Westrons Pt. 32

After sending the preceding note, I found this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlADvQ_EkGU ] which, I think, is much better at illustrating actual military practice with the Ferguson, I.e., loading the rifle using paper cartridges. As you see, what the demonstrator did was drop in the ball, tear the paper cartridge open and prime the pan, pour the remaining powder into the breech behind the ball, slap the action to settle the power, close the plug, aim and fire.

He also addresses that British riflemen carried two different diameter balls — large diameter balls for early in the fight, an smaller balls for use one the barrels were fouled. I think the Baker Rifle units operated the same way.

It also goes into some detail about how the rifles were built and the problems created if every rifle was produced by hand as individual weapons, which meant few if any parts were interchangeable from one rifle to another. Assembly line manufacture conquered that problem.

It is interesting how much of the history of 17th century military weapons remains educated conjecture. Records were not rigorously maintained and production techniques not meticulously recorded. From the standpoint of a writer, I think that means that, as long as you stay roughly in line with the main line of thinking on the weapon you choose to model the Westron rifles on, you're on solid ground. There may be other experts or enthusiasts that champion a different real world narrative for the weapon, but their opinions are probably no more likely to be "the ultimate truth" than your take on it is. Too, since your readers don't need all this detail, there is no reason to get into the weeds. In fact, this probably is a classic less-is-more situation and then let their imaginations take it away.

Weapons guys, especially reenactors, are rabid enthusiasts. When I was on the 12-pound cannon crew at Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, we would establish a field camp and talk to visitors in between our 4 firing demonstrations. One visit I had to endure two reenactors who argued for most of 6 hours about the color of thread in the one man's cap. This was a Confederate crew wearing Confederate uniforms. The thread in the one guy's hat was a particular color of brown, which he said was the color thread specified in the Confederate pattern for this cap. His critic argued, repeatedly, that that color dye was imported from England and by the time of the Kennesaw Battle (1864), that dye was no longer available due to the Union Navy's blockade and different color threads were used. Wow.

Cook's Grand Battery at Feirlan was planned before I'd even finished Chapter 4. But the Colonel brought up the question of artillery, and then discussed communications (which I'd only been thinking about)

Also, something that is not well understood outside the artillery business is the impact of the lack of artillery recoil mechanisms on artillery accuracy. Even in WWI, much of the artillery did not have recoil mechanisms. What this meant was that the ability to replicate an accurate shot by an individual gun without a recoil mechanism was problematic at best. If you review WWI photos and film of artillery, you will often find the guns in long-standing positions had inclined pads built behind each wheel. When the gun fired, the cannon would roll back up these pads and then return to about where they started from. Guns with recoil mechanisms tended to remain stable, so once you found the target, repeated rounds with the same charge, deflection and elevation would hit in about the same place.

In Westron, your artillery is going to have to be essentially direct fire. Training and a better understanding of artillery ballistics than Cook's enemies can make a very important difference for Westron, but unless you can sort out long range observation and communications, you're probably stuck for Cook's lifetime.

That brings me to what kinda got me thinking more about this, I.e., one of the corners that, in my opinion, you need to paint your way out of is battlefield communications.

One of the basic mantras of Infantry Officer training is that tactical dominance requires you and your unit to master three things: Shoot, Move and Communicate.

You are well on your way, it seems to me, to putting the Westrons ahead of the game on Shoot and Move, but Communicate is the weak link. You don't have horses, so long range battlefield messengers to communicate from Cook's brigade to the Commanding General are out. You haven't mentioned bird life on the planet, but even if you could develop some form of "homing pigeon" capability, it would be limited. Frankly, given Cook's background, telegraph (which required very little voltage) is not out of the question if Cook can solve the battery (Civil War batteries were pretty primitive) and wire production problem, but that could take years and I don't think that's where you want to go right now. True, Cook's regiments are now trained to move long distances quickly, so a foot messaging service is not out of the question, but it is still problematic.

Where that gets us to is what was pretty much the 18th Century solution to rapid long range communications: A semaphore system. Both the French and British had well-established systems (here is a link to a pretty good article on the French system: https://99percentinvisible.org/article/the-revolutionary-semaphore-high-speed-communications-in-18th-century-france/ ). That can work in fairly settled, stable regions, but has limits as tactical comms for mobile forces. I don't get the sense that the Napoleonic-era armies solved this, but the Civil War armies came close in their establishment of a signal corps and the development of semaphore techniques that could be put into place rapidly and move with the army. They have to be line-of-sight from one station to the next. They are vulnerable to bad weather and, of course, night-time pretty much shuts them down. However, if the Westrons were to establish fixed semaphore stations inside their territory, mobile forces could establish line-of-sight stations on high ground and, where those don't exist, build wooden towers, that could link to the fixed system and/or communicate with the Commanding General's HQ. Here are some Civil War signal towers: (several photos included)

Of, course, as you can see from the lower photo, this also required telescopes and/or binoculars, neither of which you've mentioned so far, so I don't know if that is something available in Westron or not. Certainly Cook understands the basics of lens craft well enough to start some Westron scientists/mechanics down the path to grinding lenses for such devices. Also, Cook probably has come across the heliograph system developed by the U.S. Army during the Indian wars and used, most notably, in their campaigns against the Apaches. It has some of the same problems as semaphore (line-of-sight, bad weather), but it was quicker than semaphore and did not require telescopes to see the mirror flashes. Oh, and Cook would also have to invent something like Morse Code.

