coleman similarly won the position of
quartermaster.

We finished digging the trench soon after midnight, and then the
worn-out men laid down in rows on their rifles and dropped heavily to
sleep. About one in ten of them had blankets taken from the Spaniards.
Henry Bardshar, my orderly, had procured one for me. He, Goodrich, and
I slept together. If the men without blankets had not been so tired
that they fell asleep anyhow, they would have been very cold, for, of
course, we were all drenched with sweat, and above the waist had on
nothing but our flannel shirts, while the night was cool, with a heavy
dew. Before anyone had time to wake from the cold, however, we were
all awakened by the Spaniards, whose skirmishers suddenly opened fire
on us. Of course, we could not tell whether or not this was the
forerunner of a heavy attack, for our Cossack posts were responding
briskly. It was about three o'clock in the morning, at which time
men's courage is said to be at the lowest ebb; but the cavalry
division was certainly free from any weakness in that direction. At
the alarm everybody jumped to his feet and the stiff, shivering,
haggard men, their eyes only half-opened, all clutched their rifles
and ran forward to the trench on the crest of the hill.

The sputtering shots died away and we went to sleep again. But in
another hour dawn broke and the Spaniards opened fire in good earnest.
There was a little tree only a few feet away, under which I made my
head-quarters, and while I was lying there, with Goodrich and Keyes, a
shrapnel burst among us, not hurting us in the least, but with the
sweep of its bullets killing or wounding five men in our rear, one of
whom was a singularly gallant young Harvard fellow, Stanley Hollister.
An equally gallant young fellow from Yale, Theodore Miller, had
already been mortally wounded. Hollister also died.

The Second Brigade lost more heavily than the First; but neither its
brigade commander nor any of its regimental commanders were touched,
while the commander of the First Brigade and two of its three
regimental commanders had been killed or wounded.

In this fight our regiment had numbered 490 men, as, in addition to
the killed and wounded of the first fight, some had had to go to the
hospital for sickness and some had been left behind with the baggage,
or were detailed on other duty. Eighty-nine were killed and wounded:
the heaviest loss suffered by any regiment in the cavalry division.
The Spaniards made a stiff fight, standing firm until we charged home.
They fought much more stubbornly than at Las Guasimas. We ought to
have expected this, for they have always done well in holding
intrenchments. On this day they showed themselves to be brave foes,
worthy of honor for their gallantry.

In the attack on the San Juan hills our forces numbered about 6,600.*
There were about 4,500 Spaniards against us.** Our total loss in
killed and wounded was 1,071. Of the cavalry division there were, all
told, some 2,300 officers and men, of whom 375 were killed and
wounded. In the division over a fourth of the officers were killed or
wounded, their loss being relatively half as great again as that of
the enlisted men--which was as it should be.

  * Note: According to the official reports, 5,104 officers and men
  of Kent's infantry, and 2,649 of the cavalry had been landed. My
  regiment is put down as 542 strong, instead of the real figure, 490,
  the difference being due to men who were in hospital and on guard at
  the seashore, etc. In other words, the total represents the total
  landed; the details, etc., are included. General Wheeler, in his
  report of July 7th, puts these details as about fifteen per cent of
  the whole of the force which was on the transports; about
  eighty-five per cent got forward and was in the fight.

  ** Note: The total Spanish force in Santiago under General Linares
  was 6,000: 4,000 regulars, 1,000 volunteers, and 1,000 marines and
  sailors from the ships. (Diary of the British Consul, Frederick W.
  Ramsden, entry of July 1st.) Four thousand more troops entered next
  day. Of the 6,000 troops, 600 or thereabouts were at El Caney, and
  900 in the forts at the mouth of the harbor. Lieutenant Tejeiro
  states that there were 520 men at El Caney, 970 in the forts at the
  mouth of the harbor, and 3,000 in the lines, not counting the
  cavalry and civil guard which were in reserve. He certainly very
  much understates the Spanish force; thus he nowhere accounts for the
  engineers mentioned on p. 135; and his figures would make the total
  number of Spanish artillerymen but 32. He excludes the cavalry, the
  civil guard, and the marines which had been stationed at the Plaza
  del Toros; yet he later mentions that these marines were brought up,
  and their commander, Bustamente, severely wounded; he states that
  the cavalry advanced to cover the retreat of the infantry, and I
  myself saw the cavalry come forward, for the most part dismounted,
  when the Spaniards attempted a forward movement late in the
  afternoon, and we shot many of their horses; while later I saw and
  conversed with officers and men of the civil guard who had been
  wounded at the same time--this in connection with returning them
  their wives and children, after the latter had fled from the city.
  Although the engineers are excluded, Lieutenant Tejeiro mentions
  that their colonel, as well as the colonel of the artillery, was
  wounded. Four thousand five hundred is surely an understatement of
  the forces which resisted the attack of the forces under Wheeler.
  Lieutenant Tejeiro is very careless in his figures. Thus in one
  place he states that the position of San Juan was held by two
  companies comprising 250 soldiers. Later he says it was held by
  three companies, whose strength he puts at 300--thus making them
  average 100 instead of 125 men apiece. He then mentions another
  echelon of two companies, so situated as to cross their fire with
  the others. Doubtless the block-house and trenches at Fort San Juan
  proper were only held by three or four hundred men; they were taken
  by the Sixth and Sixteenth Infantry under Hawkins's immediate
  command; and they formed but one point in the line of hills,
  trenches, ranch-houses, and block-houses which the Spaniards held,
  and from which we drove them. When the city capitulated later, over
  8,000 unwounded troops and over 16,000 rifles and carbines were
  surrendered; by that time the marines and sailors had of course
  gone, and the volunteers had disbanded.

  In all these figures I have taken merely the statements from the
  Spanish side. I am inclined to think the actual numbers were much
  greater than those here given. Lieutenant Wiley, in his book _In Cuba
  with Shafter_, which is practically an official statement, states
  that nearly 11,000 Spanish troops were surrendered; and this is the
  number given by the Spaniards themselves in the remarkable letter
  the captured soldiers addressed to General Shafter, which Wiley
  quotes in full. Lieutenant Tejeiro, in his chap. xiv., explains that
  the volunteers had disbanded before the end came, and the marines
  and sailors had of course gone, while nearly a thousand men had been
  killed or captured or had died of wounds and disease, so that there
  must have been at least 14,000 all told. Subtracting the
  reinforcements who arrived on the 2nd, this would mean about 10,000
  Spaniards present on the 1st; in which case Kent and Wheeler were
  opposed by at least equal numbers.

  In dealing with the Spanish losses, Lieutenant Tejeiro contradicts
  himself. He puts their total loss on this day at 593, including 94
  killed, 121 missing, and 2 prisoners--217 in all. Yet he states that
  of the 520 men at Caney but 80 got back, the remaining 440 being
  killed, captured, or missing. When we captured the city we found in
  the hospitals over 2,000 seriously wounded and sick Spaniards; on
  making inquiries, I found that over a third were wounded. From these
  facts I feel that it is safe to put down the total Spanish loss in
  battle as at least 1,200, of whom over a thousand were killed and
  wounded.

  Lieutenant Tejeiro, while rightly claiming credit for the courage
  shown by the Spaniards, also praises the courage and resolution of
  the Americans, saying that they fought, "con un arrojo y una
  decision verdaderamente admirables." He dwells repeatedly upon the
  determination with which our troops kept charging though themselves
  unprotected by cover. As for the Spanish troops, all who fought them
  that day will most freely admit the courage they showed. At El
  Caney, where they were nearly hemmed in, they made a most desperate
  defence; at San Juan the way to retreat was open, and so, though
  they were seven times as numerous, they fought with less
  desperation, but still very gallantly.

I think we suffered more heavily than the Spaniards did in killed
and wounded (though we also captured some scores of prisoners). It
would have been very extraordinary if the reverse was the case, for we
did the charging; and to carry earthworks on foot with dismounted
cavalry, when these earthworks are held by unbroken infantry armed
with the best modern rifles, is a serious task.

Chapter 5

                          IN THE TRENCHES

When the shrapnel burst among us on the hill-side we made up our minds
that we had better settle down to solid siege work. All of the men who
were not in the trenches I took off to the right, back of the Gatling
guns, where there was a valley, and dispersed them by troops in
sheltered parts. It took us an hour or two's experimenting to find out
exactly what spots were free from danger, because some of the Spanish
sharp-shooters were in trees in our front, where we could not possibly
place them from the trenches; and these were able to reach little
hollows and depressions where the men were entirely safe from the
Spanish artillery and from their trench-fire. Moreover, in one hollow,
which we thought safe, the Spaniards succeeded in dropping a shell, a
fragment of which went through the head of one of my men, who,
astonishing to say, lived, although unconscious, for two hours
afterward. Finally, I got all eight troops settled, and the men
promptly proceeded to make themselves as much at home as possible. For
the next twenty-four hours, however, the amount of comfort was small,
as in the way of protection and covering we only had what blankets,
rain-coats, and hammocks we took from the dead Spaniards. Ammunition,
which was, of course, the most vital need, was brought up in
abundance; but very little food reached us. That afternoon we had just
enough to allow each man for his supper two hardtacks, and one
hardtack extra for every four men.

During the first night we had dug trenches sufficient in length and
depth to shelter our men and insure safety against attack, but we had
not put in any traverses or approaches, nor had we arranged the
trenches at all points in the best places for offensive work; for we
were working at night on ground which we had but partially explored.
Later on an engineer officer stated that he did not think our work had
been scientific; and I assured him that I did not doubt that he was
right, for I had never before seen a trench, excepting those we
captured from the Spaniards, or heard of a traverse, save as I vaguely
remembered reading about them in books. For such work as we were
engaged in, however, the problem of intrenchment was comparatively
simple, and the work we did proved entirely adequate. No man in my
regiment was ever hit in the trenches or going in or out of them.

But on the first day there was plenty of excitement connected with
relieving the firing line. Under the intense heat, crowded down in
cramped attitudes in the rank, newly dug, poisonous soil of the
trenches, the men needed to be relieved every six hours or so.
Accordingly, in the late morning, and again in the afternoon, I
arranged for their release. On each occasion I waited until there was
a lull in the firing and then started a sudden rush by the relieving
party, who tumbled into the trenches every which way. The movement
resulted on each occasion in a terrific outburst of fire from the
Spanish lines, which proved quite harmless; and as it gradually died
away the men who had been relieved got out as best they could.
Fortunately, by the next day I was able to abandon this primitive,
though thrilling and wholly novel, military method of relief.

When the hardtack came up that afternoon I felt much sympathy for
the hungry unfortunates in the trenches and hated to condemn them to
six hours more without food; but I did not know how to get food into
them. Little McGinty, the bronco buster, volunteered to make the
attempt, and I gave him permission. He simply took a case of hardtack
in his arms and darted toward the trenches. The distance was but
short, and though there was an outburst of fire, he was actually
missed. One bullet, however, passed through the case of hardtack just
before he disappeared with it into the trench. A trooper named
Shanafelt repeated the feat, later, with a pail of coffee. Another
trooper, George King, spent a leisure hour in the rear making soup out
of some rice and other stuff he found in a Spanish house; he brought
some of it to General Wood, Jack Greenway, and myself, and nothing
could have tasted more delicious.

