The Rough Riders

I wish to bear testimony to the energy and capacity of Colonel Weston, the Commissary-General with the expedition. If it had not been for his active aid, we should have fared worse than we did. All that he could do for us, he most cheerfully did.

As regards the clothing, I have to say: As to the first issue, the blue shirts were excellent of their kind, but altogether too hot for Cuba. They are just what I used to wear in Montana. The leggings were good; the shoes were very good; the undershirts not very good, and the drawers bad—being of heavy, thick canton flannel, difficult to wash, and entirely unfit for a tropical climate. The trousers were poor, wearing badly. We did not get any other clothing until we were just about to leave Cuba, by which time most of the men were in tatters; some being actually barefooted, while others were in rags, or dressed partly in clothes captured from the Spaniards, who were much more suitably clothed for the climate and place than we were. The ponchos were poor, being inferior to the Spanish rain-coats which we captured.

As to the medical matters, I invite your attention, not only to the report of Dr. Church accompanying this letter, but to the letters of Captain Llewellen, Captain Day, and Lieutenant McIlhenny. I could readily produce a hundred letters on the lines of the last three. In actual medical supplies, we had plenty of quinine and cathartics. We were apt to be short on other medicines, and we had nothing whatever in the way of proper nourishing food for our sick and wounded men during most of the time, except what we were able to get from the Red Cross or purchase with our own money. We had no hospital tent at all until I was able to get a couple of tarpaulins. During much of the time my own fly was used for the purpose. We had no cots until by individual effort we obtained a few, only three or four days before we left Cuba. During most of the time the sick men lay on the muddy ground in blankets, if they had any; if not, they lay without them until some of the well men cut their own blankets in half. Our regimental surgeon very soon left us, and Dr. Church, who was repeatedly taken down with the fever, was left alone—save as he was helped by men detailed from among the troopers. Both he and the men thus detailed, together with the regular hospital attendants, did work of incalculable service. We had no ambulance with the regiment. On the battle-field our wounded were generally sent to the rear in mule-wagons, or on litters which were improvised. At other times we would hire the little springless Cuban carts. But of course the wounded suffered greatly in such conveyances, and moreover, often we could not get a wheeled vehicle of any kind to transport even the most serious cases. On the day of the big fight, July 1st, as far as we could find out, there were but two ambulances with the army in condition to work—neither of which did we ever see. Later there were, as we were informed, thirteen all told; and occasionally after the surrender, by vigorous representations and requests, we would get one assigned to take some peculiarly bad cases to the hospital. Ordinarily, however, we had to do with one of the makeshifts enumerated above. On several occasions I visited the big hospitals in the rear. Their condition was frightful beyond description from lack of supplies, lack of medicine, lack of doctors, nurses, and attendants, and especially from lack of transportation. The wounded and sick who were sent back suffered so much that, whenever possible, they returned to the front. Finally my brigade commander, General Wood, ordered, with my hearty acquiescence, that only in the direst need should any men be sent to the rear—no matter what our hospital accommodations at the front might be. The men themselves preferred to suffer almost anything lying alone in their little shelter-tents, rather than go back to the hospitals in the rear. I invite attention to the accompanying letter of Captain Llewellen in relation to the dreadful condition of the wounded on some of the transports taking them North.

