History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0436/04362.txt

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$Title{Rough Riders
Part II}
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$Author{Roosevelt, Theodore}
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$Log{See Farewell*0436201.scf
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Title:       Rough Riders
Book:        Chapter VI: The Return Home
Author:      Roosevelt, Theodore

Part II

     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 paperwork 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.

[See Farewell: Colonel Roosevelt's farewell to the Rough Riders.]

     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.

[Footnote *: 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 23d, 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 warwhoops 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 doingf
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?