Page:John Banks Wilson - Maneuver and Firepower (1998).djvu/50

28 more powerful and self-sufficient organization. A field artillery brigade of two regiments with forty-eight guns replaced the provisional regiment. Infantry and cavalry regiments benefited from additional firepower. Based on experiments with machine guns in 1906, a provisional two-gun platoon had been added to each infantry and cavalry regiment, and with the new regulations the authorization was increased to six guns. Depending on range, one machine gun equaled the firepower of between sixteen and thirty-nine riflemen. Thus, divisional firepower grew substantially. Other changes improved communications by replacing the signal company with a two-company battalion and expanded the medical service by adding four ambulance companies. For the first time, a directive fixed the strength of a division at 19,850 men—740 officers, 18,533 enlisted, and 577 civilians, the last serving mostly in the ammunition and supply units. Transport for a division included 769 wagons and carts, 48 ambulances, and 8,265 animals.

While making the division more powerful, the regulations realigned the division staff. The new staff consisted of a chief of staff, an adjutant general, an inspector general, a judge advocate, a quartermaster, a commissary officer, a surgeon, the commander's three aides, and six civilian clerks. Engineer and signal battalion commanders joined it at the discretion of the division commander. The provost marshal was eliminated, as were the ordnance, muster, and senior artillery officers, with most of these positions moving to the field army headquarters.

A new nomenclature for divisions indicated their self-sufficiency. Instead of being numbered as the 1st, 2d, and 3d Divisions, I Army Corps, as during the Civil War and the War with Spain, units were to be numbered consecutively in the order of their formation. No reference to any field army appeared in divisional designations. As before, brigades were identified only as the 1st, 2d, and 3d brigades of a division.

The new ordinances also included a 13,836-man cavalry division in the field army, and, as in the infantry division, internal changes affected firepower, logistics, and staff. A field artillery regiment replaced the six batteries, and each cavalry regiment fielded a provisional machine gun troop. The engineer and signal companies were expanded to battalions, and two ambulance companies were added. A pack train completed the division. For the first time, the cavalry division was given a staff similar to that in the infantry division. Designations of cavalry divisions were also to be numerical and consecutive in the order of their organization.

Maj. Gen. James Franklin Bell, the Chief of Staff of the Army, established the First Field Army on 28 February 1910. Although merely a paper organization before mobilization, it consisted of three infantry divisions, each with three infantry brigades. Each infantry brigade comprised three infantry regiments, and the other divisional units included a cavalry regiment, an engineer battalion, and medical and signal units. In place of the field artillery brigade, each division had only one field artillery regiment. Because the artillery and cavalry regiments