Infantry, Part I: Regular Army / A Diverse Half Century, 1866-1915




 * A Diverse Half Century, 1866-1915


 * Four years of war, and the large army built up during them, conditioned the nation in 1866 to the biggest increase in the Regular infantry since the War of 1812. The result was a postwar military peace establishment of twenty-six more Regular regiments of foot soldiers than had served for the Union. The total was forty-five. All regiments were formed on the prewar pattern with ten companies, and with regiment and battalion one and the same. The new companies were strong in noncommissioned officers and specialists, having a total of nineteen, and privates totaled between fifty and one hundred at the discretion of the President.


 * The expansion of the infantry worked out as follows. The 1st through 10th Infantry retained their numbers. The first battalions of the 11th through the 19th expanded into regiments of the same respective numbers, and the second battalions into the 20th through the 28th Infantry. The first ten regiments needed no expansion, but the converted first and second battalions, being composed of just eight companies, required two more companies apiece. The 29th through the 37th Infantry were supposed to come from the third battalions of the Civil War units, but, since these had never been raised for the 12th, 13th, 14th, 17th, and 19th regiments, and only imperfectly for the other four, the postwar units had to be recruited. The other eight regiments were new. Negro personnel, commanded by white officers, staffed the 38th through the 41st, while men from the Veteran Reserve Corps, wounded but still able to do active duty, filled up the 42nd through the 45th.


 * During 1866, twenty-six of the forty-five regiments remained in the area of the Confederacy, while twelve were sent west into Indian country. To the men who personally fought the Indians, there never seemed to be enough soldiers, but the level of forty-five regiments was altogether too high for the rest of the nation when the stimulus of the great conflict had worn off. In consequence, recruiting was stopped, and in 1867 the companies were directed not to replace their losses until only fifty privates per company remained. Two years later, on 3 March 1869, Congress reduced the infantry to twenty-five regiments. This set off a reorganization which, for disrupting the history and traditions of regiments, almost rivaled the upheaval of 1815. The following consolidations resulted:


 * 1) 43rd consolidated with the 1st to form the new 1st
 * 2) 16th consolidated with the 2nd to form the new 2nd
 * 3) Half of the 37th consolidated with the 3rd to form the new 3rd
 * 4) 30th consolidated with the 4th to form the new 4th
 * 5) Half of the 37th consolidated with the 5th to form the new 5th
 * 6) 42nd consolidated with the 6th to form the new 6th
 * 7) 36th consolidated with the 7th to form the new 7th
 * 8) 33rd consolidated with the 8th to form the new 8th
 * 9) 27th consolidated with the 9th to form the new 9th
 * 10) 26th consolidated with the 10th to form the new 10th
 * 11) 24th consolidated with the 29th to form the new 11th
 * 12) 12th Infantry not affected
 * 13) 13th Infantry not affected
 * 14) 45th consolidated with the 14th to form the new 14th
 * 15) 35th consolidated with the 15th to form the new 15th
 * 16) 11th consolidated with the 34th to form the new 16th
 * 17) 44th consolidated with the 17th to form the new 17th
 * 18) 25th consolidated with the 18th to form the new 18th
 * 19) 28th consolidated with the 19th to form the new 19th
 * 20) 20th Infantry not affected
 * 21) 32nd consolidated with the 21st to form the new 21st
 * 22) 31st consolidated with the 22nd to form the new 22nd
 * 23) 23rd Infantry not affected
 * 24) 38th consolidated with the 41st to form the new 24th
 * 25) 39th consolidated with the 40th to form the new 25th


 * Twenty-one outfits emerged from the reorganization bearing the same numbers they had borne through the war, but the new 11th, 16th, 24th, and 25th Infantry were not so fortunate. They had no connection with the war units of the same numbers. However, the 24th and 25th-created by consolidation of the 38th through the 41st-carried on the tradition of the Negro regiments begun during the Civil War.