At this time our army in the trenches numbered about 11,000 men; and
the Spaniards in Santiago about 9,000,* their reinforcements having
just arrived. Nobody on the firing line, whatever was the case in the
rear, felt the slightest uneasiness as to the Spaniards being able to
break out; but there were plenty who doubted the advisability of
trying to rush the heavy earthworks and wire defenses in our front.

  * Note: This is probably an understatement. Lieutenant Muller, in
  chap. xxxviii. of his book, says that there were "eight or nine
  thousand;" this is exclusive of the men from the fleet, and
  apparently also of many of the volunteers (see chap. xiv.), all of
  whom were present on July 2nd. I am inclined to think that on the
  evening of that day there were more Spanish troops inside Santiago
  than there were American troops outside.

All day long the firing continued--musketry and cannon. Our artillery
gave up the attempt to fight on the firing line, and was withdrawn
well to the rear out of range of the Spanish rifles; so far as we
could see, it accomplished very little. The dynamite gun was brought
up to the right of the regimental line. It was more effective than the
regular artillery because it was fired with smokeless powder, and as
it was used like a mortar from behind the hill, it did not betray its
presence, and those firing it suffered no loss. Every few shots it got
out of order, and the Rough Rider machinists and those furnished by
Lieutenant Parker--whom we by this time began to consider as an
exceedingly valuable member of our own regiment--would spend an hour or
two in setting it right. Sergeant Borrowe had charge of it and handled
it well. With him was Sergeant Guitilias, a gallant old fellow, a
veteran of the Civil War, whose duties were properly those of
standard-bearer, he having charge of the yellow cavalry standard of
the regiment; but in the Cuban campaign he was given the more active
work of helping run the dynamite gun. The shots from the dynamite gun
made a terrific explosion, but they did not seem to go accurately.
Once one of them struck a Spanish trench and wrecked part of it. On
another occasion one struck a big building, from which there promptly
swarmed both Spanish cavalry and infantry, on whom the Colt automatic
guns played with good effect, during the minute that elapsed before
they could get other cover.

These Colt automatic guns were not, on the whole, very successful.
The gun detail was under the charge of Sergeant (afterward Lieutenant)
Tiffany, assisted by some of our best men, like Stevens,
Crowninshield, Bradley, Smith, and Herrig. The guns were mounted on
tripods. They were too heavy for men to carry any distance and we
could not always get mules. They would have been more effective if
mounted on wheels, as the Gatlings were. Moreover, they proved more
delicate than the Gatlings, and very readily got out of order. A
further and serious disadvantage was that they did not use the Krag
ammunition, as the Gatlings did, but the Mauser ammunition. The
Spanish cartridges which we captured came in quite handily for this
reason. Parker took the same fatherly interest in these two Colts that
he did in the dynamite gun, and finally I put all three and their men
under his immediate care, so that he had a battery of seven guns.

In fact, I think Parker deserved rather more credit than any other
one man in the entire campaign. I do not allude especially to his
courage and energy, great though they were, for there were hundreds of
his fellow-officers of the cavalry and infantry who possessed as much
of the former quality, and scores who possessed as much of the latter;
but he had the rare good judgment and foresight to see the
possibilities of the machine-guns, and, thanks to the aid of General
Shafter, he was able to organize his battery. He then, by his own
exertions, got it to the front and proved that it could do invaluable
work on the field of battle, as much in attack as in defence. Parker's
Gatlings were our inseparable companions throughout the siege. After
our trenches were put in final shape, he took off the wheels of a
couple and placed them with our own two Colts in the trenches. His
gunners slept beside the Rough Riders in the bomb-proofs, and the men
shared with one another when either side got a supply of beans or of
coffee and sugar; for Parker was as wide-awake and energetic in
getting food for his men as we prided ourselves upon being in getting
food for ours. Besides, he got oil, and let our men have plenty for
their rifles. At no hour of the day or night was Parker anywhere but
where we wished him to be in the event of an attack. If I was ordered
to send a troop of Rough Riders to guard some road or some break in
the lines, we usually got Parker to send a Gatling along, and whether
the change was made by day or by night, the Gatling went, over any
ground and in any weather. He never exposed the Gatlings needlessly or
unless there was some object to be gained, but if serious fighting
broke out, he always took a hand. Sometimes this fighting would be the
result of an effort on our part to quell the fire from the Spanish
trenches; sometimes the Spaniards took the initiative; but at whatever
hour of the twenty-four serious fighting began, the drumming of the
Gatlings was soon heard through the cracking of our own carbines.

I have spoken thus of Parker's Gatling detachment. How can I speak
highly enough of the regular cavalry with whom it was our good fortune
to serve? I do not believe that in any army of the world could be
found a more gallant and soldierly body of fighters than the officers
and men of the First, Third, Sixth, Ninth, and Tenth United States
Cavalry, beside whom we marched to blood-bought victory under the
tropic skies of Santiago. The American regular sets the standard of
excellence. When we wish to give the utmost possible praise to a
volunteer organization, we say that it is as good as the regulars. I
was exceedingly proud of the fact that the regulars treated my
regiment as on a complete equality with themselves, and were as ready
to see it in a post of danger and responsibility as to see any of
their own battalions. Lieutenant Colonel Dorst, a man from whom praise
meant a good deal, christened us "the Eleventh United States Horse,"
and we endeavored, I think I may say successfully, to show that we
deserved the title by our conduct, not only in fighting and in
marching, but in guarding the trenches and in policing camp. In less
than sixty days the regiment had been raised, organized, armed,
equipped, drilled, mounted, dismounted, kept for a fortnight on
transports, and put through two victorious aggressive fights in very
difficult country, the loss in killed and wounded amounting to a
quarter of those engaged. This is a record which it is not easy to
match in the history of volunteer organizations. The loss was but
small compared to that which befell hundreds of regiments in some of
the great battles of the later years of the Civil War; but it may be
doubted whether there was any regiment which made such a record during
the first months of any of our wars.

After the battle of San Juan my men had really become veterans; they
and I understood each other perfectly, and trusted each other
implicitly; they knew I would share every hardship and danger with
them, would do everything in my power to see that they were fed, and
so far as might be, sheltered and spared; and in return I knew that
they would endure every kind of hardship and fatigue without a murmur
and face every danger with entire fearlessness. I felt utter
confidence in them, and would have been more than willing to put them
to any task which any crack regiment of the world, at home or abroad,
could perform. They were natural fighters, men of great intelligence,
great courage, great hardihood, and physical prowess; and I could draw
on these qualities and upon their spirit of ready, soldierly obedience
to make up for any deficiencies in the technique of the trade which
they had temporarily adopted. It must be remembered that they were
already good individual fighters, skilled in the use of the horse and
the rifle, so that there was no need of putting them through the kind
of training in which the ordinary raw recruit must spend his first
year or two.

On July 2nd, as the day wore on, the fight, though raging fitfully at
intervals, gradually died away. The Spanish guerillas were causing us
much trouble. They showed great courage, exactly as did their soldiers
who were defending the trenches. In fact, the Spaniards throughout
showed precisely the qualities they did early in the century, when, as
every student will remember, their fleets were a helpless prey to the
English war-ships, and their armies utterly unable to stand in the
open against those of Napoleon's marshals, while on the other hand
their guerillas performed marvellous feats, and their defence of
intrenchments and walled towns, as at Saragossa and Gerona, were the
wonder of the civilized world.

In our front their sharp-shooters crept up before dawn and either
lay in the thick jungle or climbed into some tree with dense foliage.
In these places it proved almost impossible to place them, as they
kept cover very carefully, and their smokeless powder betrayed not the
slightest sign of their whereabouts. They caused us a great deal of
annoyance and some little loss, and though our own sharp-shooters were
continually taking shots at the places where they supposed them to be,
and though occasionally we would play a Gatling or a Colt all through
the top of a suspicious tree, I but twice saw Spaniards brought down
out of their perches from in front of our lines--on each occasion the
fall of the Spaniard being hailed with loud cheers by our men.

These sharp-shooters in our front did perfectly legitimate work, and
were entitled to all credit for their courage and skill. It was
different with the guerillas in our rear. Quite a number of these had
been posted in trees at the time of the San Juan fight. They were
using, not Mausers, but Remingtons, which shot smokeless powder and a
brass-coated bullet. It was one of these bullets which had hit Winslow
Clark by my side on Kettle Hill; and though for long-range fighting
the Remingtons were, of course, nothing like as good as the Mausers,
they were equally serviceable for short-range bush work, as they used
smokeless powder. When our troops advanced and the Spaniards in the
trenches and in reserve behind the hill fled, the guerillas in the
trees had no time to get away and in consequence were left in the rear
of our lines. As we found out from the prisoners we took, the Spanish
officers had been careful to instil into the minds of their soldiers
the belief that the Americans never granted quarter, and I suppose it
was in consequence of this that the guerillas did not surrender; for
we found that the Spaniards were anxious enough to surrender as soon
as they became convinced that we would treat them mercifully. At any
rate, these guerillas kept up in their trees and showed not only
courage but wanton cruelty and barbarity. At times they fired upon
armed men in bodies, but they much preferred for their victims the
unarmed attendants, the doctors, the chaplains, the hospital stewards.
They fired at the men who were bearing off the wounded in litters;
they fired at the doctors who came to the front, and at the chaplains
who started to hold burial service; the conspicuous Red Cross brassard
worn by all of these non-combatants, instead of serving as a
protection, seemed to make them the special objects of the guerilla
fire. So annoying did they become that I sent out that afternoon and
next morning a detail of picked sharp-shooters to hunt them out,
choosing, of course, first-class woodsmen and mountain men who were
also good shots. My sharp-shooters felt very vindictively toward these
guerillas and showed them no quarter. They started systematically to
hunt them, and showed themselves much superior at the guerillas' own
game, killing eleven, while not one of my men was scratched. Two of
the men who did conspicuously good service in this work were Troopers
Goodwin and Proffit, both of Arizona, but one by birth a Californian
and the other a North Carolinian. Goodwin was a natural shot, not only
with the rifle and revolver, but with the sling. Proffit might have
stood as a type of the mountaineers described by John Fox and Miss
Murfree. He was a tall, sinewy, handsome man of remarkable strength,
an excellent shot and a thoroughly good soldier. His father had been a
Confederate officer, rising from the ranks, and if the war had lasted
long enough the son would have risen in the same manner. As it was, I
should have been glad to have given him a commission, exactly as I
should have been glad to have given a number of others in the regiment
commissions, if I had only had them. Proffit was a saturnine, reserved
man, who afterward fell very sick with the fever, and who, as a reward
for his soldierly good conduct, was often granted unusual privileges;
but he took the fever and the privileges with the same iron
indifference, never grumbling, and never expressing satisfaction.

