Emergency Procedures for the Mooney M18 Mite

key member of the progressive Fires Center of Excellence at Fort Sill, a product of the Base Realignment and Closure 2005 which collocated the Air Defense Artillery School on Fort Sill, the school became a partner in producing fires officers and soldiers for the 21st century. Artillery Strong! Thomas S. Vandal Brigadier General, USA Commandant iv Preface Over the years, the Field Artillery School transformed itself to meet the needs of the Army. During the 20 years preceding the opening of the School of Fire for Field Artillery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1911, the War Department candidly acknowledged the requirement for trained field artillerymen, but training had been sporadic and ineffective since the American Civil War because artillery schools opened and closed with regularity and furnished little training even when opened. While the Artillery School at Fort Monroe, Virginia, renamed the Coast Artillery School in 1907, focused on coast artillery training, the garrison schools concentrated on drill and ceremony and rote memorization but not firing. The Mounted Service School at Fort Riley, Kansas, was created by the War Department in 1907 to replace the ineffective School of Practice for Cavalry and Field Artillery at Fort Riley that had opened in 1892. It operated under several names over the years with the mission of teaching equitation and field artillery tactics, but it failed to fill the void created by the Coast Artillery School’s decision to furnish coast artillery instruction exclusively. Inadequate training, modern field guns, indirect fire that was supplanting direct fire, and the Field Artillery’s poor performance in the Spanish-American War of 1898 prompted the War Department to organize a school devoted to training field artillerymen. On 15 September 1911, the School of Fire for Field Artillery opened its doors. Outside forces continued shaping the school following World War I, which caused the school to expand its operations. Facing the imperative of improving indirect fire tactics, techniques, and procedures to make fire support more responsive on a more mobile battlefield, the school developed the fire direction center to facilitate massing and shifting fires more rapidly than ever before. The school also participated in testing motor-drawn and self-propelled artillery, and played a role in the adoption of organic field artillery aerial observation. During the four decades after World War II, pressures beyond the school reinforced the need to adapt. The shortage of field artillery and antiaircraft artillery officers and the Army’s push to save money generated the need for flexibility in officer assignments. This caused the school to conduct cross training in the late 1940s to the 1960s during which field artillery and antiaircraft artillery officers were trained in both artillery branches so that they could serve in either. Meanwhile, the Army entered the atomic and nuclear age, forcing the school to develop courses and doctrine for a conventional and nuclear battlefield. Subsequently, the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s prompted the school to shift its focus from conventional and tactical nuclear warfare to guerilla warfare, while the Army’s return to Europe in the 1970s rekindled interest in conventional and nuclear warfare and suitable weapons and equipment. v National and international events during the last decade of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century once again sculpted the school. Fearful that the Army would become irrelevant in the small wars springing up around the world, General Eric K. Shinseki, Chief of Staff of the Army, tore the Army and school away from a Cold War orientation with its emphasis on heavy units and moved training to lighter and more mobile units for fighting throughout the world. The War on Terrorism following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 pulled the Army and school even further from the Cold War moorings. Although the school trained soldiers and officers to fight on the conventional battlefield, non-standard missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan – patrolling, civil affairs, and psychological warfare, among others – during the early years of the 21st century eroded field artillerymen’s core fire support skills. Non- standard missions also stimulated the school to emphasize resetting (retraining) the field artillery force in its core field artillery competencies and to adopt non-lethal effects – tactical information operations and electronic warfare – as core competencies. Although outside forces drove the school’s program of instruction and involvement in combat developments, individual efforts did not go unnoticed in an organization devoted to team play. Against tremendous odds, Captain Dan T. Moore opened the School of Fire for Field Artillery in 1911. Years later in the 1920s and 1930s, Major Carlos Brewer, as a director of the Gunnery Department, reformed gunnery techniques to mass fires more rapidly, while his successor, Major Orlando Ward, created the fire direction center. Lieutenant Colonel H.L.C. Jones, director of the Gunnery Department, subsequently improved upon the center and paved the way for its acceptance throughout the field artillery community. Starting out as an early advocate of cross training late in the 1940s, Major General Thomas E. de Shazo, the Commandant of the US Army Artillery and Missile School late in the 1950s, became an outspoken opponent of cross training after witnessing its deleterious impact on officers and unsuccessfully pushed to revoke it. Only the Vietnam War ended that disastrous program. Major General David E. Ott developed the fire support team to facilitate coordinating fires from attack helicopters, tactical aircraft, mortars, naval guns, and field artillery and counterfire to engage enemy indirect fire systems in the 1970s to overcome the numerically superior ground forces of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. Years later, Major General David C. Ralston initiated reset efforts to retrain field artillerymen in their core fire support skills that had deteriorated after serving in non-standard missions in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) during the first years of the 21st century. These individuals and others met the changing demands placed upon the school to train high quality field artillerymen and develop new field artillery systems. This book starts with the school at the beginning of the 20th century and carries the story through the first decade of the 21st century. Although the school’s early years fell short of Captain Dan T. Moore’s vision of creating a field artillery school comparable to the German one at Juterborg, the ensuing ones saw the rise of a first-rate institution that fulfilled the captain’s dream. I would like to thank Mark Megehee of the Field Artillery Museum at Fort Sill, Dan Scraper who has played a key role in developing training for field artillery officers, and vi David A. Christensen, the Air Defense Artillery School historian, for taking time to read the manuscript and offer suggestions for improvement. I would also like to acknowledge Dr. Donald P. Wright and Jody Becker of the Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for their outstanding attention to detail and advice during the editing process. Any errors in fact are mine. Boyd L. Dastrup, Ph.D. US Army Field Artillery School vii To my wife, Karen, for all of her support. ix Contents Foreword ............................................................................................................................ iii Preface..................................................................................................................................v Contents ............................................................................................................................. xi Chapter One: A New, Isolated Fort .....................................................................................1 Chapter Two: A New Mission ............................................................................................15 Chapter Three: The War to End All Wars ..........................................................................45 Chapter Four: Peace and Transition ...................................................................................69 Chapter Five: Another War: 1939-1945 ..........................................................................103 Chapter Six: Early Cold War Years: 1945-1971 ..............................................................131 Chapter Seven: Back to Europe .......................................................................................173 Chapter Eight: Moving toward the New Century ............................................................209 Chapter Nine: The New Century .....................................................................................251 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................301 Glossary ...........................................................................................................................303 Names of Field Artillery School ......................................................................................307 Field Artillery School Commandants...............................................................................309 Chiefs of Field Artillery ...................................................................................................311 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................313 Index ................................................................................................................................327 xi 1 Chapter One A New, Isolated Fort During the 19th century, white Americans steadily expanded the boundaries of the United States of America. From the original 13 colonies along the Atlantic Ocean, they flowed westward across the American continent in search of economic opportunities and land and conquered and displaced Native Americans tribes as they moved. Upon reaching the Trans-Mississippi West by the 1820s, they encountered the Great Plains where the scarcity of water, the relentless summer heat, and the thick indigenous grasses that were difficult to plow created unfavorable conditions for traditional farming methods based upon an abundant water supply and moderate summers. Prompted by the unforgiving conditions of the Great Plains, they migrated to Texas, California, or Oregon where more hospitable climates and better opportunities existed. Although trappers, traders, and explorers saw potential in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma, the American preoccupation with Texas in the 1830s and 1840s, the discovery of gold in California in 1849, the aridity and scorching summers of the Great Plains, and the American Civil War of 1861-1865 discouraged serious migration onto the Great Plains. However, immigrant overland trails to Oregon, California, and Utah, cutting through the heart of the Great Plains, alarmed Native American tribes about the white settlers’ intentions and led to the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 between the federal government and Native Americans. The treaty promised the Northern Plains tribes annuities of food and clothing. In exchange, they would permit the immigrant wagon trains to travel safely across their territory. Meanwhile, the allure of riches enticed other Anglos to traverse the Great Plains. To the south of Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming, the discovery of gold in the Rocky