Part 4
In May the regiment was ordered to proceed to Tampa. After a lengthy struggle with the {84} railway authorities cars were put at the disposal of Colonel Wood, who left San Antonio on the 29th with three sections, the remaining four sections being left to proceed later in charge of Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt. The confusion of getting started was reduced to a minimum by Wood, who had worked out a scheme for embarkation; but due to delay on the part of the railway authorities in providing proper facilities for handling the troops and equipment they were delayed four days. Everywhere along the line of travel they were cheered enthusiastically by people who came to greet the train on its arrival in towns and cities.
Tampa was in chaos. There seemed to be no order or system for the disembarkation of troops. Every one asked for information and no one could give it. Officers, men, railroad employees and longshoremen milled about in a welter of confusion. The troops were dumped out with no prearranged schedule on the part of the officers in charge of the camp. There were no arrangements for feeding the men and no wagons in which to haul impedimenta. In such conditions it {85} required all the native vigor characteristic of their Colonel to bring some sort of order--all the knowledge he had gained from his Indian campaign. And even then there was still needed an unconquerable spirit that did not know what impossibilities were.
After a few days at Tampa, Colonel Wood was notified that his command would start for destination unknown at once, leaving four troops and all the horses behind them. On the evening of June 7th notification came that they would leave from Port Tampa, nine miles away, the following morning, and that if the troops were not aboard the transport at that time they could not sail. No arrangements were made by the port authorities for the embarkation. No information could be obtained regarding transportation by rail to the port. There was no information regarding the transport that the troops were to use. In an official report made to the Secretary of War Colonel Roosevelt had the following remarks to make about the conditions that confronted them in Tampa:
". . . No information was given in advance {86} what transports we should take, or how we should proceed to get aboard, nor did any one 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 Quarter-master General. Colonel Humphrey was not in his office, and nobody knew where he was. The {87} 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 midstream 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."
The conditions at Tampa provided material for a spirited exchange of letters and telegrams between General Miles, who had taken command, and Secretary of War Alger.
On June 4th, General Miles filed by telegraph the following report to the Secretary of War:
"Several of the volunteer regiments came here without uniforms; several came without arms, and some without blankets, tents, or camp equipage. {88} The 32d Michigan, which is among the best, came without arms. General Guy V. Henry reports that five regiments under his command are not fit to go into the field. There are over three hundred cars loaded with war material along the roads about Tampa. Stores are sent to the Quartermaster at Tampa, but the invoices and bills of lading have not been received, so that the officers are obliged to break open seals and hunt from car to car to ascertain whether they contain clothing, grain, balloon material, horse equipments, ammunition, siege guns, commissary stores, etc. Every effort is being made to bring order out of confusion. I request that rigid orders be given requiring the shipping officers to forward in advance complete invoices and bills of lading, with descriptive marks of every package, and the number and description of car in which shipped. To illustrate the embarrassment caused by present conditions, fifteen cars loaded with uniforms were sidetracked twenty-five miles from Tampa, and remained there for weeks while the troops were suffering for clothing. Five thousand rifles, which were discovered yesterday, were needed by {89} several regiments. Also the different parts of the siege train and ammunition for same, which will be required immediately on landing, are scattered through hundreds of cars on the sidetracks of the railroads. Notwithstanding these difficulties, this expedition will soon be ready to sail."
In answer to this dispatch was sent the following reply from Secretary Alger:
"Twenty thousand men ought to unload any number of cars and assort contents. There is much criticism about delay of expedition. Better leave a fast ship to bring balance of material needed, than delay longer."
This slight difference of opinion which a shrewd observer can discover between the lines was characteristic of the whole preparation of the United States army that undertook to carry on the war with Spain. As one remembers those days, or reads of them in detail, it seems as if every one did something wrong regularly, as if no one of ability was anywhere about. As a matter of fact, however, the organizing and shipping of a suddenly acquired expeditionary volunteer force has never been accomplished in any other way. The truth {90} of the matter is that it can never be run properly at the start for the simple reason that there is no organization fitted to carry out the details.
The officials in Washington who had to do with the army--good men in many cases, poor men in some cases--if they had been in office long had been handling a few hundred men here and there in the forts, on the plains, or at the regular military posts. They could no more be molded into a homogeneous whole than could the cowboys, stockbrokers, college athletes, and southern planters maneuver until they had been drilled.
