History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0436/04368.txt

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$Title{Rough Riders
Appendix B}
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$Author{Roosevelt, Theodore}
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$Log{See Roosevelt Visits Regiment*0436801.scf
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Title:       Rough Riders
Book:        Appendix B
Author:      Roosevelt, Theodore

Appendix B

     [Before it was sent, this letter was read to and approved by every
officer of the regiment who had served through the Santiago campaign.]

[Copy.]

     Camp Wikoff, September 10, 1898.

To The Secretary Of War.

     Sir: In answer to the circular issued by command of Major-General Shafter
under date of September 8, 1898, containing a request for information by the
Adjutant-General of September 7th, I have the honor to report as follows:

     I am a little in doubt whether the fact that on certain occasions my
regiment suffered for food, etc., should be put down to an actual shortage of
supplies or to general defects in the system of administration.  Thus, when
the regiment arrived in Tampa after a four days' journey by cars from its camp
at San Antonio, it received no food whatever for twenty-four hours, and as the
travel rations had been completely exhausted, food for several of the troops
was purchased by their officers, who, of course, have not been reimbursed by
the Government.  In the same way we were short one or two meals at the time of
embarking at Port Tampa on the transport; but this I think was due, not to a
failure in the quantity of supplies, but to the lack of system in embarkation.

     As with the other regiments, no information was given in advance what
transports we should take, or how we should proceed to get aboard, nor did
anyone exercise any supervision over the embarkation.  Each regimental
commander, so far as I know, was left to find out as best he could, after he
was down at the dock, what transport had not been taken, and then to get his
regiment aboard it, if he was able, before some other regiment got it. Our
regiment was told to go to a certain switch, and take a train for Port Tampa
at twelve o'clock, midnight.  The train never came.  After three hours of
waiting we were sent to another switch, and finally at six o'clock in the
morning got possession of some coal-cars and came down in them. When we
reached the quay where the embarkation was proceeding, everything was in utter
confusion.  The quay was piled with stores and swarming with thousands of men
of different regiments, besides onlookers, etc.  The commanding General, when
we at last found him, told Colonel Wood and myself that he did not know what
ship we were to embark on, and that we must find Colonel Humphrey, the
Quartermaster-General.  Colonel Humphrey was not in his office, and nobody
knew where he was.  The commanders of the different regiments were busy trying
to find him, while their troops waited in the trains, so as to discover the
ships to which they were allotted - some of these ships being at the dock and
some in mid-stream.  After a couple of hours' search, Colonel Wood found
Colonel Humphrey and was allotted a ship. Immediately afterward I found that
it had already been allotted to two other regiments.  It was then coming to
the dock.  Colonel Wood boarded it in mid-stream to keep possession, while I
double-quicked the men down from the cars and got there just ahead of the
other two regiments.  One of these regiments, I was afterward informed, spent
the next thirty-six hours in cars in consequence.  We suffered nothing beyond
the loss of a couple of meals, which, it seems to me, can hardly be put down
to any failure in the quantity of supplies furnished to the troops.

     We were two weeks on the troop-ship Yucatan, and as we were given twelve
days' travel rations, we of course fell short toward the end of the trip, but
eked things out with some of our field rations and troop stuff. The quality of
the travel rations given to us was good, except in the important item of meat.
The canned roast beef is worse than a failure as part of the rations, for in
effect it amounts to reducing the rations by just so much, as a great majority
of the men find it uneatable.  It was coarse, stringy, tasteless, and very
disagreeable in appearance, and so unpalatable that the effort to eat it made
some of the men sick.  Most of the men preferred to be hungry rather than eat
it.  If cooked in a stew with plenty of onions and potatoes - i.e., if only
one ingredient in a dish with other more savory ingredients - it could be
eaten, especially if well salted and peppered; but, as usual (what I regard as
a great mistake), no salt was issued with the travel rations, and of course no
potatoes and onions.  There were no cooking facilities on the transport.  When
the men obtained any, it was by bribing the cook.  Toward the last, when they
began to draw on the field rations, they had to eat the bacon raw.  On the
return trip the same difficulty in rations obtained - i.e., the rations were
short because the men could not eat the canned roast beef, and had no salt.
We purchased of the ship's supplies some flour and pork and a little rice for
the men, so as to relieve the shortage as much as possible, and individual
sick men were helped from private sources by officers, who themselves ate what
they had purchased in Santiago.  As nine-tenths of the men were more or less
sick, the unattractiveness of the travel rations was doubly unfortunate.  It
would have been an excellent thing for their health if we could have been an
excellent thing for their health if we could have had onions and potatoes, and
means for cooking them.  Moreover, the water was very bad, and sometimes a
cask was struck that was positively undrinkable. The lack of ice for the weak
and sickly men was very much felt. Fortunately there was no epidemic, for
there was not a place on the ship where patients could have been isolated.

