ON FEBRUARY 16, 1899, ten days after the United States Senate ratified the treaty ending war with Spain and twelve days after Filipinos demanded their independence by firing on American troops, President William McKinley explained to the Home Market Club of Boston his decision to annex the Philippines. Despite a snowstorm delaying travel all along the East Coast, he came to assert his goal: to establish “law and liberty” in that distant place. “Our priceless principles,” he said, “undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag.”1 The blizzard also pushed back sailing day for four United States Army regiments ordered to the Philippines, but on February 19, the transport Sheridan slipped from Brooklyn harbor building steam for a fifty-four-day journey to the archipelago. It soon joined the Grant and the Sherman already steering toward Gibraltar and the Suez Canal, and aboard the Sheridan, First Lieutenant Frederick S. Wild of the Twelfth US Infantry stood ready to fulfill McKinley's plan.2 A veteran of fighting in Cuba, he exemplified what Theodore Roosevelt later called the “doctrine of the strenuous life,” and he remained ever conscious that his manly virtues—duty, courage, and physical strength—were tightly bound to his profession. Manliness became a popular trope among proponents of empire; countries and their leaders, citizens and soldiers needed to recognize their responsibilities and fulfill them.3 One of imperialism's loudest voices that February was the English writer Rudyard Kipling, whose poem “The White Man's Burden” appeared in publications on both sides of the Atlantic. This American venture would have consequences, he believed, so the US must “send forth the best ye breed.”4 A model professional soldier, Wild had no doubts about his role; he intended to defeat the insurrectos and achieve glory for himself. Instead, his three years of service in the Philippines left him embittered and convinced that his involvement had been unappreciated and detrimental to his career. He found combat exhilarating, but the guerrilla war proved a difficult test. In response, he became irritable and petty, justifying brutal acts and roiling at the American public's disregard for the army's efforts.Wild described his experiences in thirty-eight letters to his parents in Chicago, Georgina and Thomas S. Wild. He was an informative, straight-talking correspondent, and because of the intense public debate concerning an American presence in the Philippines, he wanted them to understand the war as he lived it and not be swayed by voices far from bullets and blood. He detailed events, appraised friend and foe, related adventures, and expressed his doubts and unhappiness. Wild reminded them continually of his hardships and the ever-present violence. He believed this an uncomplicated narrative, yet it revealed the war's complexity and its effect on officers, like him, imbued with values they assumed would win over people perceived as inferior. The attitudes Wild displayed in the Philippines reflected cultural characteristics that shaped his generation, and he never questioned them. He accepted exceptionalism and ethnocentrism as natural principles, believed that civilization would defeat savagery, and assumed his career would flourish in this righteous air. If society viewed life as a battle to be won, he would stand on the ramparts and lead the fight. In the nineteenth century, manly attributes became the measure of individuals and ideas, and no one lived or articulated that better than Roosevelt, New York's governor and former Rough Rider. “We admire the man of victorious effort,” he told Chicago's Hamilton Club in April 1899 while expressing his support for McKinley's Philippines policy. For that man, he said, “does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil.” He “has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.”5 Wild shared that view. He believed in success and achievement; failure demonstrated a weakness of character. These ideals defined Wild's identity and guided him, but he eventually crossed personal battlefields that could not be won.Born in New York on November 4, 1863, Wild grew up in Chicago, where his father operated a small company manufacturing brass and iron products. His parents had migrated from England in the mid-1850s, and though not wealthy, the family appeared financially comfortable, and for most of the 1880s, they resided in Rogers Park, a North Shore suburb and sanctuary for middle-class Protestants. By 1898, they had relocated to a part of Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood developed by the merchant and hotelier Potter Palmer.6 They maintained a respectable social standing, and the Wilds instilled in their two sons and daughter values cherished by the middle class. Frederick Wild appeared well mannered and intelligent, and he continually evoked the sanctity of private property, the importance of personal discipline and self-improvement, and the need