The greatest trouble we had was with the lack of transportation. Under the order issued by direction of General Miles through the Adjutant-General on or about May 8th, a regiment serving as infantry in the field was entitled to twenty-five wagons. We often had one, often none, sometimes two, and never as many as three. We had a regimental pack-train, but it was left behind at Tampa. During most of the time our means of transportation were chiefly the improvised pack-trains spoken of above; but as the mules got well they were taken away from us, and so were the captured Spanish cavalry horses. Whenever we shifted camp, we had to leave most of our things behind, so that the night before each fight was marked by our sleeping without tentage and with very little food, so far as officers were concerned, as everything had to be sacrificed to getting up what ammunition and medical supplies we had. Colonel Wood seized some mules, and in this manner got up the medical supplies before the fight of June 24th, when for three days the officers had nothing but what they wore. There was a repetition of this, only in worse form, before and after the fight of July 1st. Of course much of this was simply a natural incident of war, but a great deal could readily have been avoided if we had had enough transportation; and I was sorry not to let my men be as comfortable as possible and rest as much as possible just before going into a fight when, as on July 1st and 2nd, they might have to be forty-eight hours with the minimum quantity of food and sleep. The fever began to make heavy ravages among our men just before the surrender, and from that time on it became a most serious matter to shift camp, with sick and ailing soldiers, hardly able to walk—not to speak of carrying heavy burdens—when we had no transportation. Not more than half of the men could carry their rolls, and yet these, with the officers' baggage and provisions, the entire hospital and its appurtenances, etc., had to be transported somehow. It was usually about three days after we reached a new camp before the necessaries which had been left behind could be brought up, and during these three days we had to get along as best we could. The entire lack of transportation at first resulted in leaving most of the troop mess-kits on the beach, and we were never able to get them. The men cooked in the few utensils they could themselves carry. This rendered it impossible to boil the drinking-water. Closely allied to the lack of transportation was the lack of means to land supplies from the transports.

In my opinion, the deficiency in transportation was the worst evil with which we had to contend, serious though some of the others were. I have never served before, so have no means of comparing this with previous campaigns. I was often told by officers who had seen service against the Indians that, relatively to the size of the army, and the character of the country, we had only a small fraction of the transportation always used in the Indian campaigns. As far as my regiment was concerned, we certainly did not have one-third of the amount absolutely necessary, if it was to be kept in fair condition, and we had to partially make good the deficiency by the most energetic resort to all kinds of makeshifts and expedients.

Yours respectfully,(Signed)THEODORE ROOSEVELT, ColonelFirst United States Cavalry.

Forwarded through military channels.

(5 enclosures.)

First Endorsement.

HEAD-QUARTERS FIFTH ARMY CORPS.

CAMP WIKOFF,

September 18, 1898.

Respectfully forwarded to the Adjutant-General of the Army.(Signed)WILLIAM R. SHAFTER, Major-General Commanding.

APPENDIX C

THE "ROUND ROBIN" LETTER

[The following is the report of the Associated Press correspondent of the "round-robin" incident. It is literally true in every detail. I was present when he was handed both letters; he was present while they were being written.]

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, August 3rd (delayed in transmission).—Summoned by Major-General Shafter, a meeting was held here this morning at head-quarters, and in the presence of every commanding and medical officer of the Fifth Army Corps, General Shafter read a cable message from Secretary Alger, ordering him, on the recommendation of Surgeon-General Sternberg, to move the army into the interior, to San Luis, where it is healthier.

As a result of the conference General Shafter will insist upon the immediate withdrawal of the army North.

As an explanation of the situation the following letter from Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, commanding the First Cavalry, to General Shafter, was handed by the latter to the correspondent of the Associated Press for publication:

MAJOR-GENERAL SHAFTER.

SIR: In a meeting of the general and medical officers called by you at the Palace this morning we were all, as you know, unanimous in our views of what should be done with the army. To keep us here, in the opinion of every officer commanding a division or a brigade, will simply involve the destruction of thousands. There is no possible reason for not shipping practically the entire command North at once. Yellow-fever cases are very few in the cavalry division, where I command one of the two brigades, and not one true case of yellow fever has occurred in this division, except among the men sent to the hospital at Siboney, where they have, I believe, contracted it.

But in this division there have been 1,500 cases of malarial fever. Hardly a man has yet died from it, but the whole command is so weakened and shattered as to be ripe for dying like rotten sheep, when a real yellow-fever epidemic instead of a fake epidemic, like the present one, strikes us, as it is bound to do if we stay here at the height of the sickness season, August and the beginning of September. Quarantine against malarial fever is much like quarantining against the toothache.

All of us are certain that as soon as the authorities at Washington fully appreciate the condition of the army, we shall be sent home. If we are kept here it will in all human possibility mean an appalling disaster, for the surgeons here estimate that over half the army, if kept here during the sickly season, will die.

This is not only terrible from the stand-point of the individual lives lost, but it means ruin from the stand-point of military efficiency of the flower of the American army, for the great bulk of the regulars are here with you. The sick list, large though it is, exceeding four thousand, affords but a faint index of the debilitation of the army. Not twenty per cent are fit for active work.

