Page:Theodore Roosevelt Rough Riders.djvu/188

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
180
The Rough Riders

of the troopers named Knoblauch, he who had dived after the rifles that had sunk off the pier at Daiquiri. The supplies of food we got in this way had a very beneficial effect, not only upon the men's health, but upon their spirits. To the Red Cross and similar charitable organizations we owe a great deal. We also owed much to Colonel Weston of the Commissary Department, who always helped us and never let himself be hindered by red tape; thus he always let me violate the absurd regulation which forbade me, even in wartime, to purchase food for my men from the stores, although letting me purchase for the officers. I, of course, paid no heed to the regulations when by violating it I could get beans, canned tomatoes, or tobacco. Sometimes I used my own money, sometimes what was given me by Woody Kane, or what was sent me by my brother-in-law, Douglas Robinson, or by the other Red Cross people in New York. My regiment did not fare very well; but I think it fared better than any other. Of course no one would have minded in the least such hardships as we endured had there been any need of enduring them; but there was none. System and sufficiency of transportation were all that were needed.

On one occasion a foreign military attaché visited my headquarters together with a foreign correspondent who had been through the Turco-Greek