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Rough Riders Return

After a 'bully fight' in Cuba, Roosevelt and his men land in Montauk as heroes

By George DeWan | Staff Writer

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IIt was summer, 1898, and Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders were coming home.

Flushed with victory over the Spaniards in Cuba and threatened with diseases and fevers that were decimating its ranks, the Fifth Army Corps fled the malaria, dysentery and yellow fever of the southern climates for the breezy beaches of eastern Long Island. When Roosevelt disembarked at Fort Pond Bay in Montauk on Aug. 15, the press was out in force to meet him.

``THE ROUGH RIDERS LAND AT MONTAUK" read the headline in The New York Times for Aug. 16, 1898. The publicity was just as in Cuba, where Roosevelt and his men had upstaged the entire American Army that had fought valiantly to take Santiago's San Juan Heights in what Secretary of State John Hay later called ``A splendid little war.''

``How are you feeling, Colonel?'' was the first shouted question as Roosevelt walked down the gangplank from the troopship Miami.

``Well, I am disgracefully healthy,'' Roosevelt responded, according to The Times. ``Really, I am ashamed of myself, feeling so well and strong, with all these poor fellows suffering and so weak they can hardly stand. But I tell you, we had a bully fight.''

While thousands of other equally weary heroes of the short but brutal war to drive Spain out of Cuba arrived at Montauk both before and after the arrival of the Rough Riders, the newspapers often focused on the colonel, who was being mentioned as a Republican candidate for governor, and his men. Out of about 29,500 men who passed through Camp Wikoff, only 1,137 were Rough Riders, officially known as the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry.

``They dominated the coverage,'' said Jeff Heatley, whose book, based on newspaper accounts, ``Bully!: Col. Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders & Camp Wikoff,'' is to be published next month. ``Everyone was focusing on Roosevelt. The Rough Riders were huge heroes. The others just didn't get any coverage.''

This year, Suffolk County is sponsoring a series of events to commemorate the centennial of the Wikoff encampment: on May 30, a museum display at Third House at Theodore Roosevelt County Park in Montauk; Sept. 5-7, Rough Rider days at Deep Hollow Ranch, Montauk; Sept. 18-20, at Theodore Roosevelt County Park, a reunion of descendants of Spanish-American War veterans, and an encampment by Rough Rider re-enactors.

The camp, named for Col. Charles Wikoff, the first American officer killed in Cuba, had been recently opened for rest and recuperation of men who either fought in Cuba or had waited in Florida staging areas. The battle at Santiago, Cuba, had been short but tough, but equally hazardous were the tropical conditions that virtually laid waste the Army. In addition to typhus, malaria and dysentery, there were the beginnings of yellow fever. And the troops that were disembarking at Montauk - the sickest were sent elsewhere - were a sorry lot.

Pale and emaciated, men stumbled and fell as they exited the ships, and many had to be carried off on stretchers. When they got to the camp, all of them had to be sent to a detention section, that was essentially a five-day quarantine to weed out those with communicable diseases, especially yellow fever.

Death tracked the Army up from the battlefields of Cuba. It struck on the transport ships, and it struck over and over at Wikoff. Official statistics listed 263 deaths at Wikoff, but Heatley, who studied death records in the East Hampton Town Clerk's office, has identified 341 soldiers and 15 others, with typhoid the main cause of death, followed by malaria and dysentery. There were two deaths from yellow fever.

In his book ``The Rough Riders,'' Roosevelt wrote that he could always get free time to ride through the countryside. ``Galloping over the open, rolling country, through the cool fall evenings, made us feel as if we were out on the great Western plains and might at any moment start deer from the brush, or see antelope stand and gaze, far away, or rouse a band of mighty elk and hear their horns clatter as they fled.''

On Sept. 13, the day before mustering-out, officers went to Roosevelt's tent at 1 p.m. and summoned him outside. The Rough Riders were grouped there but a number of other troopers were on their fringes. At their center was a rough pine table with an object on it covered by a horse blanket.

``As lieutenant colonel of our regiment, you first made us respect you,'' Trooper William S. Murphy said as the men's spokesman. ``As our colonel, you have taught us to love you deeply, as men love men.'' Murphy then pulled away the blanket to reveal a 2-foot-high bronze statue by Frederic Remington titled ``Bronco Buster.''

His voice faltering at the start, Roosevelt said he was touched and pleased, that he was proud of the regiment beyond measure. ``Outside of my own immediate family,'' he said, ``I shall always feel that stronger ties exist between you and me than between me and anyone else on earth.''

Then, Roosevelt took notice of the black soldiers from the Ninth and 10th Cavalry, often known as the Buffalo Soldiers, who fought bravely alongside the Rough Riders in Cuba. ``The Spaniards called them `Smoked Yankees,' but we found them to be an excellent breed of Yankees.''

On Sept. 15, the Rough Riders' regimental colors were taken down for the last time. ``So all things pass away,'' Roosevelt said to his newspaper friend Jacob Riis. ``But they were beautiful days.''