to maintain order. Like most boys in post–Civil War America, he graduated from grammar school, attended one year of high school, then went to work. The shop served as the preferred setting for learning industrial skills so Wild spent four years employed at his father's foundry. After studying at H. B. Bryant's Business College, he formed a partnership with Thomas Wild in 1885, but their arrangement soured, and the younger Wild felt pressured to leave the business. Later, from the Philippines, he complained that his father had accused him of tampering with company accounts. “I have never forgotten it and never will,” he said, his ruddy complexion probably flushed from the memory. “It hurt then and it hurts now. It is the first, last and only time I have ever had my integrity questioned.” After suffering this indignity, he traveled to Denver where, on February 21, 1887, at age twenty-three, he enlisted in the US Seventeenth Infantry.7The army had long served as a haven for the dispossessed, and it seemed an appropriate home for Wild. He had joined the First Infantry, Illinois National Guard, in 1885 and the next year, battled strikers in Chicago's streets.8 Never articulating the attraction of military life or explaining his migration west, his decision indicated a personal rebellion and an escape from his father's tether. Wild no doubt craved excitement and adventure. He was also ambitious and sought recognition free of parental constraint, and he found opportunities for advancement in the army. Wild thrived in this new life; it had a regenerative appeal, offering structure and camaraderie in a healthy, outdoor setting.9Assigned to Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming Territory, Wild's regiment carried out routine duties, while the young private earned a reputation for hard work and received praise for “his manly and soldierly bearing.” He climbed rapidly in rank during his three years of western service, accepting a commission as second lieutenant in January 1890. This success demonstrated his abilities as well as the army's efforts, after years of limiting individual advancement, to encourage and promote such talent.10 Remaining with the Seventeenth Infantry, Wild played a nominal role in the Wounded Knee campaign in December 1890, and from 1891 to 1893, he attended the Infantry and Cavalry School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The army initiated the program to teach updated tactics, emphasize original thinking, and encourage continued learning. Wild developed into a consummate officer, combining the physical and intellectual attributes necessary for leadership. He played football and enjoyed horseback riding; along with a reading knowledge of French and German, he spoke and translated Spanish “imperfectly”; and he presented lectures at camp lyceums. One topic was “Street Riots and Fighting,” a study about using military force to quell urban disorders. Wild advocated decisive action to protect lives and property from the “tramps, toughs, thieves, anarchists and loafers” who turned labor strikes into riots. “Punishment will be sharp and swift,” he argued, “so that its effects will be lasting and not easily forgotten.” He echoed the stern language common among army officers responding to civil violence, foreshadowing a no-nonsense professionalism that became his hallmark in the Philippines.11 Promoted to first lieutenant in February 1897, he transferred in May to the Twelfth Infantry, going to its station at Fort Niobrara, Nebraska. In Cuba the next year, the regiment participated in the Santiago campaign, where Wild's commanders commended his actions assailing the fortress at El Caney.12As the century ended, the possibilities for Wild's career seemed as expansive as American prospects in the Pacific, and his letters projected self-assurance. They also exposed a querulous nature, suggesting chinks in his confidence as he struggled to fulfill the expectations of society, and those he imposed on himself. Wild addressed twenty-four letters to Georgina, and in most, he was solicitous and caring. But he could be condescending and often scolded her for misbegotten ideas about the war. Despite this uneven treatment, Wild sought Georgina's motherly comfort, confiding to her about setbacks and illness. He directed no letters specifically to his father; there were no manly exchanges, and he sought no advice.He began by recounting the voyage from stopovers in Malta, Egypt, and Singapore. Because of crowded, damp conditions on the Sheridan, pneumonia spread among the soldiers and their families. Wild disapproved of women and children being aboard, but Secretary of War Elihu Root allowed them to accompany troops expecting garrison duty. When the ship arrived at Gibraltar, Spanish officials used these illnesses to keep it away from the harbor, a decision Wild resented. “It strikes me that the authorities made a great deal more fuss over our little sick list than was at all necessary,” he