 * The Regular infantry stood unchanged at twenty-five regiments for thirty-two years, and was at last altered only because of the need to hold the territory outside the continental United States acquired from Spain in 1898. Within the regiments the size of companies fluctuated. In the trough of economic depression the number of men authorized per company dropped in 1876 as low as thirty-seven. Infantry officers pointed out that when sickness and desertion occurred; these little companies were much too small to do their duty in the Indian country where 180 out of 250 of them were stationed in the 1870's. The severe cut that reduced the companies to skeleton strength came about in the following manner. One month after the famous massacre of Custer's troops in June 1876, Congress reduced the enlisted strength of the Army from 30,000 to 25,000. Then in August the legislators allowed existing cavalry units to be augmented by 2,500 men, since cavalry was considered the chief reliance against the Plains Indians. As a result, the reduction of 5,000 fell almost entirely upon the infantry.


 * By 1890 the long fight against the red man was practically won. This made it possible to abandon some of the small posts, held by one or two companies, and to concentrate the units under regimental control. The shift, however, was not made easily, and as late as 1912 the Secretary of War complained that dispersion made of the Army nothing but a scattered constabulary. In any case, in 1890 it seemed sensible to make the whole infantry establishment more compact without increasing it.. In consequence, Companies I and K of each regiment were stripped of all personnel, and their men and officers used to fill out the remaining companies. Thus, fifty infantry companies existed only in name with their records and trophies preserved by the regiments. The two hundred companies that survived had one sergeant and four corporals fewer than formerly, and a total of forty-six privates each. Within a year, however, the War Department directed that Company I of nineteen of the regiments be filled out with fifty-five Indians, but because it was unsuccessful the, project was soon dropped.


 * While these changes were taking place, observers were pointing out that the ten-company, one-battalion regiment was obsolete. The increased accuracy of firearms, they said, had forced dispersion so that no one man could control ten companies in battle. Accordingly, the Secretary of War in 1890 urged that a regiment of three battalions of four companies each be adopted. Such an arrangement was backed by statistics, for wars in Europe had demonstrated that one-third of a regiment now occupied the same front in battle as an entire regiment once had. This being so, a single leader could hardly be expected to direct more than four companies in action. In the next few years, the Secretary's successors repeated the request, but without success.


 * Throughout the period under consideration, there was ceaseless experimentation with infantry small arms; but, even so, changes came slowly. The reason for this was that the Army had to practice the strictest economy. Accordingly, Ordnance sought for the last refinement before standardizing any model, since once a rifle was adopted, it could not soon be discarded in favor of a new one costing large sums. As a result, the rifle musket of the Civil War remained in general use for a few years after the return of peace.


 * When at last the almost hallowed old piece made way for a new one in the early 1870's, the United States infantry took a forward stride as great as when it had adopted the Minie principle in the 1850's. The new gun, the celebrated Springfield Model 1873, embodied several indispensable improvements. It was the first official infantry rifle to load at the breech. Next, it operated without a touch-hole- an essential in all previous American foot soldiers' guns- because the primer was included as part of a brass cartridge which had replaced paper cartridges. Last but not least, it dropped .13 of an inch in caliber, being .45 instead of .58 across the bore.


 * The Springfield '73 remained the official shoulder arm of the infantry for nineteen years. Actually it served longer than that, for citizen soldiers used it in 1898 and 1899, and the Philippine Scouts even later. When finally it was superseded in 1892, its replacement embodied an advance that had been widely used for decades. Called the Krag-Jorgensen, it was the foot soldier's first standard repeating rifle. In addition, it continued the trend toward smaller bullets, being .30 caliber instead of .45. The Krag lasted nine years before yielding to the Springfield Model 1903. The latter remained standard for almost forty years, that is, to the outbreak of World War II. Although it was not a new departure as the '73 and the Krag had been, it utilized the latest improvements, and was as fine a rifle as infantry had anywhere in the world.


 * All of a sudden, in the spring of 1898, the United States jumped into a war with Spain. There were then 26,000 enlisted men, in round figures, in the Regular Army, of whom half were infantry. A threebattalion organization was put into effect at once by the following arrangement. The existing eight companies in each regiment were divided into two battalions, while the two skeleton companies were filled out and combined with two new companies to make the third battalion. Also, the size of companies rose from around 50 to 106 enlisted men. The result was a substantial regiment of 1,309 enlisted men. However, it still contained 1,000 men fewer than the authorized strength of the 11th through 19th Infantry in the Civil War and 2,400 less than the 3,700-man units of World War I.


