Our War with Spain for Cuba's Freedom

by Trumbull White

CHAPTER XLIII.

CALL FOR THE NATIONAL GUARD, OUR CITIZEN SOLDIER.

Enthusiastic Answer to the Call—Requirements of the War
Department—Who May Enlist—How the Army was Formed—In the
Training Camps—The American Makes the Best Soldier—The "Rough
Riders"—Cowboys and Society Men—Their Uniforms and Their
Weapons—Their Fighting Leaders.

If all the men who showed a desire to answer the call to arms had been accepted, no nation in the world could have boasted of a larger army. The demand was so limited and the supply so great that many more had to be refused than were accepted, and many of the National Guard, who were given the preference in all the States, were rejected at the final examination, because they lacked some of the qualifications necessary in a soldier of the United States.

According to the requirements of the war department applicants for enlistment must be between the ages of 18 and 35 years, of good character and habits, able-bodied, free from disease and must be able to speak the English language. If one is addicted to the bad habit of smoking cigarettes it is quite likely that he will not pass the physical examination. A man who has been a heavy drinker is apt to be rejected without ceremony.

Married men will only be enlisted upon the approval of the regimental commander.

Minors must not be enlisted without the written consent of father, only surviving parent, or legally appointed guardian. Original enlistment will be confined to persons who are citizens of the United States or who have made legal declaration of their intention to become citizens thereof.

These requirements fulfilled a man is permitted to take the physical examination. Few understand just how rigid this examination is. Many have been rejected who thought that they were in perfect physical condition. A number of applicants who were confident that they would be allowed to enlist were rejected by the physicians on account of varicose veins. Varicose veins are enlarged veins which are apt to burst under the stress of long continued exertion. Closely allied to this is varicocele, which threw out a surprisingly large proportion of the National Guard and the recruits.

After a man is weighed and his height taken, he is turned over to the doctor, who places the applicant's hands above his head and proceeds to feel his flesh. If it is soft and of flabby fiber the physician is not well pleased and if he finds that the bones are too delicate for the amount of flesh he turns the applicant down. Fat men, however, get through if their bones are solid and there is no organic weakness of any description. To discover the condition of the heart the applicant is made to hop about five yards on one foot and back again on the other. The doctor then listens to the beating of the heart. He lifts his head and says to some apparently fine-looking specimen of manhood the simple word:

"Rejected."

This man has heart trouble, and, strange to say, he does not know it. If a man be of a pale complexion or rather sallow, the doctors will question him with regard to his stomach. Of course the lungs are thoroughly tested. It is not often, however, that any one presents himself who is suffering from lung trouble. One man in particular was rejected because of the formation of his chest. He was what is commonly known as "pigeon-breasted." The doctors said that there was not enough room for air in the lungs, and yet the rejected applicant was a well-known athlete.

But after all organic centers have been found in excellent condition several things yet remain to be tested. A man's feet must not blister easily. His teeth must be good, because bad teeth interfere with digestion and are apt to develop stomach troubles. Of course other things taken into consideration a particular defect may be overlooked according to the discretion of the doctor. A man with his index finger gone stands no show.

A bow-legged man will be accepted, but a knocked-kneed man rarely.

The final test is of the eyes. At a, distance of twenty feet one must be able to read letters a half inch in size. Many tricks were played to read the letters when the eager candidate could see only a blur before him. The favorite method was to memorize the letters from those who had taken the examination and knew in just what order the letters were situated.

HOW AN ARMY IS FORMED.

The making of an army—that is what it means to turn men of peace to men of war, to fit the mechanic or the business man, the farmer or the miner, for a passage at arms with a foreign foe—has been for the present generation a matter of conjecture and of lessons drawn from previous passages in the nation's chronicles. In our war with Spain it became a fact, and the progress made in the various stages forms a chapter in the public history which is as interesting as any of those conquests of either peace or war which brighten for every American the pages of the achievements of the Union of the States.

It is impossible to tell just how an army is made. During the long debates which preceded the declaration of war, eloquent men on both sides of the chambers of Congress pictured the strength of American arms, the shrillness of the scream of the eagle, and the sharpness of his talons, and applauding galleries saw in the coming combat little but the calling out of the vast body of the reserve strength of the American people, its marching upon the enemy, and return, bearing captured standards and leading prisoners in chains, to the music of the applauding nations, and the thanksgiving of a people made free by their struggles. The other side was never touched. The nights of toil by staff officers, the multiplied forces of mills and factories, the shriek of the trains crossing the continent, bearing men and munitions, and the hours of waiting for the completion of those warlike implements which the peaceful American has never before contemplated in the expansion of his industrial institutions, were entirely overlooked.

Not by all, however, for, from the moment the conflict seemed inevitable, stern-eyed men who had fought before began to count, not the cost, but the hours between the giving of an order and its fulfillment, between the calling and the coming, and finally when the results of their labors were completed the story of what they did may be partly told.

