Battalion: An Organizational Study of the United States Infantry
Before 1898
The estate of the late John Sayen has graciously given the Tactical Notebook permission to serialize his study of the organizational evolution of American infantry battalions. The author’s preface may be found by means of the following link:
The history of today’s United States Army and Marine Corps infantry battalions really began in 1898. Prior to that time, the infantry’s standard large fighting unit had been the regiment. In its essential characteristics, the infantry regiment had scarcely changed since the 1775-83 War for Independence. Based upon British Army practice, it was designed to accommodate the close order tactics of the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, which grew out of the limitations of the inaccurate, short-ranged, slow-firing, and unreliable smoothbore flintlock muskets that most soldiers carried. From 1812 onward the “sharp end” of a US Army regiment consisted of 10 small companies grouped into a single battalion. (Smaller groups of companies might form temporary battalions to meet particular situations). Each company traditionally had three officers (a captain, a first lieutenant and a second lieutenant) and a number of enlisted men that could range from 50 or so in a Regular Army company in peacetime to up to 100 in a company raised for war.[1] Despite recruiting shortfalls and high desertion rates, companies in peacetime generally stayed closer to their authorized strengths than they did in war. Casualties and other causes, to be discussed below, usually kept wartime companies below 50% strength.[2]
Although the number and ranks of the men that a company was authorized had always been published, a company’s internal structure was not officially specified until 1918. Instead, a captain configured his company according to standing Army regulations (as he understood them), the number of men actually available, and his own judgement. Usually this consisted of forming his corporals and privates into eight-man squads and then grouping those squads into two or more platoons.[3]
On paper a colonel commanded each regiment. A lieutenant colonel assisted him and a major commanded each battalion. Given that an infantry regiments normally had only one battalion (and thus only one major) the fact that three “field grade” officers were in charge of it might seem excessive.[4] It was in fact was a survival from British tradition under which a colonel was usually too important to command his own regiment. Being more akin to a proprietor than a commander, he might actually be a general officer, or a powerful nobleman. His American counterpart (often an influential politician) was also frequently absent and for similar reasons. Under either system, command of a regiment in the field tended to devolve upon its lieutenant colonel, or even its major. Likewise, three officers were more than what was needed to command each company. However, just as their field grade counterparts were often away from their regiments company officers were often absent from their companies. They might have staff duties with the regiment or a higher headquarters, or they might be sick, on leave, or off recruiting new men. In any given company, the first lieutenant usually served as the captain’s principal deputy and relief while the second lieutenant actually functioned, more often than not, as an officer trainee, learning his duties “on the job.”[5]
These infantry regiments served in an army that, by European standards, was extremely small in size, geographically and culturally isolated, indifferently equipped, doctrinally backward, and generally inconsequential. Although by 1898 the United States commanded a huge landmass, a burgeoning population, and a rapidly developing industrial base, its army was still largely a relic of the Civil War. During that conflict, some 1,696 infantry regiments served at one time or another on the Union side but only 19 were Regular Army and only 10 of those had existed before the war. As in previous conflicts, the various state militias furnished most of the wartime army. However, militia units as such were not used. The militia was a home defense force whose members could not be compelled to serve outside their local areas. They could volunteer to do so, however, and the procedure at the start of a war would be for the President to send out a call for a fixed number of volunteers (broken down by state) which the militias could then answer. A militia regiment in which a minimum of two thirds or so (depending on the terms of the call) of the members volunteered for federal service could be taken on as a regiment of United States Volunteers with all volunteering members retaining their militia ranks and positions. New recruits could then be used to bring existing Volunteer regiments to full strength and to create new ones. After the first few months of the war, state governors were allowed to fill officer vacancies in the Volunteers, a power they often used to reward their friends and political cronies. When casualties depleted a Union Army Volunteer regiment, the governor of its home state preferred to replace it with a new regiment rather than rebuild it. This enabled the governor to appoint all the new regiment’s officers, thus giving him many more favors that he could use to pay off his political debts.[6]
