Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography — Ch 07-The War of America the Unready, pt 2

Among my friends was the then Army Surgeon Leonard Wood.

He was a surgeon.

Not having an income, he had to earn his own living.

He had gone through the Harvard Medical School, and had then joined the army in the Southwest as a contract doctor.

He had every physical, moral, and mental quality which fitted him for a soldier's life and for the exercise of command.

In the inconceivably wearing and harassing campaigns against the Apaches he had served nominally as a surgeon, really in command of troops, on more than one expedition.

He was as anxious as I was that if there were war we should both have our part in it.

I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it.

Moreover, I had very deeply felt that it was our duty to free Cuba, and I had publicly expressed this feeling;

and when a man takes such a position, he ought to be willing to make his words good by his deeds unless there is some very strong reason to the contrary.

He should pay with his body.

As soon as war was upon us, Wood and I began to try for a chance to go to the front.

Congress had authorized the raising of three National Volunteer Cavalry regiments, wholly apart from the State contingents.

Secretary Alger of the War Department was fond of me personally, and Wood was his family doctor.

Alger had been a gallant soldier in the Civil War, and was almost the only member of the Administration who felt all along that we would have to go to war with Spain over Cuba.

He liked my attitude in the matter, and because of his remembrance of his own experiences he sympathized with my desire to go to the front.

Accordingly he offered me the command of one of the regiments.

I told him that after six weeks' service in the field I would feel competent to handle the regiment, but that I would not know how to equip it or how to get it into the first action; but that Wood was entirely competent at once to take command, and that if he would make Wood colonel I would accept the lieutenant-colonelcy.

General Alger thought this an act of foolish self-abnegation on my part--instead of its being, what it was, the wisest act I could have performed.

He told me to accept the colonelcy, and that he would make Wood lieutenant-colonel, and that Wood would do the work anyway; but I answered that I did not wish to rise on any man's shoulders; that I hoped to be given every chance that my deeds and abilities warranted; but that I did not wish what I did not earn, and that above all I did not wish to hold any position where any one else did the work.

He laughed at me a little and said I was foolish, but I do not think he really minded, and he promised to do as I wished.

True to his word, he secured the appointment of Wood as colonel and of myself as lieutenant-colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry.

This was soon nicknamed, both by the public and by the rest of the army, the Rough Riders, doubtless because the bulk of the men were from the Southwestern ranch country and were skilled in the wild horsemanship of the great plains.

Wood instantly began the work of raising the regiment.

He first assembled several old non-commissioned officers of experience, put them in office, and gave them blanks for requisitions for the full equipment of a cavalry regiment.

He selected San Antonio as the gathering-place, as it was in a good horse country, near the Gulf from some port on which we would have to embark, and near an old arsenal and an old army post from which we got a good deal of stuff--some of it practically condemned, but which we found serviceable at a pinch, and much better than nothing.

He organized a horse board in Texas, and began purchasing all horses that were not too big and were sound.

A day or two after he was commissioned he wrote out in the office of the Secretary of War, under his authority, telegrams to the Governors of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Indian Territory, in substance as follows: The President desires to raise --- volunteers in your Territory to form part of a regiment of mounted riflemen to be commanded by Leonard Wood, Colonel; Theodore Roosevelt, Lieutenant-Colonel.

He desires that the men selected should be young, sound, good shots and good riders, and that you expedite by all means in your power the enrollment of these men.

(Signed) R. A.

ALGER, Secretary of War.

As soon as he had attended to a few more odds and ends he left Washington, and the day after his arrival in San Antonio the troops began to arrive.

For several weeks before I joined the regiment, to which Wood went ahead of me, I continued as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, trying to get some coherence of plan between the War Department and the Navy Department; and also being used by Wood to finish getting the equipment for the regiment.

As regards finding out what the plans of the War Department were, the task was simple.

They had no plans.

Even during the final months before the outbreak of hostilities very little was done in the way of efficient preparation.

