10 - Rough Riders by Theodore Roosevelt

Join Theodore Roosevelt as he recounts his thrilling experiences with The Rough Riders, the legendary 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry formed in 1898 for the Spanish-American War. As Lt. Colonel and second-in-command, Roosevelt vividly portrays the brave men and their spirited horses, the challenges they faced, and the fierce battles they fought in Cuba. He paints a picture of soldiers forged from the rugged wilderness, accustomed to the wild and the unpredictable. With a passion for adventure and an eagerness for action, these “grim hunters of the mountains” were ready to face any foe. Roosevelt’s account is a stirring tribute to their courage and camaraderie, making it a compelling listen for history enthusiasts.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section ten of The Rough Riders by Theodore Roosevelt. This
LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by William Peck,
Chapter five, Part two. Doctor Church had established a little
field hospital under the shoulder of the hill in our rear.
He was himself very sick and had almost nothing in

(00:21):
the way of medicine or supplies or apparatus of any kind.
But the condition of the wounded in the big field
hospitals in the rear was so horrible from the lack
of attendants as well as of medicines, that we kept
all the men we possibly could at the front. Some
of them had now begun to come down with fever.
They were all very patient, but it was pitiful to
see the sick and wounded soldiers lying on their blankets

(00:44):
if they had any, and if not, then simply in
the mud, with nothing to eat but hard tack and pork,
which of course they could not touch when their fever
got high, and with no chance to get more than
the rudest attention. Among the very sick here was gallant
Captain Leewowyan. I feared he was going to die. We
finally had to send him to one of the big
hospitals in the rear. Doctors Brewer and Fuller of the

(01:07):
tenth had been unwearying and attending to the wounded, including
many of those of my regiment. At twelve o'clock we
were notified to stop firing, and a flag of truce
was sent into demand the surrender of the city. The
negotiations gave us a breathing spell. That afternoon I arranged
to get our baggage up, sending back strong details of

(01:27):
men to carry up their own goods, and as usual,
in pressing into service a kind of improvised pack train
consisting of the officer's horses of two or three captured
Spanish cavalry horses, two or three mules which had been
shot and abandoned in which our men had taken and cured,
and two or three Cuban ponies. Hitherto we had simply

(01:49):
been sleeping by the trenches or immediately in their rear,
with nothing in the way of shelter, and only one
blanket to every three or four men. Fortunately there had
been little rain. We now got up the sho shelter
tents of the men, and some flies for the hospital
and for the officers, and my personal baggage appeared. I
celebrated its advent by a thorough wash and shave. Later,

(02:11):
I twice snatched a few hours to go to the
rear and visit such of my men as I could
find in the hospitals. Their patience was extraordinary. Kenneth Robinson,
a gallant young trooper, though himself severely I suppose at
the time mortally wounded, was noteworthy for the way in
which he tended those among the wounded who were even
more helpless, and the cheery courage with which he kept

(02:33):
up their spirits. Gievers, who was shot through the hips,
rejoined us at the front in a fortnight. Captain Day
was hardly longer away. Jack Hammer, who with poor Race Smith,
a gallant Texas lad who was mortally hurt beside me
on the summit of the hill, had been on kitchen detail,
was wounded and sent to the rear. He was ordered
to go to the United States, but he heard that

(02:55):
we were to assault Santiago, so he struggled out to
rejoin us, and thereafter Day at the front. Cosby, badly wounded,
made his way down to the seacoast in three days
unassisted with all volunteer troops and I am inclined to
think with regulars two in time of trial, the best
work can be got out of the men only if
the officers endure the same hardships and faced the same risk.

(03:19):
In my regiment as in the whole cavalry division, the
proportion of loss and killed and wounded was considerably greater
among the officers than among the troopers. And this was
exactly as it should be. Moreover, when we got down
to hard pan, we all officers and men fared exactly
alike as regards both shelter and food. This prevented any

(03:40):
grumbling when the troopers saw that the officers had nothing
but hard attack. There was not a man in the
regiment who would not have been ashamed to grumble at
faring no worse. And when all alikes slept out in
the open in the rear of the trenches, and when
the men always saw the field officers up at night
during the digging of the trenches and going the rounds
of the outpost, they would not tolerate in any of