In battle, the companies of a regiment originally fought in line formation two ranks deep, the men standing shoulder to shoulder. The regiment would arrange its companies in column for movement or in line for combat. The appearance of the percussion cap rifled musket shortly before the Civil War did much to make the regiments tactically obsolete. The new rifles were not only more reliable than the old flintlocks but had three times the effective range. Their use mandated greater dispersion. Not only could fewer men hold a given frontage but musket era close order formations now presented too easy a target. The standard two-rank firing line remained in use but men were spaced about twice as far apart, thus doubling the regiment’s frontage. This might have created serious tactical control problems but as most regiments were already operating at half strength or less, no major organizational change (such as permanently grouping the regiment’s companies into two or more battalions) was necessary.[7]
When the Volunteers went home at the end of the Civil War, the Regular Army actually expanded. It needed extra troops both to occupy the South and to police the western territories. In 1870, after the occupation of the South had ended, Congress trimmed the Army from an authorized strength of nearly 55,000 down to 30,000 men. The Army distributed these among a number of administrative departments and several territorial commands, also called “departments.” The territorial departments controlled the Army’s 25 infantry regiments (down from 45 in 1867), 10 cavalry, and 5 artillery regiments. They sometimes assumed tactical responsibilities because in peacetime, Congress would authorize no tactical headquarters above the regimental level. New budget cuts in 1876 further reduced the Army to about 25,000, largely through a sharp reduction in the number of infantry privates. However, in response to the disaster at the Little Big Horn Congress authorized another 2,500 privates for the cavalry regiments. For a time, this made cavalry regiments individually much larger than infantry regiments though this size difference later diminished as personnel were redistributed. In 1890, after the Indian wars had ended, each infantry regiment “skeletonized” two of its rifle companies in order to strengthen the other eight. The officers from the skeletonized companies typically served as inspectors of state militia units or to taught “military science” at selected colleges. The regiment’s remaining companies usually formed two provisional battalions. However, because the Army had dispersed itself among hundreds of small posts that seldom had more than one or two companies apiece the provisional battalions were mainly symbolic. Nevertheless, many officers wanted to get away from Civil War style single battalion regiments and achieve the greater flexibility that multiple battalions per regiment would make possible. Each cavalry or artillery regiment was already using a structure of three battalions (or squadrons) of four companies (or troops) each but Congress refused to spend the money to apply this to the infantry. In its view infantry regiments need only be cadre formations in peacetime because they had no peacetime missions. They were not fighting the Indians like the cavalry, nor manning coastal fortresses like the artillery.[8]
Anachronistic as the late Nineteenth Century organization of the U.S. Army’s infantry may have been, it is worth noting that it was not unique. The challenges that the Army faced in policing the American West were not unlike those experienced by the British or French in their Nineteenth, and early Twentieth Century roles as European colonizers of Africa and Asia. They too fielded battalions that featured relatively large numbers of smaller companies; British battalions had eight companies apiece. The standard French infantry battalion had six companies until about 1875 while a Chasseur, or light infantry battalion could have as many as ten. The standard company strength in both these armies was three officers and 75 to 125 men, whereas post-Civil War US Army infantry companies did not exceed 65 enlisted men. All these tactical organizations were holdovers from the musket era. Deployed in close order each of these small companies made a compact enough formation for one man, the company commander, to control (squads and platoons served more to facilitate firing than maneuver). That they lingered for as long as they did was due as much to institutional inertia as from a lack of sophisticated opponents. More but smaller companies also meant more commands for captains and made it easier for their parent battalions to create multiple detachments, often a useful capability in “irregular” warfare. Nevertheless, their defeat