Six weeks on the North Maine coast, for instance, or elsewhere where the yellow-fever germ cannot possibly propagate, would make us all as fit as fighting-cocks, as able as we are eager to take a leading part in the great campaign against Havana in the fall, even if we are not allowed to try Porto Rico.

We can be moved North, if moved at once, with absolute safety to the country, although, of course, it would have been infinitely better if we had been moved North or to Porto Rico two weeks ago. If there were any object in keeping us here, we would face yellow fever with as much indifference as we faced bullets. But there is no object.

The four immune regiments ordered here are sufficient to garrison the city and surrounding towns, and there is absolutely nothing for us to do here, and there has not been since the city surrendered. It is impossible to move into the interior. Every shifting of camp doubles the sick-rate in our present weakened condition, and, anyhow, the interior is rather worse than the coast, as I have found by actual reconnaissance. Our present camps are as healthy as any camps at this end of the island can be.

I write only because I cannot see our men, who have fought so bravely and who have endured extreme hardship and danger so uncomplainingly, go to destruction without striving so far as lies in me to avert a doom as fearful as it is unnecessary and undeserved.

Yours respectfully,THEODORE ROOSEVELT,Colonel Commanding Second Cavalry Brigade.

After Colonel Roosevelt had taken the initiative, all the American general officers united in a "round robin" addressed to General Shafter. It reads:

We, the undersigned officers commanding the various brigades, divisions, etc., of the Army of Occupation in Cuba, are of the unanimous opinion that this army should be at once taken out of the island of Cuba and sent to some point on the Northern sea-coast of the United States; that can be done without danger to the people of the United States; that yellow fever in the army at present is not epidemic; that there are only a few sporadic cases; but that the army is disabled by malarial fever to the extent that its efficiency is destroyed, and that it is in a condition to be practically entirely destroyed by an epidemic of yellow fever, which is sure to come in the near future.

We know from the reports of competent officers and from personal observations that the army is unable to move into the interior, and that there are no facilities for such a move if attempted, and that it could not be attempted until too late. Moreover, the best medical authorities of the island say that with our present equipment we could not live in the interior during the rainy season without losses from malarial fever, which is almost as deadly as yellow fever.

This army must be moved at once, or perish. As the army can be safely moved now, the persons responsible for preventing such a move will be responsible for the unnecessary loss of many thousands of lives.

Our opinions are the result of careful personal observation, and they are also based on the unanimous opinion of our medical officers with the army, who understand the situation absolutely.

J. FORD KENT,Major-General Volunteers Commanding First Division, Fifth Corps.J. C. BATES,Major-General Volunteers Commanding Provisional Division.ADNAH R. CHAFFEE,Major-General Commanding Third Brigade, Second Division.SAMUEL S. SUMNER,Brigadier-General Volunteers Commanding First Brigade, Cavalry.WILL LUDLOW,Brigadier-General Volunteers Commanding First Brigade, SecondDivision.ADELBERT AMES,Brigadier-General Volunteers Commanding Third Brigade, FirstDivision.LEONARD WOOD,Brigadier-General Volunteers Commanding the City of Santiago.THEODORE ROOSEVELT,Colonel Commanding Second Cavalry Brigade.

Major M. W. Wood, the chief Surgeon of the First Division, said: "The army must be moved North," adding, with emphasis, "or it will be unable to move itself."

General Ames has sent the following cable message to Washington:

CHARLES H. ALLEN,

Assistant Secretary of the Navy:

This army is incapable, because of sickness, of marching anywhere except to the transports. If it is ever to return to the United States it must do so at once.

APPENDIX D

CORRECTIONS

It has been suggested to me that when Bucky O'Neill spoke of the vultures tearing our dead, he was thinking of no modern poet, but of the words of the prophet Ezekiel: "Speak unto every feathered fowl . . . . . ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the princes of the earth."

At San Juan the Sixth Cavalry was under Major Lebo, a tried and gallant officer. I learn from a letter of Lieutenant McNamee that it was he, and not Lieutenant Hartwick, by whose orders the troopers of the Ninth cast down the fence to enable me to ride my horse into the lane. But one of the two lieutenants of B troop was overcome by the heat that day; Lieutenant Rynning was with his troop until dark.