complained. “We can't expect anything but insolence from Spaniards anyway.” The availability of liquor proved another difficulty at the Mediterranean ports. Soldiers scrambled overboard to find drink ashore, while purveyors in small boats came alongside the Sheridan to tempt those who remained. As officer of the guard, Wild expressed frustration that his men lacked restraint, but he took pride in the success of his vigilance. His reward came with visits to the Pyramids, dining with the United States consul in Malta, and touring the HMS Hood. Charles Vaughn, another member of the Twelfth, remembered the “grand reception” given by the British at Malta, and Wild called it a “fine time.” Queen Victoria's officers impressed him, and his praise of their bearing and hospitality overshadowed descriptions of ancient sites.13The Sheridan arrived in Manila on April 14, 1899, and Wild presented the Philippines as an inhospitable land with uncivilized inhabitants, and his correspondence underscored what every soldier endured during their deployment—the enervating heat and monsoonal rains that slowed operations. Wild never seemed to appreciate Luzon's exotic character because he offered no aesthetic descriptions. On the rare occasion when he alluded to the natural setting, it was unfavorable. The cherries had a “sickly taste,” and all but a few flowers had “disagreeable odors.” Never escaping his acrimony, the place and its people melded together and became his enemies.14Once ashore, the Twelfth became “somewhat scattered,” and Wild received temporary command of Company H in the Third Battalion. Regimental musician Walter R. Gans heard firing late on April 19 as battalion pickets “got mixed up” with the insurgents, but Wild downplayed the early skirmishes. “There is a little desultory firing every night,” he wrote in his first letter from the islands, “but it don't [sic] amount to much, though occasionally a good man falls.”15 As the fighting expanded, the Filipino Army of Liberation waged a conventional war against the Americans, and Wild reveled in the opportunity. Open confrontation tested individual character and the quality of his training. Reassigned to the First Battalion, Wild assumed command of Company B when its captain went on detached service, and his unit defended an area south of Manila where Filipinos conducted a week-long series of attacks against the First Washington Volunteers, a regiment nearing the end of its service and waiting to return home. On April 27, Wild and his men joined the fight by reinforcing two companies of the First at Taguig. The volunteers “had more than they could attend to,” he told his parents. The Americans chased the enemy back to its stronghold, then retreated rather than confront an entrenched and larger force. “We need more troops here badly,” Wild stated, assessing the American situation. “The insurgents are in a very strong position and are well armed, besides outnumbering us greatly.” He repeated this viewpoint a month later, estimating Filipino strength at six thousand and believing “some light field and rapid fire guns” would be necessary to destroy their defenses.16Despite his concerns about continued resistance, Wild remained sanguine, reporting favorably on US operations. Campaigns into Pampanga and Bulacan Provinces proved logistically difficult and were eventually stymied by heat and rain, but he praised the First Division under Major General Henry W. Lawton for its “great success” in conducting “about twenty fights” and capturing forty towns.17 The Army of Liberation, however, remained intact, and the possibility of continued action pleased Wild. “The scrap will proceed as usual,” he wrote when peace negotiations failed in April. “Well, let ’er rip. To fight is what we are paid for.” Increased success against an enemy with limited skills and few resources encouraged his swagger. In one attack, the Filipinos impressed him with “good fire discipline,” yet overall, they displayed the same poor marksmanship he associated with Native American warriors incapable of mastering the adjustable sights on a modern rifle. As a result, bullets passed high overhead, missing intended targets. Veterans shared this opinion, and the assertion that Filipinos “fired high” served as a metaphor for American success and affirmed the insurgents’ inability to defeat a civilized army. When fired upon, Wild noted, the poorly trained enemy broke ranks and retreated to their entrenchments, then harassed the American lines with “incessant firing all night long.” “Oh it is a dirty way of making war,” he complained. Wild not only identified the inherent weakness of Filipino troops, he questioned their worthiness as adversaries. Cultural differences and racism fostered these feelings, but in addition, Wild's generation grew up amid commemorations of Civil War sacrifice and heroism. To duplicate that level of manliness, Wild demanded a foe of equal stature. If Filipinos failed in this measure, they lowered