at the hands of the Prussians in 1870-71 caused the French to move to a German style battalion that had four large 200-250-man companies. This battalion was much simpler to control and maneuver and needed relatively fewer supply and administrative personnel. As firepower improvements increased the need for battlefield dispersion, the old 75-125-man companies gradually became too large to fight as single entities but too small to split into tactically effective sub-units. However, a 200-250-man company could function as a smaller but more efficient version of one of the old battalions, its three or four platoons being individually as effective as one of the old companies. The British had considered switching to large companies after the Crimean War but only the fiascoes of the Boer War persuaded them to move seriously in that direction. The actual changeover did not finally occur until the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) left for France in 1914. Even after that, eight-company battalions lingered on in the colonies until they were finally phased out in 1918-19.[9]
If US Army infantry regiments remained weak in manpower, their firepower did slowly improve. Immediately following the Civil War, the Army completely equipped itself with breechloaders by converting its existing muzzleloaders to Springfield “trap door” rifles. Although the later models used metallic cartridges and were fairly reliable, all the Springfield trap door rifles were heavy, single-shot weapons that suffered from a heavy recoil. However, they were only intended as a stopgap until the Army Ordnance Department could come up with something better. It was not until 1892, however, that the Ordnance Department finally settled on the Norwegian designed Krag-Jörgensen repeating rifle. The “Krag” was a light and serviceable weapon that fired a relatively modern .30 caliber (7.62mm) bullet whose higher muzzle velocity was expected to compensate for its smaller size. Like contemporary Mauser rifles, it used a moveable bolt to rapidly feed cartridges into its chamber from a five-round magazine. In this respect, the Krag was a true repeater. Unfortunately, its weak locking mechanism not only reduced its accuracy but also limited its ammunition’s propelling charge. Worse, Mauser-type five-round “stripper clips” that could fill a five-round magazine with a single motion, would not work with the Krag. Cartridges could only be inserted one at a time and this made the process of filling the Krag’s magazine so slow that the rifle was normally used only as a single loader, the magazine being reserved for emergencies. Oddly enough, the Ordnance Department may have found the Krag’s inefficient magazine attractive because of the ammunition economy that it imposed.[10]
The US Navy, however, found the Krag so objectionable that it refused to issue it to its sailors and Marines. Instead, it selected the M1895 Lee straight-pull repeating rifle. This weapon was easily loaded by stripper clip but it was chambered for an unusually small .236 (6mm) caliber cartridge that lacked stopping power. Further, the Lee’s straight pull action, although fast, was weak and unreliable. The service life of the new rifle would be short.[11]
In 1898, the United States Navy still maintained a Marine Corps as one of its subdivisions, although the Marines had largely subordinated their infantry functions to other tasks. Marines were soldiers originally recruited into most navies for service aboard wooden sailing ships. In the close-range combat characteristic of that era, Marine musketeers could add significantly to a ship’s firepower or to the strength of a boarding or landing party. Marines could also serve as auxiliary seamen or gunners although, contrary to popular myth, British and American Marines rarely took station in the rigging to fire down on the decks of enemy ships. Rapid or accurate musket fire from the “fighting tops” was, at best, very difficult to achieve and in any case only trained seamen were obliged to go aloft; musketeers were far more efficiently employed from the deck.[12]
The arrival of steam propulsion and heavier cannon ensured that future naval battles would be fought from well beyond small arms range. Marines could still serve in the occasional landing party, but mostly they supplemented the sailors by providing semi-skilled labor at sea and, in battle, by operating some of their ship’s lighter cannon. They also acted as seagoing police but this added nothing to their popularity. Like their Army counterparts, Marine officers suffered from long and monotonous service with few promotion prospects. When the Army went under the budget cutter’s axe in 1876, the Marines were not spared. Congress reduced them from about 3,000 men to 2,000, led by a mere 75 officers. The Marine Corps’ Commandant was reduced in rank from brigadier general to colonel. When, in 1885 Congress finally permitted the Navy to start replacing its wooden Civil War era vessels with modern steel warships, the Marines lobbied to be allowed to man the new ships’ secondary batteries. They