Mountains, near present-day Denver, Colorado, in 1859 aggravated the uneasy truce between the Native Americans tribes in the area and the Anglos. Anglos rushed into the area in search of gold, causing a rapid growth of communities in Colorado to support the gold seekers and armed clashes between the tribes and whites. Following the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862 with its provisions for purchasing land at a relatively inexpensive price and the end of the American Civil War that allowed the country to shift its attention once again to the West, the rapidly growing white population now equipped with steel plows with the ability to cut through the thick plains grasses to get to the rich soil beneath and improved windmills to pump water to the water-starved soil moved onto the Great Plains in search of arable farm land. This wave of settlers also intensified the simmering confrontation between the Native Americans and whites, produced an armed, bloody conflict, and eventually led to the establishment of Fort Sill in 1869 to maintain peace in the region. Laying a Foundation Although the white population avoided the Great Plains in its search for suitable 2 farmland before the American Civil War, explorers, trappers, hunters, and traders did not. After purchasing the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned several expeditions to gather as much information as possible about the newly acquired land. In 1804, President Jefferson dispatched Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, both of the US Army, to find a route to the Pacific Ocean, to strengthen American claims to the Oregon Territory, and to gather information about the indigenous inhabitants, flora, and fauna. With the able assistance of Sacagawea, a Shoshoni who was a captive of the Dakota tribes, the Lewis and Clark expedition, composed of Army officers, enlisted personnel, and even Clark’s African-American slave York, explored thousands of square miles of the country, made important scientific observations, established friendly relations with Native American tribes along the route of travel, and returned to St. Louis, Missouri, in September 1806.1 As Lewis and Clark trekked through the northern portion of the Louisiana country, Lieutenant Zebulon Montgomery Pike rose to prominence as an explorer. In the fall of 1805, he pushed northward from St. Louis to find the source of the Mississippi River. After reaching Leech Lake in present-day Minnesota which he determined to be the source of the Mississippi River, he started back to St. Louis, arriving there in April 1806. Pike set out again on another journey in July 1806. With a party of 20 men, he ventured westward along the Missouri and Osage Rivers and turned south to the Arkansas River and followed it into present-day Colorado. For two months he explored the Colorado country, unsuccessfully tried to climb a peak that later bore his name, and hunted vainly for the headwaters of the Red River. In the spring of 1807, Spanish soldiers captured him and his party, escorted them to Chihuahua, Mexico, for intensive questioning, and then marched them to Natchitoches, originally established by the French in 1714 as an outpost at the head of navigation on the Red River for trading with the Spanish in Mexico. Here, the Spanish deposited him on the American side of the Louisiana Territory border.2 Meanwhile, President Jefferson proposed sending out other expeditions to unlock additional secrets of the territory. One would explore the Platte and Kansas Rivers. A second would traverse the Des Moines River. A third would scout the Upper Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, while a fourth party would ascend the Red River to its source and explore the headwaters of the Arkansas River. Lacking President Jefferson’s zeal and practical interest in the Louisiana Territory, however, Congress granted only enough money to fund one of the expeditions. At President Jefferson’s direction, William Dunbar, a noted scientist from Natchez, Mississippi, and John Hunter, a Philadelphia chemist, received the intimidating task of leading a team up the Red River to its source. The small party left Natchez in October 1804, but Spanish soldiers prevented it from traveling up the river. Undeterred by this failure, President Jefferson wrung more money from Congress and dispatched Thomas Freeman, a surveyor and astronomer, with a body of 37 people in 1806 to explore the Red River to its source. Freeman’s party entered the Red River in May 1806, expecting to ascend the river in boats. Like Dunbar’s ill-fated expedition, this endeavor also faltered. Spanish soldiers forced Freeman’s company to turn back before it could find the source of the Red River. Thus far, official government explorers floundered in their attempts to fulfill the ambitious dream of President Jefferson of scouting and mapping the 3 Louisiana country in detail. The source of the Red River remained obscure, and most of present-day Oklahoma remained a mystery to the white man. Only the Native American tribes knew the region.3 Years passed before any serious undertakings succeeded in present-day Oklahoma. Although Lieutenant James R. Wilkinson who was the son of Major General James Wilkinson, the governor of the Louisiana Territory, traveled through the site of present-day Ponca City, Oklahoma, in 1806, although R.B. Sparks visited northern present-day Oklahoma in 1806, and although George C. Sibley attempted to find the source of the Red River in 1811, Major Stephen H. Long of the US Army left the most enduring legacy following his exploration of the West. Between 1817 and 1819, Long’s expedition constructed Fort Smith on the Arkansas River in present-day Arkansas, while Colonel Henry Leavenworth’s expedition built Fort Snelling at the junction of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. In 1819, Long and Colonel Henry Atkinson left St. Louis for the Mandan villages on the Missouri River, but their steamboat broke down so frequently that they traveled no farther than Council Bluffs where they erected Fort Atkinson at the junction of the Missouri and Platte Rivers in present-day Nebraska. After this abortive attempt, the US Army shifted its attention south to the Red River. In June 1820, Long and his small party left Fort Atkinson to explore the sources of the Red, Platte, and Arkansas Rivers. After reaching the Rocky Mountains without locating the source of the Platte River, Long divided his command. Part descended the Arkansas River, while the other under Long searched for the Red River. Long’s small band followed the Purgatory and Cimarron Rivers until they merged into a larger river that Long believed to be the Red River. After following this river downstream, he learned to his dismay when his band reached the Arkansas River that it had been descending the Canadian River which ran through the heart of present-day Oklahoma. He continued to follow the Arkansas River until he reached Fort Smith. Although his groups took extensive notes on the flora, fauna, geology, Native American tribes, and agricultural potential, Long’s most lasting contribution focused on his uncomplimentary appellation of the explored area and that beyond his travels. Believing the land to be worthless for traditional agriculture, he labeled the entire Great Plains as “The Great American Desert.” His term was nothing new as far as government officials were concerned because it echoed an earlier description about the region by Pike after his expedition into the West. However, the official map of Long’s journey incorporated the expression for the first time and established the psychological barrier to white settlement for years to come.4 Although government explorers opened the Louisiana Territory by mapping and traversing it, traders created the conditions for permanent settlement. Moving to tap the vast potential of trade with Santa Fe, Mexico, and northern Mexico, which lacked manufacturing centers and begged for American goods, Jean Pierre Chouteau, a French trader, constructed a trading post on the Three Forks around 1802 where the Grand, Verdigris, and Arkansas Rivers joined in present-day eastern Oklahoma. From this post, shipments of raw materials could be floated down the Arkansas River to the Mississippi River to New Orleans or up the Mississippi River to St. Louis. Years later in 1817, Chouteau’s son, Auguste Pierre Chouteau, established a trading post on the Grand River, near present-day Salina, Oklahoma. Together, the Chouteau trading posts and other trading 4 posts furnished excellent starting points for transporting manufactured goods to Santa Fe. As might be expected, farmers and settlers soon ventured onto the land near Chouteau’s trading posts and the others in the region. To protect the expanding white population from raids and reprisals from the Native Americans, the federal government built Fort Gibson in 1824 at the fork of the Verdigris, Arkansas, and Grand Rivers and erected Fort Towson in 1824, near the mouth of the Kiamichi River to the south. Together, these two forts stood as twin sentinels to replace Fort Smith as guardians of the vast untapped region.5 As the creation of Fort Gibson and Fort Towson suggested, explorers, traders, farmers, and settlers albeit in small numbers moved onto land occupied by Native Americans and created the conditions for conflict. Throughout the colonial period, white settlers appropriated the lands of eastern Native Americans and pushed them farther west onto lands already populated by other Native American tribes.6 Upon acquiring the Louisiana Territory in 1803, President Jefferson envisioned the possibility of moving Native Americans there. If the Native Americans east of the Mississippi River could be voluntarily relocated west of the river onto lands undesired by the white population, the friction between the two peoples could be eliminated. Equally important, valuable lands currently occupied by Native Americans in the East could be opened up to white settlement with less opposition. This line of thinking persisted for the next 20 years and prompted the haphazard removal of portions of Native American tribes from the East to the West. Upon being elected president in 1828, Andrew Jackson, who championed removal with unprecedented enthusiasm, found willing support for his cause in Congress. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act. The act ended the inconsistent nature of the removals of the first three decades of the 19th century, accelerated their pace, made the forced removal of Native American tribes an official government policy, and led to the creation of a gigantic Indian Territory stretching from the Red River in the south to the Missouri River in the north and extending west from the 95th Parallel. From 1830 onward, the northern Native American tribes moved involuntarily into northern Indian Territory (present-day Nebraska and Kansas), while the Five Civilized Tribes of the southeastern United States were transferred into southern Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma).7 Forcefully displacing the relatively sedentary Five Civilized Tribes who were replicating much of the Anglo’s life style brought them into contact with the nomadic Southern Plains tribes (the Osages, Comanches, Kiowas, and Wichitas) to create a serious confrontation. Already feeling the pressure of the expanding white population, the Southern Plains tribes resented the intrusion of other Native American tribes onto their land, insisted that the territory granted to the Five Civilized Tribes was still their own, and launched terrifying raids against the Five Civilized Tribes. Located the farthest west in Indian Territory, the Chickasaws experienced more violent raids by the Southern Plains tribes than the other civilized tribes. To avoid conflicts with those nomadic tribes, the Five Civilized Tribes stayed east of the Arbuckle Range in central Indian Territory even though they had rights to land to the west.8 To protect the Five Civilized Tribes from the Southern Plains tribes, the War Department signed treaties with the indigenous tribes and established additional forts in Indian Territory. 