Men trained to shoot
with it, used to the slender line of its silver foresight and to the
delicate response of its hair-trigger, have made rare records in
marksmanship. The very difficulty of loading--the time it took--taught
its users to be accurate and not spend the shot.
This rifle stopped the British at Bunker Hill and Kings Mountain, and
over its long barrel Alvin York and some of the best shots of the
American army learned to bring their sights upward to the mark and tip
the hair-trigger when the bead first reached its object.
It was training acquired in the forest, the same manner of marksmanship,
the same self-reliance and individual resourcefulness as a soldier that
gave to Sergeant York the power to come back over the hill in Argonne
Forest, bringing one hundred and thirty-two prisoners, and to the army
under Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, more than a hundred years before,
the fighting resource to achieve victory with a loss of eight killed and
thirteen wounded, while England's records show that "about three
thousand of the British were struck with rifle bullets."
[Footnote: From "The True Andrew Jackson," by Cyrus Townsend Brady,
Chap. IV, p. 88; published by J. B. Lippincott Co., 1906. ]
The man trained behind the muzzle-loading rifle in all the wars America
has fought has been individually a fighter and "a shot," formerly but
little skilled in military training, who while obeying orders fought
along lines of personal initiative.
Pages:
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68