On one occasion, when every one knew that the declaration of war was sure to come in a few days, I went on military business to the office of one of the highest line generals of the army, a man who at that moment ought to have been working eighteen hours out of the twenty-four on the vital problems ahead of him.

What he was actually doing was trying on a new type of smart-looking uniform on certain enlisted men; and he called me in to ask my advice as to the position of the pockets in the blouse, with a view to making it look attractive.

An aide of this general--funnily enough a good fighting man in actual service--when I consulted him as to what my uniform for the campaign should be, laid special stress upon my purchasing a pair of black top boots for full dress, explaining that they were very effective on hotel piazzas and in parlors.

I did not intend to be in any hotel if it could possibly be avoided; and as things turned out, I had no full-dress uniform, nothing but my service uniform, during my brief experience in the army.

I suppose that war always does bring out what is highest and lowest in human nature.

The contractors who furnish poor materials to the army or the navy in time of war stand on a level of infamy only one degree above that of the participants in the white slave traffic themselves.

But there is conduct far short of this which yet seems inexplicable to any man who has in him any spirit of disinterested patriotism combined with any power of imagination.

Respectable men, who I suppose lack the imagination thoroughly to realize what they are doing, try to make money out of the Nation's necessities in war at the very time that other men are making every sacrifice, financial and personal, for the cause.

In the closing weeks of my service as Assistant Secretary of the Navy we were collecting ships for auxiliary purposes.

Some men, at cost to their own purses, helped us freely and with efficiency; others treated the affair as an ordinary business transaction; and yet others endeavored, at some given crisis when our need was great, to sell us inferior vessels at exorbitant prices, and used every pressure, through Senators and Congressmen, to accomplish their ends.

In one or two cases they did accomplish them too, until we got a really first-class board established to superintend such purchases.

A more curious experience was in connection with the point chosen for the starting of the expedition against Cuba.

I had not supposed that any human being could consider this matter save from the standpoint of military need.

But one morning a very wealthy and influential man, a respectable and upright man according to his own lights, called on me to protest against our choice of Tampa, and to put in a plea for a certain other port, on the ground that his railroad was entitled to its share of the profit for hauling the army and equipment!

I happened to know that at this time this very man had kinsfolk with the army, who served gallantly, and the circumstances of his coming to me were such as to show that he was not acting secretly, and had no idea that there was anything out of the way in his proposal.

I think the facts were merely that he had been trained to regard business as the sole object in life, and that he lacked the imagination to enable him to understand the real nature of the request that he was making; and, moreover, he had good reason to believe that one of his business competitors had been unduly favored.

The War Department was in far worse shape than the Navy Department.

The young officers turned out from West Point are precisely as good as the young officers turned out from Annapolis, and this always has been true.

But at that time (something has been done to remedy the worst conditions since), and ever since the close of the Civil War, the conditions were such that after a few years the army officer stagnated so far as his profession was concerned.

When the Spanish War broke out the navy really was largely on a war footing, as any navy which is even respectably cared for in time of peace must be.

The admirals, captains, and lieutenants were continually practicing their profession in almost precisely the way that it has to be practiced in time of war.

Except actually shooting at a foe, most of the men on board ship went through in time of peace practically all that they would have to go through in time of war.

The heads of bureaus in the Navy Department were for the most part men who had seen sea service, who expected to return to sea service, and who were preparing for needs which they themselves knew by experience.

Moreover, the civilian head of the navy had to provide for keeping the ships in a state of reasonable efficiency, and Congress could not hopelessly misbehave itself about the navy without the fact at once becoming evident.

All this was changed so far as the army was concerned.

Not only was it possible to decrease the efficiency of the army without being called to account for it, but the only way in which the Secretary of War could gain credit for himself or the Administration was by economy, and the easiest way to economize was in connection with something that would not be felt unless war should arise.

The people took no interest whatever in the army; demagogues clamored against it, and, inadequate though it was in size, insisted that it should be still further reduced.

Popular orators always appealed to the volunteers; the regulars had no votes and there was no point in politicians thinking of them.