The sharp-shooters returned by nightfall. Soon afterward I
established my pickets and outposts well to the front in the jungle,
so as to prevent all possibility of surprise. After dark, fires
suddenly shot up on the mountain passes far to our right. They all
rose together and we could make nothing of them. After a good deal of
consultation, we decided they must be some signals to the Spaniards in
Santiago, from the troops marching to reinforce them from without--for
we were ignorant that the reinforcements had already reached the city,
the Cubans being quite unable to prevent the Spanish regulars from
marching wherever they wished. While we were thus pondering over the
watch-fires and attributing them to Spanish machinations of some sort,
it appears that the Spaniards, equally puzzled, were setting them down
as an attempt at communication between the insurgents and our army.
Both sides were accordingly on the alert, and the Spaniards must have
strengthened their outlying parties in the jungle ahead of us, for
they suddenly attacked one of our pickets, wounding Crockett
seriously. He was brought in by the other troopers. Evidently the
Spanish lines felt a little nervous, for this sputter of shooting was
immediately followed by a tremendous fire of great guns and rifles
from their trenches and batteries. Our men in the trenches responded
heavily, and word was sent back, not only to me, but to the commanders
in the rear of the regiments along our line, that the Spaniards were
attacking. It was imperative to see what was really going on, so I ran
up to the trenches and looked out. At night it was far easier to place
the Spanish lines than by day, because the flame-spurts shone in the
darkness. I could soon tell that there were bodies of Spanish pickets
or skirmishers in the jungle-covered valley, between their lines and
ours, but that the bulk of the fire came from their trenches and
showed not the slightest symptom of advancing; moreover, as is
generally the case at night, the fire was almost all high, passing
well overhead, with an occasional bullet near by.

I came to the conclusion that there was no use in our firing back
under such circumstances; and I could tell that the same conclusion
had been reached by Captain Ayres of the Tenth Cavalry on the right of
my line, for even above the cracking of the carbines rose the
Captain's voice as with varied and picturesque language he bade his
black troopers cease firing. The Captain was as absolutely fearless as
a man can be. He had command of his regimental trenches that night,
and, having run up at the first alarm, had speedily satisfied himself
that no particular purpose was served by blazing away in the dark,
when the enormous majority of the Spaniards were simply shooting at
random from their own trenches, and, if they ever had thought of
advancing, had certainly given up the idea. His troopers were devoted
to him, would follow him anywhere, and would do anything he said; but
when men get firing at night it is rather difficult to stop them,
especially when the fire of the enemy in front continues unabated.
When he first reached the trenches it was impossible to say whether or
not there was an actual night attack impending, and he had been
instructing his men, as I instructed mine, to fire low, cutting the
grass in front. As soon as he became convinced that there was no night
attack, he ran up and down the line adjuring and commanding the
troopers to cease shooting, with words and phrases which were
doubtless not wholly unlike those which the Old Guard really did use
at Waterloo. As I ran down my own line, I could see him coming up his,
and he saved me all trouble in stopping the fire at the right, where
the lines met, for my men there all dropped everything to listen to
him and cheer and laugh. Soon we got the troopers in hand, and made
them cease firing; then, after awhile, the Spanish fire died down. At
the time we spoke of this as a night attack by the Spaniards, but it
really was not an attack at all. Ever after my men had a great regard
for Ayres, and would have followed him anywhere. I shall never forget
the way in which he scolded his huge, devoted black troopers,
generally ending with "I'm ashamed of you, ashamed of you! I wouldn't
have believed it! Firing; when I told you to stop! I'm ashamed of
you!"

That night we spent in perfecting the trenches and arranging
entrances to them, doing about as much work as we had the preceding
night. Greenway and Goodrich, from their energy, eagerness to do every
duty, and great physical strength, were peculiarly useful in this
work; as, indeed, they were in all work. They had been up practically
the entire preceding night, but they were too good men for me to spare
them, nor did they wish to be spared; and I kept them up all this
night too. Goodrich had also been on guard as officer of the day the
night we were at El Poso, so that it turned out that he spent nearly
four days and three nights with practically hardly any sleep at all.

Next morning, at daybreak, the firing began again. This day, the 3rd,
we suffered nothing, save having one man wounded by a sharp-shooter,
and, thanks to the approaches to the trenches, we were able to relieve
the guards without any difficulty. The Spanish sharp-shooters in the
trees and jungle nearby, however, annoyed us very much, and I made
preparations to fix them next day. With this end in view I chose out
some twenty first-class men, in many instances the same that I had
sent after the guerillas, and arranged that each should take his
canteen and a little food. They were to slip into the jungle between
us and the Spanish lines before dawn next morning, and there to spend
the day, getting as close to the Spanish lines as possible, moving
about with great stealth, and picking off any hostile sharp-shooter,
as well as any soldier who exposed himself in the trenches. I had
plenty of men who possessed a training in woodcraft that fitted them
for this work; and as soon as the rumor got abroad what I was
planning, volunteers thronged to me. Daniels and Love were two of the
men always to the front in any enterprise of this nature; so were
Wadsworth, the two Bulls, Fortescue, and Cowdin. But I could not begin
to name all the troopers who so eagerly craved the chance to win honor
out of hazard and danger.

Among them was good, solemn Fred Herrig, the Alsatian. I knew Fred's
patience and skill as a hunter from the trips we had taken together
after deer and mountain sheep through the Bad Lands of the Little
Missouri. He still spoke English with what might be called Alsatian
variations--he always spoke of the gun detail as the "gondetle," with
the accent on the first syllable--and he expressed a wish to be allowed
"a holiday from the gondetle to go after dem gorrillas." I told him he
could have the holiday, but to his great disappointment the truce came
first, and then Fred asked that, inasmuch as the "gorrillas" were now
forbidden game, he might be allowed to go after guinea-hens instead.

Even after the truce, however, some of my sharp-shooters had
occupation, for two guerillas in our rear took occasional shots at the
men who were bathing in a pond, until one of our men spied them, when
they were both speedily brought down. One of my riflemen who did best
at this kind of work, by the way, got into trouble because of it. He
was much inflated by my commendation of him, and when he went back to
his troop he declined to obey the first Sergeant's orders on the
ground that he was "the Colonel's sharp-shooter." The Lieutenant in
command, being somewhat puzzled, brought him to me, and I had to
explain that if the offence, disobedience of orders in face of the
enemy, was repeated he might incur the death penalty; whereat he
looked very crestfallen. That afternoon he got permission, like Fred
Herrig, to go after guinea-hens, which were found wild in some numbers
round about; and he sent me the only one he got as a peace offering.
The few guinea-hens thus procured were all used for the sick.

Dr. Church had established a little field hospital under the
shoulder of the hill in our rear. He was himself very sick and had
almost nothing in the way of medicine or supplies or apparatus of any
kind, but the condition of the wounded in the big field hospitals in
the rear was so horrible, from the lack of attendants as well as of
medicines, that we kept all the men we possibly could at the front.
Some of them had now begun to come down with fever. They were all very
patient, but it was pitiful to see the sick and wounded soldiers lying
on their blankets, if they had any, and if not then simply in the mud,
with nothing to eat but hardtack and pork, which of course they could
not touch when their fever got high, and with no chance to get more
than the rudest attention. Among the very sick here was gallant
Captain Llewellen. I feared he was going to die. We finally had to
send him to one of the big hospitals in the rear. Doctors Brewer and
Fuller of the Tenth had been unwearying in attending to the wounded,
including many of those of my regiment.

At twelve o'clock we were notified to stop firing and a flag of
truce was sent in to demand the surrender of the city. The
negotiations gave us a breathing spell.

That afternoon I arranged to get our baggage up, sending back strong
details of men to carry up their own goods, and, as usual, impressing
into the service a kind of improvised pack-train consisting of the
officers' horses, of two or three captured Spanish cavalry horses, two
or three mules which had been shot and abandoned and which our men had
taken and cured, and two or three Cuban ponies. Hitherto we had simply
been sleeping by the trenches or immediately in their rear, with
nothing in the way of shelter and only one blanket to every three or
four men. Fortunately there had been little rain. We now got up the
shelter tents of the men and some flies for the hospital and for the
officers; and my personal baggage appeared. I celebrated its advent by
a thorough wash and shave.

Later, I twice snatched a few hours to go to the rear and visit such
of my men as I could find in the hospitals. Their patience was
extraordinary. Kenneth Robinson, a gallant young trooper, though
himself severely (I supposed at the time mortally) wounded, was
noteworthy for the way in which he tended those among the wounded who
were even more helpless, and the cheery courage with which he kept up
their spirits. Gievers, who was shot through the hips, rejoined us at
the front in a fortnight. Captain Day was hardly longer away. Jack
Hammer, who, with poor Race Smith, a gallant Texas lad who was
mortally hurt beside me on the summit of the hill, had been on kitchen
detail, was wounded and sent to the rear; he was ordered to go to the
United States, but he heard that we were to assault Santiago, so he
struggled out to rejoin us, and thereafter stayed at the front. Cosby,
badly wounded, made his way down to the sea-coast in three days,
unassisted.

With all volunteer troops, and I am inclined to think with regulars,
too, in time of trial, the best work can be got out of the men only if
the officers endure the same hardships and face the same risks. In my
regiment, as in the whole cavalry division, the proportion of loss in
killed and wounded was considerably greater among the officers than
among the troopers, and this was exactly as it should be. Moreover,
when we got down to hard pan, we all, officers and men, fared exactly
alike as regards both shelter and food. This prevented any grumbling.
When the troopers saw that the officers had nothing but hardtack,
there was not a man in the regiment who would not have been ashamed to
grumble at faring no worse, and when all alike slept out in the open,
in the rear of the trenches, and when the men always saw the field
officers up at night, during the digging of the trenches, and going
the rounds of the outposts, they would not tolerate, in any of their
number, either complaint or shirking work. When things got easier I
put up my tent and lived a little apart, for it is a mistake for an
officer ever to grow too familiar with his men, no matter how good
they are; and it is of course the greatest possible mistake to seek
popularity either by showing weakness or by mollycoddling the men.
They will never respect a commander who does not enforce discipline,
who does not know his duty, and who is not willing both himself to
encounter and to make them encounter every species of danger and
hardship when necessary. The soldiers who do not feel this way are not
worthy of the name and should be handled with iron severity until they
become fighting men and not shams. In return the officer should
carefully look after his men, should see that they are well fed and
well sheltered, and that, no matter how much they may grumble, they
keep the camp thoroughly policed.

After the cessation of the three days' fighting we began to get our
rations regularly and had plenty of hardtack and salt pork, and
usually about half the ordinary amount of sugar and coffee. It was not
a very good ration for the tropics, however, and was of very little
use indeed to the sick and half-sick. On two or three occasions during
the siege I got my improvised pack-train together and either took or
sent it down to the sea-coast for beans, canned tomatoes, and the
like. We got these either from the transports which were still landing
stores on the beach or from the Red Cross. If I did not go myself I
sent some man who had shown that he was a driving, energetic, tactful
fellow, who would somehow get what we wanted. Chaplain Brown developed
great capacity in this line, and so did one of the troopers named
Knoblauch, he who had dived after the rifles that had sunk off the
pier at Daiquiri. The supplies of food we got in this way had a very
beneficial effect, not only upon the men's health, but upon their
spirits. To the Red Cross and similar charitable organizations we owe
a great deal. We also owed much to Colonel Weston of the Commissary
Department, who always helped us and never let himself be hindered by
red tape; thus he always let me violate the absurd regulation which
forbade me, even in war time, to purchase food for my men from the
stores, although letting me purchase for the officers. I, of course,
paid no heed to the regulation when by violating it I could get beans,
canned tomatoes, or tobacco. Sometimes I used my own money, sometimes
what was given me by Woody Kane, or what was sent me by my
brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson, or by the other Red Cross people in
New York. My regiment did not fare very well; but I think it fared
better than any other. Of course no one would have minded in the least
such hardships as we endured had there been any need of enduring them;
but there was none. System and sufficiency of transportation were all
that were needed.