5 The First Dragoon Regiment under Major General Henry Leavenworth, who had founded Fort Leavenworth in 1827 along the Missouri River, moved into southwest Indian Territory to acquire guarantees from the native tribes. He wanted them to stop harassing the newly arriving Five Civilized Tribes, traders, hunters, and trappers and to permit safe passage along the trade routes through Indian Territory to Santa Fe. The regiment marched from Fort Gibson to the vicinity of the confluence of the Washita and Red Rivers. Mortally ill, Leavenworth turned over his command to Colonel Henry Dodge to complete the mission. On 16 July 1834, Dodge conferred with a group of Comanches along Cache Creek near present-day Fort Sill and later met with the Wichitas to the west of the Wichita Mountains. As a result of the meetings, the federal government signed treaties at Fort Gibson with the Comanches in 1835 and the Wichitas in 1837 to create a temporary but uneasy peace to the territory until the mid-1860s and later built Fort Washita on the Washita River in 1842 to assist Fort Gibson and Fort Towson in protecting the Five Civilized Tribes from the Plains tribes. Captain Randolph B. Marcy, with his company of the 5th Infantry, explored present-day Oklahoma, producing outstanding maps. He founded an outpost in April 1851 that was subsequently named Fort Arbuckle in honor of General Matthew Arbuckle, a frontier Army officer who had died of cholera. The fort remained in use until 1870 when the establishment of Fort Sill rendered it unnecessary.9 Onto the Southern Plains Following the American Civil War of 1861-1865, the US Army found the Southern Great Plains ablaze with violence and bloodshed between two conflicting cultures – the Native Americans fighting for self-preservation and the white settlers seeking complete domination of the region. Feeling the escalating pressure from the encroaching white population sweeping onto the Southern Plains in quest of land, adventure, and commerce, the Kiowa-Apache, Comanche, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and other Native American tribes aggressively fought to defend and preserve their homelands and way of life. The federal government dispatched a peace commission in October 1867 to end the fierce warfare that had been unleashed with the Sand Creek Massacre in November 1864 in southeastern Colorado near the Arkansas River where Colonel John M. Chivington’s Colorado volunteers had ruthlessly butchered Black Kettle’s peaceful Cheyenne village. Consisting of Major General William S. Harney, Major General Alfred H. Terry, other army officers, and civilians, the commission conferred with the hostile Southern Plains tribes at Medicine Lodge Creek in southern Kansas to formulate a lasting peace treaty.10 After exhaustive and heated discussions, the commission and the Native Americans finally reached an agreement and signed the Medicine Lodge Creek Peace Treaty in late October 1867. The treaty concentrated the signatory tribes on two reservations in Indian Territory that had been reduced in size to present-day Oklahoma following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. One reservation was dedicated to the Kiowas, Comanches, and Kiowa-Apaches; and the other was for the Southern Cheyennes and Arapahos.11 The treaty permitted the Southern Cheyenne to hunt north of the Arkansas River until the buffalo had been all killed off but committed them and the other tribes to remain peaceful. The treaty also allowed white emigrant travel over the trails, permitted private companies 6 to build railroads across the trackless plains, stipulated converting the Native Americans into farmers and Christians, and prohibited the tribes from raiding off the reservations into Texas, Kansas, and Colorado. In return, the federal government promised to protect the tribes from white hunters who were indiscriminately killing the buffalo, to provide schools, churches, farms, and agricultural implements to civilize the people, and to issue annuities of food, blankets, and clothing to offset the loss of the buffalo as the major source of food, clothing, and shelter. Basically, the treaty spelled an end to the Native Americans’ way of life and meant the forced adoption of the white man’s lifestyle.12 Relocating the nomadic Southern Plains tribes onto reservations in western Indian Territory and pacifying them presented a challenge. Some bands reluctantly accepted reservation status and government rations during the scarcity of the winter months but returned to raiding in the milder months. Others, such as the Southern Cheyenne, rejected the Medicine Lodge Creek Peace Treaty out of hand. They maintained their hostility and resisted any attempts to confine them to the reservations. The poor living conditions on the reservations and the continued killing of buffalo by white hunters drew elements of the Comanches and Kiowas back to war and encouraged them to step up their raids into Kansas, Colorado, and Texas in retaliation for broken promises.13 Influenced by the intensity of the raids on white settlements in Kansas, Lieutenant General William T. Sherman, commander of the Division of the Missouri and noted Civil War commander, assigned Major General Philip H. Sheridan, another famous Civil War general, to end the depredations with military force as required. After peaceful means had failed, Sheridan laid the groundwork for a military campaign with Sherman’s blessing. Sheridan concentrated vast stores of supplies at Fort Gibson in eastern Indian Territory and Fort Larned in Kansas for forwarding to Fort Arbuckle and Fort Cobb, both in Indian Territory. Once the preparations had been completed, Sheridan opened his punitive, three-pronged winter offensive late in 1868 to drive hostile Native Americans from their winter camps to the Native American agency at Fort Cobb where the friendly bands were assembling for rations and protection under Colonel (Brevet Major General) William B. Hazen. Hazen commanded the Southern Indian Military District that covered all of Indian Territory and supervised and controlled the issuance of goods and supplies to the tribes in western Indian Territory. One prong under Major Andrew W. Evans marched east from Fort Bascom, New Mexico, along the South Canadian River. Another under Major (Brevet Brigadier General) Eugene A. Carr moved southeast from Fort Lyon, Colorado. Together, the two columns had the mission of blocking any hostile bands that were attempting to escape from the third column that was driving south from Fort Dodge, Kansas, with the assignment of striking the killing blow if needed and punishing the Native Americans who had been raiding into Kansas.14 Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Alfred M. Sully and composed of 1,700 soldiers, including infantry and cavalry, the third and largest of the columns left Fort Dodge early in November 1868 and moved slowly south into Indian Territory where it established Camp Supply near the North Canadian River as a base of operations. At Camp Supply, Sully directed Lieutenant Colonel (Brevet Major General) George A. Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment to find and strike at the Native Americans. After marching through deep snow 7 from Camp Supply for almost three days in search of unfriendly Native Americans, especially those who had been raiding into Kansas, Custer slowed down his advance upon reaching the Canadian River, also called the South Canadian, on 26 November 1868. There, he dispatched his second in command, Major Joel Elliott, with three troops of cavalry and a few Native American scouts to reconnoiter upstream for any signs of Native Americans while he moved downstream to find a suitable location for a camp. Elliott soon found a recently abandoned camp and fresh pony tracks in the new fallen snow leading to the south and sent a scout to report this finding to Custer. Concluding that the tracks were made by the belligerent Native Americans returning from recent raids into Kansas, Custer rapidly transmitted orders to Elliott via a scout to follow the trail and to halt and wait at dark for the main body. Custer left his supply wagons on the Canadian River to improve his mobility and led a hasty march with his main column of cavalry, seven ammunition wagons, and one ambulance to catch up with Elliott. On the morning of 27 November 1868, Custer found Black Kettle’s camp of Cheyennes on the Washita River, near present-day Cheyenne, Oklahoma, divided his command into four columns, and attacked at the break of dawn. During the course of the ensuing battle, Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment slaughtered more than 800 ponies and mules, killed many Native Americans, including Black Kettle, took many women and children as prisoners, and burned the village to the ground before retreating toward Camp Supply. Custer made a weak attempt to find Elliott’s command in his rush to retire from the battlefield to protect his tenuous supply line from a growing number of restive warriors from neighboring Kiowa, Arapaho, and Cheyenne camps downstream who were gathering on ridges surrounding Black Kettle’s destroyed village and appeared to be eager to join the fight. Custer subsequently left Elliott’s command to fend for itself. At the start of the fight, Elliott had led one of the four attack columns and then subdivided it when he took 17 men to chase escaping warriors who were attempting to break through the Army’s lines for help. Elliott and his small detachment quickly found themselves outnumbered and surrounded by Arapahos, gallantly defended themselves, but were eventually killed.15 After Custer had jubilantly returned to Camp Supply to boast of his resounding victory, Sheridan continued to maintain military pressure on the hostile bands. On 7 December 1868, Sheridan led a column of cavalry south from Camp Supply toward the Wichita Mountains with the intent of rounding up various bands of hostile Kiowas and Comanches. During the remaining days of December 1868 and the first days of January 1869, the general gathered them up and forcibly herded them to Fort Cobb.16 Meanwhile, six cavalry troops under Evans marched out of Fort Bascom along the South Canadian River into the Texas panhandle, as seven 5th Cavalry Regiment troops commanded by Carr drove southeastward from Fort Lyon toward the headwaters of the Red River and into Indian Territory. Of the two, only Evans’ command saw any significant action. At Soldier Springs on the west side of the Wichita Mountains in southwest Indian Territory, Evans’ column attacked a Comanche village on Christmas Day, suffered only one casualty, seriously damaged their food and shelter, killed 22 Comanches, and compelled them to return to the reservation on Indian Territory.17 As he was conducting his mopping 8 up action in his winter campaign, Sheridan searched for a strategic location to establish a military post closer to the center of southwest Indian Territory to protect the exposed Texas frontier from future Native American raids. In December 1868, Sheridan selected Colonel (Brevet Major General) Benjamin H. Grierson to pick a site for the new post.18 Grierson previously had led an expedition from Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, into the region to the south of Fort Cobb in the summer of 1868 to determine the defensive needs of the territory in light of the raids by Cheyennes and Arapahos into Kansas. For the new post, Grierson found an excellent spot near Medicine Bluff, a cliff formation not far from the base of the Wichita Mountains. On 8 January 1869, Sheridan staked out his new post on the site identified by Grierson and called it Camp Wichita. Against the wishes of the 7th Cavalry Regiment that wanted the post named Fort Elliott after Major Joel Elliott who had been killed at the Washita after he had been abandoned by Custer, Sheridan subsequently renamed the camp Fort Sill on 1 August 1869 in honor of Brigadier General Joshua W. Sill. A classmate of Sheridan’s at West Point, Sill was killed during the Civil War leading a Union brigade in Sheridan’s division at the Battle of Murfreesboro (Stones River), Tennessee, on 31 December 1862.19 The New Fort and Its Mission Fort Sill quickly became a base for future operations against hostile Native Americans, and subsequently assumed the mission of keeping the peace in Southwest Indian Territory. In 1869, soldiers erected temporary wooden buildings using roughhewn logs cut from the heavy timber along Medicine Creek and bricks and carpentry tools transported from Fort Arbuckle about 40 miles east. Later in 1870, with picks and shovels, African-American soldiers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Grierson hacked out blocks of stone from nearby limestone outcroppings to construct a permanent fort while other soldiers guarded against attacks from any warlike Native Americans in the area. With the consent of the Department of the Interior, Lieutenant L.H. Orleman of the 10th Cavalry Regiment formally surveyed Fort Sill in August 1871; and later on 7 October 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant officially declared Fort Sill to be an Army fort.20 Besides serving as a Native American agency beginning early in 1869, when Albert Gallatin Boone arrived to become the first agent, and ending in 1901, when the federal government closed the agency with the opening of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache reservations to white settlement, Fort Sill stood as a lonely sentinel in southwest Indian Territory. Surrounded by both friendly and hostile Native Americans, Fort Sill was more than 300 miles from the nearest railhead at Fort Harkness, Kansas. High water, bad weather, and Native American attacks often interrupted communications with Fort Harkness and other frontier army posts and left Fort Sill isolated from the outside world. The little garrison received its mail by wagon from Boggy Depot, a trading center and post office about 100 miles to the east on the Clear Boggy, a tributary of the Red River in the Indian Territory, while communications between the post and the War Department often required 10 to 14 days.21 9 During the early 1870s, the fort’s garrison fluctuated in size between 300 to 800 soldiers and had the unenviable task of maintaining peace in southwest Indian Territory. With assistance from Fort Reno to the north as needed, Fort Sill’s small garrison supervised 6,000 to 8,000 Native Americans and frequently encountered difficulties with the Comanches, Kiowas, and Southern Cheyennes who disliked reservation life and resisted assimilation. Many opposed the white man’s religion and cattle ranching, which the federal government and assimilationists saw as a middle ground between the nomadic lifestyle of the plains tribes and the desired sedentary yeoman lifestyle of Anglo America. Cattle ranching would be a stage through which the Native Americans would pass on their way to total assimilation into the dominant or white man’s culture. Restive portions of these tribes who resisted assimilation raided into Kansas and Texas at will, stole horses and mules, destroyed white settlements, and returned to their sanctuaries in Indian Territory where civil and military authorities could not touch them.22 To end the depredations and pacify the region permanently, the US Army launched the Red River Campaign of 1874-1875. From Fort Sill and frontier forts in Texas and New Mexico, columns of troops relentlessly pursued hostile bands of Comanches, Kiowas, and Southern Cheyennes. One column under Lieutenant Colonel John W. Davidson of the 10th Cavalry Regiment operated westward from Fort Sill. Exhausted by the chase, the hostile bands eventually surrendered piecemeal and returned to the reservations to join friendly Native Americans who had not participated in the depredations. The Red River War of 1874-1875, or Indian Territory Campaign as the War Department officially called it, completed the subjugation of the Southern Plains tribes that Sheridan had initiated in 1868-1869 with his three-pronged, winter offensive.23 With the conclusion of the Native American wars in Indian Territory when Quanah Parker, an influential Comanche chief and part white by virtue of his white mother, Cynthia Anne Parker, surrendered to the Army in June 1875, Fort Sill assumed the peacetime mission of policing Southwest Indian Territory for the next 26 years. Besides supervising the cattle trails, such as the Chisholm, running from Texas through Indian Territory to the railheads in western Kansas where the cattle were shipped to lucrative eastern markets, Fort Sill troops hunted bands of white outlaws, poachers, whiskey peddlers, and a few renegade Native Americans in an effort to maintain law and order in the lawless land and simultaneously attempted to prevent white settlers and cattlemen from encroaching into western Indian Territory. Perhaps, the post’s most glamorous responsibility came with the arrival of Geronimo and his Chiricahua Apaches from Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, in October 1894 for confinement as prisoners of war and conversion to the white man’s way of life. Under the guidance of Captain Hugh L. Scott, who was sympathetic to their plight and later Chief of Staff of the Army from 1914 to 1917, the Chiricahua Apaches learned to build houses, raise crops, and herd cattle. To accommodate the prisoners of war, the federal government enlarged Fort Sill from its original size of 23,000 acres to 51,400 acres in 1895 by annexing lands from the Kiowas, Comanches, and Kiowa-Apaches with their consent and even promised to make the post the permanent home for the Fort Sill Apaches as the prisoners of war were often called.24 10 As the Chiricahua Apache were slowly adjusting to their new life, national events transformed Fort Sill’s mission. Succumbing to pressure to open the Comanche, Kiowa, and Apache reservations to white settlement, Congress sent a commission composed of David H. Jerome, Alfred M. Wilson, and Warren G. Sayre in 1892 to meet with members of the affected tribes to discuss selling a portion of their land to the federal government. Upon hearing the commission’s proposal, most of the Native Americans opposed it. However, some, such as Quanah Parker of the Comanches, realized the inevitability of the sale. Led by Stumbling Bear, Big Tree, Poor Buffalo, and Komalty of the Kiowas, White Man and Chewathlanie of the Kiowa-Apaches, and Quanah Parker and White Wolf of the Comanches, the Native Americans entered into tense negotiations with the Jerome Commission. After three days of heated discussions at the Red Store trading complex just to the south of Fort Sill over the selling price and the amount of land to be sold, the Jerome Commission and the Native Americans finally reached an agreement on 6 October 1892 that required Congressional ratification to be effective. Under the terms of the agreement, the federal government would allot 160 acres to each tribal member and would establish a plot of 480,000 acres, called Big Pasture, between present-day Lawton, Oklahoma, and the Red River for the Native Americans to use as they pleased but would be open to leasing by Texas cattlemen. The federal government would also buy surplus reservation land from the tribes and open it to white settlement.25 Opposition to the agreement immediately surfaced to stall ratification. Although the adult males of the tribes signed the agreement, they claimed trickery and deceit on the part of the commission and refused to give up their land. Equally important, they insisted that the interpreter, Joshua Givens, had made false or incorrect translations of what they had said and written. Army Captain Hugh L. Scott, a long-time friend and defender of the Native Americans around Fort Sill, James Mooney of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and others sympathetic to the Native Americans’ cause concurred. Insisting that commissioners had used bribery and fraud to obtain Native American signatures on the agreement, they helped resist ratification. Scott and Mooney soon gained unlikely allies with their own agenda. Powerful ranchers living across the Red River in Texas and holding inexpensive grazing leases on Big Pasture also challenged the agreement because they feared losing their inexpensive leases. Together, the efforts of Scott and the ranchers and the fervent support of Sen. Matt Quay of Pennsylvania obstructed ratification of the agreement for eight years. After Quay died and Scott was sent to Cuba in 1900 to be a part of an occupying military force after the Spanish-American War, Congress approved the agreement in July 1900 to make it effective. As a result, the Comanches, Kiowas, and Apaches received less than a dollar an acre for their lands and rightfully felt cheated.26 Ratification set in motion a series of events that culminated in the founding of Lawton in 1901. In keeping with the provisions of the agreement, the federal government made the allotments of land to the Native Americans for personal use, established the Wichita Mountain Reserve of 58,000 acres to the west of Fort Sill, enlarged Fort Sill to 56,000 acres, abolished the grazing leases, and set aside Big Pasture of 480,000 acres for Native American use. Subsequently, Congress passed the Lottery Opening Act of March 1901 as a means of distributing the surplus land. Under the act’s provisions, the federal government 11 divided the land into present-day Comanche, Kiowa, and Caddo counties, surveyed the land into 160-acre plots, set aside 320 acres in each county for a county seat that would be surveyed, platted, and subdivided as a town site with lots being sold at auction to pay for courthouses, jails, roads, bridges, and government expenses. Equally important, the act opened the surplus land for white settlement upon a proclamation of the President of the United States. Rather than allowing the settlers to select their land by making a “run” as had been the practice when opening other Native American lands in present-day Oklahoma, the Lottery Opening Act prescribed a lottery to distribute the lands. This would prevent conflicting claims and contests over land as had occurred in the earlier land runs in present-day Oklahoma.27 Following the proclamation of 4 July 1901 by President William H. McKinley that opened the reservation to white settlement and divided it into two districts with a land office at El Reno for the northern district and one at Fort Sill for the southern district, homesteaders rushed to both sites to register for the lottery. About 29,000 homesteaders converged on Fort Sill by horse, wagon, buggy, or foot where registration for the south district was scheduled to take place. Upon arriving, they erected a tent city patrolled by Fort Sill soldiers to maintain the peace and waited for the registration and later the drawing. When the land office opened on 