the value of his efforts and diminished his respect for them.18Wild also scrutinized his comrades and often judged them harshly. Before leaving the United States, the Twelfth Infantry, like other regular army units going overseas, filled its ranks with inexperienced recruits that Wild deemed a “scrub lot” and inferior to those who served in Cuba. They “think they know everything,” he remarked, “and are the devil's own to discipline.” They frustrated him by eating green fruit, drinking impure water, and contracting “loathsome diseases.” He particularly disliked recruits who had served in volunteer regiments, calling them “the worst of the lot” for being absent without leave or neglecting their duty. He regularly punished men for drunkenness or sleeping at their post, and he had little tolerance for officers whose work ethic conflicted with his.19 Wild's drive and motivation had not changed since his years as an enlisted man, and he pushed himself day and night. After dark, he went on patrols scouting for the enemy or prowled among his pickets ready to surprise a drowsy sentinel. If his line was attacked, he led the countercharge. Stout and barrel-chested, Wild credited his endurance to “long years of training,” and when the number of officers on the sick list increased in October, he believed that “hard night work and loss of sleep is telling on the weaker ones.” He compared his background with that of his second lieutenant, Robert W. Barnett, a younger man commissioned from civilian life. The junior officer, Wild noted, had been “raised on a farm down in Mississippi and educated at a state institution.” Facing a shortage of officers between 1899 and 1902, the army relied on training programs in US colleges that supplied over one thousand men. But Wild was unimpressed with Barnett's ability, referring to him as “the farmer” and complaining that his “knowledge of military matters is almost nil.” Even worse, the subaltern lacked purpose, once sleeping through a late-night rebel attack, and he often taxed Wild's patience.20By midsummer, Wild saw weariness in his men and hinted at his own fatigue. He brooked no shirkers but felt his company deserved some rest. Only 76 enlisted men out of 101 stood muster, and Barnett along with First Lieutenant Wilber E. Dove were ill and hospitalized in Manila. The company served a twenty-four-hour rotation on outpost duty every fourth day, yet nightly attacks by the Filipinos and persistent harassing fire meant the Americans obtained little sleep upon returning to their lines. Rain added to their discomfort and probably contributed to Wild's nettled comments. “Fatigue work, police work, guard tours, drills, target practice, scouting trips, inspections and Heaven only knows what else,” he protested, “come in such rapid succession and so often that to be well rested is a rare experience.” Hoping to conserve the men's energy, he limited their non-combat duties, but the battalion commander, Captain Robert K. Evans, proved uncompromising in his desire to keep them busy. When Wild skipped a daily drill, Evans cursed him and demanded a written explanation. “Wouldn't it jar you,” Wild exclaimed, bristling at the rebuke of his leadership. As he had with his father, Wild resented unjust authority, but he had little recourse except the sarcasm found in his letters home. He grumbled about Evans's easy life at headquarters and anticipated a captaincy because the promotion might place him “in a regiment where the battalion commanders have a little common sense.”21The best escape came on the battlefield. In a running three-week fight, Wild's regiment sloshed across rice fields and struggled through sugar cane and bamboo thickets, pushing the insurgent army from town to town in central Luzon and defeating them with minimal American casualties. “We have been making history here at a great rate,” he began in a lengthy narration of events. Recounting each action since leaving San Fernando on August 8, he barely contained his excitement, showing pride in the victories, noting hardships, and boasting of his personal courage. “We advanced steadily,” he said of a skirmish at Calulut, “driving them from one set of trenches to another.”22 On August 16, 1899, with Wild's Company B on the right flank, the Twelfth moved under heavy fire against the entrenchments protecting Angeles. Reporting on the deployment of his battalion, Evans commented that Wild, with his men following, “was the first to take his place in line.” They were joined by Company C to create a firing line and led the advance, but the late-morning heat, rugged terrain, and waist-deep mud caused 30 percent of the men in the two units to fall away from exhaustion. The companies also had trouble maintaining contact and had to beat back Filipino threats on their flank.23 The Americans attacked, Wild said, “in rushes, a few yards at a time, firing volleys, one platoon advancing covered by the fire of the other.” Within 240 yards of the enemy emplacements, the