After the USS Maine sank in 1898 and William McKinley called for 125,000 volunteers, the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry formed under Colonel Leonard Wood, with Theodore Roosevelt, who resigned as assistant secretary of the Navy, as second in command. The War Department wanted Southwestern frontiersmen, and about half the unit came from New Mexico, but Roosevelt added Ivy League athletes, tennis champions and glee club singers. He secured Krag carbines, Colt revolvers and privately donated Mauser machine guns, and the men wore slouch hats and blue flannel shirts. In the swampy camps around Tampa, more than 1,500 troops died of typhoid before any ships sailed.
A shortage of transports meant only eight of 12 companies sailed and nearly all the horses stayed behind, earning them the name Wood’s Weary Walkers. They landed in Cuba on June 23, 1898, and at Las Guasimas faced Spanish troops firing smokeless Mausers; when journalist Edward Marshall was shot, men believed Wood had fallen, and Roosevelt rallied the line. At Kettle Hill, Roosevelt rode his horse Texas and ordered a charge that took the hill in about 20 minutes, backed by 18,000 rounds from Lieutenant John H. Parker’s Gatling guns and the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry. The men returned to Montauk Point weakened by malaria, yellow fever and dysentery, and within three years Roosevelt went from governor of New York to president.
- The unit skipped saber training entirely.
- American black powder left smoke clouds that revealed every shooter’s position in the jungle.
- Black Jack Pershing earned a Silver Star with the 10th Cavalry in the fight.
- Mascots at Montauk included a mountain lion named Josephine, an eagle, a dog named Cuba and a young stowaway.
- When the 144-day unit disbanded in September 1898, the men gave Roosevelt a bronze Bronco Buster statue.
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