The chief activity shown by Congressmen about the army was in getting special army posts built in places where there was no need for them.

Even the work of the army in its campaigns against the Indians was of such a character that it was generally performed by small bodies of fifty or a hundred men.

Until a man ceased being a lieutenant he usually had plenty of professional work to attend to and was employed in the field, and, in short, had the same kind of practice that his brother in the navy had, and he did his work as well.

But once past this stage he had almost no opportunity to perform any work corresponding to his rank, and but little opportunity to do any military work whatsoever.

The very best men, men like Lawton, Young, Chaffee, Hawkins, and Sumner, to mention only men under or beside whom I served, remained good soldiers, soldiers of the best stamp, in spite of the disheartening conditions.

But it was not to be expected that the average man could continue to grow when every influence was against him.

Accordingly, when the Spanish War suddenly burst upon us, a number of inert elderly captains and field officers were, much against their own wishes, suddenly pitchforked into the command of regiments, brigades, and even divisions and army corps.

Often these men failed painfully.

This was not their fault; it was the fault of the Nation, that is, the fault of all of us, of you, my reader, and of myself, and of those like us, because we had permitted conditions to be such as to render these men unfit for command.

Take a stout captain of an out-of-the-way two-company post, where nothing in the world ever occurred even resembling military action, and where the only military problem that really convulsed the post to its foundations was the quarrel between the captain and the quartermaster as to how high a mule's tail ought to be shaved (I am speaking of an actual incident).

What could be expected of such a man, even though thirty-five years before he had been a gallant second lieutenant in the Civil War, if, after this intervening do-nothing period, he was suddenly put in command of raw troops in a midsummer campaign in the tropics?

The bureau chiefs were for the most part elderly incompetents, whose idea was to do their routine duties in such way as to escape the censure of routine bureaucratic superiors and to avoid a Congressional investigation.

They had not the slightest conception of preparing the army for war.

It was impossible that they could have any such conception.

The people and the Congress did not wish the army prepared for war; and those editors and philanthropists and peace advocates who felt vaguely that if the army were incompetent their principles were safe, always inveighed against any proposal to make it efficient, on the ground that this showed a natural bloodthirstiness in the proposer.

When such were the conditions, it was absolutely impossible that either the War Department or the army could do well in the event of war.

Secretary Alger happened to be Secretary when war broke out, and all the responsibility for the shortcomings of the Department were visited upon his devoted head.

He was made the scapegoat for our National shortcomings.

The fault was not his; the fault and responsibility lay with us, the people, who for thirty-three years had permitted our representatives in Congress and in National executive office to bear themselves so that it was absolutely impossible to avoid the great bulk of all the trouble that occurred, and of all the shortcomings of which our people complained, during the Spanish War.

The chief immediate cause was the conditions of red-tape bureaucracy which existed in the War Department at Washington, which had prevented any good organization or the preparation of any good plan of operation for using our men and supplies.

The recurrence of these conditions, even though in somewhat less aggravated form, in any future emergency is as certain as sunrise unless we bring about the principle of a four years' detail in the staff corps--a principle which Congress has now for years stubbornly refused to grant.

There are nations who only need to have peaceful ideals inculcated, and to whom militarism is a curse and a misfortune.

There are other nations, like our own, so happily situated that the thought of war is never present to their minds.

They are wholly free from any tendency improperly to exalt or to practice militarism.

These nations should never forget that there must be military ideals no less than peaceful ideals.

The exaltation of Nogi's career, set forth so strikingly in Stanley Washburn's little volume on the great Japanese warrior, contains much that is especially needed for us of America, prone as we are to regard the exigencies of a purely commercial and industrial civilization as excusing us from the need of admiring and practicing the heroic and warlike virtues.

Our people are not military.

We need normally only a small standing army; but there should be behind it a reserve of instructed men big enough to fill it up to full war strength, which is over twice the peace strength.

Moreover, the young men of the country should realize that it is the duty of every one of them to prepare himself so that in time of need he may speedily become an efficient soldier--a duty now generally forgotten, but which should be recognized as one of the vitally essential parts of every man's training.

