SANTIAGO.
Headquarters
Cavalry Division, U. S. Army.
Headqrs. Wood's Rough Riders.
June 29th, 1898.
[DEAR DAD:]
I suppose you are back from Marion now and I have missed
you. I can't tell you how sorry I am. I wanted to see you
coming up the street this summer in your knickerbockers and
with no fish, but still happy. Never mind, we shall do the
theatres this Fall, and have good walks downtown. I hope
Mother will come up and visit me this September, at Marion and
sit on Allen's and on the Clarks' porch and we can have Chas.
too. I suppose he will have had his
holiday but he can come up for a Sunday. We expect to move up
on Santiago the day after to-morrow, and it's about time, for
the trail will not be passable much longer. It rains every
day at three o'clock for an hour and such rain you never
guessed. It is three inches high for an hour. Then we all go
out naked and dig trenches to get it out of the way. It is
very rough living. I have to confess that I never knew how
well off I was until I got to smoking Durham tobacco and I've
only half a bag of that left. The enlisted men are smoking
dried horse droppings, grass, roots and tea. Some of them
can't sleep they are so nervous for the want of it, but to-day
a lot came up and all will be well for them. I've had a
steady ration of coffee, bacon and hard tack for a week and
one mango, to night we had beans. Of course, what they ought
to serve is rice and beans as fried bacon is impossible in
this heat. Still, every one is well. This is the best crowd
to be with — they are so well educated and so interesting. The
regular army men are very dull and narrow and would bore one
to death. We have Wood, Roosevelt, Lee, the British Attache,
Whitney and a Doctor Church, a friend of mine from Princeton,
who is quite the most cheerful soul and the funniest I ever
met. He carried four men from the firing line the other day
back half a mile to the hospital tent. He spends most of his
time coming around headquarters in an undershirt of mine and a
gold bracelet fighting tarantulas. I woke up the other
morning with one seven inches long and as hairy as your head
reposing on my pillow. My sciatica bothers me but has not
prevented me seeing everything and I can dig rain gutters and
cut wood with any of them. It is very funny to see Larned,
the tennis
champion, whose every movement at Newport was applauded by
hundreds of young women, marching up and down in the wet
grass. Whitney and I guy him. To-day a sentry on post was
reading "As You Like It" and whenever I go down the line half
the men want to know who won the boat race — To-day Wood sent
me out with a detail on a pretense of scouting but really to
give them a chance to see the country. They were all college
boys, with Willie Tiffany as sergeant and we had a fine time
and could see the Spanish sentries quite plainly without a
glass. I hope you will not worry over this long separation.
I don't know of any experience I have had which has done me so
much good, and being with such a fine lot of fellows is a
great pleasure. The scenery is very beautiful when it is not
raining. I have a cot raised off the ground in the Colonel's
tent and am very well off. If Chaffee or Lawton, who are the
finest type of officers I ever saw, were in command, we would
have been fighting every day and would probably have been in
by this time. This weather shows that Havana must be put off
after Porto Rico. They cannot campaign in this mud.
DICK.