(04:02):
their number either complaint or shriking work. When things got easier,
I put up my tent and lived a little apart,
for it is a mistake for an officer, ever, to
grow too familiar with his men, no matter how good
they are, And it is of course the greatest possible
mistake to seek popularity, either by showing weakness or by
mauikodling the men. They will never respect the commander who

(04:23):
does not enforce discipline, who does not know his duty,
and who is not willing both himself to encounter and
to make them encounter every species of danger and hardship
when necessary. The soldiers who do not feel this way
are not worthy of the name, and should be handled
with iron severity until they become fighting men, and not shams.
In return, the officer should carefully look after his men,

(04:46):
should see that they are all well fed and well sheltered,
and that no matter how much they may grumble, they
keep the camp thoroughly policed. After the cessation of the
three days fighting, we began to get our rations regularly,
and had plenty of hardtack and salt pork, and usually
about half the ordinary amount of sugar and coffee. It
was not a very good ration for the tropics, however,

(05:08):
and was of very little use indeed to the sick
and half sick. On two or three occasions during the siege,
I got my improvised pack train together and either took
or sent it down to the sea coast for beans,
canned tomatoes and the like. We got these either from
the transports which were still landing stores on the beach,
or from the Red Cross. If I did not go myself,

(05:30):
I sent some man who had shown that he was
a driving, energetic, tactful fellow who would somehow get what
we wanted. Chaplin Brown developed great capacity in this line,
and so did one of the troopers named No. Block,
he who had dived after the rifles that had sunk
off the pier at Dakery. The supplies of food we
got in this way had a very beneficial effect, not

(05:52):
only upon the men's health, but upon their spirits. To
the Red Cross and similar charitable organizations we owe a
great deal. We also owed much to Colonel Weston of
the Commissary Department, who always helped us and never let
himself be hindered by red tape. Thus he always let
me violate the absurd regulation which forbade me, even in

(06:12):
war time, to purchase food for my men from the stores.
Although letting me purchase for the officers, I of course,
paid no heed to the regulation when by violating it
I could get beans, canned tomatoes, or tobacco. Sometimes I
used my own money, sometimes what was given me by
Woody Kane, or what was sent me by my brother
in law, Douglas Robinson, or by the other Red Cross

(06:35):
people in New York. My regiment did not fare very well,
but I think it fared better than any other. Of course,
no one would have minded in the least such hardships
as we endured, had there been any need of enduring them,
but there was none. System and sufficiency of transportation were
all that were needed. On one occasion, a farm military

(06:57):
attachee visited my headquarters together with a foreign correspondent who
had been through the Turko Greek War. They were both
most friendly critics, and as they knew I was aware
of this. The correspondent finally ventured the remark that he
thought our soldiers fought even better than the Turks, but
that on the whole our system of military administration seemed
rather worse than that of the Greeks. As a nation,

(07:20):
we had prided ourselves on our business ability and adroitness
in the arts of peace, while outsiders at any rate
did not credit us with any special warlike prowess, and
it was curious that when war came, we should have
broken down precisely on the business and administrative side, while
the fighting edge of the troops certainly left little to
be desired. I was very much touched by the devotion

(07:41):
my men showed to me. After they had once become
convinced that I would share their hardships, they made it
a point that I should not suffer any hardships at all,
and I really had an extremely easy time. Whether I
had any food or not myself made no difference, as
there were sure to be certain troopers and indeed certain
troop messes on the lookout for me. If they had

(08:02):
any beans, they would send me over a cupful, or
I would suddenly receive a present of donuts from some
ex round up cook who had succeeded in obtaining a
little flour and sugar. And if a man shot a
guinea hen it was all I could do to make
him keep half of it for himself. Right the color
sergeant and Henry Barchar my orderly always pitch and struck

(08:23):
my tent and built me a bunk of bamboo poles
whenever we changed camp. So I personally endured very little discomfort,
for of course no one minded the two or three
days preceding or following each fight, when we all had
to get along as best we could. Indeed, as long
as we were under fire or in the immediate presence

(08:44):
of the enemy, and I had plenty to do, there
was nothing of which I could legitimately complain, And what
I really did regard as hardships my men did not
object to. For later on, when we had some leisure,
I would have given much for complete solitude and some
good books. Whether there was a truce, or whether, as
sometimes happened, we were notified that there was no truce

(09:05):
but merely a further cessation of hostilities by tacit agreement,
or whether the fight was on, we kept equally vigilant watch,
especially at night in the trenches. Every fourth man kept awake,
the others sleeping beside or behind him on their rifles,
and the Cossack posts and pickets were pushed out in
advance beyond the edge of the jungle. At least once

(09:27):
a night, at some irregular hour, I tried to visit
every part of our line, especially if it was dark
and rainy, although sometimes when the lines were in charge
of some officer like Wilcox or Caine, Greenway or Goodrich,
I became lazy, took off my boots, and slept all
night through. Sometimes at night I went not only along
the lines of our own brigade, but of the brigades adjoining.