 * Conflict with Spain did not add even one to the total of twenty-five Regular infantry regiments, for, as in the Civil War, chief reliance was not placed upon Regulars. No sooner was war declared than Congress passed an act putting a second component beside the Regulars. This was called the Volunteer Army of the United States. The regiments of this force were raised and officered by the states, and in the main sprang from existing organized militia units. Officers of the Regular Army were at liberty, without losing Regular status, to accept commissions for field grades in state units, provided there was no more than one Regular in any volunteer regiment. Congress also ruled that state units had to conform to the organization of the Army, and that general and staff officers for corps, divisions, and brigades be appointed by the President.


 * Before the end of May, President William McKinley made two calls for troops, requesting a total of 141 regiments, 20 separate battalions, and 46 separate companies of infantry, all of which were raised quickly. Most of the regiments came into Federal service with around 950 enlisted men, but three or four contained as few as 650. Nearly all of them recruited up before the war was over, although none reached the 1,309 prescribed. This was not surprising when one considers that, except for the regiments that went to the Philippines, all the volunteer infantry units were released by 8 June 1899, having served in most cases less than a year.


 * It was decided, in the second month of the war (May 1898), to organize ten regiments of volunteers not related to any state, an action for which there was precedent in the United States volunteers of the Civil War. The latter had been raised from special groups such as sharpshooters or Confederate prisoners of war. The earliest regiments of United States Volunteer Infantry in the War with Spain were also made up from a special group, that is, from men who were immune to tropical disease: five regiments of Negroes and five of whites. They were authorized to contain only 992, instead of 1,309, enlisted men, and all had close to that number when they were mustered in.


 * As early as March 1899, the use of United States Volunteer Infantry was carried beyond the employment of the 10,000 immunes. By September 1899, twenty-four new regiments, not to remain in service beyond 1 July 1901, had been authorized to be raised from the country at large. Their designating numbers started where the Regular infantry's left off (that is, at 26) and ran through 49. The 36th and 37th were recruited from men already on duty in the Philippines, the 48th and 49th from Negroes. Practically all the officers of field grade for the new outfits came from the Regular Army.


 * In March 1899, companies went up in size to 112 enlisted men and regiments to 1,378. Three months later, companies in active areas, such as the Philippines, increased to 128. Thus enlarged, twenty-four regiments of United States Volunteers and twenty-five of Regulars made up the infantry which garrisoned the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, as well as the United States itself. Soon it was necessary to make new provisions, since after 1 July 1901 the authorization for Volunteers and for the increases in Regulars ran out. The new arrangement, dated 2 February 1901, gave the number of Regular infantry regiments its first boost since 1866. Five new ones were authorized, the 26th through the 30th. These were the fourth units with these numbers to have been in the Regular service, the first having existed during the French crisis in 1798-99, the second during the War of 1812, and the third from 1866 to 1869.


 * This and other legislation of 1901 set the upper limits of the military establishment, but allowed the President to increase the size of companies by 6 noncommissioned officers and to raise the, privates up to a total of 127 if he thought it necessary. Under this discretion, the authorized size of the Army fluctuated by executive order until World War I. Also, two new nationalities joined the infantry establishment, for the law sanctioned up to 12,000 Philippine Scouts and a provisional regiment of Puerto Ricans.


 * Native Filipinos had been organized into companies as early as September 1899, but having no official sanction, had been paid as civilian employees of the Quartermaster. Their official organization, which took effect on 1 October 1901, provided for fifty companies. The officers were from the Regular Army except for the 1st and 2nd lieutenants, who could be selected from qualified natives. A battalion organization was introduced in 1904, and in the following decade thirteen Philippine Scout battalions came into being. After World War I these battalions, most of which had been parts of provisional regiments during the war, were grouped into permanent regiments and given numbers. They became the 43rd, 45th, 57th, and 62nd Infantry (Philippine Scouts).


