American Rifle - Alexander Rose [107]
The percolating influence of the military reformer General Emory Upton elevated marksmanship to the pinnacle of army concerns. Originally of a New York farming family, Upton had fought a brilliant war. An extreme rarity in that he served in all three branches of the army (artillery, cavalry, and infantry), he achieved notable success in each. After the war he returned to West Point to teach cadets. There he produced A New System of Infantry Tactics, Double and Single Rank (1867), a brilliant manual that paid little heed to the traditional French influences but instead described a system of tactics that exploited the new breech-loading rifles’ power in a specifically American environment. He urged the end of heavy, clumsy line formations advancing across open ground to engage the enemy with the bayonet, and promoted in their place a squad-based “skirmish” formation consisting of light teams that could march, deploy, wheel, and shoot in teams of four. A sergeant or corporal would be in charge of several squads separated from one another, and the “line” that advanced toward the enemy would be a ragged, staggered one that would minimize casualties from artillery and defensive fire.
On the strength of his book, Upton, still only in his midthirties, was sent abroad in 1875 for an official tour of the world’s armies. His instructions from the army were to “examine and report upon [their] organization, tactics, discipline, and . . . manoeuvres.” His eighteen-month trip produced 1878’s The Armies of Asia and Europe, a work heavily influenced by his favorable impressions of the German Army.
Upton’s recommendations amounted to radical army reform. To replace the lumbering conscript armies of the Civil War, he advocated the creation of a relatively small but highly professional and expertly officered regular force during peacetime, supported by large “National Volunteer” units. In wartime, using the army as a core, the National Volunteers could be grafted onto the armed forces, thereby vastly and rapidly multiplying the country’s military strength. In peacetime a regular company, for instance, would comprise three officers and fifty-four men, but a declaration of war, thanks to the influx of National Volunteers, would expand its strength to five officers and 242 men. Using Upton’s figures, the peacetime army’s twenty-five regiments would balloon from 12,500 to 100,075 trained effectives in very short order. Any enemy, expecting to find weak forces confronting them, would be unpleasantly surprised by the American ability to field a first-class army within weeks.
For Upton, the country’s ability to manufacture an effective fighting service hinged on meritocracy and hard training. No officer in the National Volunteers would owe his place to political connections; he would instead prove himself in a special examination or attend courses in military science, and he would demonstrate his competence during field training exercises. The same applied to regular officers: if inept, they would be removed; if doddering, retired; if overpromoted, relegated.36
A key aspect of Uptonian doctrine was marksmanship. Constant practice would create a nation of lethal riflemen ready and able to spring into action against a foe. Upton’s focus on squads deployed in skirmish formation dovetailed nicely with the need for good shooting. From a command perspective, because the men would be more spread out, an officer could not retain strict European-style control over everyone in his unit. “In this all important matter of firing,” grumbled Lieutenant P. D. Lochridge, “a captain used to be able to control his company. Now, a corporal may ruin it.”37 Each man had to be sufficiently proficient with a rifle to look after himself and his squadmates. On the tactical side of things, Upton emphasized the importance of standardized target practice out to as much as eight hundred yards.38
Upton