Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt! by Jean Fritz

Author:Jean Fritz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group

5

ALTHOUGH COLONEL Wood was recognized as being first in command, the public acted as if this were Teddy’s regiment. At first, newspapers referred to the regiment as “Teddy’s Terrors”; Roosevelt hated the nickname “Teddy,” even though everyone except his family and close friends called him that. Soon the papers found the right name, the one that stuck. “Roosevelt’s Rough Riders”—that’s who they were, 1,000 men selected out of 20,000 applicants. The best riders, the best marksmen, the hardiest, they were a mixed lot—mostly cowboys from the Southwest, a few Native Americans, but also athletes from eastern colleges (a star football player from Harvard, a champion tennis player, high-jumpers from Yale). They wore blue kerchiefs around their necks, had a bald eagle for a mascot, sang “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” and adored Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt. They were men of a kind whose closeness turned out to be not just a wartime bond but a lifelong one.

Teddy was proud of them and was pleased with the way the war was going according to the plan he’d presented to the president. On May 1, Commodore Dewey had taken his fleet to the Philippines and in short order had destroyed almost every Spanish ship there. All without losing a single American life.

Now for Cuba. Of course it was important to have a quick victory in Cuba, but for Teddy it was absolutely essential that his regiment play a part in that victory. The question was: would their orders come in time? Would they be among the first to go?

He wrote to the president from Texas. “We are ready now to leave at any moment. And we earnestly hope that we will be put into Cuba with the very first troops; the sooner, the better.”

At the end of May a telegram arrived, ordering the regiment to Tampa, Florida, “for immediate embarkation on transport ships.”

It looked good. But immediate? Was anything in the Army really immediate? They didn’t even leave immediately. After loading the horses on seven trains, the men found there were no trains for carrying them; they had to sleep beside the railroad tracks and wait until the next day to start.

It took four miserable, hot days to reach Tampa, and then, for some unexplained reason, the trains stopped seven miles short. So the Rough Riders mounted their horses and rode the rest of the way to the enormous tent city where the army was camped.

More waiting.

Three days later, on June 6, news came that despite their drilling on horseback, the Rough Riders were not going to operate as a cavalry regiment after all. Only the officers could take horses with them. Worse still, not all the men could go: only 560 out of the 1,000. Nothing that Teddy Roosevelt did in Cuba was harder than giving this news to those who couldn’t go.

The next day the men were to leave, but the train that was to take them to the point of embarkation didn’t appear. They were told to go to another track, but still no train came.

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