 * As with the Filipinos, there had been an earlier organization in Puerto Rico, a battalion which had begun to operate during March 1899. This was combined with a battalion of mounted infantry, organized in 1900, to make a regiment. Its companies were smaller than those of the Regulars and of the Philippine Scouts, and it contained two instead of three battalions. The Puerto Rico Regiment was manned by natives of, that island but commanded by officers from the continent. In 1908 this outfit was incorporated into the Regular Army, and in 1920 it was redesignated as the 65th Infantry.


 * The organization of infantry regiments into three battalions of four companies each-finally brought about by the War with Spain-persisted as a permanent alteration. It is interesting to note, that with this change the Army returned to the regimental organization used from 1790 to 1792. This 100-year reversion, however, did not arise from a study of the earlier period-rather it sprang from the experience of the. Civil War, coupled with that of the later wars in Europe. Experience had demonstrated that the old regiments were far too big to be effectively controlled in battle. As long as the system in which battalion and regiment were one and the same was followed, the regiment was a fighting subdivision in the line of battle. On the other hand, in the shift to more modern practice which the infantry was making, the battalion was a fighting subdivision while the regiment exercised administrative control over three battalions. The fault in the shift was that the American battalion was too small to perform its work. This may be illustrated by comparing the new organization with those in Europe. The French and Prussian infantries both used regiments of three battalions, but the battalions were far larger. The Prussians had 1,000 enlisted men in theirs, the French close to 700, wile Americans had no more than 425.


 * One of the major trends in military organization during the second half of the nineteenth century had to do with the organization of infantry below company level. Within two years after the Civil War, a new United States manual on infantry tactics was issued. Prepared by Maj. Gen. Emory Upton, it based all troop evolutions on movement by fours. Since a front of four men in proper line had a rear rank, the basic subdivision of the new system was really a squad, although that term was not used.


 * Upton's Infantry Tactics remained official for twenty-four years. During these years organization within companies took form. Accordingly, the Infantry Drill Regulations (the first manual to bear that name), issued in 1891, defined a squad more sharply than before. A squad contained seven privates and one corporal, and was made the basis of drill in extended order. Since extended order was gradually displacing close order, the squad gained new importance. Likewise, as the duties and the organization of a squad became clearer, those of half companies (that is, platoons) also took firmer form. Indeed, the fire of an advancing infantry line was carried out, according to the manuals, by platoon.


 * Throughout the half century the movement was toward the refinement of organization further and further. This meant giving small knots of men, and combinations of such knots, cohesion and special leadership. The development that launched this movement was the gradual replacement of line tactics by skirmish tactics. Along with it came changes in training and techniques, such as a set of arm signals by which company officers and their subordinates could control their men. All the changes, whether in organization or techniques, stemmed from the growing deadliness of firearms.


 * A weapon that would change the character of warfare, the machine gun, was being developed during this period. The first important model, the Gatling gun patented in 1862, was purchased by the United States during the Civil War. Tests made in the 1870's showed the Gatling to be equal to seventy Springfield rifles well aimed at 150 to 200 yards. Interest in the weapon increased and the United States bought several lots of it in the years after the Civil War.


 * As a result of the intercession of 1st Lt. John H. Parker, an independent battery of four Gatling guns, directly under the corps commander, took an active part in the Santiago campaign. The guns were directed against entrenched Spanish infantry with telling effect, and even against artillery. Parker contended they could do anything necessary to support infantry, but believed they would be more effective if made lighter (they weighed two hundred pounds). He also recommended that some sort of mounting, other than the awkward cannon carriage, be devised for them. Not infected with Parker's enthusiasm, higher commanders were inclined to look at the Gatlings as artillery, and not very good artillery at that.