battalion “opened a heavy rapid fire” and followed with a bayonet charge that drove their foe back in confusion. After another volley of rifle fire, the Filipinos “lit out for safer quarters.” Wild's description of the battle, corroborated in Evans's official report, offered a textbook lesson in open order tactics. The method, introduced by the army in 1891 and employed in Cuba for frontal assaults, emphasized small unit activity, required disciplined troops, and relied on the initiative of unit leaders. This is evident in Evans's account as he singled out several enlisted men for special recognition and praised his officers. “He grasps a military situation instantly,” Evans said of Wild, “and meets it the best way possible.” The report showed Wild's understanding of each battlefield situation, his quick response and clear judgment, and in several instances, his anticipation of Evans's next order. A consequence of these tactics, however, was an increased casualty rate among junior officers, and Wild noted that four officers, including “an awfully good chum of mine,” had been killed or wounded since June. Mentioning the death of one officer, he added: “Not an enlisted man was even scratched.” On August 17, the Filipinos counterattacked but were driven back, and the next morning, “they got all they wanted in about an hour.” Though continually rebuffed, the enemy proved tenacious and reinforced Wild's feelings about his own conduct under fire. He called the battle at Angeles “the worst fight I have been in since the fight at El Caney.”24Surviving the intense fighting, Wild remembered his exposure to enemy fire with a cavalier flair. “I have been shot at so many times,” he remarked, “that actually I don't mind it any more!!! I was shot at this morning and stopped to light a cigar before looking where the shots were fired from.” And as the fighting extended to Thanksgiving, his letters mixed bravado with complaint and maintained a calm certainty about his safety. “I stood up on the top of the cemetery wall and directed our fire,” he said in October, recalling an intense, twenty-minute firefight. In the engagement, insurgents fired an estimated four thousand rounds against Wild's line, and his men countered with 1,500 shots from a Gatling gun and three thousand from small arms. The result of such encounters, he stated, left everyone “kind of calloused and indifferent” to the danger, and after a spent bullet struck his leg without damage, he added with assurance: “Don't believe my particular bullet is in existence yet.”25 By exposing himself so readily, Wild was neither overconfident nor fatalistic. He simply exhibited the personal courage expected of an individual soldier, particularly a battle-tested leader. Like all line officers throughout the nineteenth century, Wild's responsibility was getting his men to engage and eliminate an enemy. Leadership did not hinge on his skill at killing but on a willingness to share in the danger his men faced, to inspire courage in them by displaying his own, and to prove worthy of their respect and obedience. He understood this role clearly and always represented the kind of commander men would follow. His conspicuous challenges to the Filipinos’ marksmanship also reinforced the belief that they were incompetent and should not be feared, and once reassured of this, Wild's men gained a scupper to overcome their common fear—the capriciousness of war's risks. Each time Wild revealed his personal mettle, he inspired his men to find their own.26Demonstrations of coolness under fire set Wild apart from fellow officers with whom he competed for recognition and promotion. With a mix of vanity, personal ambition, and professional élan, he welcomed, and seemed to crave, praise for his battlefield conduct. “An old veteran,” Wild told his parents, called the officers of the Twelfth “the bravest lot of officers he had ever seen.” He enjoyed this approbation from a brother officer, especially an experienced soldier, because of regimental pride and the knowledge that the unit's success reflected well on him. To be touted as “‘one of the bravest of the brave,’” along with commendations from superiors, validated not only Wild's ability as an officer but his grit as well. In his official report after Angeles, Evans stated bluntly: “There can be no better officer in a fight than Lieutenant Wild. He is perfectly fearless.” Historian Richard Holmes calls fear “the common bond between fighting men,” and although a normal emotion, soldiers readily associated it with cowardice. Wild's actions in combat demonstrated that he had been instilled with the importance of showing no fear. His courage was neither temporary nor fickle; it was constant and guaranteed the confidence of his men and commanders, and furthermore, it meant he would never be thought a coward by anyone. And if acts of valor ensured this ideal, he relished hearing about them.27 Because of his continued exposure to enemy fire, Wild