On one occasion a foreign military attache visited my head-quarters
together with a foreign correspondent who had been through the
Turco-Greek war. They were both most friendly critics, and as they
knew I was aware of this, the correspondent finally ventured the
remark, that he thought our soldiers fought even better than the
Turks, but that on the whole our system of military administration
seemed rather worse than that of the Greeks. As a nation we had prided
ourselves on our business ability and adroitness in the arts of peace,
while outsiders, at any rate, did not credit us with any especial
warlike prowess; and it was curious that when war came we should have
broken down precisely on the business and administrative side, while
the fighting edge of the troops certainly left little to be desired.

I was very much touched by the devotion my men showed to me. After
they had once become convinced that I would share their hardships,
they made it a point that I should not suffer any hardships at all;
and I really had an extremely easy time. Whether I had any food or not
myself made no difference, as there were sure to be certain troopers,
and, indeed, certain troop messes, on the lookout for me. If they had
any beans they would send me over a cupful, or I would suddenly
receive a present of doughnuts from some ex-roundup cook who had
succeeded in obtaining a little flour and sugar, and if a man shot a
guinea-hen it was all I could do to make him keep half of it for
himself. Wright, the color sergeant, and Henry Bardshar, my orderly,
always pitched and struck my tent and built me a bunk of bamboo poles,
whenever we changed camp. So I personally endured very little
discomfort; for, of course, no one minded the two or three days
preceding or following each fight, when we all had to get along as
best we could. Indeed, as long as we were under fire or in the
immediate presence of the enemy, and I had plenty to do, there was
nothing of which I could legitimately complain; and what I really did
regard as hardships, my men did not object to--for later on, when we
had some leisure, I would have given much for complete solitude and
some good books.

Whether there was a truce, or whether, as sometimes happened, we
were notified that there was no truce but merely a further cessation
of hostilities by tacit agreement, or whether the fight was on, we
kept equally vigilant watch, especially at night. In the trenches
every fourth man kept awake, the others sleeping beside or behind him
on their rifles; and the Cossack posts and pickets were pushed out in
advance beyond the edge of the jungle. At least once a night at some
irregular hour I tried to visit every part of our line, especially if
it was dark and rainy, although sometimes, when the lines were in
charge of some officer like Wilcox or Kane, Greenway or Goodrich, I
became lazy, took off my boots, and slept all night through. Sometimes
at night I went not only along the lines of our own brigade, but of
the brigades adjoining. It was a matter of pride, not only with me,
but with all our men, that the lines occupied by the Rough Riders
should be at least as vigilantly guarded as the lines of any regular
regiment.

Sometimes at night, when I met other officers inspecting their
lines, we would sit and talk over matters, and wonder what shape the
outcome of the siege would take. We knew we would capture Santiago,
but exactly how we would do it we could not tell. The failure to
establish any depot for provisions on the fighting-line, where there
was hardly ever more than twenty-four hours' food ahead, made the risk
very serious. If a hurricane had struck the transports, scattering
them to the four winds, or if three days of heavy rain had completely
broken up our communication, as they assuredly would have done, we
would have been at starvation point on the front; and while, of
course, we would have lived through it somehow and would have taken
the city, it would only have been after very disagreeable experiences.
As soon as I was able I accumulated for my own regiment about
forty-eight hours' hardtack and salt pork, which I kept so far as
possible intact to provide against any emergency.

If the city could be taken without direct assault on the intrenchments
and wire entanglements, we earnestly hoped it would be, for such an
assault meant, as we knew by past experience, the loss of a quarter
of the attacking regiments (and we were bound that the Rough Riders
should be one of these attacking regiments, if the attack had to be
made). There was, of course, nobody who would not rather have
assaulted than have run the risk of failure; but we hoped the city
would fall without need arising for us to suffer the great loss of
life which a further assault would have entailed.

Naturally, the colonels and captains had nothing to say in the peace
negotiations which dragged along for the week following the sending in
the flag of truce. Each day we expected either to see the city
surrender, or to be told to begin fighting again, and toward the end
it grew so irksome that we would have welcomed even an assault in
preference to further inaction. I used to discuss matters with the
officers of my own regiment now and then, and with a few of the
officers of the neighboring regiments with whom I had struck up a
friendship--Parker, Stevens, Beck, Ayres, Morton, and Boughton. I also
saw a good deal of the excellent officers on the staffs of Generals
Wheeler and Sumner, especially Colonel Dorst, Colonel Garlington,
Captain Howze, Captain Steele, Lieutenant Andrews, and Captain Astor
Chanler, who, like myself, was a volunteer. Chanler was an old friend
and a fellow big-game hunter, who had done some good exploring work in
Africa. I always wished I could have had him in my regiment. As for
Dorst, he was peculiarly fitted to command a regiment. Although Howze
and Andrews were not in my brigade, I saw a great deal of them,
especially of Howze, who would have made a nearly ideal regimental
commander. They were both natural cavalry-men and of most enterprising
natures, ever desirous of pushing to the front and of taking the
boldest course. The view Howze always took of every emergency (a view
which found prompt expression in his actions when the opportunity
offered) made me feel like an elderly conservative.

The week of non-fighting was not all a period of truce; part of the
time was passed under a kind of nondescript arrangement, when we were
told not to attack ourselves, but to be ready at any moment to repulse
an attack and to make preparations for meeting it. During these times
I busied myself in putting our trenches into first-rate shape and in
building bomb-proofs and traverses. One night I got a detail of sixty
men from the First, Ninth, and Tenth, whose officers always helped us
in every way, and with these, and with sixty of my own men, I dug a
long, zigzag trench in advance of the salient of my line out to a
knoll well in front, from which we could command the Spanish trenches
and block-houses immediately ahead of us. On this knoll we made a kind
of bastion consisting of a deep, semi-circular trench with sand-bags
arranged along the edge so as to constitute a wall with loop-holes. Of
course, when I came to dig this trench, I kept both Greenway and
Goodrich supervising the work all night, and equally of course I got
Parker and Stevens to help me. By employing as many men as we did we
were able to get the work so far advanced as to provide against
interruption before the moon rose, which was about midnight. Our
pickets were thrown far out in the jungle, to keep back the Spanish
pickets and prevent any interference with the diggers. The men seemed
to think the work rather good fun than otherwise, the possibility of a
brush with the Spaniards lending a zest that prevented its growing
monotonous.

Parker had taken two of his Gatlings, removed the wheels, and mounted
them in the trenches; also mounting the two automatic Colts where he
deemed they could do best service. With the completion of the
trenches, bomb-proofs, and traverses, and the mounting of these guns,
the fortifications of the hill assumed quite a respectable character,
and the Gatling men christened it Fort Roosevelt, by which name it
afterward went.*

  * Note: See Parker's "With the Gatlings at Santiago."

During the truce various military attaches and foreign officers came
out to visit us. Two or three of the newspaper men, including Richard
Harding Davis, Caspar Whitney, and John Fox, had already been out to
see us, and had been in the trenches during the firing. Among the
others were Captains Lee and Paget of the British army and navy, fine
fellows, who really seemed to take as much pride in the feats of our
men as if we had been bound together by the ties of a common
nationality instead of the ties of race and speech kinship. Another
English visitor was Sir Bryan Leighton, a thrice-welcome guest, for he
most thoughtfully brought to me half a dozen little jars of devilled
ham and potted fruit, which enabled me to summon various officers down
to my tent and hold a feast. Count von Gotzen, and a Norwegian
attache, Gedde, very good fellows both, were also out. One day we were
visited by a travelling Russian, Prince X., a large, blond man, smooth
and impenetrable. I introduced him to one of the regular army
officers, a capital fighter and excellent fellow, who, however, viewed
foreign international politics from a strictly trans-Mississippi
stand-point. He hailed the Russian with frank kindness and took him
off to show him around the trenches, chatting volubly, and calling him
"Prince," much as Kentuckians call one another "Colonel." As I
returned I heard him remarking: "You see, Prince, the great result of
this war is that it has united the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon
people; and now that they are together they can whip the world,
Prince! they can whip the world!"--being evidently filled with the
pleasing belief that the Russian would cordially sympathize with this
view.

The foreign attaches did not always get on well with our generals.
The two English representatives never had any trouble, were heartily
admired by everybody, and, indeed, were generally treated as if they
were of our own number; and seemingly so regarded themselves. But this
was not always true of the representatives from Continental Europe.
One of the latter--a very good fellow, by the way--had not altogether
approved of the way he was treated, and the climax came when he said
good-by to the General who had special charge of him. The General in
question was not accustomed to nice ethnic distinctions, and grouped
all of the representatives from Continental Europe under the
comprehensive title of "Dutchmen." When the attache in question came
to say farewell, the General responded with a bluff heartiness, in
which perhaps the note of sincerity was more conspicuous than that of
entire good breeding: "Well, good-by; sorry you're going; which are
you anyhow--the German or the Russian?"

Shortly after midday on the 10th fighting began again, but it soon
became evident that the Spaniards did not have much heart in it. The
American field artillery was now under the command of General
Randolph, and he fought it effectively. A mortar battery had also been
established, though with an utterly inadequate supply of ammunition,
and this rendered some service. Almost the only Rough Riders who had a
chance to do much firing were the men with the Colt automatic guns,
and the twenty picked sharp-shooters, who were placed in the newly dug
little fort out at the extreme front. Parker had a splendid time with
the Gatlings and the Colts. With these machine guns he completely
silenced the battery in front of us. This battery had caused us a good
deal of trouble at first, as we could not place it. It was immediately
in front of the hospital, from which many Red Cross flags were flying,
one of them floating just above this battery, from where we looked at
it. In consequence, for some time, we did not know it was a hostile
battery at all, as, like all the other Spanish batteries, it was using
smokeless powder. It was only by the aid of powerful glasses that we
finally discovered its real nature. The Gatlings and Colts then
actually put it out of action, silencing the big guns and the two
field-pieces. Furthermore, the machine guns and our sharp-shooters
together did good work in supplementing the effects of the dynamite
gun; for when a shell from the latter struck near a Spanish trench, or
a building in which there were Spanish troops, the shock was seemingly
so great that the Spaniards almost always showed themselves, and gave
our men a chance to do some execution.

As the evening of the 10th came on, the men began to make their coffee
in sheltered places. By this time they knew how to take care of
themselves so well that not a man was touched by the Spaniards during
the second bombardment. While I was lying with the officers just
outside one of the bomb-proofs I saw a New Mexican trooper named
Morrison making his coffee under the protection of a traverse high up
on the hill. Morrison was originally a Baptist preacher who had joined
the regiment purely from a sense of duty, leaving his wife and
children, and had shown himself to be an excellent soldier. He had
evidently exactly calculated the danger zone, and found that by
getting close to the traverse he could sit up erect and make ready his
supper without being cramped. I watched him solemnly pounding the
coffee with the butt end of his revolver, and then boiling the water
and frying his bacon, just as if he had been in the lee of the roundup
wagon somewhere out on the plains.

