American Rifle - Alexander Rose [20]
For the Forbes expedition, the general chose two subordinates, both experts in frontier fighting: Colonels George Washington (of the Virginia Regiment) and Henry Bouquet (of the Royal American Regiment of Foot). Bouquet (1719–65) was a Swiss working in the British service whom Washington regarded as the leading wilderness soldier on the continent. Believing frontiersmen to be superior to redcoats at trekking over mountainous terrain, snowshoeing, swimming, working individually and yet rallying when needed, finding cover, deploying camouflage, and leaping over wide ditches and fallen trees, he enlisted them as auxiliaries to his regular troops.
Before the expedition left, Washington and Bouquet were regularly exchanging ideas. Washington told Bouquet that his men had few regimental uniforms, but “far from regretting” this fact, he confessed that “were I left to pursue my own inclinations I would not only order the men to adopt the Indian dress, but cause the officers to do it also, and be the first to set the example myself [in order to proceed] as light as any Indian in the woods.” “Indian dress”—by which he meant the frontiersman’s version, consisting of hunting shirts, moccasins, and leggings—“is an unbecoming dress, I confess, for an officer; but convenience rather than show” should be the watchword in the backcountry. “Soldiers in that trim,” he argued, “are better able to carry their provisions; are fitted for the active service we must engage in; [and are] less liable to sink under the fatigues of a march.” Bouquet readily agreed that “their dress should be our pattern in this expedition.”138 Privately, Washington was thrilled that the more experienced warhorse had accepted his recommendations, and he boasted to his friends about it.139
Likewise, Washington followed Bouquet’s counsel in how to get his men up to speed on wilderness fighting. One effective method, he was told, was to send out “scalping parties” to “harass the enemy (by keeping them under continual alarms).” These units comprised an officer, about a score of Cherokees, and a small detachment of his frontiersmen. These patrols allowed the men to practice operating as an Indian-style squad while honing their survival, marksmanship, and combat skills.140
Forbes eagerly sought Bouquet’s and Washington’s advice on the best way to advance through the woods. Washington insisted that Forbes’s regulars must not repeat Braddock’s mistake of marching in a single column; instead they must be divided into three small divisions flexible enough to form “instantly” into an “order of battle in the woods” if attacked. Each division must be further subdivided into three separate sections—each “to be in readiness always to oppose the enemy,” he specified—working strictly along a chain of command to avoid the confusion that had beset Braddock.
If the vanguard division was attacked, Washington stipulated that its members were not to form up in a line or retreat to the main body but instead were to file smoothly off to the right and left “and take to trees, gaining the enemy’s flanks, and surrounding them.” Simultaneously, most of the second division was to split off to the right and join their comrades in the flanking parties, while the third, the rear guard, would do the same, but leftward. Their Indian allies should in the meantime “get round, unperceived, and fall upon the enemy’s rear.” His plan, Washington promised, would be “different from any thing they have ever yet experienced from us.”
Forbes adopted this farsighted scheme and handed Washington command of the right division, composed of his Virginia Regiment veterans plus several provincial companies of North Carolinians, Marylanders, and Pennsylvanians (mostly armed with rifles), as well as two units of rifle-equipped backwoodsmen. The force was almost sundered by colonial and royal rivalries, was hampered by a lack of both transport and funds, and was deserted by its Indian allies; nonetheless Forbes brought it through the Pennsylvania fastness safely thanks to his deputies