wrote, “I have been dubbed ‘The fighting Wild man of the Twelfth.’” The punning nickname pleased him, and it suggested a primitivism common among warriors historically. Soldiers often equated their aggression with animal behavior, and while many from the Trojan War to Vietnam expressed discomfort with losing their humanity, men at the end of the nineteenth century easily accepted this comparison. In the wake of Darwin, prescriptive views of manliness encouraged animal-like or natural passions to inspire a vigorous, combative element into a male's civilized and self-controlled personality. Fraternal organizations and writers of manly themes extolled these ideals, but the excitement of combat was neither ritual nor metaphor for Wild. It was real, and he savored each moment.28During the autumn, he often visited brigade headquarters to confer with staff officers and to receive adulation from Brigadier General Joseph Wheeler. The former Confederate cavalry officer, Wild noted with satisfaction from his camp in Angeles, “got mashed on me for my part in the fights here on Oct. 9th and 16th.” While battlefield tactics had changed by century's end, success still depended on the courage of the individual, and Wild's conduct under fire evoked a daring that had much in common with a Civil War line officer and attracted Fighting Joe's attention. Wheeler retained a penchant for bold assaults against enemy lines, but unfortunately, his efforts often caused confusion and irritated the commander of the Second Division, Brigadier General Arthur MacArthur, who ultimately removed Wheeler's brigade from the front as a reprimand. Like his commander, Wild received admonitions about his behavior in combat. “I got myself criticised [sic] by some folks,” he wrote, “for exposing myself ‘too damned recklessly,’ ‘no sense in it,’ ‘get your fool self killed some day’ etc. Ha, ha, good joke.” Laughing off these critics underscored his readiness to face combat's hazards while assuaging his parents’ fears for his safety. In his next letter, he opened with the comment: “I am alive and very well indeed.”29Wild seemed more concerned about his self-image than his welfare. “I have added to my fighting record,” he commented at the end of November. He praised the brigade's role against the Army of Liberation, but his focus never strayed from personal achievements. He listed seven towns captured along the march and noted the ones where he arrived first. Cited for gallantry on three occasions, Wild received a brevet as major for the battle at Angeles, and while he had received a brevet as captain for action in Cuba, he remained a first lieutenant. Brevets were honorary promotions and their mention in official reports were the primary methods of acknowledging valor and service in the American army. By tradition, character and performance defined a soldier's merit, but increasingly sacrifice and bravery had to be verified to satisfy a wider audience. Theodore Roosevelt's obsession with obtaining a medal of honor for action in Cuba seemed to illustrate this point, and despite a solid record, Wild shared this feeling. “Wish I could get a medal of honor,” he confided to his parents, “I know men who are wearing them who haven't done one tenth of the things I have done.” He lamented that two medal recipients “got them for less than any of us in the Twelfth do every day and week. Political pull. I haven't any.” Wild dismissed his chances grudgingly and expressed frustration when other units received credit for successful actions that he and his comrades rightfully deserved. He resented, for example, the Thirty-Sixth Infantry, US Volunteers, and its popular colonel, J. Franklin Bell, getting credit for defeating and dispersing a Filipino force commanded by General Jose Alejandrino. Bell “couldn't have done it,” Wild claimed, “if Gen. Wheeler hadn't chased ’em all out of Camaling right into his hands.” More than pats on the back or cheers from a crowd, he understood that medals would authenticate his heroism, justify his career, and validate his manhood. Such acclaim also affirmed the army's mission at a time when the public seemed reluctant to endorse it.30Wild's every deed, every success in the Philippines further separated him from the civilian world of his parents. To be a soldier in wartime fulfilled the ultimate demands of the strenuous life, but more than that, it was an exclusionary experience that only a select few shared. Americans at home had rare opportunities, if any, to test and prove themselves. Writing to his parents early in the campaign, Wild cited William Tecumseh Sherman's famous dictum that “war is hell” as if it needed to be reaffirmed to underscore his service in the Philippines. Along with his battlefield accounts, Wild explained the physical discomfort of a tropical war zone. And if his family missed the point, he supplied evidence of hardships and emphasized their inability to grasp or appreciate his circumstances. “You folks don't know anythi