10 July 1901, the eager homesteaders formed a line stretching across the post and running out onto the prairie, hoping to get lucky with the land lottery. On 29 July 1901, the drama heightened with the first drawing at El Reno where the Fort Sill registration cards had been delivered. Out of the Fort Sill cylinder, James T. Wood of Weatherford, Oklahoma, was the first name drawn, and the second was Mattie Beal of Wichita, Kansas. Eight days later on 6 August 1901, government officials auctioned off lots in present-day Lawton. Within years, Lawton, named after Major General Henry W. Lawton who had been a quartermaster at Fort Sill years earlier, had earned a Medal of Honor, and had participated in the capture of Geronimo, became a community where cattlemen, traders, gamblers, soldiers, and others mingled and walked the dusty streets, while cultivated fields and fenced pastures quickly replaced open range in southwest Oklahoma. Only Fort Sill with its old stone buildings remained untouched and stood as a link to the past. The opening of Native American lands for white settlement and the subsequent founding of Lawton as the county seat of Comanche County closed an era for Fort Sill. Together, they ended the post’s isolation and concluded its responsibilities for policing the frontier.28 After being constructed by the US Army in 1869-1870 to bring peace to southwest Indian Territory after years of unrest, Fort Sill served as a frontier post for more than 30 years. After the exhilarating military campaigns of the 1870s had driven the hostile Native Americans, especially the Comanche, Kiowa, and Southern Cheyenne, back onto the reservations in Indian Territory, Fort Sill soldiers settled into monotonous peacekeeping duties and essentially served as giant sheriff’s posses chasing outlaws and others who disturbed the peace in the territory. As significant as bringing and maintaining peace to the area were, unfolding international events promised to change Fort Sill’s mission. 12 Notes 1 Edwin C. McReynolds, Oklahoma: A History of the Sooner State (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), pp. 51-54; Ray M. Billington, Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, Inc., 1974), pp. 372-76; Jerome O. Steffen, “William Clark,” in Paul A. Hutton, ed., Soldiers West: Biographies from the Military Frontier (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), pp. 11-24; see Stephen E. Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (New York: Touchstone Books, 1996) for an excellent discussion of the Lewis and Clark expedition. 2 Billington, Westward Expansion, pp. 376-77. 3 Billington, Westward Expansion, p. 376; Morris Swett, Fort Sill: A History, photocopy, (Fort Sill, OK: 1921), p. 1, UF25 H673 S59, Morris Swett Technical Library (MSTL), US Army Field Artillery School; Duane Gage, “Oklahoma: A Resettlement Area for Indians,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Autumn 1969, p. 284. 4 Billington, Westward Expansion, p. 378; Swett, Fort Sill, p. 1, UF25 H673 S59, MSTL; Roger L. Nichols, “Stephen H. Long,” in Paul A. Hutton, ed., Soldiers West: Biographies from the Military Frontier (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1987), pp. 33-35; M. David Stevens, Lawton-Fort Sill: A Pictorial History (Norfolk, VA: The Donning Company, 1990), p. 17; Gage, “Oklahoma,” p. 285; McReynolds, Oklahoma, pp. 65-68. 5 Billington, Westward Expansion, p. 382; McReynolds, Oklahoma, pp. 62-65, 72-73; H. Wayne Morgan and Anne Hodges Morgan, Oklahoma: A Bicentennial History (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1977), p. 20; Gage, “Oklahoma,” p. 291. 6 Morgan and Morgan, Oklahoma, pp. 20-21; Billington, Westward Expansion, pp. 219-20, 266-67, 273-75, 396; Gage, “Oklahoma,” p. 288; McReynolds, Oklahoma, pp. 132-33. 7 Gage, “Oklahoma,” pp. 290-94; Billington, Westward Expansion, pp. 297-316, 396; Morgan and Morgan, Oklahoma, pp. 20-29. 8 Billington, Westward Expansion, pp. 397-99; Berlin B. Chapman, “Establishment of the Wichita Reservation,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Mar-Dec 1933, p. 1044; Gage, “Oklahoma,” p. 294; John W. Morris and Edwin C. McReynolds, Historical Atlas of Oklahoma (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p. 13; Morgan and Morgan, Oklahoma, p. 28; Wilbur S. Nye, Carbine and Lance: The Story of Old Fort Sill (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974), p. 17. See Grant Foreman’s Indian Removal: The Emigration of the Five Civilized Tribes of Indians (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1972) and Grant Foreman’s The Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974) for extensive discussions of the removal of the Five Civilized Tribes to Oklahoma. 9 Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 7-17; Stevens, Lawton-Fort Sill, pp. 17-19; W.B. Morrison, “Fort Arbuckle,” Chronicles of Oklahoma, Mar 1928, pp. 26-34. 10 Paul H. Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), pp. 29-30; Jerome A. Greene, Washita: The US Army and the Southern Cheyennes, 1867- 1869 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004), pp. 3-24, 34-37. For more on the Sand Creek Massacre, see Reginald S. Craig’s The Fighting Parson: The Biography of Colonel John M. Chivington (Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1959). This book is a sympathetic interpretation of Chivington and his role in the Sand Creek Massacre. 11 Greene, Washita, p. 37. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 gave the President of the United States authority to designate specific lands as Indian Territory for the Native Americans that were being removed from their homelands in southeastern United States. Initially, Indian Territory 13 included present-day Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. With the creation of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska in 1854, only Oklahoma remained as Indian Territory. As white settlers moved onto the Southern Great Plains during the four decades after the Civil War, pressure mounted to open Indian Territory for white settlement. The federal government finally opened Indian Territory to white settlers through a series of land runs between 1889 and 1901 and created the state of Oklahoma in 1907. Initially, Indian Territory was the home to the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Seminole, Choctaw, and Chickasaw) from the southeastern United States. Eventually, the federal government moved other tribes from their homelands into Indian Territory to make room for the expanding white population. 12 Greene, Washita, pp. 37-38; Hutton, Sheridan and His Army, pp. 33-34; Gillette Griswold, “Fort Sill, Oklahoma: A Brief History,” unpublished manuscript, pp. 2-3, in Historical Research and Document Collection (HRDC) Field Artillery Branch Historian’s Office, US Army Field Artillery School; Andrew Denson, “Unite With Us to Rescue the Kiowas: The Five Civilized Tribes and Warfare on the Southern Plains,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Winter 2003-04, pp. 458-79; Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 45 13 Denson, “Unite with Us to Rescue the Kiowas,” pp. 458-60; Greene, Washita, pp. 38-41. 14 Greene, Washita, pp. 43-76; Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, pp. 41-53; Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 55-58; Denson, “Unite with Us to Rescue the Kiowas,” p. 460; Stan Hoig, The Battle of the Washita: The Sheridan-Custer Indian Campaign of 1867-69 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), pp. 74, 75, 86, 87. 15 Greene, Washita, pp. 117-62; Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, pp. 56-76, 80-90; Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 51-54, 59-78, 84-89, 100. 16 Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, pp. 56-76, 80-90; Stevens, Lawton-Fort Sill, pp. 3-4; Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 51-54, 59-78, 84-89, 100. 17 Hoig, The Battle of the Washita, pp. 74-75, 168. 18 Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, pp. 90-91; Greene, Washita, p. 54. 19 Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, pp. 100-01; Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 100. 20 “A Brief History of Fort Sill and the Field Artillery School,” Field Artillery Journal, Nov- Dec 1933, pp. 528-29; Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 101, 105. 21 McReynolds, Oklahoma, pp. 170, 214, 256; Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 55; Gillette Griswold, “Fort Sill, Oklahoma,” unpublished manuscript, p. 5, HRDC; Riley Sunderland, History of the Field Artillery School: 1911-1942 (Fort Sill, OK: Fort Sill Printing Plant, 1942), p. 31; “A Brief History of Fort Sill and the Field Artillery School,” pp. 528-29. 22 “A Brief History of Fort Sill and the Field Artillery School,” pp. 528-29; Todd Leahy, “Beef Instead of Bayonets: Cultural Mores and the Failure of Assimilation on the Kiowa-Comanche Reservation,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Winter 2005-2006, pp. 490-99. 23 Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, pp. 245-261; “A Brief History of Fort Sill and the Field Artillery School,” pp. 530; Griswold, “Fort Sill, Oklahoma,” pp. 3-9, HRDC; See Nye’s Carbine and Lance for a full discussion of early Fort Sill and William H. Leckie’s The Buffalo Soldier: A Narrative of the Negro Cavalry in the West (1967) for a solid account of African-American soldiers at Fort Sill. 24 Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 298; Griswold, “Fort Sill, Oklahoma,” p. 9, HRDC; Brenda L. Haes, “Fort Sill, The Chiricahua Apaches, and the Government’s Promise of Permanent Residence,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma, Spring 2000, pp. 28-43; “A Brief History of Fort Sill and the Field Artillery School,” p. 534; H. Henrietta Stockel, Shame and Endurance: The Untold Story of the 14 Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War (Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, 2004), pp. 101-53. See John A. Turcheneske’s The Chiricahua Apache Prisoners of War: Fort Sill, 1894-1914 (1997) for a penetrating, in-depth analysis of the Apache prisoners of war. 25 Monta Rae Collins, “The History of the City of Lawton, Oklahoma,” unpublished master’s thesis, University of Oklahoma, 1941, p. 8; Joe Looney and Vivian Wilson Looney, The History of Comanche County, Oklahoma (Lawton, OK: Southwest Genealogical Society, 1985), pp. 17- 18; Arthur R. Lawrence, Lawton: A Golden Anniversary, 1901-1951 (Lawton, OK: Arthur R. Lawrence, 1951), p. 4; Leahy, “Beef Instead of Bayonets,” pp. 490-99. 26 Collins, “History of the City of Lawton, Oklahoma,” p. 8; Looney and Looney, The History of Comanche County, Oklahoma, p. 18; Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 303-04; Lawrence, Lawton: A Golden Anniversary, p. 4. 27 Collins, “History of the City of Lawton, Oklahoma,” pp. 8-12; Nye, Carbine and Lance, p. 304; Looney and Looney, The History of Comanche County, Oklahoma, p. 19. 28 McReynolds, Oklahoma, pp. 304-05; Collins, “A History of Lawton, Oklahoma,” pp. 12- 25; Looney and Looney, The History of Comanche County, Oklahoma, pp. 20-21; Nye, Carbine and Lance, pp. 304-07; Noel Edwards, “Some Facts about Lawton, Oklahoma,” ca. 1902, pp. 1-14, Lawton Public Library; MG Robert M. Danford, “Morris S. Simpson,” Field Artillery Journal, Nov-Dec 1944, pp. 765-67. 