American Rifle - Alexander Rose [179]
According to Hitchman’s analysis, the army’s famed standards of ac-curacy could be severely reduced—perhaps even to zero—without any concordant diminution of hit-kill effectiveness. Most damagingly to Studler in the short run, however, was Hitchman’s highly critical observation that Springfield’s products were overpriced and overengineered. The T44 in particular, he said, was a wasteful extravagance.31
Adding to Studler’s woes was a test in August 1953 at Fort Benning that the Pentagon had ordered as part of its unwritten deal with the Belgians to adopt their FN-FAL. Against the FN-FAL, the T44 flopped miserably, and the Infantry Board recommended that the project be terminated in favor of procuring the FN-FAL on an initially limited basis.32 Having invested so heavily in the two successive failures of the T25 and T44, and assaulted from all sides by civilian analysts daring to question his military-bred expertise in all things Ordnance, Studler’s position was untenable and he stepped down on August 31. (John Garand, disgusted by the T44 chaos, had retired four months before.)
On a broader level the 1950s reevaluation of the rifle, its uses, and its abilities marked a conceptual return to the early distinction between muskets and rifles that the advent of breech-loading weapons, metallic cartridges, and the cult of accuracy had obscured. Then the musket had been a rapid-firing, not overly accurate, short-range weapon issued to the general infantryman, and the rifle the long-range, single-shot-firing tool of the specialist. According to the new research, small-caliber automatic rifles ought to be employed as muskets, while higher-caliber rifles ought to be reserved for long-range sharpshooting by expert units. In a way, too, the controversies of the 1950s and later the 1960s were a rerun of the post–Civil War clash in the West between the progressive advocates of .45 single-shot rifles and those diehards who believed that rapid-firing weapons were sufficient for the close-in attacks endemic to the frontier.
The foremost advocate of the modern diehard approach was General S. L. A. Marshall (1900–77), son of a bricklayer and the author of the 1947 classic Men Against Fire, a book reprinting a remarkable series of articles he had written for Infantry Journal. Marshall, a short, stocky First World War veteran who discovered “that fire of any kind did not unnerve him,” afterward worked as a reporter for the Detroit News. Working the beat, he honed his interview techniques and joined the Army Historical Branch as a major upon the outbreak of war. Seeking an explanation as to why and how men fight, Marshall trawled soldiers’ memories in Europe and the South Pacific, interviewing them immediately following combat so that important details weren’t forgotten and contradicting accounts detected. His Infantry Journal articles were en-lightening and present a remarkable portrayal of the soldier at war, but one piece in particular, entitled “Ratio of Fire,” especially stunned readers.
Marshall declared that, contrary to every assumption of the past and to the experience of the present, “not more than 15 percent of the men had actually fired at the enemy positions or personnel with rifles, carbines, grenades, bazookas, BARs, or machine guns during the course of an entire engagement.” Even among “the most aggressive infantry companies,” the “figure did not rise above 20 to 25 per cent of the total for any action.”33
Marshall’s solution was straightforward: teach men not to be afraid to fire. “Shoot fast, shoot often,” might have been his motto, but only when subjected “to the thoroughness of control by the junior leaders.” Officers should not regulate fire, he counseled, but instead should regulate