In 1885 he took an examination for admission as a surgeon in the army. He passed second in a competitive class of fifty-nine. His first service was at Fort Warren, Massachusetts. From this post he was ordered to Arizona. Here he met Captain H. L. Lawton of the Fourth Cavalry, who later became Major-General Lawton. The two fought Apaches together. Wood developed into such a good fighting man that before he had been commissioned three months, and while he still held the rank of surgeon, he was given the command of the infantry of the expedition.
While engaged in this work he announced his opinion that a well-trained white man could endure more than an Indian. It became his ambition to prove this so far as he himself was concerned.
General Miles, in forwarding to the War Department his report of Captain Lawton’s expedition against Geronimo, had this to say of Wood:
“He not only fulfilled the duties of his profession in his skillful attention to disabled officers and soldiers, but at times performed satisfactorily the duties of a line officer, and, during the whole extraordinary march, by his example of physical endurance, greatly encouraged others, having voluntarily made many of the longest and most difficult marches on foot.”
After service in Mexico, Los Angeles, New Mexico and other posts, General Wood was ordered to duty as an army surgeon in Washington in 1895. He became a friend of President Cleveland and his family, and later received a summons from President McKinley to become the regular medical adviser to Mrs. McKinley and himself. It was at this time that he met Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Their first meeting occurred when they were guests at dinner of the Lowndes family. They were at once attracted to each other. They possessed the same ideals. They went tramping together, ran foot races, scaled steep hills, crossed log bridges and did anything that would increase their strength and endurance.
When the talk of war with Spain arose, the two men became so eager to see active service that President McKinley, who was a close friend to both Wood and Roosevelt, called them “The War Party.” When Wood visited McKinley, the latter would ask: “Have you and Theodore declared war yet?”
General Alger, to whom Wood was also medical adviser, was heartily in favor of the “Rough Rider” regiment, and when Wood was commissioned to raise the regiment and appointed its Colonel, General Alger gave him a desk in his office with the injunction: “Now don’t let me hear from you again until your regiment is raised!”
In the campaign that followed, Roosevelt testified in regard to Wood:
“No soldier could outwalk him, could live with greater indifference on hard and scanty fare, could endure hardship better or do better without sleep.” Others who served under Wood testified that he went through a hail of bullets without fear, that he would walk erect along the line when his soldiers were hugging the ground, and that he would calmly caution his men: “Don’t swear, men. Shoot!”
General Wood’s work as governor of Santiago, and later as governor of the whole island of Cuba, and his still later efforts shoulder to shoulder with Roosevelt to arouse America’s conscience and to make the American army an efficient fighting force, is well known to the American public.