In endeavoring to get the "Rough Riders" equipped I met with some experiences which were both odd and instructive.

There were not enough arms and other necessaries to go round, and there was keen rivalry among the intelligent and zealous commanders of the volunteer organizations as to who should get first choice.

Wood's experience was what enabled us to equip ourselves in short order.

There was another cavalry organization whose commander was at the War Department about this time, and we had been eyeing him with much alertness as a rival.

One day I asked him what his plans were about arming and drilling his troops, who were of precisely the type of our own men.

He answered that he expected "to give each of the boys two revolvers and a lariat, and then just turn them loose."

I reported the conversation to Wood, with the remark that we might feel ourselves safe from rivalry in that quarter; and safe we were.

In trying to get the equipment I met with checks and rebuffs, and in return was the cause of worry and concern to various bureau chiefs who were unquestionably estimable men in their private and domestic relations, and who doubtless had been good officers thirty years before, but who were as unfit for modern war as if they were so many smooth-bores.

One fine old fellow did his best to persuade us to take black powder rifles, explaining with paternal indulgence that no one yet really knew just what smokeless powder might do, and that there was a good deal to be said in favor of having smoke to conceal us from the enemy.

I saw this pleasing theory actually worked out in practice later on, for the National Guard regiments with us at Santiago had black powder muskets, and the regular artillery black powder guns, and they really might almost as well have replaced these weapons by crossbows and mangonels.

We succeeded, thanks to Wood, in getting the same cavalry carbines that were used by the regulars.

We were determined to do this, not only because the weapons were good, but because this would in all probability mean that we were brigaded with the regular cavalry, which it was certain would be sent immediately to the front for the fighting.

There was one worthy bureau chief who was continually refusing applications of mine as irregular.

In each case I would appeal to Secretary Alger--who helped me in every way--and get an order from him countenancing the irregularity.

For instance, I found out that as we were nearer the July date than the January date for the issuance of clothing, and as it had long been customary to issue the winter clothing in July, so as to give ample leisure for getting it to all the various posts, it was therefore solemnly proposed to issue this same winter clothing to us who were about to start for a summer campaign in the tropics.

This would seem incredible to those who have never dealt with an inert officialdom, a red-tape bureaucracy, but such is the fact.

I

rectified this and got an order for khaki clothing.

We were then told we would have to advertise thirty days for horses.

This meant that we would have missed the Santiago expedition.

So I made another successful appeal to the Secretary.

Other difficulties came up about wagons, and various articles, and in each case the same result followed.

On the last occasion, when I came up in triumph with the needed order, the worried office head, who bore me no animosity, but who did feel that fate had been very unkind, threw himself back in his chair and exclaimed with a sigh: "Oh, dear!

I had this office running in such good shape--and then along came the war and upset everything!"

His feeling was that war was an illegitimate interruption to the work of the War Department.

There were of course department heads and bureau chiefs and assistants who, in spite of the worthlessness of the system, and of the paralyzing conditions that had prevailed, remained first-class men.

An example of these was Commissary-General Weston.

His energy, activity, administrative efficiency, and common sense were supplemented by an eager desire to help everybody do the best that could be done.

Both in Washington and again down at Santiago we owed him very much.

When I was President, it was my good fortune to repay him in part our debt, which means the debt of the people of the country, by making him a major-general.

The regiment assembled at San Antonio.

When I reached there, the men, rifles, and horses, which were the essentials, were coming in fast, and the saddles, blankets, and the like were also accumulating.

Thanks to Wood's exertions, when we reached Tampa we were rather better equipped than most of the regular regiments.

We adhered strictly to field equipment, allowing no luxuries or anything else unnecessary, and so we were able to move off the field when ordered, with our own transportation, leaving nothing behind.

I suppose every man tends to brag about his regiment; but it does seem to me that there never was a regiment better worth bragging about than ours.

Wood was an exceptional commander, of great power, with a remarkable gift for organization.