     During the month following the landing of the army in Cuba the
food-supplies were generally short in quantity, and in quality were never such
as were best suited to men undergoing severe hardships and great exposure in
an unhealthy tropical climate.  The rations were, I understand, the same as
those used in the Klondike.  In this connection, I call especial attention to
the report of Captain Brown, made by my orders when I was Brigade-Commander,
and herewith appended.  I also call attention to the report of my own
Quartermaster.  Usually we received full rations of bacon and hardtack.  The
hardtack, however, was often mouldy, so that parts of cases, and even whole
cases, could not be used.  The bacon was usually good.  But bacon and hardtack
make poor food for men toiling and fighting in trenches under the mid-summer
sun of the tropics.  The ration of coffee was often short, and that of sugar
generally so; we rarely got any vegetables.  Under these circumstances the men
lost strength steadily, and as the fever speedily attacked them, they suffered
from being reduced to a bacon and hardtack diet.  So much did the shortage of
proper food tell upon their health that again and again officers were
compelled to draw upon their private purses, or upon the Red Cross Society, to
make good the deficiency of the Government supply.  Again and again we sent
down improvised pack-trains composed of officers' horses, of captured Spanish
cavalry ponies, or of mules which had been shot or abandoned but were cured by
our men.  These expeditions - sometimes under the Chaplain, sometimes under
the Quartermaster, sometimes under myself, and occasionally under a trooper -
would go to the sea-coast or to the Red Cross head-quarters, or, after the
surrender, into the city of Santiago, to get food both for the well and the
sick.  The Red Cross Society rendered invaluable aid.  For example, on one of
these expeditions I personally brought up 600 pounds of beans; on another
occasion I personally brought up 500 pounds of rice, 800 pounds of cornmeal,
200 pounds of sugar, 100 pounds of tea, 100 pounds of oatmeal, 5 barrels of
potatoes, and two of onions, with cases of canned soup and condensed milk for
the sick in hospitals.  Every scrap of the food thus brought up was eaten with
avidity by the soldiers, and put new heart and strength into them.  It was
only our constant care of the men in this way that enabled us to keep them in
any trim at all.  As for the sick in the hospital, unless we were able from
outside sources to get them such simple delicacies as rice and condensed milk,
they usually had the alternative of eating salt pork and hardtack or going
without.  After each fight we got a good deal of food from the Spanish camps
in the way of beans, peas, and rice, together with green coffee, all of which
the men used and relished greatly.  In some respects the Spanish rations were
preferable to ours, notably in the use of rice.  After we had been ashore a
month the supplies began to come in in abundance, and we then fared very well.
Up to that time the men were under-fed, during the very weeks when the
heaviest drain was being made upon their vitality, and the deficiency was only
partially supplied through the aid of the Red Cross, and out of the officers'
pockets and the pockets of various New York friends who sent us money.
Before, during, and immediately after the fights of June 24th and July 1st, we
were very short of even the bacon and hardtack.  About July 14th, when the
heavy rains interrupted communication, we were threatened with famine, as we
were informed that there was not a day's supply of provisions in advance
nearer than the sea-coast; and another twenty-four hours' rain would have
resulted in a complete break-down of communications, so that for several days
we should have been reduced to a diet of mule-meat and mangos.  At this time,
in anticipation of such a contingency, by foraging and hoarding we got a
little ahead, so that when our supplies were cut down for a day or two we did
not suffer much, and were even able to furnish a little aid to the less
fortunate First Illinois Regiment, which was camped next to us.  Members of
the Illinois Regiment were offering our men $1 apiece for hardtacks.

[See Roosevelt Visits Regiment: Colonel Roosevelt visiting Colonel Turner, of
the First Illinois Regiment, U.S.V.]

     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
 rmy 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-ttntst 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 2d, 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 heaty 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,
     Colonel First 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.