15 Chapter Two A New Mission Following the opening of western Indian Territory to white settlement in 1901, Fort Sill converted from a cavalry post to a field artillery post during the first decade of the 20th century. Although the first field artillery unit arrived at Fort Sill in 1902 and the last cavalry unit left in 1907, the transition from one branch to another culminated when the War Department created the School of Fire for Field Artillery in 1911 to train field artillerymen in the latest techniques of their branch that were growing more sophisticated with the introduction of new weapons and indirect fire. Captain Dan T. Moore, the school’s first commandant, and his successor, Lieutenant Colonel Edward L. McGlachlin, overcame insufficient funding by the War Department, instructor and staff shortages, and inadequate facilities to produce competent field artillerymen and to lay the foundation for future growth. The School of Fire for Field Artillery Pressured by the United States’ expanding commercial interests throughout the world and its newly acquired overseas possessions following the Spanish-American War and influenced by the intensifying imperial rivalries among European countries over colonies in the first decade of the 20th century, the War Department faced the imperative of transforming its Army. It had to convert the Army from a frontier constabulary to an armed force capable of fighting on the modern battlefield. To do this, the War Department confronted the necessity of eliminating the long-standing division of command between the Commanding General and the Secretary of War that had existed through most of the 19th century and that had been so disruptive during the Spanish-American War. While the Commanding General exercised discipline and control over the troops, the Secretary of War provided administrative support and supervised fiscal matters through the military bureau chiefs. Secretary of War Elihu Root, who was appointed to this office in 1899 to institute reforms, wanted to establish a chief of staff and general staff and to reduce the independence of the War Department’s bureau chiefs. At Root’s recommendation, Congress overcame some die-hard opposition in 1903 when it created the Chief of Staff to replace the Commanding General and to serve as the chief army advisor to the President of the United States through the Secretary of War and organized a general staff to prepare war plans, make policy, and make the War Department more efficient and attune to the 20th century. However, Congress retained some of the bureaus, such as the Adjutant General. Although hostility to the reforms existed for several years, the newly organized general staff issued the Army’s first field service regulations in 1905 to govern and organize troops in the field, drew up plans for an expeditionary force to be sent to Cuba in 1906, designed plans for three permanent divisions composed of Regular Army and National Guard regiments in 1910 that were never formed because troubles on the Mexican border led to the creation of temporary divisions in 1911, and equipped the Army with state-of-the-art weapons and equipment for combat on the modern battlefield.1 Equally important, the War Department introduced a comprehensive, sequential 16 education system that ran from the garrison schools to the Army War College to raise the standards of professional training of officers. In 1901, the War Department directed that the educational system for officers would be the US Military Academy at West Point, a school at each post for elementary instruction in theory and practice, five service schools (the Artillery School, the Engineer School of Application, the School of Antisubmarine Defense, the School of Application for Cavalry and Field Artillery, and the Army Medical School), the General Staff and Service College, and the Army War College. As the requirement for specialized training grew with the introduction of new weapons and equipment, the War Department opened the Signal School in 1905, the School of Fire for Field Artillery in 1911, and the School of Musketry in 1913.2 Organizing the School of Fire for Field Artillery capped the changes in the Field Artillery that had been underway for several years. A Congressional act of February 1901 expanded the Infantry from 25 to 30 regiments and dissolved the Artillery’s regimental organization that had been in place since the Reorganization of 1821, which mixed coast and field artillery units together in the same regiment and rotated officers between the two artilleries. The 1901 act established an Artillery Corps of Coast Artillery with 126 companies and Field Artillery with 30 batteries that included field, mountain, and horse batteries under a Chief of Artillery and to serve on the Army General Staff with Brigadier General William F. Randolph being the first chief. Yet, the act failed to divorce the Field Artillery from the Coast Artillery totally and preserved the wasteful practice of rotating officers between two artilleries that had no tactical relationship with each other. This hurt both branches by hindering the efficiency of either and produced a generic artillery officer just at the time that field artillery and coast artillery technology was growing more sophisticated and different from each other.3 Although the first field artillery unit, the 29th Field Artillery Battery, organized in Havana, Cuba, in 1901 with Captain Edward E. Gayle as commander in response to the Congressional act of February 1901, transferred to Fort Sill on 9 January 1902 and initiated the slow process of converting the post from a cavalry to a field artillery installation, a more significant development came several years later.4 Impressed with Fort Sill’s size and varied terrain that was suitable for field artillery training, Lieutenant General Adna R. Chaffee, the Chief of Staff of the Army, decided early in 1905 to station a provisional field artillery regiment of two battalions there. Under the command of Colonel Walter Howe, the provisional regiment would consist of the 2d, 8th, 13th, 14th, 15th, and 21st batteries of field artillery and would have the mission of training officers and enlisted personnel in the latest field artillery tactics and techniques, meaning indirect fire. The regiment’s first units arrived on 29 June 1905 and established a camp where Colonel (Brevet Major General) Benjamin H. Grierson’s 10th Cavalry Regiment had camped in 1868 and 1869. Economy measures unfortunately caused the War Department to disband the regiment along with its fellow provisional field artillery regiment at Fort Riley, Kansas, in November 1905.5 Notwithstanding this decision, the War Department’s endeavor to modernize its combat forces to fight a European-style enemy carried on and eventually led to creating the Field Artillery on a permanent basis. In 1904, the Chief of Artillery, Brigadier General 17 Joseph P. Story, urged forming the Field Artillery into permanent battalions and regiments during peacetime. By doing this, the Field Artillery could support the Infantry and Cavalry on the mobile battlefield more effectively and could eliminate the striking organizational deficiencies highlighted during the Spanish-American War when the War Department could only muster a provisional battalion of four field batteries equipped with obsolete equipment for combat duty in Cuba.6 In his annual report for 1904, Story emphatically noted, “Divisions, corps, and armies should have their chiefs of artillery, who should be in actual command of all of their field artillery, and they should be provided with adequate staffs. . . . Field Artillery should in time of peace be organized into tactical units” to prepare for war.7 In an even more trenchant indictment about the inadequate state of preparedness and the need for reforming the Field Artillery, Story added, “There is no first-class power which has so systematically neglected its field artillery as the United States.”8 Echoing these sentiments and going one step further, Story’s successor, Brigadier General Arthur Murray, discussed the differing missions of the two artilleries. He explained in 1906 that the Coast Artillery existed solely for harbor defense and had no tactical relation to the “active forces of infantry, cavalry, or field artillery, the three fighting elements of a mobile army.”9 Murray advised the War Department, “It is a sound military principle that only such arms of the service as have a fighting or tactical relation with each other should be combined for organization purposes.”10 Both generals concurred that the Field Artillery and the Coast Artillery should be separated because they had entirely different tactical missions and needs.11 After much prodding by concerned officers in the War Department, especially Story and Murray, Congress finally acknowledged the differences between the two artilleries and took appropriate action. On 25 January 1907, a Congressional act separated the Coast Artillery and the Field Artillery into independent branches. The act permitted establishing permanent field artillery regiments and battalions; allowed the War Department to develop officers, noncommissioned officers, and enlisted personnel with field artillery expertise; and ended the damaging policy of rotating personnel between the two artilleries.12 Several months later, the Field Artillery became a reality. War Department General Orders No. 118 of 31 May 1907 formed the Field Artillery into six regiments (three mounted, two mountain, and one horse) of two battalions each. With the passage of the January 1907 act and the subsequent War Department General Orders of 31 May 1907, the Field Artillery achieved a new status within the War Department by becoming an official combat arms branch. Before, it had been subordinate to the Coast Artillery that had received most of the money and attention because it defended the country’s vulnerable harbors against enemy naval attacks.13 The separation of the two artilleries directly influenced Fort Sill. In May 1907, the Chief of Staff of the Army, Major General J. Franklin Bell (1906-1910), moved the last cavalry regiment (13th Cavalry Regiment) from Fort Sill and replaced it with the 1st Field Artillery Regiment that had been created after the separation. Transferring the last cavalry unit to another post and concentrating the 1st Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Sill in June 1907 eliminated the last vestiges of the frontier army and started the process of turning the 18 post into a home for field artillery.14 To accommodate the field artillery regiment and to fulfill his desire to make Fort Sill into a brigade or division post but not solely a field artillery post as part of the overall drive to modernize, Bell outlined an ambitious construction program. He contemplated spending $20 million to make Fort Sill a military show place for the country and envisioned building new facilities along the south boundary of the reservation as far west as Signal Mountain. Bell also wanted to build an electric railroad between Lawton and the post, to construct a hotel atop Signal Mountain, and to tear down the old limestone buildings erected by the 10th Cavalry Regiment in the 1870s. As might be expected, Bell met stiff resistance from romantics, including Secretary of War William H. Taft, when he suggested razing Fort Sill’s historic limestone buildings. Although Taft and his fellow idealists supported modernizing and expanding Fort Sill, they wanted to maintain the limestone buildings as a memorial of the post’s frontier days. Taft even visited the post and then decided to retain the limestone buildings.15 Influenced by Taft and preservationists and based upon a report by the Corps of Engineers that opposed expanding the post along its southern boundary where the soldiers would have easy access to whiskey peddlers and other unsavory people from the neighboring town of Lawton, Bell picked a more isolated location for his post. Erected on the 1869 