American Rifle - Alexander Rose [16]
Men unaccustomed to frontier fighting found swamps and forests to be the most dangerous and terrifying places on earth. With their “arms pinioned with the thick boughs of trees” and “feet shackled with the roots spreading every way in those boggy woods,” local militiamen likened the experience to “fighting with a wild beast in his own den.”108 Perceptive commanders soon ended the typical European practice of marching in a body through the woods.109 They instead advanced with at least several yards separating each man and were directed to scatter and take cover if attacked.110 No longer, either, would they attack in line but would creep silently forward on their bellies once a scout detected the enemy. Most important, to avoid ambushes the best officers and frontiersmen never left a swamp or forest by the same path they entered.111
Still, sometimes officers had to be sufficiently flexible to rely on the old, imported methods of mass, volume, concentration, and discipline. Consequently, between King Philip’s War and the French and Indian War, an authentic American way of warfare evolved on the frontier. It was a doctrine based on an admixture of European and Indian practices. It relied much more heavily on individual enterprise (symbolized by the rifle and accuracy) than was acceptable in Europe, yet it was more disciplined (symbolized by the mass-firing musket and bayonetry) than anything previously seen in America. Americans on the defensive might still use the tried and true European tactic of forming the infantry into lines, but they were lines that took advantage, Indian style, of any available cover. Likewise, they learned that when taking the offensive, they needed to combine firepower with loose, fluid movements rather than remaining in a static line and moving directly forward.
In the hands of the most masterful commanders, the fusion of New and Old World ways could be devastating against both stiff European formations and mobile Indian ambushes alike. The young George Washington would perfectly embody the meaning and methods of this American way of warfare.
Notwithstanding the blazing temperature, just after midday on July 9, 1755, General Edward Braddock and his aides (including a very young Washington) were justly confident: their objective, the French Fort Duquesne (now subsumed within Pittsburgh) was but a few days’ march away, and resistance so far had been light. Braddock’s 1,469 men comprised two British regiments, three companies of Virginia provincial troops (two of rangers and one of “carpenters”—axmen and bridge-builders—all experienced at frontier fighting), and three “independent” companies from New York and South Carolina. They exultantly marched in an extended column along a narrow path through the woods.112
As Colonel Thomas Gage’s vanguard of grenadiers reached the top of a hill, it marched headlong into a French and Indian ambush. Under heavy fire, the grenadiers retreated while the nine-hundred-strong enemy splayed out into a half-moon shape, surrounding the British on three sides. In the confusion of the grenadiers’ withdrawal, panic spread among Braddock’s officers and men. Within minutes the soldiers were completely entangled, and no man could find his lieutenant or sergeant. It was impossible to organize an efficient defense against the Indian marksmen briskly picking them off from the hill, a ravine to one side, or the thick trees to the other.113 One veteran remembered that he never saw more than “five or six” of the enemy at