Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/577

Rh tysburg he was the mark for three bullets—one gashed his forehead, another pierced his arm, and a third glanced from his side; but he fought on, none the less, and led his regiment gamely, with head and arm done up in bandages. At Cold Harbor, during an assault on the enemy's works at daybreak, Brooke's command penetrated the works, and he was again wounded. This time the wound was so severe that he was compelled to take leave of absence for three months.

When Theodore Roosevelt announced his intention of resigning his enviable position as Assistant Secretary of the Navy in order to serve his country in the field, his friends gathered around him and begged him to remain. They told him he was wrecking his career; but Roosevelt would listen to nobody. "I should be false to my ideals," he said, "if I were to remain here while fighting was going on, and I am willing to take the chance." The President offered to make him a colonel of cavalry, but Roosevelt declined the commission. "I am not fitted to command a regiment," he said, "for I have had no military training. Later, after I have gained experience, perhaps that may come; but all I ask now is to be permitted to serve under somebody else. If you will make my friend Dr. Wood a colonel, I will go with him as lieutenant-colonel." The President accepted the suggestion.

Leonard Wood, who was thus placed in command of the regiment of rough riders, was an assistant surgeon in the army. He had been with the army on the plains, and General Miles had brought him to Washington as his attendant physician. He was not long ago detailed as physician at the White House; but while surgery was his profession, fighting was his bent. Wood has the instincts and the bearing of a soldier; he is of New England birth, a graduate of the Harvard Medical School, and he is as fine a specimen of the gritty Anglo-Saxon as can be found. He has a record of which any soldier might be proud, and he wears a medal of honor which testifies to his gallant conduct.

At the head of an army thus splendidly officered is Major-General Nelson A. Miles, the ideal soldier in personal presence and a man who has shown extraordinary ability to meet emergencies. He resigned a mercantile position and entered the Civil War as a lieutenant of volunteers when he was barely twenty-two. Within seven or eight months he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and within a year to that of colonel. He fought in all the battles of the Army of the Potomac, except one, up to the surrender of Lee, and he was wounded three times. He was finally brevetted major-general of volunteers for distinguished service and gallantry, particularly in the battle of Ream's Station. He entered the regular army at the conclusion of the war as colonel of the 40th infantry, and then followed his brilliant achievements as an Indian fighter. In this most baffling kind of warfare he displayed great resourcefulness and versatility. He has always been especially strong in devising quick and effective plans, and he has been exceptionally successful in his movements.