The rank and file were as fine natural fighting men as ever carried a rifle or rode a horse in any country or any age.

We had a number of first-class young fellows from the East, most of them from colleges like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton; but the great majority of the men were Southwesterners, from the then territories of Oklahoma, Indian Territory, Arizona, and New Mexico.

They were accustomed to the use of firearms, accustomed to taking care of themselves in the open; they were intelligent and self-reliant; they possessed hardihood and endurance and physical prowess; and, above all, they had the fighting edge, the cool and resolute fighting temper.

They went into the war with full knowledge, having deliberately counted the cost.

In the great majority of cases each man was chiefly anxious to find out what he should do to make the regiment a success.

They bought, first and last, about 800 copies of the cavalry drill regulations and studied them industriously.

Such men were practically soldiers to start with, in all the essentials.

It is small wonder that with them as material to work upon the regiment was raised, armed, equipped, drilled, sent on trains to Tampa, embarked, disembarked, and put through two victorious offensive--not defensive--fights in which a third of the officers and one-fifth of the men were killed or wounded, all within sixty days.

It is a good record, and it speaks well for the men of the regiment; and it speaks well for Wood.

[*] [*] To counterbalance the newspapers which ignorantly and indiscriminately praised all the volunteers there were others whose blame was of the same intelligent quality.

The New York _Evening Post_, on June 18, gave expression to the following gloomy foreboding: "Competent observers have remarked that nothing more extraordinary has been done than the sending to Cuba of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, known as the 'rough riders.'

Organized but four weeks, barely given their full complement of officers, and only a week of regular drill, these men have been sent to the front before they have learned the first elements of soldiering and discipline, or have even become acquainted with their officers.

In addition to all this, like the regular cavalry, they have been sent with only their carbines and revolvers to meet an enemy armed with long-range rifles.

There have been few cases of such military cruelty in our military annals."

A week or so after this not wholly happy prophecy was promulgated, the "cruelty" was consummated, first at Las Guasimas and then in the San Juan fighting.

Wood was so busy getting the regiment ready that when I reached San Antonio he turned most of the drilling of it over to me.

This was a piece of great good fortune for me, and I drilled the men industriously, mounted and unmounted.

I had plenty to learn, and the men and the officers even more; but we went at our work with the heartiest good will.

We speedily made it evident that there was no room and no mercy for any man who shirked any duty, and we accomplished good results.

The fact is that the essentials of drill and work for a cavalry or an infantry regiment are easy to learn, which of course is not true for the artillery or the engineers or for the navy.

The reason why it takes so long to turn the average civilized man into a good infantryman or cavalryman is because it takes a long while to teach the average untrained man how to shoot, to ride, to march, to take care of himself in the open, to be alert, resourceful, cool, daring, and resolute, to obey quickly, as well as to be willing, and to fit himself, to act on his own responsibility.

If he already possesses these qualities, there is very little difficulty in making him a soldier; all the drill that is necessary to enable him to march and to fight is of a simple character.

Parade ground and barrack square maneuvers are of no earthly consequence in real war.

When men can readily change from line to column, and column to line, can form front in any direction, and assemble and scatter, and can do these things with speed and precision, they have a fairly good grasp of the essentials.

When our regiment reached Tampa it could already be handled creditably at fast gaits, and both in mass and extended formations, mounted and dismounted.

I had served three years in the New York National Guard, finally becoming a captain.

This experience was invaluable to me.

It enabled me at once to train the men in the simple drill without which they would have been a mob; for although the drill requirements are simple, they are also absolutely indispensable.

But if I had believed that my experience in the National Guard had taught me all that there was to teach about a soldier's career, it would have been better for me not to have been in it at all.

There were in the regiment a number of men who had served in the National Guard, and a number of others who had served in the Regular Army.

Some of these latter had served in the field in the West under campaign conditions, and were accustomed to long marches, privation, risk, and unexpected emergencies.

These men were of the utmost benefit to the regiment.

