re jumbled together, and it was no light labor afterwards to
assemble the various batteries. For instance, one transport had guns,
and another the locks for the guns; the two not getting together for
several days after one of them had been landed. Soldiers went here,
provisions there; and who got ashore first largely depended upon
individual activity. Fortunately for us, my former naval aide, when I
had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Lieutenant-Commander Sharp, a
first-class fellow, was there in command of a little ship to which I had
succeeded in getting him appointed before I left the Navy Department. He
gave us a black pilot, who took our transport right in shore, the others
following like a flock of sheep; and we disembarked with our rifles,
ammunition belts, and not much else. In theory it was out of our turn,
but if we had not disembarked then, Heaven only knows when our turn
would have come, and we did not intend to be out of the fighting if we
could help it. I carried some food in my pockets, and a light waterproof
coat, which was my sole camp equipment for the next two or three days.
Twenty-four hours after getting ashore we marched from Daiquiri, where
we had landed, to Siboney, also on the coast, reaching it during a
terrific downpour of rain. When this was over, we built a fire, dried
our clothes, and ate whatever we had brought with us.

We were brigaded with the First and Tenth Regular Cavalry, under
Brigadier-General Sam Young. He was a fine type of the American regular.
Like General Chaffee, another of the same type, he had entered the army
in the Civil War as a private. Later, when I was President, it was my
good fortune to make each of them in succession Lieutenant-General of
the army of the United States. When General Young retired and General
Chaffee was to take his place, the former sent to the latter his three
stars to wear on his first official presentation, with a note that they
were from "Private Young to Private Chaffee." The two fine old fellows
had served in the ranks, one in the cavalry, one in the infantry, in
their golden youth, in the days of the great war nearly half a century
before; each had grown gray in a lifetime of honorable service under the
flag, and each closed his active career in command of the army. General
Young was one of the few men who had given and taken wounds with the
saber. He was an old friend of mine, and when in Washington before
starting for the front he tol