One night during the siege, when we were digging trenches, a curious stampede occurred (not in my own regiment) which it may be necessary some time to relate.

Lieutenants W. E. Shipp and W. H. Smith were killed, not far from each other, while gallantly leading their troops on the slope of Kettle Hill. Each left a widow and young children.

Captain (now Colonel) A. L. Mills, the Brigade Adjutant-General, has written me some comments on my account of the fight on July 1st. It was he himself who first brought me word to advance. I then met Colonel Dorst—who bore the same message—as I was getting the regiment forward. Captain Mills was one of the officers I had sent back to get orders that would permit me to advance; he met General Sumner, who gave him the orders, and he then returned to me. In a letter to me Colonel Mills says in part:

I reached the head of the regiment as you came out of the lane and gave you the orders to enter the action. These were that you were to move, with your right resting along the wire fence of the lane, to the support of the regular cavalry then attacking the hill we were facing. "The red-roofed house yonder is your objective," I said to you. You moved out at once and quickly forged to the front of your regiment. I rode in rear, keeping the soldiers and troops closed and in line as well as the circumstances and conditions permitted. We had covered, I judge, from one-half to two-thirds the distance to Kettle Hill when Lieutenant-Colonel Garlington, from our left flank called to me that troops were needed in the meadow across the lane. I put one troop (not three, as stated in your account7) across the lane and went with it. Advancing with the troop, I began immediately to pick up troopers of the Ninth Cavalry who had drifted from their commands, and soon had so many they demanded nearly all my attention. With a line thus made up, the colored troopers on the left and yours on the right, the portion of Kettle Hill on the right of the red-roofed house was first carried. I very shortly thereafter had a strong firing-line established on the crest nearest the enemy, from the corner of the fence around the house to the low ground on the right of the hill, which fired into the strong line of conical straw hats, whose brims showed just above the edge of the Spanish trench directly west of that part of the hill.8 These hats made a fine target! I had placed a young officer of your regiment in charge of the portion of the line on top of the hill, and was about to go to the left to keep the connection of the brigade—Captain McBlain, Ninth Cavalry, just then came up on the hill from the left and rear—when the shot struck that put me out of the fight.

There were many wholly erroneous accounts of the Guasimas fight published at the time, for the most part written by newspaper-men who were in the rear and utterly ignorant of what really occurred. Most of these accounts possess a value so purely ephemeral as to need no notice. Mr. Stephen Bonsal, however, in his book, "The Fight for Santiago," has cast one of them in a more permanent form; and I shall discuss one or two of his statements.

Mr. Bonsal was not present at the fight, and, indeed, so far as I know, he never at any time was with the cavalry in action. He puts in his book a map of the supposed skirmish ground; but it bears to the actual scene of the fight only the well-known likeness borne by Monmouth to Macedon. There was a brook on the battle-ground, and there is a brook in Mr. Bonsal's map. The real brook, flowing down from the mountains, crossed the valley road and ran down between it and the hill-trail, going nowhere near the latter. The Bonsal brook flows at right angles to the course of the real brook and crosses both trails—that is, it runs up hill. It is difficult to believe that the Bonsal map could have been made by any man who had gone over the hill-trail followed by the Rough Riders and who knew where the fighting had taken place. The position of the Spanish line on the Bonsal map is inverted compared to what it really was.

On page 90 Mr. Bonsal says that in making the "precipitate advance" there was a rivalry between the regulars and Rough Riders, which resulted in each hurrying recklessly forward to strike the Spaniards first. On the contrary. The official reports show that General Young's column waited for some time after it got to the Spanish position, so as to allow the Rough Riders (who had the more difficult trail) to come up. Colonel Wood kept his column walking at a smart pace, merely so that the regulars might not be left unsupported when the fight began; and as a matter of fact, it began almost simultaneously on both wings.