argued that since the ships resembled floating fortresses their crews would have to train more like soldiers and Marines were cheaper to maintain than sailors. Such suggestions merely helped to fuel a strong movement among the Navy line officers to remove the anachronistic Marines from their ships altogether. Such a move would amount to a bureaucratic death sentence for the Marine Corps since it would almost certainly lead to its absorption by the Army. However, no one could think of a genuinely useful mission for the Marines. Even landing forces of the era were made up primarily of sailors (who were supposed to get the same infantry training that Marines did) and led by Naval officers. The fact that the Marines had let their infantry skills deteriorate to the point where, in 1887 only 98 Marine officers and enlisted men could qualify as marksmen or sharpshooters, added some weight to the Navy’s claim that its sailors made just as good “soldiers” as the Marines did. However, instead of remolding their Marines into something the Navy actually wanted Marine commandant Charles McCawley and his successor Charles Heywood merely redoubled their efforts to lobby Congress for a larger Marine Corps with more shipboard responsibilities.[13]
Unlike the Army, the Marines had no fixed tactical organization of any kind. During the Revolution, the Continental Marines formed separate companies and detachments. Each was an integral part of the crew of a particular warship. When the ship disappeared from the Navy list, so did its Marines. When Congress established a permanent United States Marine Corps in 1798, it did not revive the old companies. Instead, Marines were assigned to barracks located at the principal naval bases and ports. The barracks supplied detachments for shipboard duty. Each detachment typically had one or two officers and up to 60 men. If the Marines had to fight ashore, they would form themselves into temporary companies, battalions, or even a regiment or brigade. These ad hoc combat units used Army doctrine and structures as much as they could but since they could only use whatever manpower was immediately available, they tended to be of relatively small size. Major Waller’s “battalion” at Peking in 1900, for example, had only 130 men. These temporary units would disband as soon as their mission was complete. The United States Marines’ mentor organization, the British Royal Marines, used a similar system. The British Marines (who were not permanently established until 1755 and not “Royal” until 1802) used permanent numbered companies, but these never left their depots and only furnished individuals for shipboard and other duty, just like the US Marine barracks did. In later years, the Japanese Imperial Marines would also follow the practice of assembling temporary field units from manpower assigned to permanent depots. Like their American counterparts, British Marines acted as naval gunners and auxiliary seamen and they also served alongside sailors in Naval landing parties.[14]
Overall, the US Marine Corps of 1896 had changed remarkably little since 1798, despite revolutionary developments in both naval and land warfare. Its survival depended much more on its political influence within the halls of Congress and the Navy Department than on its substantive contribution to the nation’s defense.[15]
Editor’s Note: The format of the many appendices to this work fit poorly with Substack. For that reason, I have placed them on a PDF file that can be found at Military Learning Library, a website that I maintain.
[1] Although ten companies per infantry regiment was the norm there were exceptions. The nine Federal “New Army” regiments raised for the Civil War, for example, were each allowed three eight-company battalions. In practice, each of these battalions functioned as if it was a regiment itself but recruiting shortfalls left most New Army regiments unable to field more than two battalions apiece. The ten pre-war or “Old Army” regiments retained their original organizations. See Appendix 1.1 and 1.2 and the US Army Registers for 1860-1898.
[2] See Emory Upton, The Armies of Asia and Europe (New York, the Greenwood Press, undated reprint) and Emory Upton, The Military Policy of the United States (New York, the Greenwood Press, facsimile reprint first published 1904). For a detailed look at the earliest regimental organizations. See also Robert K. Wright Jr. The Continental Army (Washington DC, US Army Center of Military History 1983) and the tables in the U.S. Army Registers for 1860-1898 (all published Washington DC by the Adjutant General).
[3] John K. Mahon, Army Lineage Book Vol. II: Infantry (1953 Washington DC USGPO) p. 27; John K. Mahon and Romana Danysh Army Lineage Series, Infantry Part I: Regular Army (Washington DC Office of the Chief of Military History US Army 1972) p. 31 (cited below as Mahon & Danysh); and Weigley op cit p. 226. Gregory J. W. Irwin, The United States Infantry, an Illustrated History 1775-1918 (New York, Stirling Publishing Co 1988) p. 93; and Upton, Armies of Europe and Asia op cit.