They already knew their profession, and could teach and help the others.

But if the man had merely served in a National Guard regiment, or in the Regular Army at some post in a civilized country where he learned nothing except what could be picked up on the parade ground, in the barracks, and in practice marches of a few miles along good roads, then it depended purely upon his own good sense whether he had been helped or hurt by the experience.

If he realized that he had learned only five per cent of his profession, that there remained ninety-five per cent to accomplish before he would be a good soldier, why, he had profited immensely.

To start with five per cent handicap was a very great advantage; and if the man was really a good man, he could not be overtaken.

But if the man thought that he had learned all about the profession of a soldier because he had been in the National Guard or in the Regular Army under the conditions I have described, then he was actually of less use than if he had never had any military experience at all.

Such a man was apt to think that nicety of alignment, precision in wheeling, and correctness in the manual of arms were the ends of training and the guarantees of good soldiership, and that from guard mounting to sentry duty everything in war was to be done in accordance with what he had learned in peace.

As a matter of fact, most of what he had learned was never used at all, and some of it had to be unlearned.

The one thing, for instance, that a sentry ought never to do in an actual campaign is to walk up and down a line where he will be conspicuous.

His business is to lie down somewhere off a ridge crest where he can see any one approaching, but where a man approaching cannot see him.

As for the ceremonies, during the really hard part of a campaign only the barest essentials are kept.

Almost all of the junior regular officers, and many of the senior regular officers, were fine men.

But, through no fault of their own, had been forced to lead lives that fairly paralyzed their efficiency when the strain of modern war came on them.

The routine elderly regular officer who knew nothing whatever of modern war was in most respects nearly as worthless as a raw recruit.

The positions and commands prescribed in the text-books were made into fetishes by some of these men, and treated as if they were the ends, instead of the not always important means by which the ends were to be achieved.

In the Cuban fighting, for instance, it would have been folly for me to have taken my place in the rear of the regiment, the canonical text-book position.

My business was to be where I could keep most command over the regiment, and, in a rough-and-tumble, scrambling fight in thick jungle, this had to depend upon the course of events, and usually meant that I had to be at the front.

I saw in that fighting more than one elderly regimental commander who unwittingly rendered the only service he could render to his regiment by taking up his proper position several hundred yards in the rear when the fighting began; for then the regiment disappeared in the jungle, and for its good fortune the commanding officer never saw it again until long after the fight was over.

After one Cuban fight a lieutenant-colonel of the regulars, in command of a regiment, who had met with just such an experience and had rejoined us at the front several hours after the close of the fighting, asked me what my men were doing when the fight began.

I answered that they were following in trace in column of twos, and that the instant the shooting began I deployed them as skirmishers on both sides of the trail.

He answered triumphantly, "You can't deploy men as skirmishers from column formation"; to which I responded, "Well, I did, and, what is more, if any captain had made any difficulty about it, I would have sent him to the rear."

My critic was quite correct from the parade ground standpoint.

The prescribed orders at that time were to deploy the column first into a line of squads at correct intervals, and then to give an order which, if my memory serves correctly, ran: "As skirmishers, by the right and left flanks, at six yards, take intervals, march."

The order I really gave ran more like this: "Scatter out to the right there, quick, you!

scatter to the left!

look alive, look alive!"

And they looked alive, and they scattered, and each took advantage of cover, and forward went the line.

Now I do not wish what I have said to be misunderstood.

If ever we have a great war, the bulk of our soldiers will not be men who have had any opportunity to train soul and mind and body so as to meet the iron needs of an actual campaign.

Long continued and faithful drill will alone put these men in shape to begin to do their duty, and failure to recognize this on the part of the average man will mean laziness and folly and not the possession of efficiency.

Moreover, if men have been trained to believe, for instance, that they can "arbitrate questions of vital interest and national honor," if they have been brought up with flabbiness of moral fiber as well as flabbiness of physique, then there will be need of long and laborious and faithful work to give the needed tone to mind and body.

But if the men have in them the right stuff, it is not so very difficult.