The Career of Leonard Wood

by Joseph Hamblen Sears

{77}

[IV]
THE SOLDIER

The name "Rough Riders" will forever mean to those who read American history the spontaneous joy of patriotism and the high hearts of youth in this land. It was the modern reality of the adventurous musketeers--of those who loved romance and who were ready for a call to arms in support of their country. They came from the cowboys of the west, from the stockbrokers' offices of Wall Street, from the athletic field, from youth wherever real youth was to be found. Something over 20,000 men applied for enrollment. None of them knew anything of war. None of them wanted to die, but they all wanted to try the great adventure under such leaders. And they have left an amazing record of the joyousness of the fight and the recklessness that goes with it.

Now and then there have been organizations of a similar character in our history, but only here and there. It was the first outburst of that day {78} of the spirits filled with high adventure; and the record cheers the rest of us as we plod along our way, just as it cheers us when we are ill in bed with indigestion to read again the old but ever-young Dumas.

It would have been impossible for any one to have organized and controlled such a group without the enthusiasm of men like Roosevelt and Wood, as well as the knowledge these two had of the West, the Southwest and the South.

It detracts nothing from Roosevelt's greatness of spirit to say that it was Wood who did the organizing, the equipping of the regiment. In fact Roosevelt declined to be the Rough Riders' first Colonel, but consented to be the second in command only if Wood were made its commander. The fact that Roosevelt was not only known in the East but in the Northwest, and that Wood was quite as well known in the Southwest and the South meant that men of the Rough Riders type all over the country knew something of one or the other of the regiment's organizers.

It detracts nothing from Wood's amazing activity in organization and capacity for getting {79} things done, to say that had it not been for Roosevelt's wonderful popularity amongst those of the youthful spirit of the land the regiment would never have had its unique character or its unique name.

This is not the place to tell the story of that famous band of men. But its organization is so important a part of Wood's life that it comes in for mention necessarily.

In the Indian campaign with the regulars he had known the great importance of being properly outfitted and ready for those grilling journeys over the desert. In the Spanish War he learned, as only personal experience can teach, the amazing importance of preparation for volunteers and inexperienced men. The whole story of the getting ready to go to Cuba was burned into his brain so deeply that it formed a second witness in the case against trusting to luck and the occasion which has never been eradicated from his mind. Yet this episode brought strongly before him also the fact that prepared though he might be there was no success ahead for such an organization without the sense of subordination to the {80} state and the nation which not only brought the volunteers in, but carried them over the rough places through disease and suffering and death to the end.

Eight days after the telegram calling upon the Governors of New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma and Indian Territory for men to form the regiment, the recruits gathered at San Antonio where Wood was waiting to meet them. The most important thing about them for the moment was that they knew nothing of military life. Wood believed with Old Light-Horse Harry Lee "That Government is a murderer of its citizens which sends them to the field uninformed and untaught, where they are meeting men of the same age and strength mechanized by education and disciplined for battle."