(09:50):
It was a matter of pride, not only with me
but with all our men, that the lines occupied by
the rough riders should be at least as visiently guarded
as the lines of any irregular regiment. Sometimes at night,
when I met other officers inspecting their lines, we would
sit and talk over matters and wonder what shape the
outcome of the siege would take. We knew we would

(10:11):
capture Santiago, but exactly how we would do it we
could not tell. The failure to establish any depot for
provisions on the fighting line, where there was hardly ever
more than twenty four hours food ahead, made their risk
very serious. If a hurricane had struck the transports, scattering
them to the four winds, or if three days of
heavy rain had completely broken up our communication, as they

(10:34):
assuredly would have done, we would have been at starvation
point on the front and while of course we would
have lived through it somehow and would have taken the city,
it would have only been after very disagreeable experiences. As
soon as I was able, I accumulated for my own
regiment about forty eight hours hard tack and salt pork,
which I kept, so far as possible, intact to provide

(10:56):
against any emergency. If the city could be taken without
direct assault on the entrenchments and wire entanglements, we earnestly
hoped they would be for such an assault met as
we knew bypass experience the loss of a quarter of
the attacking regiments, and we were bound that the rough
Riders should be one of these attacking regiments if the

(11:16):
attack had to be made. There was of course nobody
who would not rather have assaulted than have run the
risk of failure. But we hoped the city would fall
without need arising for us to suffer the great loss
of life which a further assault would have entailed. Naturally,
the colonels and captains had nothing to say in the
peace negotiations which dragged along for the week following the

(11:38):
sending in the flag of truce. Each day we expected
either to see the city surrender or to be told
to begin fighting again. And toward the end it grew
so irksome that we would have welcomed even assault in
preference to further inaction. I used to discuss matters with
the officers of my own regiment now and then, and
with a few of the officers of the neighboring regiments

(11:59):
with whom I had ruck up a friendship Parker, Stevens, Beck, Heirs, Morton,
and Bowten. I also saw a good deal of the
excellent officers on the staffs of Generals Wheeler and Sumner,
especially Colonel Dorris, Colonel Garlington, Captain Howes, Captain Steele, Lieutenant Andrews,
and Captain Aster Chandler, who, like myself, was a volunteer.

(12:21):
Chandler was an old friend and a fellow big game
hunter who had done some good exploring work in Africa.
I always wish I could have had him in my regiment.
As for Doris, he was peculiarly fitted to command a regiment.
Although Howes and Andrews were not in my brigade, I
saw a great deal of them, especially of Howes, who
would have made a nearly ideal regimental commander. They were

(12:43):
both natural cavalrymen and of most enterprising natures ever desirous
of pushing to the front and of taking the boldest course.
The view Hows always took of every emergency, a view
which found prompt expression in his actions when the opportunity offered.
Made me feel like an elderly concservative. The week of
non fighting was not all a period of truce. Part

(13:04):
of the time was passed under a kind of nondescript arrangement,
when we were told not to attack ourselves, but to
be ready at any moment to repulse an attack and
to make preparations for meeting it. During these times I
busied myself in putting our trenches into first rate shape,
and in building bomb proofs and traverses. One night I
got a detail sixty men from the first, ninth and tenth,

(13:27):
whose officers always helped us in every way. And with
these and with sixty of my own men, I dug
a long zigzag trench in advance of the salient of
my line out to the knoll well in front, from
which we could command the Spanish trenches and blockhouses immediately
ahead of us. On this knoll, we made a kind
of bastion consisting of a deep, semi circular trench with

(13:49):
sandbags arranged along the edge so as to constitute a
wall with loopholes. Of course, when I came to dig
this trench, I kept both Greenway and Goodrich supervising the
work all night, and equally, of course, I got Parker
and Stevens to help me. By employing as many men
as we did, we were able to get the work
so far advanced as to provide against interruption before the

