We received the details of the fight of Las Guasimas on the 4th of July, I remember, and all night long I sat on my piazza on Orange Mountain, thinking, with a strange horror, of the danger in which my brother had been and still was.
On June 27, 1898, another letter, this time dated Santiago:
“We have a lovely camp here by a beautiful stream which runs through jungle-land banks. The morning after the fight, we buried our dead in a great big trench, reading the solemn burial service over them, and all the regiment joined in singing ‘Rock of Ages.’ The woods are full of land crabs, some of which are almost as big as rabbits; when things grew quiet, they slowly gathered in gruesome rings around the fallen.”
Bob Ferguson also adds interesting evidence to the courage of the First Volunteer Cavalry under fire.
Las Guasimas—June 25, 1898.
Theodore and Wood are more than delighted with the conduct of the men. You never heard such a hail of shot. The enemy, of course, knew when we would be in the jungle, and we could only guess their whereabouts. Their volleys opened up from all directions. Theodore did great work skipping from one troop to another, and directed them as they were deployed, but we can only trust that this kind of thing won’t happen too often, for fear of results. It was, in fact, a surprise party, however, an expected one. Our men rushed into a known ambush with the careless dash of the cow-puncher. Once in, they literally had to hug the ground while the trees above and beside them were torn to shreds.... Theodore has marked the Spaniard all right—and the name of his regiment will never be spoken of any too lightly. They really did not understand fear and would willingly repeat the dose tomorrow. Poor Ham Fish,—he was such a good-hearted, game fellow, and I got to like him ever so much on the way down;—it is more than much now!—The Spaniards showed any amount of skill in their tactics, and only the extraordinary grit of our men undid their calculation, together with the good work of a parallel column of Regulars, who cleared the Spaniards off a flanking ridge in the forest in the finest style—otherwise they could have out-flanked us on either side and given us Hell in open sight. So far, it seems like fighting an army of invisible Pigmies.... Kenneth was awfully good yesterday after the fight. He was the first to volunteer to help the wounded when the entire troop was too exhausted to move;—he carried them for hours until his back gave out.... We really did splendidly yesterday. The Regulars are to have their turn now. We have been blooded ourselves. We lost too many officers. One little fellow, shot right through both hips, was the greatest little sport. He refused to be attended to until others were made comfortable, and he lay and smoked his pipe patiently. One man walked to the hospital with five wounds:—in the neck, right shoulder, right hand, left thigh, and one other.
It is a matter of interest to print the above extracts, for even when my brother wrote his book called “The Rough Riders,” he could not give quite the spirit which the letters, penned at the moment of the happenings, can so fitly interpret. Bob Ferguson again, on July 5, gave an important description of my brother:
Before Santiago, July 5, 1898.
We have been having the devil of a fine time of it, shooting Spaniards, and being “stormed at by shot and shell.” When I caught up with Theodore, the day of his famous charge, (having been held in the reserve line until tired of being pelted at from a distance) “T” was revelling in victory. He had just “doubled up” a Spanish officer like a jack-rabbit, as he retreated from a block house.... That same evening, having reached the most advanced crest possible, with about 300 men, and having the whole Spanish Army firing at us from their entrenchments around the city, the summit of our ambition was almost reached.
Theodore moved about in the midst of shrapnel explosions like Shadrach, Meschach & Sons in the midst of the fiery furnace, unharmed by the vicious Mauser balls or by the buzzing exploding bullets of the Irregulars.... Theodore preferred to stand up or walk about snuffing the fragrant air of combat. I really believe firmly now, that they cannot kill him. It looks, too, somewhat as if they would not get a chance for a spell, for our lines are around the Spanish Dog’s throat, and he will be smothered by our fire in a moment should the fight open once more. It would seem a shame now to have to damage them any more, for they say the streets are full of wounded and spent balls shower among them.... Theodore has sure made his mark on the Spaniard,—and the Rough Riders [the regiment had already ceased to be called the First Volunteer Cavalry, and was never again known as anything but the Rough Riders] will remain—pitching bronchos and all, afoot or on horseback!... The “bob whites” whistle all around these plantations, and transport one straight back to Sagamore Hill on a summer’s day. The mountains here are glorious; the valleys, a dream of drooping palms, and dark, cool, shaded mangroves clustered; soft bamboo waves near the creeks and smiling ridges, once all under cultivation.
My brother himself, in a letter dated from Santiago, July 19, 1898, writes:
“Darling Corinne:—‘Triumph tasted’!—for that, one will readily pay as heavy a price as we have paid; but it is bitter to think that part of the price was due to the mismanagement of those in authority. The misery has been fearful. Today, out of my four hundred odd men in camp, one hundred and twenty-three are under the doctor’s care. The rest of the six hundred with whom I landed are dead or in the rear hospitals. I cannot explain the breakdown of the transportation service, the commissariat, or the hospital service.”
I quote the above letter for the special purpose of recalling to my readers the fact that Colonel Roosevelt was much criticised later for instigating the writing of a “round-robin” letter in the summer, urging the authorities to bring home the regiments after the victory was won. Due to the “breakdown” which he describes, the men were dying like flies, and had that “round robin” (severely censured by my brother’s enemies) not been written, had the authorities at Washington not decided to follow the suggestions of Theodore Roosevelt and order our gallant men back from their death-trap, very few of that expedition to Cuba would have lived to tell the tale. At the end of the above letter, after describing in full the sufferings of the men because of lack of care, he says: