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Mil.270. The details of Wheeler’s advance to the front are rather confused. Mil.270 has him riding to Siboney at the head of the entire Cavalry Division on the afternoon of June 2. Azo.79 accepts this account. But Davis, Campaigns, 136 specifically states that the General reconnoitred the country beyond Siboney that afternoon, and had a plan for the next day’s maneuvers worked out by the time Wood and TR arrived. Marshall, who took part in the march from Siboney, confirms (Story, 83). TR, in RR.50, says that the 1st and 10th Cavalry left Daiquiri before the Rough Riders; it therefore seems that Wheeler must have left with those regiments, much earlier in the day.

31. McIntosh, Cuba, 82.

32. Mar.78–83; Jones, Rough Riders, 112.

33. Marshall, Story, 78. Marshall had been amazed by the violence of TR’s reaction when the Yucatán steamed off without unloading a saddle for Texas. “His wrath was boiling, his grief was heartbreaking.” (Ib.)

34. Jones, Rough Riders, 111.

35. McIntosh, Cuba, 69.

36. Mil.270–1; RR.51; Davis, Campaigns, 136; Freidel, Frank, The Splendid Little War (Little, Brown, 1958) 100; RR.52, 57.

37. Marshall, Story, 88–9; RR.51–2.

38. Brown, Correspondents’ War, 313; Hag.LW.162.

39. The following account of the Battle of Las Guásimas is based on these primary sources: Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back”; Marshall, Cuba, 90; Davis, Campaigns, 138–72; RR. 53–72; TR.Auto.245 ff; Mor.844–6; and Hag.LW.I.163–170, which is itself based on Wood’s written account of the fight. Secondary sources: Azo.; Freidel, Splendid Little War; Mil.; Brown, Correspondents’ War; Crane, Stephen, War Dispatches, ed. R. W. Stallman and E. R. Hageman (N.Y.U. Press, 1964). Crane saw nothing of the fighting.

40. Marshall, Story, 91.

41. Stephen Crane, writing from the opposite point of view, said that the Rough Riders looked like “brown flies” as they swarmed up the bluff. Cosby, “A RRR Looks Back,” 82.

42. RR.56.

43. See Stallman, R. W., Stephen Crane: A Biography (NY, 1968) for a full analysis of the relationship of TR and Crane.

44. Davis, Campaigns, 139.

45. RR. 104 (TR says the body was “Cuban”); Azo.86; Davis, Campaigns, 141.

46. Ib., 142; Marshall, Story, 99–100; Davis, Campaigns, 141.

47. Marshall, Story, 99–100.

48. Ib. Most other sources, including several defensively cited by TR in Ch. IV of RR., say that the first shots did not come until after Wood had deployed the Rough Riders against the enemy. However all these sources represent a revisionist view of events, since the Rough Riders were much embarrassed by reports that they had been ambushed (as indeed they were). The author chooses to follow Marshall, who was with TR when the first shot came, and who had especial reasons for remembering the Battle of Las Guásimas with clarity.

49. Marshall, Story, 119–21, 124.

50. Azo.90. The statistic of course refers to military, rather than naval, operations.

51. Hagedorn memo, “Wood under Fire,” TRB mss.

52. RR.68–9.

53. Marshall, Story, 104.

54. Mor. 844.

55. Azo.91; see also Hag.LW.I. 164–7 (Wood afterward confessed that he had been thinking much of the time about life insurance); Marshall, Story, 104.

56. RR.57–8; Marshall, Story, 110. TR insisted afterward that the sounds were bird calls at least “until we came right up to the Spanish lines.” RR.56. But Edward Marshall (93) and Stephen Crane, who had been in Cuba much longer than he, recognized the calls. “Ah, the wood-dove!” wrote Crane, “the Spanish guerrilla wood-dove which had presaged the death of gallant marines at Guantanamo!” Crane, Dispatches, 156. One senses a certain ornithological embarrassment in TR’s disclaimer, not to mention unwillingness to admit that he had been victim of an ambush.

57. Davis, Campaigns, 149 points out that Wood had to plot all his tactical movements by ear, being unable to see more than two or three of his own troops at a time, let alone the enemy. RR.59; Mil.116.

58. Crane, Dispatches, 157; Davis, Campaigns, 146.

59. Ib.

60. Hag.LW.I.165. The best overall accounts of the battle are Freidel, Splendid Little War, 102–9, and Azo.83