By noon of next day, the 11th, my regiment with one of the Gatlings
was shifted over to the right to guard the Caney road. We did no
fighting in our new position, for the last straggling shot had been
fired by the time we got there. That evening there came up the worst
storm we had had, and by midnight my tent blew over. I had for the
first time in a fortnight undressed myself completely, and I felt
fully punished for my love of luxury when I jumped out into the
driving downpour of tropic rain, and groped blindly in the darkness
for my clothes as they lay in the liquid mud. It was Kane's night on
guard, and I knew the wretched Woody would be out along the line and
taking care of the pickets, no matter what the storm might be; and so
I basely made my way to the kitchen tent, where good Holderman, the
Cherokee, wrapped me in dry blankets, and put me to sleep on a table
which he had just procured from an abandoned Spanish house.

On the 17th the city formally surrendered and our regiment, like the
rest of the army, was drawn up on the trenches. When the American flag
was hoisted the trumpets blared and the men cheered, and we knew that
the fighting part of our work was over.

Shortly after we took our new position the First Illinois Volunteers
came up on our right. The next day, as a result of the storm and of
further rain, the rivers were up and the roads quagmires, so that
hardly any food reached the front. My regiment was all right, as we
had provided for just such an emergency; but the Illinois newcomers
had of course not done so, and they were literally without anything to
eat. They were fine fellows and we could not see them suffer. I
furnished them some beans and coffee for the elder officers and two or
three cases of hardtack for the men, and then mounted my horse and
rode down to head-quarters, half fording, half swimming the streams;
and late in the evening I succeeded in getting half a mule-train of
provisions for them.

On the morning of the 3rd the Spaniards had sent out of Santiago many
thousands of women, children, and other non-combatants, most of them
belonging to the poorer classes, but among them not a few of the best
families. These wretched creatures took very little with them. They
came through our lines and for the most part went to El Caney in our
rear, where we had to feed them and protect them from the Cubans. As
we had barely enough food for our own men the rations of the refugees
were scanty indeed and their sufferings great. Long before the
surrender they had begun to come to our lines to ask for provisions,
and my men gave them a good deal out of their own scanty stores, until
I had positively to forbid it and to insist that the refugees should
go to head-quarters; as, however hard and merciless it seemed, I was
in duty bound to keep my own regiment at the highest pitch of fighting
efficiency.

As soon as the surrender was assured the refugees came streaming back
in an endless squalid procession down the Caney road to Santiago. My
troopers, for all their roughness and their ferocity in fight, were
rather tender-hearted than otherwise, and they helped the poor
creatures, especially the women and children, in every way, giving
them food and even carrying the children and the burdens borne by the
women. I saw one man, Happy Jack, spend the entire day in walking to
and fro for about a quarter of a mile on both sides of our lines along
the road, carrying the bundles for a series of poor old women, or else
carrying young children. Finally the doctor warned us that we must not
touch the bundles of the refugees for fear of infection, as disease
had broken out and was rife among them. Accordingly I had to put a
stop to these acts of kindness on the part of my men; against which
action Happy Jack respectfully but strongly protested upon the
unexpected ground that "The Almighty would never let a man catch a
disease while he was doing a good action." I did not venture to take
so advanced a theological stand.

Chapter 6

                          THE RETURN HOME

Two or three days after the surrender the cavalry division was marched
back to the foothills west of El Caney, and there went into camp,
together with the artillery. It was a most beautiful spot beside a
stream of clear water, but it was not healthy. In fact no ground in
the neighborhood was healthy. For the tropics the climate was not bad,
and I have no question but that a man who was able to take good care
of himself could live there all the year round with comparative
impunity; but the case was entirely different with an army which was
obliged to suffer great exposure, and to live under conditions which
almost insured being attacked by the severe malarial fever of the
country. My own men were already suffering badly from fever, and they
got worse rather than better in the new camp. The same was true of the
other regiments in the cavalry division. A curious feature was that
the colored troops seemed to suffer as heavily as the white. From week
to week there were slight relative changes, but on the average all the
six cavalry regiments, the Rough Riders, the white regulars, and the
colored regulars seemed to suffer about alike, and we were all very
much weakened; about as much as the regular infantry, although
naturally not as much as the volunteer infantry.

Yet even under such circumstances adventurous spirits managed to make
their way out to us. In the fortnight following the last bombardment
of the city I enlisted no less than nine such recruits, six being
from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton; and Bull, the former Harvard oar,
who had been back to the States crippled after the first fight,
actually got back to us as a stowaway on one of the transports,
bound to share the luck of the regiment, even if it meant yellow
fever.

There were but twelve ambulances with the army, and these were quite
inadequate for their work; but the conditions in the large field
hospitals were so bad, that as long as possible we kept all of our
sick men in the regimental hospital at the front. Dr. Church did
splendid work, although he himself was suffering much more than half
the time from fever. Several of the men from the ranks did equally
well, especially a young doctor from New York, Harry Thorpe, who had
enlisted as a trooper, but who was now made acting assistant-surgeon.
It was with the greatest difficulty that Church and Thorpe were able
to get proper medicine for the sick, and it was almost the last day of
our stay before we were able to get cots for them. Up to that time
they lay on the ground. No food was issued suitable for them, or for
the half-sick men who were not on the doctor's list; the two classes
by this time included the bulk of the command. Occasionally we got
hold of a wagon or of some Cuban carts, and at other times I used my
improvised pack-train (the animals of which, however, were continually
being taken away from us by our superiors) and went or sent back to
the sea-coast at Siboney or into Santiago itself to get rice, flour,
cornmeal, oatmeal, condensed milk, potatoes, and canned vegetables.
The rice I bought in Santiago; the best of the other stuff I got from
the Red Cross through Mr. George Kennan and Miss Clara Barton and Dr.
Lesser; but some of it I got from our own transports. Colonel Weston,
the Commissary-General, as always, rendered us every service in his
power. This additional and varied food was of the utmost service, not
merely to the sick but in preventing the well from becoming sick.
Throughout the campaign the Division Inspector-General,
Lieutenant-Colonel Garlington, and Lieutenants West and Dickman, the
acting division quartermaster and commissary, had done everything in
their power to keep us supplied with food; but where there were so few
mules and wagons even such able and zealous officers could not do the
impossible.

We had the camp policed thoroughly, and I made the men build little
bunks of poles to sleep on. By July 23rd, when we had been ashore a
month, we were able to get fresh meat, and from that time on we fared
well; but the men were already sickening. The chief trouble was the
malarial fever, which was recurrent. For a few days the man would be
very sick indeed; then he would partially recover, and be able to go
back to work; but after a little time he would be again struck down.
Every officer other than myself except one was down with sickness at
one time or another. Even Greenway and Goodrich succumbed to the fever
and were knocked out for a few days. Very few of the men indeed
retained their strength and energy, and though the percentage actually
on the sick list never got over twenty, there were less than fifty per
cent who were fit for any kind of work. All the clothes were in rags;
even the officers had neither socks nor underwear. The lithe college
athletes had lost their spring; the tall, gaunt hunters and
cow-punchers lounged listlessly in their dog-tents, which were
steaming morasses during the torrential rains, and then ovens when the
sun blazed down; but there were no complaints.

Through some blunder our march from the intrenchments to the camp on
the foothills, after the surrender, was made during the heat of the
day; and though it was only some five miles or thereabouts, very
nearly half the men of the cavalry division dropped out. Captain
Llewellen had come back, and led his troop on the march. He carried a
pick and shovel for one of his sick men, and after we reached camp
walked back with a mule to get another trooper who had fallen out from
heat exhaustion. The result was that the captain himself went down and
became exceedingly sick. We at last succeeded in sending him to the
States. I never thought he would live, but he did, and when I met him
again at Montauk Point he had practically entirely recovered. My
orderly, Henry Bardshar, was struck down, and though he ultimately
recovered, he was a mere skeleton, having lost over eighty pounds.

Yellow fever also broke out in the rear, chiefly among the Cubans. It
never became epidemic, but it caused a perfect panic among some of
our own doctors, and especially in the minds of one or two generals
and of the home authorities. We found that whenever we sent a man to
the rear he was decreed to have yellow fever, whereas, if we kept him
at the front, it always turned out that he had malarial fever, and
after a few days he was back at work again. I doubt if there were ever
more than a dozen genuine cases of yellow fever in the whole cavalry
division; but the authorities at Washington, misled by the reports
they received from one or two of their military and medical advisers
at the front, became panic-struck, and under the influence of their
fears hesitated to bring the army home, lest it might import yellow
fever into the United States. Their panic was absolutely groundless,
as shown by the fact that when brought home not a single case of
yellow fever developed upon American soil. Our real foe was not the
yellow fever at all, but malarial fever, which was not infectious, but
which was certain, if the troops were left throughout the summer in
Cuba, to destroy them, either killing them outright, or weakening them
so that they would have fallen victims to any disease that attacked
them.

However, for a time our prospects were gloomy, as the Washington
authorities seemed determined that we should stay in Cuba. They
unfortunately knew nothing of the country nor of the circumstances of
the army, and the plans that were from time to time formulated in the
Department (and even by an occasional general or surgeon at the front)
for the management of the army would have been comic if they had not
possessed such tragic possibilities. Thus, at one period it was
proposed that we should shift camp every two or three days. Now, our
transportation, as I have pointed out before, was utterly inadequate.
In theory, under the regulations of the War Department, each regiment
should have had at least twenty-five wagons. As a matter of fact our
regiment often had none, sometimes one, rarely two, and never three;
yet it was better off than any other in the cavalry division. In
consequence it was impossible to carry much of anything save what the
men had on their backs, and half of the men were too weak to walk
three miles with their packs. Whenever we shifted camp the exertion
among the half-sick caused our sick-roll to double next morning, and
it took at least three days, even when the shift was for but a short
distance, before we were able to bring up the officers' luggage, the
hospital spare food, the ammunition, etc. Meanwhile the officers slept
wherever they could, and those men who had not been able to carry
their own bedding, slept as the officers did. In the weak condition of
the men the labor of pitching camp was severe and told heavily upon
them. In short, the scheme of continually shifting camp was impossible
of fulfilment. It would merely have resulted in the early destruction
of the army.

Again, it was proposed that we should go up the mountains and make our
camps there. The palm and the bamboo grew to the summits of the
mountains, and the soil along their sides was deep and soft, while the
rains were very heavy, much more so than immediately on the coast
--every mile or two inland bringing with it a great increase in the
rainfall. We could, with much difficulty, have got our regiments up
the mountains, but not half the men could have got up with their
belongings; and once there it would have been an impossibility to feed
them. It was all that could be done, with the limited number of wagons
and mule-trains on hand, to feed the men in the existing camps, for
the travel and the rain gradually rendered each road in succession
wholly impassable. To have gone up the mountains would have meant
early starvation.