All the processes of making a soldier are as distinct as are those which mark the seed time and the harvest, the milling and the making of the loaf. It can be readily seen that in a country where the standing army is but 25,000, and the militia forces of the various States bears such a slight proportion to the population, that manufactures of materials of use only in time of war could not flourish. Thus it was that at the time of the commencement of hostilities there was available in the United States equipment for an army of less than one-fifth the size of that which afterwards took the field, and patriotism and fidelity were shown as much in the outfitting of that force, as can be shown in actual battle by any volunteer or regular officer, whether he be posted in fort or field, and win glory by brilliant dash, or simply doing his duty by holding his post.

The ready response to the President's call for volunteers was sufficient to prove that the people were eager to take up arms and ready to go to the front. But enthusiasm, patriotism and readiness never make an army. An army is a great machine, of which each individual is a part, and there even the militia men of the various States, who had spent so much time in preparing themselves for just such a struggle, lacked the one great element without which no army can hope for success: the capacity to move in unison. Few of the States had given their men the training which makes of the simple company or regiment a wheel in the brigade or division.

In the great camps at Chickamauga, at Camp Alger, at Tampa, and at San Francisco the task of making an army from men who a month before had been working in the store, the mill or the field, went on. This meant long, thorough drilling under competent instructors. Careful study of the tactics and intelligent comprehension of the meaning of an order makes the soldier. It is not possible to imagine anything more difficult than the thorough training of the arms bearer, and for this task the American seems better fitted than the men of any other country. In an analysis of the soldiers of the world an authority would place the American, combining as he does the blood of nations, at the head of the list, for the reason that with his finer sensibility, his greater capacity to think while acting and to act while thinking, all tend to produce in him that character capable of high and perfect development in the soldier.

At Chickamauga, under General Wade; at Washington, under General Graham; at Tampa, under General Shafter; at San Francisco, under General Merriam, and on the New York and New England coasts under brigadiers who had served East and West, the raw material was formed, until at length the perfect soldier was produced, the soldier of whom it could be said:

"Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die."

ABOUT THE ROUGH RIDERS.

Those who are acquainted with the nature of the service usually required of cavalry in time of war will not question the usefulness of the cowboy regiment—rough riders as they are called—that were raised in the West to take part in the invasion of Cuba.

The cowboy is a rapidly passing type. Barbed wire, the fencing in of the range, together with the irrigation and cultivation of those regions which were once marked as deserts on the maps—have been responsible for his undoing and he has made what may prove to be his last stand, as a soldier.

The cowboy regiment was the idea of the assistant secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt, who had had some experience himself as a cowboy on his Wyoming ranch and who was an expert in such matters as branding, rope-throwing, broncho breaking and those other practices which are peculiar to the "cow-puncher."

Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt's regiment, which figures on the army records as the "1st regiment of rifle rangers," but which the general public from the first preferred to call "Roosevelt's rough riders," or more simply still, "Teddy's terrors," was made up almost entirely of cowboys, with a small sprinkling of society men, who had both a fondness and an aptitude for horsemanship, which had found no other outlet than that offered by the hunting field and the polo ground.

MADE UP ALMOST ENTIRELY OF COWBOYS.

In organization the regiment was not widely different from the famous Texas Rangers, but the uniform was the same as that of the cavalrymen of the regular army, slightly modified. Its personnel, with the exception of the millionaire members—was about the same, however, as that of the Rangers. It included men from almost every State in the Union, and they could one and all ride well, and shoot well, and many of them smelled powder in more than one Indian war.

While Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt took the most active part in its formation, he did not command the regiment. That responsibility was delegated to Colonel Wood, who was almost as well known in the West as Roosevelt was in the East. He entered the army as a surgeon, but he probably had much more to do with the making of wounds than their healing.

It is said of him that when he was first assigned for duty to an Arizona post he arrived at the post one night at 7 o'clock, and the next morning at 4 was in the field and at work. This was during the Apache campaign in 1885, and Surgeon Wood soon won for himself the name of the fighting doctor. He was conspicuous in the famous Geronimo outbreak, having command at various times of the infantry and scouts engaged in the chase after that wily savage.

The regiment was armed with the Krag-Jorgensen carbine and revolvers, without which no cowboy would be complete even in time of peace. And instead of the regular cavalry sword, which is a rather unwieldy instrument except in the hands of men trained to its use, the rough riders adopted the Cuban machete, which even the inexperienced can use successfully; but it was not intended that they should be swordsmen; their reliance was on the rifle and revolver. The machete was carried merely as a possible dependence should ammunition fail, or a hand-to-hand encounter with the cavalry of the enemy occur. In the development of this plan of action it can be seen that Colonel Wood and Lieutenent-Colonel Roosevelt in the tactics they employed followed closely those used by the mounted riflemen of the revolution. It was a band of this sort that after a ride of sixty miles the last day met and utterly routed the English under Colonel Ferguson.