site of Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment’s parade ground about one mile to the west of the original post, New Post as it was called to distinguish it from the original post, now known as Old Post where the old limestone buildings stood, consisted of brick and concrete buildings. Construction began in 1909 and was completed in 1911.16 As critical as the arrival of the 1st Field Artillery Regiment and the construction of New Post were, the opening of the School of Fire for Field Artillery on 15 September 1911 played an even more pivotal role of moving the post away from its cavalry roots and into the 20th century. The separation of the Coast Artillery and the Field Artillery in 1907 deprived field artillerymen of desperately needed formal training on sophisticated weapons that were being introduced and new gunnery techniques. Through 1906, field artillery and coast artillery personnel received formal training at the Artillery School, Fortress Monroe, Virginia, where they pointed their field artillery pieces out into the ocean and aimed at floating barrels employing direct fire techniques. This training, even though it was rudimentary and better than none, met the requirements for training field artillerymen to employ direct fire and to engage immobile objects. Anticipating a separation of the two artilleries in the near future and recognizing that the Field Artillery and Coast Artillery were actually two different branches with dissimilar missions, the Artillery School, renamed the Coast Artillery School in 1907 to reflect its new orientation, eliminated all field artillery training from its curriculum in 1906 and focused its attention on training coast artillerymen on the latest coast artillery tactics and techniques.17 This restructured curriculum at the Coast Artillery School, the creation of two independent artilleries in 1907, the adoption of sophisticated field artillery weapons, the push to introduce indirect fire that was slowly replacing direct fire, and poor gunnery scores by field artillerymen reinforced the requirement for field artillery training. Not 19 even the Mounted Service School at Fort Riley, Kansas, created by the War Department in 1907 to replace the ineffective School of Practice for Cavalry and Field Artillery at Fort Riley that had opened in 1892 and operated under several names over the years with the mission of teaching equitation and field artillery tactics, filled the void created by the Coast Artillery School’s decision to furnish coast artillery instruction exclusively. The Fort Riley schools failed to train field artillerymen because they stressed equitation at the expense of field artillery instruction. Created by the War Department in 1902 to train lieutenants and captains, to replace the ineffective post lyceums, and to serve as the foundation of a progressive education system, the garrison schools with their emphasis on rote memorization, military discipline, military administration, and theoretical instruction also fell short in developing trained field artillerymen. Basically, the War Department did not have a formal institution to pick up the slack of training field artillerymen after 1907.18 Congressional fiscal thriftiness also influenced the quality of field artillery training. Although the War Department was abandoning its small garrisons in the makeshift forts built during the campaigns in the Trans-Mississippi West against the Native Americans in the later decades of 19th century and concentrating its forces in large numbers, advocating professional education, modernizing its equipment, and creating a general staff, limited Congressional funding restricted the impact of the educational and training reforms and led to ammunition shortages to curtail firing practice for field artillerymen.19 Commenting upon this state of training for field artillerymen, an anonymous writer in the Field Artillery Journal lamented. He wrote in mid-1911: We now have schools of many kinds, but none for the field artillery. We even have a school of musketry. . . There is no school of fire. . . Such a school is needed not to teach the enlisted men how to shoot, but to teach the officers the observation and application of the fire of their batteries.20 Without the availability of standardized technical and tactical training at a school of fire of some kind, this writer and other concerned field artillery officers understood that their branch’s future was at risk. Field artillerymen would have difficulties acquiring the requisite skills to operate the new weapons, to employ indirect fire, and to fight on the new battlefield; and the shortcomings with the Field Artillery highlighted by the Spanish- American War would persist.21 An editorial in the Field Artillery Journal of July-September 1915 also recalled the dire situation of the Field Artillery during the first decade of the 20th century. It pointed out: The technical training of our field artillery officers depended entirely upon chance. Some officers had no training at all. . . . Others were fortunate enough to serve under superiors who were able and willing to impart the knowledge which they themselves had acquired solely through their own efforts. But there was no system whatsoever. It was apparently a matter of indifference to the War Department whether the field artillery was able to make good use of its materiel or not.22 20 As this editorial emphatically reinforced, field artillerymen lacked suitable training to make them competent on the modern battlefield as it existed at the time and learned their trade by happenstance. Although field artillery units were consolidated into six regiments after 1907, the small branch was still scattered over 10 posts across the continental United States that were generally commanded by an infantry or cavalry officer who had little interest or knowledge in field artillery issues and centered their energies on parade ground drill and other time-consuming duties that were irrelevant to combat. Only the 6th Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Riley with all of its units stationed at one post published an annual training schedule for its two battalions. With the exception of the 6th Field Artillery Regiment, field artillerymen rarely trained in units larger than the battery and never learned the techniques of employing indirect fire. Not even the 6th Field Artillery Regiment and the leading field artillery intellectuals of the time, such as Captain William J. Snow who later became the Chief of Field Artillery (1918-1927) and Captain Fox Conner who later served as the chief of the Operations Section of the General Headquarters, American Expeditionary Force in World War I and was a brilliant student of warfare, stressed indirect fire techniques. They emphasized fighting in the open by employing direct fire even though they understood the revolutionary nature of indirect fire and the compelling need to adopt it.23 Such circumstances led to action. In 1908, the Chief of Coast Artillery, Major General Arthur Murray, recommended creating a school of fire for field artillery. It would fill the void created by the separation of the two artilleries and teach modern field artillery fire direction techniques more thoroughly than conditions at the time allowed. About the same time, President Theodore Roosevelt and a group of progressive field artillery officers, including Major William J. Lassiter who was detailed as a field artillery officer to the Inspector General’s Office, took up the banner of reform. They criticized the Field Artillery’s poor performance in the Spanish-American War and backwardness compared to its counterparts in foreign armies and also understood the serious limitations of field artillery training of the time. If the War Department wanted to stay abreast of foreign armies in an age characterized by growing imperial rivalries over colonies that could easily erupt into a major war, it required trained field artillerymen to support the other combat arms on the mobile battlefield. This demanded formal training and a large military installation with sufficient space for target practice and field maneuvers.24 At President Roosevelt’s direction, the War Department sent Captain Dan T. Moore of the 6th Field Artillery Regiment, who was educated in Switzerland and Germany and was a former aide to the President, to Europe in 1908-1909 to observe how the Europeans trained their field artillery officers and enlisted personnel. During those years, he visited field artillery schools in Austria, Hungary, Holland, England, and Italy and actually studied at the German Field Artillery School at Juterborg.25 The German field artillery school especially Major General William J. Snow Chief of Field Artillery 1918-1927 21 impressed Moore. It taught officers how to shoot, developed and improved methods of fire, tested new material, and emphasized practical firing and tactical exercises, among other things. Moreover, the Prussians founded their school under circumstances replicating those in the American army of the early 20th century. New rifled, breech-loading field artillery appearing in the 1850s and 1860s and the poor performance of Prussian field artillery in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 had prodded the Prussians to open the Juterborg school in 1867. Likewise, the appearance of new weapons, the existence of inadequately trained field artillerymen, the disappointing performance of field artillery units in the Spanish- American War, and the introduction of indirect fire demanded the formation of a field artillery school in the United States.26 Using the German field artillery school as a model and acting under the direction of Colonel Edwin St. Greble of the Office of the Chief of Staff in the War Department, headed by Major General Leonard Wood, Moore traveled to Fort Sill in November 1910 to begin laying the foundation for a field artillery school at the isolated Oklahoma post. Although the War Department was still considering other sites for a school, Fort Sill favorably impressed Moore as it had done Murray several years earlier in 1906. The post’s wide expanse of land and varied terrain provided sufficient room for target practice and the tactical handling of field artillery. Along with the area’s mild climate that would permit training all year, these factors led Moore to determine that Fort Sill would be worth its cost many times over to the government. As part of a board composed of Lieutenant Colonel D. J. Rumbaugh of the 1st Field Artillery Regiment who was replaced by Colonel Henry M. Andrews of the 1st Field Artillery Regiment in March 1911 and Captain Jesse Langdon of the 1st Field Artillery Regiment, Moore started drafting a concept plan for a field artillery school at Fort Sill in January 1911.27 Critical obstacles soon raised the issue about the suitability of the post. As of 1911, Chiricahua Apache prisoners of war occupied much of the post. They grazed cattle on the proposed firing ranges.28 Apprehensive about this potentially dangerous situation and a conflict with the Chiricahua Apaches, Moore frequently wrote St. Greble, seeking consolation and guidance.29 On 16 March 1911 Moore explained, “[Chiricahua Apache] villages are now scattered in such a way that many miles of the reservation cannot be used for target practice without shooting over or near one of them.”30 Also, the Chiricahua Apache cattle wandered freely around the post, trampled gardens and lawns, and even tipped over garbage cans.31 Acknowledging this, the Adjutant General of the War Department, Major General Fred C. Ainsworth, refused to give permission to develop firing ranges on Fort Sill unless the “lives