Chanler immediately volunteered his services to General Máximo Gómez and was given the rank of colonel in the nascent indigenous Cuban Army. Chanler selected ten men skilled in scouting and took them to Tampa, Florida in preparation for transport to Cuba. The group included Chanler's brother Winthrop Astor Chanler, his brother-in-law C. Temple Emmet, his friend George Galvin, fellow explorer Dr. William Louis Abbott, war correspondent (later Lieutenant) Grover Flint, and the German surgeon Dr. Maximilian Lund, as well as a grandson of General Hood, a great-grandson of Daniel Boone, and two former members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.