At any rate, that's what I've been thinking about.

We corresponded back and forth several times. Here's the Colonel's response after one of my messages.

Thought your introduction of 3-pounders was inspired . . . The 3-pounders you can actually get to the battlefield beat — every time — the batteries of bright shiny 12 or 18-pounders stuck in the mud 20 miles behind you. From what I can discern, the so-called "grasshopper" 3-pounders weighed about a 1/4 of what Frederick's 3-pounders did . . . Mostly, it appears, due to advances in metallurgy that permitted stronger barrels with less bulk. Guns that mobile, firing canister, would be a hell of weapon for a fighting withdrawal in the face of vastly superior numbers. Certainly round balls against massed infantry will be quite potent by themselves. Not really on point, but one Civil War anecdote I've never forgotten was a soldier seeing a 12-pounder ball rolling across the ground toward his unit. Not understanding the physics involved, he put out his foot to stop what looked like a casually rolling ball . . . And it tore his leg off.

I share your perspective (to the extent that that matters) on Napoleon's armies outgrowing his ability to personally control the fight. I do think that is why he placed such emphasis on clear written orders (the famous "Napoleon's Corporal" story) . . . The orders had to be a substitute for his personal presence. Interestingly, the search for something that could at least partially substitute for personal presence echoes into the present. In the early 70s Rangers I was raised in, one of the last things you did before the patrol moved out was to walk the line and have every Ranger repeat the mission statement (a tight, single sentence providing the who, what, where, and when of the mission. As was repeatedly pounded into us: If you remember nothing of the order but the mission, you still have a chance to accomplish it. Sometime in the 80s we changed the tactical standardized 5 paragraph field order to add a "Commander's Intent" statement immediately after the mission statement (Paragraph 2). The mission statement remained as a very clear, concise expression of the task at hand, but the CI added two things that put the mission into context: the commander's desired end state and what his definition of mission success looked like. It might be something like:

Mission: A Company attacks at 0630 hours, 28 July, to seize Hill 275 (grid HI168349) not later than 1130 hours.

Commander's Intent: A company's possession of Hill 275 will secure the battalion's left flank and facilitate follow on attacks by the rest of the Battalion. I expect A company

to arrive at Hill 275 able to bring effective direct and indirect fires on any enemy forces attempting to move into the Bn sector from the northwest.

Pretty much an attempt for the commander to at least be in his subordinates' heads when he can't be with them physically.

In some respects, success for Cook will probably be having his subordinate commanders know him and his approach to war well enough to be able, when confronted by an unexpected situation, to ask themselves "What would Colonel Cook do?" This was certainly a part of what made the Lee-Jackson (and to a bit lesser degree Lee-Longstreet) partnership so successful: Jackson knew what Lee wanted to accomplish and acted accordingly in the absence of orders. Part of most discussions of Gettysburg include how it might have looked different on the first day if Jackson had been there to drive the Union right.

All that said, through the Spanish American War, the tactical communications method was bugle calls. I used to use the Battle of White Bird Canyon(opening fight of the Nez Perce Wars) when teaching my cadets about the tenets of shoot-move-and-communicate. I chose this fight to illustrate the timelessness of the concepts and because it was just a great example of all three:

SHOOT: The attacking cavalry had little marksmanship training and were armed with single shot breechloaders. Most of the Nez Perce rifles were repeaters and the results

of the battle spoke for themselves with regard to marksmanship: Nez Perce suffered a single casualty (some accounts say 3) — one of the chiefs, still hung over from

partying the tribe had one the night before, fell off his horse and broke his arm. The cavalry lost 1/4 of their force killed.

MOVE: The attacking cavalry had tired horses of varying quality having moved 70 miles continuously to reach the scene. The Nez Perce were mounted on fresh horses that

were already somewhat legendary for their high quality.

COMMUNICATE: Not a lot of communications on the Indian side (something that plagued the Indians throughout the course of the Indian wars), but, to some extent, the

fact they were fighting on ground they knew intimately and with men who had all fought together for years, mitigated the need for immediate communications. The

cavalry lost its bugler in the opening shots and the back-up bugle was found to have somehow fallen out of the saddlebags of the man designated to carry it, so the

commander's ability to command and control the fight was destroyed at the beginning of the fight.

The White Bird Canyon battlefield looks today exactly as it did the day of the fight. The only change was a state road built on the steep slope to the west of the battlefield. It disturbed none of the battle site and provides a perfect overlook for reliving the fight. Standing there just above a small ravine where the Nez Perce trapped and wiped one of the cavalry units, watching the wind wave the grass is about as fine an opportunity to touch history as one is likely to find.

I apologize for being so preachy about things I suspect you already know well.

Looking forward to the next 50 chapters. Next week?