and property” of the Chiricahuas’ were protected; and this position presented a serious barrier to surmount.32 Thus, in the eyes of Moore, the War Department wanted to use Fort Sill for two contradictory purposes, prompting him to propose a solution. The War Department desired Captain Dan T. Moore Field Artillery School Commandant 19 Jul 1911-15 Sep 1914 22 to open a school of fire for field artillery there, while maintaining Chiricahua Apaches on the same land. To overcome this, Moore suggested setting aside a certain amount of land for the Native Americans for farming and grazing their cattle and dedicating the rest of the land for military purposes. As Moore conceded, this proposal would force the Native Americans to reduce the size of their cattle herd because grazing and growing hay for feed for the winter months would be seriously restricted by the reduction in the amount of available land and would mean eventual relocation. This solution basically split Fort Sill into two areas. While one would be set aside for military use, the other would be occupied and used by the Native Americans.33 Moore noted another serious drawback in establishing the school at Fort Sill.34 During the dry season in the summer months, conducting target practice would be impossible without setting fire to the prairie grass that would easily burn out of control. He spelled out vividly, “These fires would cause more damage to the Indians indirectly, than any other cause, by burning up the feed of their cattle.”35 Interestingly, the Chiricahua Apaches cut and baled hay for income; and the fires caused by field artillery projectiles would potentially reduce their income. In fact, the Chiricahua Apaches cut and baled publicly-owned hay and sold it to the government. The government then issued the same hay back to the Native Americans for free to feed their stock.36 Notwithstanding the possibility of field artillery target practice setting fire to acres of hay, the thorny and controversial hay business, and the existence of Native Americans on the post, Moore championed establishing a field artillery school on Fort Sill because its size and varied terrain outweighed the installation’s limitations. On 17 March 1911 he pleaded, “This is such a magnificent reservation for artillery work that it would be a shame to lose it –- so we have to just got to get the matter fixed up in some way.”37 In a letter dated 23 March 1911, St. Greble responded to Moore’s concerns. “The War Department will probably decide what is to be done with the Apache prisoners and I think that they will probably be removed from the reservation,” he advised.38 This would eventually eliminate one worry. Trying to provide a perspective, St. Greble then added that Native Americans’ property rights and lives had been protected in the past and that ways to safeguard them in the future could be found. He failed to acknowledge that field artillery firing practice had been nonexistent before the arrival of field artillery units at the beginning of the century with their requirements for ranges. Thus, protecting property and lives had been relatively easy when Fort Sill had been a cavalry post and when the need for large firing ranges was nonexistent.39 Addressing the anxiety about fire, St. Greble added, “In firing you can easily prevent fires by cutting the grass on the zones which you will use or by back burning it.”40 Such words undoubtedly reassured Moore about the future of the school at Fort Sill but at the same time informed him that he would have to work around the Native Americans at least temporarily until the War Department could decide what to do with them. In view of this, Moore decided to confine the firing ranges to south of Medicine Creek and west of the railroad tracks to minimize contact between the Chiricahua Apaches and the Army. This reduced the number of firing positions available to the students and had the potential of downgrading the quality of the instruction at the same time. Essentially, this decision restricted a portion of Fort Sill to military uses and further strengthened the War Department’s determination to move the Chiricahua Apaches off the post.41 23 With these issues being resolved at least for the time being, Moore and the rest of the board pressed forward with developing the school. As they battled funding constraints established by the War Department in an era of limited Congressional budgets for the military, Moore and his colleagues encountered another critical problem that overshadowed the challenge presented by the Native Americans and the potential of fire and that threatened to prevent opening the school at Fort Sill.42 The post lacked sufficient water to support the anticipated expanded operations, especially during a drought.43 Writing St. Greble on 14 June 1911, Moore commented, “The question that is worrying me, is whether or not we are going to have enough water for the needs of the School, and whether under the present conditions it is advisable to establish it here at considerable expense to the Government with the possibility of having to abandon the whole plant on account of lack of water.”44 Moore wrote four days later, “We cannot count on getting more than 40,000 gallons a day from every available source, and I believe that this is a large estimate.”45 Reflecting upon the serious predicament, Moore even suggested curtailing the size of the garrison to support the school and dropping all plans for assembling the 5th Field Artillery Regiment at Fort Sill to support training.46 From Moore’s perspective, the neighboring City of Lawton contributed to the water shortage. Shortly after it had been founded in 1901, the city constructed a dam on Medicine Bluff Creek for a source of water and obtained permission from the War Department to build a pipeline across Fort Sill to carry water from the artificial lake, Lake Lawtonka, created by the dam, to the city. Unfortunately, the dam greatly lowered the level of the creek. In fact, Moore wrote St. Greble on 29 June 1911, “Medicine Creek is now dry and has been for two years.”47 Moore commented that the fort’s water supply would remain critical until the rain and runoff had filled the dam and caused it to overflow.48 To aggravate matters even more, the owners of Medicine Park to the north of Fort Sill erected two dams across the Medicine Creek for bathing and boating even though state laws prohibited private citizens from building dams on streams.49 This further decreased the flow of the creek and prevented Fort Sill from benefiting from “all of our own water shed,” according to Moore.50 Without these dams Fort Sill would have plenty of water, and furnishing water for the additional personnel required to staff the School of Fire for Field Artillery would be easy. Fortunately, Fort Sill found a solution. It started borrowing water from Lawton’s 10-inch pipeline and drawing water from old wells. Although the shortage still existed, the school could at least open with sufficient water to support operations. Later in the summer, runoff nearly filled Lake Lawtonka to improve the water situation.51 Against this difficult backdrop, Moore expressed his thoughts about the significance of the school. On 25 May 1911 he penned, “On the other hand all you can expect is value received for your money, and this I claim the School will give, not only to us field artillerymen but to the army at large.”52 He wrote: I say the army at large, because in event of war the Infantry and Cavalry will be the ones that will pay in blood for the mistakes made by our arm, through the lack of opportunity [training] given to its officers. A field artillery captain who cannot direct the fire of his battery is a useless impedimenta to any army, and the worst point is that the other fellow, generally the infantry men, pay for his mistakes.53 As his missive to St. Greble clearly noted, Moore understood the importance of fire 24 support in combined arms warfare, the challenge of teaching officers and soldiers indirect fire, and the requirement for tactically and technically competent field artillerymen. Without qualified officers the Field Artillery would have difficulties supporting the Infantry and Cavalry on the modern battlefield, and countless number of lives would be needlessly lost. In view of recent European and American wars, growing international rivalries over colonies, and the emergence of the United States as a significant economic power and a challenger to European dominance throughout the world, the War Department could ill afford to cling to the old haphazard ways of training field artillerymen. It had to develop competent and efficient officers and enlisted soldiers, in this case, field artillerymen, in peacetime to keep abreast of foreign military developments. The Europeans, the Russians, and the Japanese were busily training their armies in the latest techniques, tactics, and procedures and adopting state-of-the-art lethal weapons and equipment. In view of the arms race, the United States could not fall further behind militarily. Thus, in Moore’s mind, a field artillery school at Fort Sill was important and could not be dismissed as a luxury. Improvements in modernizing American field guns and howitzers with their attending limbers and caissons, which were generally as good as their European counterparts, compelled developing skilled field artillerymen.54 Given this scenario and his understanding of American strategic interests, Moore assumed personal responsibility for the school’s success.55 On 3 June 1911 Moore wrote St. Greble, “I now feel that the School is well started and that if we do not succeed it will be our own fault.”56 To produce officers and enlisted personnel that could furnish fire support required obtaining a capable staff and faculty for the School of Fire. On 30 March 1911, Moore composed a letter to St. Greble about the need for an African-American detachment to serve as mounted orderlies and janitors. In that same communiqué, Moore explained the necessity for a white detachment to serve as blacksmiths, mechanics, carpenters, and painters and to operate the target ranges.57 Over the next several weeks, Moore repeatedly urged the War Department to detail the most capable officers to the school to serve as instructors and commanders of the instruction batteries.58 On 10 April 1911, St. Greble answered one of Moore’s initial queries about personnel. “Your scheme for the personnel would be beautiful if you know of any way by which you can get them: I do not unless Congress will legislate in the matter,” St. Greble impatiently retorted.59 He then sarcastically suggested getting the President of the United States to authorize increasing the strengths of field batteries to create a surplus that could be drawn upon to fill the school’s staff and faculty and observed that the War Department would probably not approve of Moore’s list of desired officers anyway.60 Early on, obtaining qualified personnel for the school staff, faculty, and instruction batteries to support and train the students posed a vexing problem for Moore as St. Greble’s comments suggested. In 1911, the Army had fewer than 300 field artillery officers; everyone had to be utilized to the best advantage. Using officers as instructors did not seem to be wise because the War Department had a shortage of officers and enlisted personnel. Sending people to staff the school, even though the War Department wanted to do so, meant stripping them from operational units and intensifying existing personnel shortages in field batteries and battalions. This certainly was not a desired end-state for the operational force and meant sacrificing it for the training institution.61 In