“A captain riding off in cool disregard of orders is enough to make the sweetest-tempered archangel use ‘language.’ What I said, or rather bellowed was: ‘What in —— are you doing? Good ——, wheel into line!’ What I might have said was: ‘Really, my dear sir, do you not observe that you are acting in direct opposition to my instructions? I beg that you will not march your troop into Kamchatka.’ Well, one always thinks afterward of what one might have said.”
COPYRIGHT, UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD
HALL AT SAGAMORE HILL
It is interesting to note that the original idea for a regiment such as the Rough Riders was suggested to Roosevelt several years before the Spanish War by no other man than Baron von Sternburg of the German Embassy. The baron, when only seventeen, had served in the Franco-Prussian War as a hussar. There was no war with Germany on the American horizon in those days and the baron spent a week in camp at Montauk with the Rough Riders upon their return.
On the Sunday before the regiment disbanded at Montauk, there came an occasion of genuine surprise to the Colonel. He was asked out of his tent by Lieutenant-Colonel Brodie and found the whole regiment formed in a hollow square. When he entered the square one of the men stepped forward and presented him with a splendid bronze of Remington’s “The Bronco Buster.” Roosevelt was deeply touched and deeply appreciative of this very appropriate gift. After the presentation the men filed past and Roosevelt shook hands with each and bade him farewell.
The next morning the men scattered to their homes. Some went North and South. Some went to the great cities of the East. Some turned to the plains, the mountains and the deserts.
The straight-from-the-shoulder sermon the Colonel preached to his Rough Riders as they went out to resume their citizen occupations was one that made a permanent impression upon their lives.
“Get action; do things; be sane,” he said to them, “don’t flitter away your time; create; act; take a place wherever you are and be somebody!”
Through the remainder of his historic career the Colonel never reached too great a place to be out of touch with his Rough Riders, no matter what humble positions they held. No member of the regiment ever came to the White House to see his former chief without Roosevelt breaking all engagements to shake his hand and talk over with him the stirring events in Cuba.