To Colonel Wood, busy most of the hours of the day and night trying to get order out of chaos in his small part of the great rush, the whole episode was a graphic demonstration of the need of getting ready. Many years later a much-advertised politician of our land said that an army was not necessary since immediately upon the need for defense of our country a million farmers would leave their plows and leap to arms. To an officer trying to find a transport train in the middle of the night with a thousand hungry, tired, half-trained men under him such logic aught well have {91} caused a smile, if nothing worse. Leave his plow at such a call the American Citizen will--and by the millions, if need be. He has done just that in the last two years. He will leap to arms--to continue the rhetoric--but what can he do if he finds no arms, or if they do not exist and cannot be made for nine months?
But the thing was not new to Wood even in those days. As he talks of that period now he says that it was not so bad. There was food, rough, but still food, and enough. There were transports. It only needed that they be found. If you could not get uniforms of blue, take uniforms of tan. If you could not find sabers, go somewhere, in or out of the country, and buy them or requisition them and put in the charge later.
Yet, even so, no man in such a position, going through what he went through, worrying hour by hour, could fail to see the object lesson and take the first opportunity when peace was declared to begin to preach the necessity for getting ready for the next occasion. And it was largely due to Leonard Wood, as the world well knows, that what {92} little preparation was made in 1915 and 1916 in advance of the United States declaring war was made at all. It was the lessons acquired in the Spanish War and in the study of other wars that made of him the great prophet of preparedness.
For several days the troops remained aboard the transport in Tampa harbor awaiting orders. The heat and discomfort told upon the men, but on the evening of June 13th orders came to start and the next morning found them at sea. On the morning of the 20th the transport came off the Cuban coast; but it was not until the 22d that the welcome order for landing came. The troops landed at the squalid little village of Daiquiri in small boats, while the smaller war vessels shelled the town.
In the afternoon of the next day, the Rough Riders received orders to advance; and Wood, leading his regiment, pushed on so as to be sure of an engagement with the enemy the next morning. It was due to his energy that the Rough Riders did not miss the first fight. Under General Young's orders the Rough Riders took up a {93} position at the extreme left of the front. The next day the action of "Las Guasimas" began.
"Shoot--don't swear" growled Wood as the fighting began. He strolled about encouraging his men and urging them to action. Under his quiet, cool direction they advanced slowly, forcing the enemy back, and finally driving him to his second line of defense. Soon the Rough Riders' right joined the left of the main body and in a concerted attack the Spaniards were routed, leaving much of their equipment in their hasty retreat.
At this juncture it was reported to Roosevelt, whose detachment was separate from that of Wood, that Wood had been killed. Roosevelt immediately began taking over the command of the entire regiment, since it naturally devolved upon him. As he was consolidating his troops he came upon Wood himself very much alive.
Major-General Joseph Wheeler made the following report of the Rough Riders:
"Colonel Wood's Regiment was on the extreme left of the line, and too far-distant for me to be a personal witness of the individual conduct of his officers and men; but the magnificent and brave {94} work done by the regiment, under the lead of Colonel Wood, testifies to his courage and skill. The energy and determination of this officer had been marked from the moment he reported to me at Tampa, Fla., and I have abundant evidence of his brave and good conduct on the field, and I recommend him for consideration of the Government."
On the 25th, General Young was stricken by the fever and Wood took charge of the brigade on the 30th, leaving Roosevelt in command of the Rough Riders. The afternoon of the 30th brought orders to march on Santiago, and the morning of July 1st found them in position three miles from the city, with Leonard Wood commanding the second dismounted cavalry brigade. During the next two days, the enemy fought fiercely to regain his lost positions, but the cool persistence of the American troops forced him constantly backward.
In endorsing Wood's report of this action, General Wheeler said, "He showed energy, courage, and good judgment. I heretofore recommended him for promotion to a Brigadier-General. He {95} deserves the highest commendation. He was under the observation and direction of myself and of my staff during the battle."
After a short siege the Spanish command capitulated on the afternoon of July 17th and the American forces entered Santiago.
