Page:Theodore Roosevelt Rough Riders.djvu/295

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Appendix B
287

shot or abandoned but were cured by our men. These expeditions—sometimes under the chaplain, sometimes under the Quartermaster, sometimes under myself, and occasionally under a trooper—would go to the sea-coast or to the Red Cross headquarters, or, after the surrender, into the city of Santiago, to get food both for the well and the sick.

The Red Cross Society rendered invaluable aid. For example, on one of these expeditions I personally brought up 600 pounds of beans; on another occasion I personally brought up 500 pounds of rice, 800 pounds of cornmeal, 200 pounds of sugar, 100 pounds of tea, 100 pounds of oatmeal, 5 barrels of potatoes, and two of onions, with cases of canned soup and condensed milk for the sick in hospitals. Every scrap of the food thus brought up was eaten with avidity by the soldiers, and put new heart and strength into them. It was only our constant care of the men in this way that enabled us to keep them in any trim at all. As for the sick in the hospital, unless we were able from outside sources to get them such simple delicacies as rice and condensed milk, they usually had the alternative of eating salt pork and hardtack or going without.

After each fight we got a good deal of food from the Spanish camps in the way of beans, peas, and rice, together with green coffee, all of which the men used and relished greatly. In some re-