The third plan of the Department was even more objectionable than
either of the others. There was, some twenty-five miles in the
interior, what was called a high interior plateau, and at one period
we were informed that we were to be marched thither. As a matter of
fact, this so-called high plateau was the sugar-cane country, where,
during the summer, the rainfall was prodigious. It was a rich, deep
soil, covered with a rank tropic growth, the guinea-grass being higher
than the head of a man on horseback. It was a perfect hotbed of
malaria, and there was no dry ground whatever in which to camp. To
have sent the troops there would have been simple butchery.

Under these circumstances the alternative to leaving the country
altogether was to stay where we were, with the hope that half the men
would live through to the cool season. We did everything possible to
keep up the spirits of the men, but it was exceedingly difficult
because there was nothing for them to do. They were weak and languid,
and in the wet heat they had lost energy, so that it was not possible
for them to indulge in sports or pastimes. There were exceptions; but
the average man who went off to shoot guinea-hens or tried some
vigorous game always felt much the worse for his exertions. Once or
twice I took some of my comrades with me, and climbed up one or
another of the surrounding mountains, but the result generally was
that half of the party were down with some kind of sickness next day.
It was impossible to take heavy exercise in the heat of the day; the
evening usually saw a rain-storm which made the country a quagmire;
and in the early morning the drenching dew and wet, slimy soil made
walking but little pleasure. Chaplain Brown held service every Sunday
under a low tree outside my tent; and we always had a congregation of
a few score troopers, lying or sitting round, their strong hard faces
turned toward the preacher. I let a few of the men visit Santiago, but
the long walk in and out was very tiring, and, moreover, wise
restrictions had been put as to either officers or men coming in.

In any event there was very little to do in the quaint, dirty old
Spanish city, though it was interesting to go in once or twice, and
wander through the narrow streets with their curious little shops and
low houses of stained stucco, with elaborately wrought iron trellises
to the windows, and curiously carved balconies; or to sit in the
central plaza where the cathedral was, and the clubs, and the Cafe
Venus, and the low, bare, rambling building which was called the
Governor's Palace. In this palace Wood had now been established as
military governor, and Luna, and two or three of my other officers
from the Mexican border, who knew Spanish, were sent in to do duty
under him. A great many of my men knew Spanish, and some of the New
Mexicans were of Spanish origin, although they behaved precisely like
the other members of the regiment.

We should probably have spent the summer in our sick camps, losing
half the men and hopelessly shattering the health of the remainder, if
General Shafter had not summoned a council of officers, hoping by
united action of a more or less public character to wake up the
Washington authorities to the actual condition of things. As all the
Spanish forces in the province of Santiago had surrendered, and as
so-called immune regiments were coming to garrison the conquered
territory, there was literally not one thing of any kind whatsoever
for the army to do, and no purpose to serve by keeping it at Santiago.
We did not suppose that peace was at hand, being ignorant of the
negotiations. We were anxious to take part in the Porto Rico campaign,
and would have been more than willing to suffer any amount of
sickness, if by so doing we could get into action. But if we were not
to take part in the Porto Rico campaign, then we knew it was
absolutely indispensable to get our commands north immediately, if
they were to be in trim for the great campaign against Havana, which
would surely be the main event of the winter if peace were not
declared in advance.

Our army included the great majority of the regulars, and was,
therefore, the flower of the American force. It was on every account
imperative to keep it in good trim; and to keep it in Santiago meant
its entirely purposeless destruction. As soon as the surrender was an
accomplished fact, the taking away of the army to the north should
have begun.

Every officer, from the highest to the lowest, especially among the
regulars, realized all of this, and about the last day of July,
General Shafter called a conference, in the palace, of all the
division and brigade commanders. By this time, owing to Wood's having
been made Governor-General, I was in command of my brigade, so I went
to the conference too, riding in with Generals Sumner and Wheeler, who
were the other representatives of the cavalry division. Besides the
line officers all the chief medical officers were present at the
conference. The telegrams from the Secretary stating the position of
himself and the Surgeon-General were read, and then almost every line
and medical officer present expressed his views in turn. They were
almost all regulars and had been brought up to life-long habits of
obedience without protest. They were ready to obey still, but they
felt, quite rightly, that it was their duty to protest rather than to
see the flower of the United States forces destroyed as the
culminating act of a campaign in which the blunders that had been
committed had been retrieved only by the valor and splendid soldierly
qualities of the officers and enlisted men of the infantry and
dismounted cavalry. There was not a dissenting voice; for there could
not be. There was but one side to the question. To talk of continually
shifting camp or of moving up the mountains or of moving into the
interior was idle, for not one of the plans could be carried out with
our utterly insufficient transportation, and at that season and in
that climate they would merely have resulted in aggravating the
sickliness of the soldiers. It was deemed best to make some record of
our opinion, in the shape of a letter or report, which would show that
to keep the army in Santiago meant its absolute and objectless ruin,
and that it should at once be recalled. At first there was naturally
some hesitation on the part of the regular officers to take the
initiative, for their entire future career might be sacrificed. So I
wrote a letter to General Shafter, reading over the rough draft to the
various Generals and adopting their corrections. Before I had finished
making these corrections it was determined that we should send a
circular letter on behalf of all of us to General Shafter, and when I
returned from presenting him mine, I found this circular letter
already prepared and we all of us signed it. Both letters were made
public. The result was immediate. Within three days the army was
ordered to be ready to sail for home.

As soon as it was known that we were to sail for home the spirits of
the men changed for the better. In my regiment the officers began to
plan methods of drilling the men on horseback, so as to fit them for
use against the Spanish cavalry, if we should go against Havana in
December. We had, all of us, eyed the captured Spanish cavalry with
particular interest. The men were small, and the horses, though well
trained and well built, were diminutive ponies, very much smaller than
cow ponies. We were certain that if we ever got a chance to try shock
tactics against them they would go down like nine-pins, provided only
that our men could be trained to charge in any kind of line, and we
made up our minds to devote our time to this. Dismounted work with the
rifle we already felt thoroughly competent to perform.

My time was still much occupied with looking after the health of my
brigade, but the fact that we were going home, where I knew that their
health would improve, lightened my mind, and I was able thoroughly to
enjoy the beauty of the country, and even of the storms, which
hitherto I had regarded purely as enemies.

The surroundings of the city of Santiago are very grand. The
circling mountains rise sheer and high. The plains are threaded by
rapid winding brooks and are dotted here and there with quaint
villages, curiously picturesque from their combining traces of an
outworn old-world civilization with new and raw barbarism. The tall,
graceful, feathery bamboos rise by the water's edge, and elsewhere,
even on the mountain-crests, where the soil is wet and rank enough;
and the splendid royal palms and cocoanut palms tower high above the
matted green jungle.

Generally the thunder-storms came in the afternoon, but once I saw
one at sunrise, driving down the high mountain valleys toward us. It
was a very beautiful and almost terrible sight; for the sun rose
behind the storm, and shone through the gusty rifts, lighting the
mountain-crests here and there, while the plain below lay shrouded in
the lingering night. The angry, level rays edged the dark clouds with
crimson, and turned the downpour into sheets of golden rain; in the
valleys the glimmering mists were tinted every wild hue; and the
remotest heavens were lit with flaming glory.

One day General Lawton, General Wood and I, with Ferguson and poor
Tiffany, went down the bay to visit Morro Castle. The shores were
beautiful, especially where there were groves of palms and of the
scarlet-flower tree, and the castle itself, on a jutting headland,
overlooking the sea and guarding the deep, narrow entrance to the bay,
showed just what it was, the splendid relic of a vanished power and a
vanished age. We wandered all through it, among the castellated
battlements, and in the dungeons, where we found hideous rusty
implements of torture; and looked at the guns, some modern and some
very old. It had been little hurt by the bombardment of the ships.
Afterward I had a swim, not trusting much to the shark stories. We
passed by the sunken hulks of the Merrimac and the Reina Mercedes,
lying just outside the main channel. Our own people had tried to sink
the first and the Spaniards had tried to sink the second, so as to
block the entrance. Neither attempt was successful.

On August 6th we were ordered to embark, and next morning we sailed
on the transport Miami. General Wheeler was with us and a squadron of
the Third Cavalry under Major Jackson. The General put the policing
and management of the ship into my hands, and I had great aid from
Captain McCormick, who had been acting with me as adjutant-general of
the brigade. I had profited by my experience coming down, and as Dr.
Church knew his work well, although he was very sick, we kept the ship
in such good sanitary condition, that we were one of the very few
organizations allowed to land at Montauk immediately upon our arrival.

Soon after leaving port the captain of the ship notified me that his
stokers and engineers were insubordinate and drunken, due, he thought,
to liquor which my men had given them. I at once started a search of
the ship, explaining to the men that they could not keep the liquor;
that if they surrendered whatever they had to me I should return it to
them when we went ashore; and that meanwhile I would allow the sick to
drink when they really needed it; but that if they did not give the
liquor to me of their own accord I would throw it overboard. About
seventy flasks and bottles were handed to me, and I found and threw
overboard about twenty. This at once put a stop to all drunkenness.
The stokers and engineers were sullen and half mutinous, so I sent a
detail of my men down to watch them and see that they did their work
under the orders of the chief engineer; and we reduced them to
obedience in short order. I could easily have drawn from the regiment
sufficient skilled men to fill every position in the entire ship's
crew, from captain to stoker.

We were very much crowded on board the ship, but rather better off
than on the Yucatan, so far as the men were concerned, which was the
important point. All the officers except General Wheeler slept in a
kind of improvised shed, not unlike a chicken coop with bunks, on the
aftermost part of the upper deck. The water was bad--some of it very
bad. There was no ice. The canned beef proved practically uneatable,
as we knew would be the case. There were not enough vegetables. We did
not have enough disinfectants, and there was no provision whatever for
a hospital or for isolating the sick; we simply put them on one
portion of one deck. If, as so many of the high authorities had
insisted, there had really been a yellow-fever epidemic, and if it had
broken out on shipboard, the condition would have been frightful; but
there was no yellow-fever epidemic. Three of our men had been kept
behind as suspects, all three suffering simply from malarial fever.
One of them, Lutz, a particularly good soldier, died; another, who was
simply a malingerer and had nothing the matter with him whatever, of
course recovered; the third was Tiffany, who, I believe, would have
lived had we been allowed to take him with us, but who was sent home
later and died soon after landing.

I was very anxious to keep the men amused, and as the quarters were
so crowded that it was out of the question for them to have any
physical exercise, I did not interfere with their playing games of
chance so long as no disorder followed. On shore this was not allowed;
but in the particular emergency which we were meeting, the loss of a
month's salary was as nothing compared to keeping the men thoroughly
interested and diverted.

By care and diligence we succeeded in preventing any serious
sickness. One man died, however. He had been suffering from dysentery
ever since we landed, owing purely to his own fault, for on the very
first night ashore he obtained a lot of fiery liquor from some of the
Cubans, got very drunk, and had to march next day through the hot sun
before he was entirely sober. He never recovered, and was useless from
that time on. On board ship he died, and we gave him sea burial.
Wrapped in a hammock, he was placed opposite a port, and the American
flag thrown over him. The engine was stilled, and the great ship
rocked on the waves unshaken by the screw, while the war-worn troopers
clustered around with bare heads, to listen to Chaplain Brown read the
funeral service, and to the band of the Third Cavalry as it played the
funeral dirge. Then the port was knocked free, the flag withdrawn, and
the shotted hammock plunged heavily over the side, rushing down
through the dark water to lie, till the Judgment Day, in the ooze that
holds the timbers of so many gallant ships, and the bones of so many
fearless adventurers.