Wood's promotion to Brigadier-General of the United States Volunteers came at once, and Roosevelt was made Colonel and placed in command of the 2d Cavalry Brigade.
The condition of our forces at this time, struggling against the unaccustomed and virulent dangers of the tropics, was pitiable. The "Round Robin" incident in which the commanding officers of the various divisions in the command reported to Major-General W. R. Shafter, that "the Army must be moved at once, or it will perish," has become a part of the record of the history of those times. Whether the sickness and disease they suffered could have been prevented became a matter of great controversy.
This "Round Robin" was a document signed by practically all general officers present, in order to bring to the attention of the War Department {96} the conditions existing in the army that had captured Santiago showing that it was suffering severely from malaria and yellow fever; that these men must be replaced; and that if they were not replaced thousands of lives would be lost. It was sent because instructions from Washington clearly indicated that the War Department did not understand the conditions, and it was feared that delay would cause enormous loss of life. The men had been in mud and water--the yellow fever country--for weeks and were thoroughly infected with malaria. Although he had signed the "Round Robin"' with the other officers General Wood later on gave the following testimony before the War Investigation Committee:
"We had never served in that climate, so peculiarly deadly from the effects of malaria, and in this respect my opinions have changed very much since the close of the war. If I had been called before you in the first week of August, I might have been disposed to have answered a little differently in some respects. I have been there ever since, and have seen regiments come to Cuba in perfect health and go into tents with floors and {97} with flies camped up on high hills, given boiled water, and have seen them have practically the identical troubles we had during the campaign. The losses may not have been as heavy, as we are organized to take them into hospitals protected from the sun which seemed to be a depressing cause. All the immune regiments serving in my department since the war have been at one time or another unfit for service. I have had all the officers of my staff repeatedly too sick for duty. I don't think that any amount of precaution or preparation, in addition to what we had, would have made any practical difference in the sickness of the troops of the army of invasion. This is a candid opinion, and an absolutely frank one. If I had answered this question in August, without the experience I have had since August, I might have been disposed to attribute more to the lack of tentage than I do now; but I think the food, while lacking necessarily in variety, was ample."
Only a few years later the explanation of yellow fever transmission became clear to all the world. This discovery and the definite methods of {98} protection against its spread and the spread of malaria were largely the result of Wood's administrative ability and his knowledge of medicine. For it was as the result of studies and experiments conducted under his direct supervision that it became known that yellow fever was the result of the bite of the mosquito and not of bad food or low, marshy country or bad air or any of the other factors which had so long been supposed to be its cause. The taking of Santiago practically ended the Spanish War. But for the military commander of the City of Santiago it began a new and epoch-making work.
{99}
THE ORGANIZER
{100}
{101}
V
THE ORGANIZER
To understand the work accomplished by Wood in Santiago, it is necessary to renew our picture of the situation existing in Cuba at the time and to realize as this is done that the problem was an absolutely new one for the young officer of thirty-seven to whom it was presented.
Nobody can really conceive of the unbelievable condition of affairs unless he actually saw it or has at some time in his life witnessed a corresponding situation. Those who return from the battlefields on the Western Front of the Great War describe the scenes and show us pictures and we think we realize the horrors of destruction, yet one after another of us as we go there comes back with the same statement: "I had heard all about it, but I hadn't the least conception of what it really was until I saw it with my own eyes."
In like manner we who are accustomed to reasonably clean and well-policed cities can call up no {102} real picture of what the Cuban cities were in those days, unless we saw them, or something like them.
Yet in spite of this it is necessary to try to give some idea of the fact, in order to give some idea of the work of reorganization required.
For four hundred years Cuba had been under the Spanish rule--the rule of viceroys and their agents who came of a race that has for centuries been unable to hold its own among the nations of the earth. Ideas of health, drainage, sanitation, orderly government, systematic commercial life--all were of an order belonging to but few spots in the world to-day. Here and there in the East--perhaps in what has been called the "cesspool of the world," Guayaquil, Ecuador--and in other isolated spots there are still such places, but they are fortunately beginning to disappear as permanent forms of human life.
