—
There is no way Teddy should have come out alive.
San Juan Hill has become almost cartoonish in our historical imagination. The invasion itself is jeered at as a template for international imperialism, a model for every instance of American intervention. Theodore Roosevelt himself is sometimes portrayed as a borderline comedic figure.
None of that matters.
Military figures, those who actually serve on the battlefield, are regarded with a sort of awe by the rest of us, those of us who, because of circumstance, or luck, or connivance, have never seen combat.
It was by a strange combination of coincidences that a future President survived.
A nearby brigade was commanded by 4 senior officers within 10 minutes, as one after another was killed or carried away with life-threatening wounds.
Four commanding officers in 10 minutes.
American troops fully expected to meet an overwhelming force of thousands of Spanish troops as they charged toward the top of San Juan Hill. They had no way of knowing that 10,000 Spanish troops had been diverted, stationed as reserves in the city of Santiago de Cuba about a mile away. Nobody knows why General Arsenio Linares ordered them held back, away from battle.
So, instead of 10,000 enemy troops, Americans encountered fewer than 800. Most of those turned out to be inexperienced conscripts, newly drafted into battle.
American troops expected heavy fire from the big guns behind concealed Spanish fortresses. They had no way of knowing that those fixed fortifications were not laid out according to any military strategy. Instead, they were aligned in whatever direction geography made convenient. So heavy artillery could not be directed at the oncoming, completely vulnerable, Americans.
The central role of thousands of African American soldiers, and the loss of hundreds in battle, was nearly lost to history. And the point at which Roosevelt went from Kettle Hill to San Juan Heights is still uncertain.
What we do know for sure is that Colonel Theodore Roosevelt led troops into what they had to have thought was near certain death.
Quite a fellow, that Teddy Roosevelt.
Nobody knows what fueled the inner fire that led Roosevelt to physical bravery. The popular speculation was that he lived his life reacting to, and overcoming, the limitations of a sickly childhood. He had been stricken with such severe asthma that it had not been certain he would even survive into adulthood. He found his condition intolerable, and he overcame it with a combination of strenuous exertion and sheer willpower.
He was brave and powerful because he knew no other way to lead a life that he could tolerate.
Some have attempted to peer into the psyche of John F. Kennedy, speculating about what could have driven him into wartime danger. Like Roosevelt, it may have been a childhood of frailty. He was born pounds below a safe and healthy weight. He was stricken with one serious illness after another. At age three, deadly scarlet fever nearly killed him. A grim family joke came to be. If a mosquito bit young Jack, the mosquito would die.
I like to think Kennedy was motivated by a family ethos of wealthy obligation: that, from those to whom God and country had given much, much was expected. His older brother, Joe, was killed in a warplane, flying a dangerous secret mission over the English Channel. His plane had been loaded with high explosives and, sure enough, it blew up.
Jack Kennedy commanded a flimsy, but maneuverable PT boat, PT 109. It had been struck in the darkness of a moonless night by a Japanese destroyer. The boat sank. Kennedy led his crew in the dark waters for hours, eventually swimming to an island, towing a seriously wounded crew member with a life jacket strap clenched between his teeth. On the island, avoiding detection by surrounding Japanese naval vessels, he decided to trust a native who happened upon them. He carved a message on a coconut and rescue came.
Later in life, as President, he was asked about what motivated his heroism. He replied, “It was involuntary. They sank my boat.”
My Uncle Burr flew in the Air Force during World War II. At least I think he did. He never talked about it. We lost touch over the years, and I felt the loss of those years when I discovered last April that he had died a few days before. That he lived to be 95 was remarkable. Life expectancy among World War II pilots is said to have been limited.
When I think of him, I think of President George H. W. Bush. The film of a spectacular crash survives today in video form and in documentaries. He happened to be filmed as he tried to land a wounded plane. He flew nearly 60 missions during that same World War in which my uncle flew. Young George Bush is said to have been the youngest Navy pilot serving at the time.
