Leonard Wood was at this time still a young man, scarcely thirty-eight years of age. Born at Winchester, New Hampshire, the son of an eminent physician and a descendant of a Mayflower Pilgrim, he had in boyhood engaged in seafaring pursuits, and then had been thoroughly trained for the medical profession at Harvard University. Obeying the promptings of patriotism, perhaps with some unrecognized pre-intimation of the vast services which he was destined to render to his country and to the world, he turned away from prospects of professional preferment and profit to undertake the arduous and often thankless tasks of an army surgeon. He was appointed to that duty from the state of Massachusetts on January 5, 1886, as an Assistant Surgeon, and five years later was promoted to the rank of Captain. The nominal rank is, however, a slight indication of the merit of his services, for in the very first year of his army life he was credited with "distinguished conduct in campaign against Apache Indians while serving as medical and line officer of Captain Lawton's expedition"; for which he was later awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. At the beginning of American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence, Theodore Roosevelt resigned the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, which he had filled with distinction and to the great profit of the country, in order to organize from among the cowboys and frontiersmen of the West his famous regiment of "Rough Riders." But he would not himself accept the supreme command of it. His unerring judgment of men led him to select Leonard Wood for the Colonelcy, under whom he was himself glad to serve as Lieutenant-Colonel. So it was that Wood first went to Cuba, as Colonel of the First Regiment of United States Cavalry Volunteers. There soon followed the achievements at Guasimas and at San Juan Hill, to which reference has already been made, in recognition of his services in which on July 8, 1898, he was promoted to be Brigadier General, and on December 7 following to be Major General of Volunteers. It may be added that he was promoted to these same ranks in the regular army respectively on February 4, 1901 and August 8, 1903.