(14:11):
moon rose, which was about midnight. Our pickets were thrown
far out in the jungle to keep back the Spanish
pickets and prevent any interference with the diggers. The men
seemed to think the work rather good fun than otherwise,
the possibility of a brush with the Spaniards, lending a
zest that prevented its growing monotonous. Parker had taken two

(14:31):
of his gatlings, removed the wheels and mounted them in
the trenches, also mounting the two automatic colts where he
deemed they could do best service. With the completion of
the trenches, bomb proofs and traverses, and the mounting of
these guns, the fortifications of the hill assumed quite a
respectable character and the Gatling men to christen it Fort Roosevelt,

(14:51):
by which name it afterwards went. Note see Parker's quote
with the Gatlings of Santiago end quote. During the truce,
various military attaches and foreign officers came out to visit us.
Two or three of the newspaper men, including Richard Harding, Davis,
Caspar Whitney, and John Fox, had already been out to

(15:12):
see us, and had been in the trenches during the firing.
Among the others were Captains Lee and Paget of the
British Army and Navy. Fine fellows who really seemed to
take as much pride in the feasts of our men
as if we had been bound together by the ties
of a common nationality instead of the ties of race
and speech kinship. Another English visitor was Sir Brian Layton,

(15:33):
a thrice welcome guest, for he most thoughtfully brought to
me a half dozen little jars of deviled ham and
potted fruit, which enabled me to summon various officers down
to my tent and hold a feast. Count Vangatsen and
a Norwegian Adachhe Geddy, very good fellows, both were also out.
One day we were visited by a traveling Russian Prince X,

(15:56):
A large blond man, smooth and impenetrable. I introduced him
to one of the regular army officers, a capital fighter
and an excellent fellow, who, however, viewed foreign international politics
from a strictly trans Mississippi standpoint. He hailed the Russian
with frank kindness and took him off to show him
around the trenches, chatting volubly and calling him prince, much

(16:18):
as Kentuckians call one another colonel. As I returned, I
heard him remarking, you see, Prince, the great result of
this war is that it is united the two branches
of the Anglo Saxon people. And now that they are together,
they can whip the world. Prince, they can whip the world.
Being evidently filled with the pleasing belief that the Russian
would cordially sympathize with this view, the foreign attaches did

(16:42):
not always get on well with our generals. The two
English representatives never had any trouble, were heartily admired by everybody,
and indeed were generally treated as if they were of
our own number, and seemingly so regarded themselves. But this
was not always true. Of the representatives from continental Europe.
One of the last, a very good fellow by the way,

(17:02):
had not altogether approved of the way he was treated,
and the climax came when he said goodbye to the
general who had special charge of him. The general in
question was not accustomed to nice ethnic distinctions, and grouped
all the representatives from continental Europe under the comprehensive title
of Dutchmen. When the attache in question came to say farewell,
the general responded with a bluff heartiness, in which perhaps

(17:25):
the note of sincerity was more conspicuous than that of
entire good breeding. Well, goodbye, Sorry you're going, Which are
you anyhow the German or the Russian. Shortly after midday
on the tenth, fighting began again, but it soon became
evident that the Spaniards did not have much heart in it.
The American field artillery was now under the command of

(17:47):
General Randolph, and he fought it effectively. A mortar battery
had also been established, though with an utterly inadequate supply
of ammunition, and this rendered some service. Almost the only
rough riders who had a chance to do much firing
were the men with the cult automatic guns and the
twenty picked up sharpshooters who were placed in the newly

(18:08):
dug little fort out at the extreme front. Parker had
a splendid time with the Gatlings and the Colts. With
these machine guns. He completely silenced the battery in front
of us. This battery had caused us a good deal
of trouble at first, as we could not replace it.
It was immediately in front of the hospital, from which
many Red Cross flags were flying, one of them floating
just above this battery from where we looked at it.