[4] In 1847 Congress increased the number of majors to two per Regular Army infantry regiment/battalion. Because there was no retirement system, many officers remained on active duty long after they were too old to be of any use. The extra major was meant to ensure that the regiment had at least one field grade officer who was still young enough to be able to command it in the field. The outbreak of the Civil War ended this practice. See Upton, Military Policy of the United States p. 206.
[5] Russell F. Weigley, History of the United States Army enlarged edition (1984 Bloomington Indiana, Indiana University Press), pp. 207, 226 & 229-230; Gregory J. W. Urwin, The United States Infantry, An Illustrated History 1775-1918 (New York, Sterling Publishing Co 1988) pp. 93; Graham A. Cosmas, An Army for Empire (University of Missouri Press 1971) p. 109; also see Wright, The Continental Army op cit p. 48; and J. A. Houlding, Fit For Service; The Training of the British Army, 1715-1795 (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1981) pp. 313-314. See also the U.S. Army Registers for 1860-1898 (Washington DC, Adjutant General’s Office).
[6] Weigley op cit pp. 227 and 266; Leonard L. Lerwill et al, The Personnel Replacement System in the United States Army (Washington DC, US Army Center for Military History 1954; reprinted 1982 and 1988) p. 77; and Urwin op cit, pp. 96-97.
[7] Cosmas op cit pp. 89-91; Weigley pp. 226-227; John K. Mahon op cit pp. 23-27; Mahon & Danysh pp. 33-34; also see Upton and Wright for discussions on tactics.
[8] Weigley op cit pp. 266-267; Mahon, op cit pp. 23-27 and 60-61; Mahon & Danysh pp. 32-34; Weigley pp.282-283; Cosmas pp. 14-20 and 89-91.
[9] See Upton’s chapters on the British, French, and German armies in his Armies of Asia and Europe op cit;. See also John A. English, A Perspective on Infantry (New York, Praeger Publications 1981) pp.1-9 and David Woodward, Armies of the World 1854-1914 (New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1978). See also Brevet-Major Hereward Wake “The Four-Company Battalion in Battle” Journal of the Royal United Service Institute Volume (London November 1914); and Brigadier General F. I. Maxse “Battalion Organization” Journal of the Royal United Service Institute Volume (London January 1912).
[10] John K. Mahon p 28; Mahon & Danysh p 34; Urwin pp.120-123; Joseph E. Smith, Small Arms of the World, 10th Ed (Harrisburg PA, Stackpole Books 1973) pp. 63-64; Cosmas pp. 8 and 12..
[11] Jack Shulimson, The Marine Corps in Search of a Mission (Lawrence Kansas, University Press of Kansas 1993) p. 170 note 6 & pp. 174-175; Smith op cit p 63; and Col Robert Debs Heinl Jr USMC, Soldiers of the Sea, The United States Marine Corps, 1775-1962 (Baltimore MD, The Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company 1991 reprint originally published 1962) p 189.
[12] N. A. M. Roger, The Wooden World, An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, (Annnapolis MD, The Naval Institute Press 1986) pp. 28 & 55. See also Alfred J. Marini, The British Corps of Marines 1746-1771 and the United States Marine Corps, 1798-1818, A Comparative Study of the Early Administration and Institutionalization of Two Modern Marine Forces (Unpublished Thesis submitted to The Graduate School at the University of Maine, at Orono ME 1979) pp. 92-96 and 173.
[13] Shulimson passim; and Heinl, Soldiers of the Sea op cit p 150.
[14] Marini op cit and Col Robert D. Heinl Jr USMC, Soldiers of the Sea, The United States Marine Corps 1775-1962 (Baltimore Maryland, Nautical & Aviation Publishing Co originally published 1962) pp. 612-613; See also Shulimson op cit.
[15] Shulminson op cit