We were favored by good weather during our nine days' voyage, and
much of the time when there was little to do we simply sat together
and talked, each man contributing from the fund of his own
experiences. Voyages around Cape Horn, yacht races for the America's
cup, experiences on foot-ball teams which are famous in the annals of
college sport; more serious feats of desperate prowess in Indian
fighting and in breaking up gangs of white outlaws; adventures in
hunting big game, in breaking wild horses, in tending great herds of
cattle, and in wandering winter and summer among the mountains and
across the lonely plains--the men who told the tales could draw upon
countless memories such as these of the things they had done and the
things they had seen others do. Sometimes General Wheeler joined us
and told us about the great war, compared with which ours was such a
small war--far-reaching in their importance though its effects were
destined to be. When we had become convinced that we would escape an
epidemic of sickness the homeward voyage became very pleasant.

On the eve of leaving Santiago I had received from Mr. Laffan of the
Sun, a cable with the single word "Peace," and we speculated much on
this, as the clumsy transport steamed slowly northward across the
trade wind and then into the Gulf Stream. At last we sighted the low,
sandy bluffs of the Long Island coast, and late on the afternoon of
the 14th we steamed through the still waters of the Sound and cast
anchor off Montauk. A gun-boat of the Mosquito fleet came out to greet
us and to inform us that peace negotiations had begun.

Next morning we were marched on shore. Many of the men were very sick
indeed. Of the three or four who had been closest to me among the
enlisted men, Color-Sergeant Wright was the only one in good health.
Henry Bardshar was a wreck, literally at death's door. I was myself in
first-class health, all the better for having lost twenty pounds.
Faithful Marshall, my colored body-servant, was so sick as to be
nearly helpless.

Bob Wrenn nearly died. He had joined us very late and we could not
get him a Krag carbine; so I had given him my Winchester, which
carried the government cartridge; and when he was mustered out he
carried it home in triumph, to the envy of his fellows, who themselves
had to surrender their beloved rifles.

For the first few days there was great confusion and some want even
after we got to Montauk. The men in hospitals suffered from lack of
almost everything, even cots. But after these few days we were very
well cared for and had abundance of all we needed, except that on
several occasions there was a shortage of food for the horses, which I
should have regarded as even more serious than a shortage for the men,
had it not been that we were about to be disbanded. The men lived
high, with milk, eggs, oranges, and any amount of tobacco, the lack of
which during portions of the Cuban campaign had been felt as seriously
as any lack of food. One of the distressing features of the malarial
fever which had been ravaging the troops was that it was recurrent and
persistent. Some of my men died after reaching home, and many were
very sick. We owed much to the kindness not only of the New York
hospitals and the Red Cross and kindred societies, but of individuals,
notably Mr. Bayard Cutting and Mrs. Armitage, who took many of our men
to their beautiful Long Island homes.

On the whole, however, the month we spent at Montauk before we
disbanded was very pleasant. It was good to meet the rest of the
regiment. They all felt dreadfully at not having been in Cuba. It was
a sore trial to men who had given up much to go to the war, and who
rebelled at nothing in the way of hardship or suffering, but who did
bitterly feel the fact that their sacrifices seemed to have been
useless. Of course those who stayed had done their duty precisely as
did those who went, for the question of glory was not to be considered
in comparison to the faithful performance of whatever was ordered; and
no distinction of any kind was allowed in the regiment between those
whose good fortune it had been to go and those whose harder fate it
had been to remain. Nevertheless the latter could not be entirely
comforted.

The regiment had three mascots; the two most characteristic--a young
mountain lion brought by the Arizona troops, and a war eagle brought
by the New Mexicans--we had been forced to leave behind in Tampa. The
third, a rather disreputable but exceedingly knowing little dog named
Cuba, had accompanied us through all the vicissitudes of the campaign.
The mountain lion, Josephine, possessed an infernal temper; whereas
both Cuba and the eagle, which have been named in my honor, were
extremely good-humored. Josephine was kept tied up. She sometimes
escaped. One cool night in early September she wandered off and,
entering the tent of a Third Cavalry man, got into bed with him;
whereupon he fled into the darkness with yells, much more unnerved
than he would have been by the arrival of any number of Spaniards. The
eagle was let loose and not only walked at will up and down the
company streets, but also at times flew wherever he wished. He was a
young bird, having been taken out of his nest when a fledgling.
Josephine hated him and was always trying to make a meal of him,
especially when we endeavored to take their photographs together. The
eagle, though good-natured, was an entirely competent individual and
ready at any moment to beat Josephine off. Cuba was also oppressed at
times by Josephine, and was of course no match for her, but was
frequently able to overawe by simple decision of character.

In addition to the animal mascots, we had two or three small boys who
had also been adopted by the regiment. One, from Tennessee, was named
Dabney Royster. When we embarked at Tampa he smuggled himself on
board the transport with a 22-calibre rifle and three boxes of
cartridges, and wept bitterly when sent ashore. The squadron which
remained behind adopted him, got him a little Rough Rider's uniform,
and made him practically one of the regiment.

The men who had remained at Tampa, like ourselves, had suffered much
from fever, and the horses were in bad shape. So many of the men were
sick that none of the regiments began to drill for some time after
reaching Montauk. There was a great deal of paper-work to be done; but
as I still had charge of the brigade only a little of it fell on my
shoulders. Of this I was sincerely glad, for I knew as little of the
paper-work as my men had originally known of drill. We had all of us
learned how to fight and march; but the exact limits of our rights and
duties in other respects were not very clearly defined in our minds;
and as for myself, as I had not had the time to learn exactly what
they were, I had assumed a large authority in giving rewards and
punishments. In particular I had looked on court-martials much as
Peter Bell looked on primroses--they were court-martials and nothing
more, whether resting on the authority of a lieutenant-colonel or of a
major-general. The mustering-out officer, a thorough soldier, found to
his horror that I had used the widest discretion both in imposing
heavy sentences which I had no power to impose on men who shirked
their duties, and, where men atoned for misconduct by marked
gallantry, in blandly remitting sentences approved by my chief of
division. However, I had done substantial, even though somewhat rude
and irregular, justice--and no harm could result, as we were just about
to be mustered out.

My chief duties were to see that the camps of the three regiments
were thoroughly policed and kept in first-class sanitary condition.
This took up some time, of course, and there were other matters in
connection with the mustering out which had to be attended to; but I
could always get two or three hours a day free from work. Then I would
summon a number of the officers, Kane, Greenway, Goodrich, Church,
Ferguson, McIlhenny, Frantz, Ballard and others, and we would gallop
down to the beach and bathe in the surf, or else go for long rides
over the beautiful rolling plains, thickly studded with pools which
were white with water-lilies. Sometimes I went off alone with my
orderly, young Gordon Johnston, one of the best men in the regiment;
he was a nephew of the Governor of Alabama, and when at Princeton had
played on the eleven. We had plenty of horses, and these rides were
most enjoyable. Galloping over the open, rolling country, through the
cool fall evenings, made us feel as if we were out on the great
Western plains and might at any moment start deer from the brush, or
see antelope stand and gaze, far away, or rouse a band of mighty elk
and hear their horns clatter as they fled.

An old friend, Baron von Sternberg, of the German Embassy, spent a
week in camp with me. He had served, when only seventeen, in the
Franco-Prussian War as a hussar, and was a noted sharp-shooter--being
"the little baron" who is the hero of Archibald Forbes's true story of
"The Pig-dog." He and I had for years talked over the possibilities of
just such a regiment as the one I was commanding, and he was greatly
interested in it. Indeed I had vainly sought permission from the
German ambassador to take him with the regiment to Santiago.

One Sunday before the regiment disbanded I supplemented Chaplain
Brown's address to the men by a short sermon of a rather hortatory
character. I told them how proud I was of them, but warned them not to
think that they could now go back and rest on their laurels, bidding
them remember that though for ten days or so the world would be
willing to treat them as heroes, yet after that time they would find
they had to get down to hard work just like everyone else, unless they
were willing to be regarded as worthless do-nothings. They took the
sermon in good part, and I hope that some of them profited by it. At
any rate, they repaid me by a very much more tangible expression of
affection. One afternoon, to my genuine surprise, I was asked out of
my tent by Lieutenant-Colonel Brodie (the gallant old boy had rejoined
us), and found the whole regiment formed in hollow square, with the
officers and color-sergeant in the middle. When I went in, one of the
troopers came forward and on behalf of the regiment presented me with
Remington's fine bronze, "The Bronco-buster." There could have been no
more appropriate gift from such a regiment, and I was not only pleased
with it, but very deeply touched with the feeling which made them join
in giving it. Afterward they all filed past and I shook the hands of
each to say good-by.

Most of them looked upon the bronze with the critical eyes of
professionals. I doubt if there was any regiment in the world which
contained so large a number of men able to ride the wildest and most
dangerous horses. One day while at Montauk Point some of the troopers
of the Third Cavalry were getting ready for mounted drill when one of
their horses escaped, having thrown his rider. This attracted the
attention of some of our men and they strolled around to see the
trooper remount. He was instantly thrown again, the horse, a huge,
vicious sorrel, being one of the worst buckers I ever saw; and none of
his comrades were willing to ride the animal. Our men, of course,
jeered and mocked at them, and in response were dared to ride the
horse themselves. The challenge was instantly accepted, the only
question being as to which of a dozen noted bronco-busters who were in
the ranks should undertake the task. They finally settled on a man
named Darnell. It was agreed that the experiment should take place
next day when the horse would be fresh, and accordingly next day the
majority of both regiments turned out on a big open flat in front of
my tent--brigade head-quarters. The result was that, after as fine a
bit of rough riding as one would care to see, in which one scarcely
knew whether most to wonder at the extraordinary viciousness and agile
strength of the horse or at the horsemanship and courage of the rider,
Darnell came off victorious, his seat never having been shaken. After
this almost every day we had exhibitions of bronco-busting, in which
all the crack riders of the regiment vied with one another, riding not
only all of our own bad horses but any horse which was deemed bad in
any of the other regiments.

Darnell, McGinty, Wood, Smoky Moore, and a score of others took part
in these exhibitions, which included not merely feats in mastering
vicious horses, but also feats of broken horses which the riders had
trained to lie down at command, and upon which they could mount while
at full speed.

Toward the end of the time we also had mounted drill on two or three
occasions; and when the President visited the camp we turned out
mounted to receive him as did the rest of the cavalry. The last night
before we were mustered out was spent in noisy, but entirely harmless
hilarity, which I ignored. Every form of celebration took place in the
ranks. A former Populist candidate for Attorney-General in Colorado
delivered a fervent oration in favor of free silver; a number of the
college boys sang; but most of the men gave vent to their feelings by
improvised dances. In these the Indians took the lead, pure bloods and
half-breeds alike, the cowboys and miners cheerfully joining in and
forming part of the howling, grunting rings, that went bounding around
the great fires they had kindled.

