American Rifle - Alexander Rose [262]
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44. R. H. Davis, The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1898), p. 208.
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45. On Wood, see Shockley, Krag-JØrgensen Rifle, p. 17; see also Jamieson, Crossing Deadly Ground, p. 147.
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46. Davis, Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, p. 149.
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47. General George S. Patton would later call the technique “marching fire” and believed that “the proper way to advance, particularly for troops armed with that magnificent weapon, the M-1 rifle, is to utilize marching fire and keep moving. This fire can be delivered from the shoulder, but it is just as effective if delivered with the butt of the rifle halfway between the belt and the armpit. One round should be fired every two or three paces. The whistle of the bullets, the scream of the ricochet, and the dust, twigs, and branches which are knocked from the ground and the trees have such an effect on the enemy that his small-arms fire becomes negligible.” G. S. Patton, War As I Knew It (1947; reprint Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995), p. 339.
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48. F. Funston, Memories of Two Wars: Cuban and Philippine Experiences (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), pp. 199–200.
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49. In a manner similar to the enemy’s being shot in the face, after Las Guasimas, Roosevelt wrote in his Rough Riders, “when we arrived at the buildings, panting and out of breath, they contained nothing but heaps of empty cartridge-shells and two dead Spaniards, shot through the head.” Roosevelt, Rough Riders, p. 82 and pp. 108, 112; Shockley, Krag-JØrgensen Rifle, pp. 17–27. On the operations of the Rough Riders, see D. S. Pierson, “What the Rough Riders Lacked in Military Discipline, They Made Up for with Patriotic Fervor and Courage,” Military History 15, no. 2 (1998).
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50. Funston, quoted in Jamieson, Crossing Deadly Ground, pp. 132–33; Roosevelt, Rough Riders, pp. 100–101, 86. General Merritt, commanding the Volunteers in the Philippines, also felt that the black-powder .45 Springfield was a better weapon for killing than the Krag. See Wolf, Arms and Innovation, p. 276.
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51. Anon., “Wounds and Disease at the Front,” Journal of the American Medical Association 31, no. 5 (July 30, 1898), p. 250.
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52. Davis, Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, pp. 207–8.
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53. These figures are taken from V.J. Cirillo, Bullets and Bacilli: The Spanish-American War and Military Medicine (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2004), pp. 34–37, except for the Civil War abdomen-wound rate, which can be found in D. C. Smith, “Military Medicine,” in J. E. Jessup and L. B. Ketz, eds., Encyclopedia of the American Military (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), p. 3:1597.
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54. N. Senn, “The Modern Treatment of Gunshot Wounds in Military Practice,” Journal of the American Medical Association 31, no. 2 (July 9, 1898), pp. 46–55.
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55. The material on wounds and projectile behavior is mostly based on several works by Martin Fackler, M.D., and on E. N. Harvey et al., “Mechanism of Wounding,” in J. C. Beyer, ed., Wound Ballistics (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General, Department of the Army, 1962). See especially M. L. Fackler and P. J. Dougherty, “Theodor Kocher and the Scientific Foundation of Wound Ballistics,” Gynecology and Obstetrics 172 (February 1991), pp. 153–60; M. L. Fackler, “What’s Wrong with the Wound Ballistics Literature, and Why,” Letterman Army Institute of Research Report no. 239 (July 1987); M. L. Fackler, “Ballistic Injury,” Annals of Emergency Medicine 15 (December 1986), pp. 1451–55; and M. L. Fackler, J. S. Surinchak, and J. A. Malinowski, “Bullet Fragmentation: A Major Cause of Tissue Disruption,” Journal of Trauma 24 (1984), pp. 35–39. D. Lindsey, “The Idolatry of Velocity, or Lies, Damn Lies, and Ballistics,”