 * The machine gun made its greatest advance when Hiram Maxim, an American inventor, patented one in 1883 which eliminated the need for a hand crank by operating on the energy of its own recoil. The United States experimented with it as early as 1888 but did not adopt it officially until the first decade of the twentieth century. Tests made in 1910 showed that one machine gun was equal to sixteen riflemen at ranges up to 600 yards; to twenty-two men from 600 to 1,200; and to thirty-nine men beyond 1,200 yards. Comparing these figures with those given for tests in the 1870's, it is clear that the repeating rifle had reduced the discrepancy between shoulder arms and machine guns a good deal. In any case, on account of the unwieldiness of the weapon and for other reasons,, official doctrine on the machine gun remained very conservative.
 * This did not, however, prevent experiments in organization to utilize it. In 1906, for example, a provisional machine gun platoon of twenty-one men and two Vickers-Maxim guns was added to each regiment. Although the Secretary of War reported three years later that this arrangement had not worked well, the salient fact is that infantry regiments were never again without machine guns. In February 1908, an experimental company was constituted, headed by John H. Parker, now a captain. This company, although it went through several changes in organization, was the forerunner of the machine gun companies of infantry regiments in World War I.


 * There were other experiments in organization besides those dealing with machine guns. A headquarters detachment of seventeen enlisted men and fifteen mounted scouts was added to each regiment in 1912 for trial. With the machine gun platoon, it made up a regimental detachment the parts of which were trained intensively in their specialized duties. By 1915 the headquarters detachment had grown into a headquarters company "provisionally provided" for each regiment of infantry. (There had never before been headquarters companies in them.) In the same way, the machine gun platoon became a machine gun company, while a third new company, a supply unit, was also under trial.


 * The size of infantry regiments varied, within the limits imposed by law on the President, according to the duty performed. Regiments in the United States in 1912 had 65 enlisted men per company and a total of 870; those in the Philippines, 150 and 1,836; those in Hawaii and the Canal Zone, 72 and 954; the Puerto Rico Regiment, 65 per company with 591 total. The beginning of World War I in Europe added to the variety, for the possibility of American involvement caused the preparation of alternate tables of organization, one for peace, the other for war. Thus in June 1915, the peace strength of an infantry regiment was set at 959 officers and enlisted men; the war strength at 1,945.


 * Once the nation had become a colonial power on account of the War with Spain, the study of war grew more important, and Americans turned to a review of what they had to fight with. It was clear that the Regular Army was too small to make up the whole defense and that stimulation of the militia was therefore necessary. As a result, one phase of the reform of 1903 was to replace the Federal militia law which had been on the books since 1792. This reform was particularly significant for the infantry because it comprised the bulk of the militia force. When the revised law went into effect, there were 107,422 enlisted men in the organized militia and 93,314 of them, or 8 7 percent, were foot soldiers.


 * The Militia Act of 1903 attempted to draw the National Guard (as the organized militias of the several states were coming to be called) closer into the military force controlled by the Federal government. This implied better training in peace time. When the act was passed, the improved training began to operate, and this, plus the beginning of war in Europe, accelerated the drawing together. Initially, according to the act of 1903, the United States could retain National Guard forces in its service for just nine months, whereas by 1908 Federal power had so enlarged that the President could specify the length of their service. Also, National Guard units volunteering for Federal service in 1903 could keep the officers they had; but by 1914 the power to appoint all officers, when the Guard was on active duty, had fallen to the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.


 * The great reforms in the Army which took place in 1903 affected the Regular infantry only indirectly. Creation of a General Staff and Army War College brought about co-ordinated thinking which, of course, touched the infantry. Very early, it was seen that, because of the great preponderance of infantry in the National Guard, the forces of the United States were out of balance. The Secretary of War hoped to offset the imbalance by maintaining a high proportion of cavalry and artillery in the Regular Army. Also, some foot units of the National Guard in seaboard states were converted into coast artillery. This does not mean that there was an excess of Regular infantry. On the contrary, in 1909 the Secretary asked that both infantry and artillery be increased. He fixed the proper proportion of infantry at 50 percent of the whole; but in the decade from 1901 to 1911, the ratio actually dropped from 50 to 35 percent.


 * Finally, it is necessary to mention the growing role of the Signal Corps in support of infantry. During the Civil War, the Corps had provided strategic communication, but by the time of the War with Spain it gave some tactical communication as well. This was accomplished by means of signal flags and, to an ever increasing extent, by telephones. Telephone lines began to follow the infantry very close to the firing line. This was but a beginning, for telephones supplemented by radios were to be the medium which in the twentieth century would link units of the same force on the vast battlefields, and link them better than they had once been linked by close-order formations.