On page 91 Mr. Bonsal speaks of "The foolhardy formation of a solid column along a narrow trail, which brought them (the Rough Riders) within point-blank range of the Spanish rifles and within the unobstructed sweep of their machine-guns." He also speaks as if the advance should have been made with the regiment deployed through the jungle. Of course, the only possible way by which the Rough Riders could have been brought into action in time to support the regulars was by advancing in column along the trail at a good smart gait. As soon as our advance-guard came into contact with the enemy's outpost we deployed. No firing began for at least five minutes after Captain Capron sent back word that he had come upon the Spanish outpost. At the particular point where this occurred there was a dip in the road, which probably rendered it, in Capron's opinion, better to keep part of his men in it. In any event, Captain Capron, who was as skilful as he was gallant, had ample time between discovering the Spanish outpost and the outbreak of the firing to arrange his troop in the formation he deemed best. His troop was not in solid formation; his men were about ten yards apart. Of course, to have walked forward deployed through the jungle, prior to reaching the ground where we were to fight, would have been a course of procedure so foolish as to warrant the summary court-martial of any man directing it. We could not have made half a mile an hour in such a formation, and would have been at least four hours too late for the fighting.

On page 92 Mr. Bonsal says that Captain Capron's troop was ambushed, and that it received the enemy's fire a quarter of an hour before it was expected. This is simply not so. Before the column stopped we had passed a dead Cuban, killed in the preceding day's skirmish, and General Wood had notified me on information he had received from Capron that we might come into contact with the Spaniards at any moment, and, as I have already said, Captain Capron discovered the Spanish outpost, and we halted and partially deployed the column before the firing began. We were at the time exactly where we had expected to come across the Spaniards. Mr. Bonsal, after speaking of L Troop, adds: "The remaining troops of the regiment had travelled more leisurely, and more than half an hour elapsed before they came up to Capron's support." As a matter of fact, all the troops travelled at exactly the same rate of speed, although there were stragglers from each, and when Capron halted and sent back word that he had come upon the Spanish outpost, the entire regiment closed up, halted, and most of the men sat down. We then, some minutes after the first word had been received, and before any firing had begun, received instructions to deploy. I had my right wing partially deployed before the first shots between the outposts took place. Within less than three minutes I had G Troop, with Llewellen, Greenway, and Leahy, and one platoon of K Troop under Kane, on the firing-line, and it was not until after we reached the firing-line that the heavy volley-firing from the Spaniards began.

On page 94 Mr. Bonsal says: "A vexatious delay occurred before the two independent columns could communicate and advance with concerted action. . . . When the two columns were brought into communication it was immediately decided to make a general attack upon the Spanish position. . . . With this purpose in view, the following disposition of the troops was made before the advance of the brigade all along the line was ordered." There was no communication between the two columns prior to the general attack, nor was any order issued for the advance of the brigade all along the line. The attacks were made wholly independently, and the first communication between the columns was when the right wing of the Rough Riders in the course of their advance by their firing dislodged the Spaniards from the hill across the ravine to the right, and then saw the regulars come up that hill.

Mr. Bonsal's account of what occurred among the regulars parallels his account of what occurred among the Rough Riders. He states that the squadron of the Tenth Cavalry delivered the main attack upon the hill, which was the strongest point of the Spanish position; and he says of the troopers of the Tenth Cavalry that "their better training enabled them to render more valuable service than the other troops engaged." In reality, the Tenth Cavalrymen were deployed in support of the First, though they mingled with them in the assault proper; and so far as there was any difference at all in the amount of work done, it was in favor of the First. The statement that the Tenth Cavalry was better trained than the First, and rendered more valuable service, has not the slightest basis whatsoever of any kind, sort, or description, in fact. The Tenth Cavalry did well what it was required to do; as an organization, in this fight, it was rather less heavily engaged, and suffered less loss, actually and relatively, than either the First Cavalry or the Rough Riders. It took about the same part that was taken by the left wing of the Rough Riders, which wing was similarly rather less heavily engaged than the right and centre of the regiment. Of course, this is a reflection neither on the Tenth Cavalry nor on the left wing of the Rough Riders. Each body simply did what it was ordered to do, and did it well. But to claim that the Tenth Cavalry did better than the First, or bore the most prominent part in the fight, is like making the same claim for the left wing of the Rough Riders. All the troops engaged did well, and all alike are entitled to share in the honor of the day.