(18:30):
In consequence, for some time we did not know it
was a hostile battery at all, as like all the
other Spanish batteries, it was using smokeless powder. It was
only by the aid of powerful glasses that we finally
discovered its real nature. The Gatlings and Colts then actually
put it out of action, silencing big guns and the
two field pieces. Furthermore, the machine guns and our sharpshooters

(18:53):
together did good work in supplementing the effects of the
dynamite gun. For when a shell from the ladder struck
near a Spanish trend or a building in which there
were Spanish troops, the shock was seemingly so great that
the Spaniards almost always showed themselves and gave our men
a chance to do some execution. As the evening of
the tenth came on, the men began to make their

(19:13):
coffee in sheltered places. By this time they knew how
to take care of themselves so well that not a
man was touched by the Spaniards during the second bombardment.
While I was lying with the officers, just outside one
of the bomb proofs, I saw a new Mexican trooper
named Morrison, making his coffee under the protection of a
traverse high up on the hill. Morrison was originally a

(19:35):
Baptist preacher who had joined the regiment purely from a
sense of duty, leaving his wife and children, and had
shown himself to be an excellent soldier. He had evidently
exactly calculated the danger zone and found that by getting
close to the traverse he could sit up erect and
make ready his supper without being cramped. I watched him
solemnly pounding the coffee with the butt end of his revolver,

(19:57):
and then boiling the water and frying his just as
if he had been in the lee of the round
up wagon somewhere out on the plains. By the noon
of the next day, the eleventh, my regiment, with one
of the Gatlings, was shifted over to the right to
guard the Caney Road. We did no fighting in our
new position, for the last struggling shot had been fired
by the time we got there. That evening, there came

(20:19):
up the worst storm we had had, and by midnight
my tent blew over. I had, for the first time
in a fortnight, undressed myself completely, and I felt fully
punished for my love of luxury when I jumped out
into the driving downpour of tropic rain and groped blindly
in the darkness for my clothes as they lay in
the liquid mud. It was Caine's night on guard, and

(20:40):
I knew that the wretched Woody would be out along
the line and taking care of the pickets, no matter
what the storm might be, and so I basely made
my way to the kitchen tent, where good Holderman the Cherokee,
wrapped me in dry blankets and put me to sleep
on a table which he had just procured from an
abandoned Spanish house. On the seventh tenth, the city formerly surrendered,

(21:02):
and our regiment, like the rest of the army, was
drawn up on the trenches. When the American flag was hoisted,
the trumpets blared and the men cheered, and we knew
that the fighting part of our work was over. Shortly
after we took our new position, the first Illinois volunteers
came up on our right. The next day, as a
result of the storm, in a further rain, the rivers

(21:23):
were up and the roads quagmires, so that hardly any
food reached the front. My regiment was all right, as
we had provided for just such an emergency, but the
Illinois newcomers had, of course not done so, and they
were literally without anything to eat. They were fine fellows,
and we could not see them suffer. I furnished them
some beans and coffee for the elder officers, and two

(21:44):
or three cases of hard attack for the men, and
then mounted my horse and rode down the headquarters, half fording,
half swimming the streams, and late in the evening I
succeeded in getting half a mule train of provisions for them.
On the morning of the third the Spanish had sent
out of Santiago many thousands of women, children, and other
non combatants, most of them belonging to the poorer classes,

(22:07):
but among them not a few of the best families.
These wretched creatures took very little with them. They came
through our lines and for the most part went to
El Caney in our rear, where we had to feed
them and protect them from the Cubans, as we had
barely enough food for our own men. The rations of
the refugees were scanty, indeed, and their sufferings great. Long

(22:27):
before the surrender, they had begun to come to our
lines to ask for provisions, and my men gave them
a good deal out of their own scanty stores, until
I had positively to forbid it and to insist that
the refugees should go to headquarters. As however hard and
merciless it seen, I was in duty bound to keep
my own regiment at the highest pitch of fighting efficiency.

(22:49):
As soon as the surrender was assured, the refugees came
streaming back in an endless, squalid procession down the Caney
Road to Santiago. My troopers, for all their roughness and
their ferocity and fight, were rather tenderhearted than otherwise, and
they helped the poor creatures, especially the women and children,
in every way, giving them food and even carrying the children,

(23:10):
and the burdens born by the women. I saw one man,
Happy Jack, spend the entire day in walking to and
fro were about a quarter of a mile on both
sides of our lines along the road, carrying the bundles
for a series of poor old women, or else carrying
young children. Finally, the doctor warned us that we must
not touch the bundles of the refugees for fear of infection,

(23:32):
as disease had broken out and was rife among them. Accordingly,
I had to put a stop to these acts of
kindness on the part of my men, against which action
Happy Jack respectfully but strongly protested, upon the unexpected ground
that the Almighty would never let a man catch a
disease while he was doing a good action. I did

(23:53):
not venture to take so advance a theological stand. End
of Chapter five, Part two