Next morning Sergeant Wright took down the colors, and Sergeant
Guitilias the standard, for the last time; the horses, the rifles, and
the rest of the regimental property had been turned in; officers and
men shook hands and said good-by to one another, and then they
scattered to their homes in the North and the South, the few going
back to the great cities of the East, the many turning again toward
the plains, the mountains, and the deserts of the West and the strange
Southwest. This was on September 15th, the day which marked the close
of the four months' life of a regiment of as gallant fighters as ever
wore the United States uniform.

The regiment was a wholly exceptional volunteer organization, and its
career cannot be taken as in any way a justification for the belief
that the average volunteer regiment approaches the average regular
regiment in point of efficiency until it has had many months of
active service. In the first place, though the regular regiments may
differ markedly among themselves, yet the range of variation among
them is nothing like so wide as that among volunteer regiments, where
at first there is no common standard at all; the very best being,
perhaps, up to the level of the regulars (as has recently been shown
at Manila), while the very worst are no better than mobs, and the
great bulk come in between.* The average regular regiment is superior
to the average volunteer regiment in the physique of the enlisted men,
who have been very carefully selected, who have been trained to life
in the open, and who know how to cook and take care of themselves
generally.

  * Note: For sound common-sense about the volunteers see Parker's
  excellent little book, "The Gatlings at Santiago."

Now, in all these respects, and in others like them, the Rough Riders
were the equals of the regulars. They were hardy, self-reliant,
accustomed to shift for themselves in the open under very adverse
circumstances. The two all-important qualifications for a cavalryman,
are riding and shooting--the modern cavalryman being so often used
dismounted, as an infantryman. The average recruit requires a couple
of years before he becomes proficient in horsemanship and
marksmanship; but my men were already good shots and first-class
riders when they came into the regiment. The difference as regards
officers and non-commissioned officers, between regulars and
volunteers, is usually very great; but in my regiment (keeping in view
the material we had to handle), it was easy to develop
non-commissioned officers out of men who had been round-up foremen,
ranch foremen, mining bosses, and the like. These men were intelligent
and resolute; they knew they had a great deal to learn, and they set
to work to learn it; while they were already accustomed to managing
considerable interests, to obeying orders, and to taking care of
others as well as themselves.

As for the officers, the great point in our favor was the anxiety
they showed to learn from those among their number who, like Capron,
had already served in the regular army; and the fact that we had
chosen a regular army man as Colonel. If a volunteer organization
consists of good material, and is eager to learn, it can readily do so
if it has one or two first-class regular officers to teach it.
Moreover, most of our captains and lieutenants were men who had seen
much of wild life, who were accustomed to handling and commanding
other men, and who had usually already been under fire as sheriffs,
marshals, and the like. As for the second in command, myself, I had
served three years as captain in the National Guard; I had been deputy
sheriff in the cow country, where the position was not a sinecure; I
was accustomed to big game hunting and to work on a cow ranch, so that
I was thoroughly familiar with the use both of horse and rifle, and
knew how to handle cowboys, hunters, and miners; finally, I had
studied much in the literature of war, and especially the literature
of the great modern wars, like our own Civil War, the Franco-German
War, the Turco-Russian War; and I was especially familiar with the
deeds, the successes and failures alike, of the frontier horse
riflemen who had fought at King's Mountain and the Thames, and on the
Mexican border. Finally, and most important of all, officers and men
alike were eager for fighting, and resolute to do well and behave
properly, to encounter hardship and privation, and the irksome
monotony of camp routine, without grumbling or complaining; they had
counted the cost before they went in, and were delighted to pay the
penalties inevitably attendant upon the career of a fighting regiment;
and from the moment when the regiment began to gather, the higher
officers kept instilling into those under them the spirit of eagerness
for action and of stern determination to grasp at death rather than
forfeit honor.

The self-reliant spirit of the men was well shown after they left
the regiment. Of course, there were a few weaklings among them; and
there were others, entirely brave and normally self-sufficient, who,
from wounds or fevers, were so reduced that they had to apply for
aid--or at least, who deserved aid, even though they often could only
be persuaded with the greatest difficulty to accept it. The widows and
orphans had to be taken care of. There were a few light-hearted
individuals, who were entirely ready to fight in time of war, but in
time of peace felt that somebody ought to take care of them; and there
were others who, never having seen any aggregation of buildings larger
than an ordinary cow-town, fell a victim to the fascinations of New
York. But, as a whole, they scattered out to their homes on the
disbandment of the regiment; gaunter than when they had enlisted,
sometimes weakened by fever or wounds, but just as full as ever of
sullen, sturdy capacity for self-help; scorning to ask for aid, save
what was entirely legitimate in the way of one comrade giving help to
another. A number of the examining surgeons, at the muster-out, spoke
to me with admiration of the contrast offered by our regiment to so
many others, in the fact that our men always belittled their own
bodily injuries and sufferings; so that whereas the surgeons
ordinarily had to be on the look-out lest a man who was not really
disabled should claim to be so, in our case they had to adopt exactly
the opposite attitude and guard the future interests of the men, by
insisting upon putting upon their certificates of discharge whatever
disease they had contracted or wound they had received in line of
duty. Major J. H. Calef, who had more than any other one man to do
with seeing to the proper discharge papers of our men, and who took a
most generous interest in them, wrote me as follows: "I also wish to
bring to your notice the fortitude displayed by the men of your
regiment, who have come before me to be mustered out of service, in
making their personal declarations as to their physical conditions.
Men who bore on their faces and in their forms the traces of long days
of illness, indicating wrecked constitutions, declared that nothing
was the matter with them, at the same time disclaiming any intention
of applying for a pension. It was exceptionally heroic."

When we were mustered out, many of the men had lost their jobs, and
were too weak to go to work at once, while there were helpless
dependents of the dead to care for. Certain of my friends, August
Belmont, Stanley and Richard Mortimer, Major Austin Wadsworth--himself
fresh from the Manila campaign--Belmont Tiffany, and others, gave me
sums of money to be used for helping these men. In some instances, by
the exercise of a good deal of tact and by treating the gift as a
memorial of poor young Lieutenant Tiffany, we got the men to accept
something; and, of course, there were a number who, quite rightly,
made no difficulty about accepting. But most of the men would accept
no help whatever. In the first chapter, I spoke of a lady, a teacher
in an academy in the Indian Territory, three or four of whose pupils
had come into my regiment, and who had sent with them a letter of
introduction to me. When the regiment disbanded, I wrote to her to ask
if she could not use a little money among the Rough Riders, white,
Indian, and half-breed, that she might personally know. I did not hear
from her for some time, and then she wrote as follows:

       "MUSCOGEE, IND. TER.,
       "December 19, 1898.

  "MY DEAR COLONEL ROOSEVELT: I did not at once reply to your letter
  of September 23rd, because I waited for a time to see if there should
  be need among any of our Rough Riders of the money you so kindly
  offered. Some of the boys are poor, and in one or two cases they
  seemed to me really needy, but they all said no. More than once I saw
  the tears come to their eyes, at thought of your care for them, as I
  told them of your letter. Did you hear any echoes of our Indian
  war-whoops over your election? They were pretty loud. I was
  particularly exultant, because my father was a New Yorker and I was
  educated in New York, even if I was born here. So far as I can learn,
  the boys are taking up the dropped threads of their lives, as though
  they had never been away. Our two Rough Rider students, Meagher and
  Gilmore, are doing well in their college work.

  "I am sorry to tell you of the death of one of your most devoted
  troopers, Bert Holderman, who was here serving on the Grand Jury. He
  was stricken with meningitis in the jury-room, and died after three
  days of delirium. His father, who was twice wounded, four times
  taken prisoner, and fought in thirty-two battles of the civil war,
  now old and feeble, survives him, and it was indeed pathetic to see
  his grief. Bert's mother, who is a Cherokee, was raised in my
  grandfather's family. The words of commendation which you wrote upon
  Bert's discharge are the greatest comfort to his friends. They wanted
  you to know of his death, because he loved you so.

  "I am planning to entertain all the Rough Riders in this vicinity
  some evening during my holiday vacation. I mean to have no other
  guests, but only give them an opportunity for reminiscences. I regret
  that Bert's death makes one less. I had hoped to have them sooner,
  but our struggling young college salaries are necessarily small and
  duties arduous. I make a home for my widowed mother and an adopted
  Indian daughter, who is in school; and as I do the cooking for a
  family of five, I have found it impossible to do many things I would
  like to.

  "Pardon me for burdening you with these details, but I suppose I am
  like your boys, who say, 'The Colonel was always as ready to listen
  to a private as to a major-general.'

  "Wishing you and yours the very best gifts the season can bring, I am,

       "Very truly yours,
            "ALICE M. ROBERTSON."

Is it any wonder that I loved my regiment? 
The End

A concluding word from Robert J.  Kuniegel

TR AMERICAN PATRIOT hopes you enjoy our books.  Theodore Roosevelt lived his life in a manner that is the only way possible to make government responsive to the people.  He has written how to make meaningful reform possible not only for his generation but for future generations, if we read what he has said.  We only need to interest others in reading what he has said to transform our government. 

Reading the books on TR AMERICAN PATRIOT DOT COM  and having others do the same, will develop citizens and leaders capable of transforming American politics into a system of government that will be honest, and responsive to “a square deal”.  A square deal has no special deals for the rich, the middle class, or the poor.  Our government today has degenerated into a system that rewards citizens for not being productive.  It promotes entitlements under the guise of helping people, when in fact it only helps politicians to protect their own royal positions.  Policies that foster a special privileged class was the type of government policies Theodore Roosevelt fought against and won.  He was a visionary.  He knew this fight would need to be fought through the ages if we were to keep our country strong.  He was an intrepid pioneer that blazed a trail through a jungle of corrupt government, so that others might follow his proven and highly successful common sense approach toward honest government.  His fearless course helped make America a beacon of hope to all that seek justice.  His endless devotion to America helped make America a super power that no just nation has needed to fear as long as our citizens value his lofty resolute square deal policy toward our fellow citizens and those of other nations. 

Theodore Roosevelt’s greatest gift to this country is before us.  It is not in the past, if we as Americans recognize that his message is not just a story from American history pages.  His message is an example, clearly defined.  It details actions that are required if we desire to do something meaningful for our country.  Join the good fight today.  You only need to read and interest others to do the same.  

David Boyd, repeating what he had read, once said, “The person we become is because of our experiences in life, the people we meet, and the books we read. ” It is time to have others meet Theodore Roosevelt.  It is time for a Theodore Roosevelt revival, “Fear God and do your own part”.  Dare to help make Theodore Roosevelt the standard and not the exception.  America needs to adopt a wise, fearless and honest role model as the standard we revere, so that our public servants know what we expect.  The first step to honest government is no harder than setting proper standards of conduct for our public servants through the use of a proper role model.  Can you find one quality in Theodore Roosevelt that is not right in a public servant?  If you think you can, I bet your conjecture is based upon something other than truth and honest reasoning and this American would love an opportunity to debate any such conjecture.