In Santiago there were about 50,000 inhabitants. These people had been taxed and abused by officials who collected and kept for themselves the funds of the Province. Fear of showing wealth, since it was certain to be confiscated, led all classes of families to hide what little they had. {103} Money for the city and its public works there was none, since all was taken for the authorities in Spain or for their representatives in Cuba. Spanish people in any kind of position treated the natives as if they were slaves--as indeed they were. No family was sure of its own legitimate property, its own occupation and its own basic rights. The city government was so administered as to deprive all the citizens of any respect for it or any belief in its statements, decrees or laws. Not only was this condition of affairs in existence at the time of the war but it had existed during the entire lifetime of any one living and during the entire lifetime of his father, grandfather and ancestors for ten generations.
As a result no Cuban had any conception of what honest government, honest administration, honest taxation, honest dealings were. He not only had no conception of such things but he believed that what his family for generations and he during his life had known was the actual situation everywhere throughout the world. He knew of nothing else.
The city had no drainage system except the {104} open gutter of the streets--never had had. The water system consisted of an elemental sort of dam six miles up in the hills outside the city, old, out of repair, constantly breaking down, and a single 11-inch pipe which had a capacity of 200,000 gallons a day for the city--something like four gallons to a person. This was not sufficient for more than one-quarter of each day. In other words the city at the best was receiving for years only one-quarter of the water it absolutely needed for cleanliness.
Plagues and epidemics, smallpox, yellow fever, bubonic plague, typhus and tetanus followed one another in regular succession. The streets for years had contained dead animals and many times in epidemics dead human beings--sights to which the citizens had been so accustomed throughout their lives that they paid no attention to them. The authorities being accustomed to keeping the public moneys for their own use spent little or nothing upon public works, cleaning the streets or making improvements. They did not build; they did not replace; they only patched and repaired when it was absolutely necessary. It was {105} a situation difficult to conceive, impossible to realize. Yet one must constantly bear in mind that there not only appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary in this, but in reality there was nothing out of the ordinary. It was the accustomed, usual thing and had been so for centuries.
The sense of personal responsibility to the community was not dormant; it did not exist. The sense of duty of those who governed to those whom they governed was not repressed by modern corruption only; it had ceased to exist altogether. No city official was expected to do anything but get what he could out of those under him. No citizen knew anything but the necessity--to him the right--of concealing anything he had, of deceiving everybody whom he could deceive and of evading any law that might be promulgated.
The integrity of the family and its right to live as it chose within restrictions required by gregarious existence had disappeared--never had existed at all so far as those living knew. The responsibility of the individual to his government was unconceivable and inconceivable.
Had all this not been so there would have been {106} no war on our part with Spain, for the whole origin of the trouble which eventually led to war grew out of the final despair of men and women in Cuba who gradually came to realize in a dim way that something was wrong and unfair. Out of this grew internal dissension which constantly spilled over to interfere with international relations.
It was the inevitable breaking down of a civilization because of the years during which civilization's laws had been disregarded, and because all this took place in close proximity to a country where the reverse was the evident fact. There are such rotten spots still upon this earth--one just across our doorstep on the Rio Grande, and somebody some day must clean that house, too.
Added to all this, and much more, was the fact that the city of Santiago had been besieged by land and by sea. Thus naturally even the conditions in this cesspool were intensely exaggerated.
Into such a plague-stricken, starving city on the 20th of July, 1898, Wood, then Brigadier General of United States Volunteers, thirty-seven {107} years of age, fresh from the job of army surgeon to the President in the White House, some Indian fighting in the Southwest and the task of getting the Rough Riders organized into fighting shape--fresh from the fighting that had taken place on and since July 1st--into this situation on July 20th General Wood was summoned by General Shafter, commanding the American forces, with the information that he had been detailed to take command of the city, secure and maintain order, feed the starving and reorganize generally.
Why he was selected may be easily guessed. He was a military man who had made good recently, who had made good in the Southwest, whom the President knew and trusted--and he was a doctor who had just shown great organizing ability. The job itself was as new to him as would have been the task in those days of flying. But with his inherited and acquired sense of values, of the essentials of life, with his education and his characteristic passion for getting ready he started at once to pull off the wall paper, hammer away the plaster and examine the condition of the beams which supported this leaning, tottering, {108} out-of-repair wing of the world's house of civilization.