The Pacification of Cuba 121Presidio (California), the units of the expeditionary force
moved toward Newport News. Fresh from summer maneu
vers, many of the troops had scarcely unpacked. The news of
the move was not entirely welcome; desertions in the Eleventh
Infantry rose when the men learned fever-famous Cuba was
their destination. To bring two battalions to nearly full
strength, each regiment stripped its third battalion to fill its
ranks. Officers were ordered back to their commands from
the Infantry and Cavalry Schools (over the Commandants'
protest) and from other detached duty. Three instructors at
West Point departed, though Colonel Hugh Scott, the Super
intendent, tried to save his football coach. General Bell's reply
was crisp:
If West Point has come to that frame of mind where it thinks that
coaching a football team is sufficient excuse for keeping a captain away
from his troops when it is ordered to a foreign country for possible
war service, then the Chief of Staff feels that the time has come for him
to weep. I am certain... that others have over-persuaded your
judgement.^2
The command and the title of the force moved about as
rapidly as its troops. Frederick Funston officially commanded
the force as of October 2, 1906, although he was unaware of
his appointment and hardly had time for it anyway. On Octo
ber 4, Secretary Taft ordered General Bell to Cuba to assume
command, which Bell did on October 10. Bell held the post
until the end of the year when he returned to Washington.
His replacement, Brigadier General Theodore J. Wint, lasted
until February 25, 1907, when illness forced the sixty-one
year old cavalryman to retire. Brigadier General Thomas H.
Barry, previously head of the Army War College and acting
Chief of Staff in Bell's absence, then commanded the Cuban
force until the end of the intervention. The command itself
was first called the First Expeditionary Brigade. As the troops
arrived in Cuba, Taft named the expedition the Army of
Cuban Intervention, but, reconsidering the political wisdom
of that title, he redesignated the force the Army of Cuban
Pacification on October 15. Such it remained.