American Rifle - Alexander Rose [266]
3. Ibid., pp. 14–15.
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4. Ibid., pp. 2–5, 15.
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5. H. E. Eames, The Rifle in War (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: U.S. Cavalry Association, 1909), pp. 42–43.
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6. Ibid., pp. 108–9.
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7. R. Gilmore, “‘The New Courage’: Rifles and Soldier Individualism, 1876–1918,” Military Affairs 40, no. 3 (1976), pp. 99–100.
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8. See especially D. Minshall, “Creedmoor and the International Matches,” available online at www.researchpress.co.uk/targets/creedmoor/01creedmoor_nra.htm. Also, G. W. Wingate, “Early Days of the NRA: Recollections of the National Rifle Association,” pt. 2, American Rifleman 99, no. 6 (June 1951), pp. 39, 46.
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9. S.W. Brookhart, Rifle Training for War (Washington, D.C.: National Rifle Association/U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), pp. 5–11.This pamphlet was published after the war but it exemplified pre-1914 thinking.
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10. On this now-forgotten achievement, see G. M. Chinn’s Bureau of Ordnance–sponsored The Machine Gun: History, Evolution, and Development of Manual, Automatic, and Airborne Repeating Weapons (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951), p. 1:268.
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11. Editorial, “Maneuvers and Marksmanship,” American Rifleman 87, no. 12 (December 1939), p. 4.
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12. J. J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1931), p. 1:153.
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13. Pershing to Baker, October 4, 1917, ibid., p. 1:189; see esp. pp. 1:151–53. See also war diary, December 19, 1917, in United States Army in the World War, 1917–1919 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948), p. 2:117; extract from a meeting of the War Cabinet, December 21, 1917, pp. 2:123–24ff.; Pershing to chief of staff, January 1, 1918, p. 2:132; and Pershing letter, February 6, 1918, p. 2:196: “We should begin to make plans to carry out necessary construction leading up to what is to become the American sector.”
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14. Quoted in “Good Advice from General Pershing: Importance of the Rifle,” Army and Navy Journal 55, no. 7 (October 13, 1917), p. 232.
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15. In a cable to National Guard instructors, October 3, 1917, quoted in ibid.
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16. Notes on Training for Rifle Fire in Trench Warfare (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1917), pp. 6–7.
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17. E. C. Crossman, “German Military Rifle Practice,” Scientific American 116, no. 5 (February 3, 1917), pp. 126, 137.
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18. See, for instance, Brookhart, Rifle Training for War, p. 7: “The best defense or offense against the machine gun is in the training of more and better snipers.”
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19. This section was heavily based on D. D. Lee’s excellent Sergeant York: An American Hero (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985). But see also J. Perry’s useful Sgt. York: His Life, Legend and Legacy: The Remarkable Untold Story of Sergeant Alvin C. York (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, 1997); and S. K. Cowan, Sergeant York and His People (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1922).
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20. Perry, Sgt. York, p. 72.
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21. Biographies of York, especially the earlier ones, invariably follow this line. Sam Cowan’s Sergeant York and His People (published in 1922) devotes much space to revealing York’s Tennessee background, connecting him to Andrew Jackson (including a photograph of York visiting the president’s tomb), and describing the idyllic lives of the inhabitants of the townspeople and farmers of the valley. As David Lee points out (Sergeant York, p.98), however, his biographers tended to play down York’s particularly fiery brand of fundamentalist Christianity in favor of a generic notion of Christian faith.
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22. As Newton Baker, the secretary of war, put it, battle had become “an industrial art conducted like a great modern integrated industry.” Quoted in Lee, Sergeant York, p. 50.
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23. On this point, see of course Cowan, Sergeant York and His People, as well as