I was old enough to have gone to Vietnam. A college deferment kept me out for a couple of months. I thought briefly about dropping out after a semester. It wasn’t out of any sense of patriotic fervor. I talked with my parents about the unfairness of college as draft avoidance. The introduction of a lottery system and the end to most deferments satisfied whatever trouble my conscience might have inflicted. The lottery assigned to my date of birth a draft number that was so high, the world would have to have ended before I would be called.
That was enough for me.
Bill Clinton was the first person in pretty much forever to have become President without military service. He had gone to college in England for a year. Then the new lottery system got him a high draft number.
George W got into the National Guard, with some controversy about whether he had showed up more than a couple of times. Obama was, I guess, about 14 or 15 when the war ended.
Donald Trump had bone spurs in his feet and got a deferment. He has taken a bit of flack since then, but draft avoidance has become a recent pattern among Presidents, so it was not ever a serious issue, although some did question his courage.
Then came the terrible shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. 17 students killed, 15 more injured.
Deputies were heroic, some victims even more so. A geography teacher was killed as he guided students to safety. A football coach died as he threw himself into the path of bullets to save students. At least one student was killed pushing other students into a room where they might be safe. Another student was wounded as he protected others. There may have been more killed saving lives. We do not know. We may never know.
Not all officers of the law found it within themselves to face mortal danger. One, in particular, has faced almost universal condemnation.
But what I saw was a deputy arrive at the west side of Building 12, take up a position, and he never went in.
That was Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, speaking to the press about video evidence he had reviewed. He described his own reaction.
…devastated, sick to my stomach. There are no words.
I have more than a little sympathy for the deputy in question. In my fondest imagination, I like to think I would have performed well. I suspect there is less courage in my soul than I would wish. I wonder how much one virtue overlaps into another. Through my life, I have been surprised to discover my own capacity for sin and corruption.
I watched the charismatic evil of another military hero, Oliver North, as he talked of breaking laws, getting lethal weapons into the hands of the enemies of humanity. And I saw a clear vision of myself following into the depths of Hell, where he would surely have led.
I can easily see myself willingly participating in some equivalent of Watergate.
I wonder what aspect of character I would have revealed under the pressure of unexpected physical danger. I think of those students and teachers, and I think of Presidents. A few days after the shooting something revealing happened. It was an important date in our national life.
We might have suspected something different from President Trump. In the summer of 2008, he talked of an elderly man falling from a stage during a benefit for veterans. He was convinced the man was dying. He laughed, and radio personality Howard Stern laughed with him, at the humor of the situation.
So what happens is, this guy falls off right on his face hits his head, and I thought he died. And you know what I did? I said, “Oh my God, that’s disgusting.” And I turned away. I couldn’t, you know. He was right in front of me. I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him.
Donald Trump has an understandable aversion to blood. There is more laughter as he explains his mounting concern over the damage to his hotel property.
He’s bleeding all over the place. I felt terribly you know. Beautiful marble floor didn’t look so good. It changed color, it became very red.
The bone spurs, the deferment, the seeming sociopathy at the prospective death of a helpless, injured, elderly man, bleeding, damaging his beautiful hotel floor.
Human experience offers too few examples of redemption. On those rare occasions, it is a beautiful thing to witness. A bloody floor can become a sort of sacred ground.
And we witnessed something remarkable on television on February 26. The President began with bitterness at what he felt to be a failure of nerve on the part of deputies. They should have done more to help students who were under fearsome attack.
The way they performed was, was really a disgrace.
And then it happened.
In an exceptional show of courage, my President bravely volunteered to have gone into danger completely unarmed.
I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon.
What a guy!
Teddy Roosevelt running into what must have seemed like certain death.
Jack Kennedy facing danger, saving his crew.
George Herbert Walker Bush flying one dangerous mission after another.
Not one of them volunteered retrospectively to run into danger unarmed.
I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon.
We really do have a remarkable President.
Remarkable.
to get episodes automatically downloaded.