After my second request to share some of his comments with other readers:

First things first . . . If you find anything I've sent you useful, please feel free to use it, keeping at all time in mind, of course, that ultimately it is all my opinion.

I will, of course, be sorry to see this saga conclude, but I look forward to whatever you go to next. Perhaps it may even lead you back to the Westrons.

On my description of the mindset and doctrine at AFOTA

With regard to West Point, essentially your point about not needing to learn from the defeated mirrors my own, although differently worded, I.e., the Army (and I'm sure the other services, but I know my own best) has tried (with varying degrees of success) to avoid focusing on threats that weren't existential. The American Indians missed their best chance to avoid European dominance in the 1500-1600s when their stone age culture had the numerical superiority to thrash the more technologically advanced Europeans. After that, the end could be delayed, but not prevented. So, no matter how successful the American Indians were in the 19th century, there was no risk of them toppling the U.S. . . . Sioux, Cheyenne and Apaches were not going to pillage St Louis, or New Orleans, or New York, or.... Still, not spending the time to better prepare its cadets for what so many of them would face on the frontier seems . . . Odd. Then again, perhaps they did bring in guest speakers and use other means to at least give the cadets a chance to find their way to information about Indian fighting. Pre-Civil War, West Point was pretty much the only show in town for officer training and development. Post-Civil War the various schools of instruction — Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery and others — came into being and officers training and education became more broad and sub-specialized.

That said, I saw a similar situation in my career. It came right as Vietnam concluded. Part of my initial training at Fort Benning still had a Vietnam flavor, but only a couple years later and almost all the counter-insurgency stuff was gone. Again, North Vietnam was not an existential threat to the U.S.. Even if it was decisively successful at the tactical level (it wasn't. . . The point is often made that every important tactical fight during that war ended in NVA/VC defeat, but, as General Giap noted later, while true, at the strategic level, it was also irrelevant.), NVA soldiers were not going to amphibiously assault the beaches of California. The existential threat was the Soviet Union and throughout the Vietnam War, we maintained 250,000 troops in Europe and chose the draft over eating into the U.S.-based divisions that had to be maintained to be ready to fly into Germany to fight the Soviets. There certainly was a political element to the draft — calling up the Reserves or NG would have been almost suicidal — but there was the fear that pouring troops into Vietnam would leave the U.S. Unable to muster the forces to take on the Soviets. That, in part, is why Vietnam was additive to Army strength, I.e., we added to Army end strength to be able to have the manpower for Vietnam. As soon as that war ended, Army end strength plummeted, the Army reorganized (1st Air Cavalry Division, e.g., became a mechanized Infantry division) and material R&D became focused on conventional ground warfare weapons. On the training front, the Army very quickly jettisoned counterinsurgency in favor of — once again — being able to focus on the Soviets.

Much of what I've enjoyed about our conversations is how it has caused me to relook some of the military history that I worked thru early in my life. It is interesting the nuances I pick up on after the end of a 30-year Army career.

Not only did the Europeans not engage the lessons of the American Civil War, it's never seemed to me that they even learned the lessons of the Crimean War (or Boer War for that matter), which presaged the Civil War in a number of ways. While some British regiments showed up for the Crimea armed with Brown Bess smoothbores (same musket...allowing for better manufacturing...they started using about 1720), they were at least in the process of issuing Enfield rifles as that war commenced, and any thinking field officer had to have been contemplating the impact of the rifle on the battlefield.

The thing that is missing from your Civil War list is mass logistics. By the end of the war, the Union Army had mastered the art and science of standing up and equipping huge armies and keeping them sustained in the field. There are a number of books about the transcontinental railroad that all come to the conclusion that that huge undertaking was only possible at the time it was built, because of the Union's experience with mass logistics. It is no surprise when you look at the backgrounds of many of the major figures in that project, that so many had Civil War logistics experience. And now that we have entered the "Big Data" era, the huge Civil War archives are being mined and analyzed as never before and we are still learning lessons from the experience.

Given the conservatism still so much a part of all armies well into WWII, it shouldn't be surprising that it was so entrenched in the 1800s that it overwhelmed the lessons of more modern warfare. It would be interesting to see if the reports of the European observers' who moved with the Union and CS armies still exist in the British and French archives (perhaps others) and, if so, what those men thought the lessons were. I've never found a good number for how many European observers were with the Union and CS armies. Now that I think on it, I don't know of any books that may have been written by those observers, although I would think there almost have to have been at least a couple. Later Union General McClellan was part of a U.S. Army team that observed some of the operations in the Crimea and his report has been published. He certainly noted the value of hasty/temporary field fortifications.

One of the classic books that every young American officer of the 70s was expected to have read was Anton Myers novel, "Once an Eagle" . . . Which tells a tale of the WWI to Vietnam army via two officers — one of whom represented the ideal of the professional officer and one who — though talented and successful — represented the officer driven by personal ambition. At one point, the "villain" of the novel (not quite the right word in context, but close) in the early 1930s is having a conversation in D.C. with the officer who is chief of the Cavalry office in the Army HQ. I'm paraphrasing, but essentially he says: "Tanks probably are the future, but I'm the Cavalry proponent so I'm promoting Cavalry."