Entering the fort made the ranger sergeant feel uneasy-too much saluting, too many people scurrying around acting important. Ever since this latest struggle against the French and their Indian allies had started in earnest, things had been this way. For the first time in anyone's memory British regulars had been sent across the ocean in large numbers, bringing a whole array of notions that had turned fighting upside down. Suddenly, officers everywhere were making an infernal racket and worrying about how you looked, not how well you could shoot. They even dressed wrong. Their red coats and shiny buttons stood out clearly in the bright summer sun, but that was hardly something that you wanted when you were trying to sneak up on an enemy outpost!

Although the scene at the fort always reminded him of an anthill after someone had kicked it over, he sighed and motioned to the private with him to proceed. They had a mission to carry out. Major Rogers had told him to deliver a message personally to the general, and it was best not to dawdle. Pausing only to ask directions to headquarters from the British sergeant (he was easy to spot-the one with the axe on a stick, called a

halberd) at the gate, the two New Englanders set about their task. Although the private was young enough to be impressed by the fort, the sergeant had been in action for four years, and he wasn't about to let anyone forget that he wore the elite green uniform of a ranger.

The pride that he felt in his unit went hand in hand with the efficient arrangement of his weapons, uniform, and equipment. From his clean and well-maintained musket and hatchet to his leggings and moccasins, the sergeant projected an image of someone completely at home in the virgin forests that covered the frontiers of the North American colonies. Moving silently through the woods around Lake Champlain was second nature to this man a fact that Major Rogers had noticed and rewarded, first by handpicking and then by promoting him. Leading a small patrol and acting as the army's eyes and ears carried a high degree of risk and the burden of making split-second decisions that could mean life or death for the soldiers serving under him, but that was what the sergeant wanted to do, and it was what he did best.

Since the late seventeenth century, Britain and France had been engaged in a prolonged struggle for world dominance. Known loosely as the second Hundred Years' War," it pitted land and sea forces against each other at locations all around the globe. Colonists of both powers in North America and their Indian allies became embroiled in the conflict as well, a process which served to establish fundamental traditions in both the American and Canadian armed forces.

The term French and Indian War (1754-1763) refers to the portion of the contest between the two giants fought in the New World. To people of the time, North America formed a relatively minor theater compared with Europe, Africa, India, or even the Caribbean. But to Virginians or New Englanders or French Canadians the issue was far more immediate survival. Earlier conflicts had involved relatively tiny contingents raiding each other's outposts as the colonies expanded from their initial toeholds along the

coastline and major rivers. By the middle of the eighteenth century, however, colonial growth had brought imperial interests fully into play. At stake was control over the rich resources of the continent, including the fur trade.

In 1754 the governor of Virginia raised a small contingent of full-time soldiers, known as Provincials to distinguish them from Royal regulars. He sent them under a former militia officer, George Washington, to evict the French from the area that would later become Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The defeat of this Virginia force marked the opening round of the war. The initial disaster prompted the London government to send over two regular regiments of Redcoats the following year, while France dispatched similar forces to strengthen Canada. Although the outnumbered French and Canadians held the line for several years, the British began marshaling increasing numbers of Provincials and Redcoats and making preparations to bring the issue to conclusion.

Canada's security rested upon a network of defensive frontier fortifications that stretched from Louisbourg on the Atlantic, across the Great Lakes, and down the Ohio Valley. It also depended on using Indian allies offensively against the British colonies. For decades that combination had kept enemies at bay, but the British now found a way to bring their superior resources into play for a final offensive. Columns of regulars and Provincials assembled annually on the disputed frontiers for campaigns targeting key forts. The first of these French forts fell in 1758. A year later the capture of Niagara cut the French off from the support of western tribes, while major British forces took Quebec City and finally punched through the Lake Champlain fortifications. The remaining French troops, now isolated, surrendered Canada in 1760.

Colonial military institutions took form during the period between the first landings by English settlers at Jamestown and Plymouth and that final victory over the French one hundred and fifty years later. Starting with Old World concepts, the settlers gradually modified their inherited traditions to fit the realities of the New World-a natural process as colonial society matured and grew. Whether political, legal, or military, all of America's systems grew from English roots. Militarily, the origin was the militia establishment created by the Anglo-Saxons over a millennium earlier. It gave each man who benefited from society the obligation to protect it and, with certain exclusions, organized the ablebodied into part-time units on a local basis.

Colonists in North America created a defensive system to deal with two very different dangers: Indians and other Europeans. The former posed a day-to-day problem only for frontiersmen; the latter (especially Frenchmen in the north and Spaniards in the south) formed a more significant long-term threat. Contrary to popular myth, colonial military institutions did not evolve only with a view to the dangers

of the forests; they also reflected the possibility of enemies' striking from the sea. America began as a maritime society and remained so until the Civil War. Because the art of war underwent dramatic change in Europe during the seventeenth century, as cannon and matchlock firearms were improved and permanent professional armies emerged, the colonists had to adjust accordingly.

Conditions prevented early New World settlements from maintaining large standing armies, although they attempted to obtain the most modern weapons possible. Economic necessity required that everyone contribute to the production of food or essential products. There was no room for idle soldiers waiting for a possible war. At the same time, any colony or community could find itself under local attack from Indians or European raiders with little or no warning. The natural solution to this problem was to take the militia organization of England and infuse it with a new sense of urgency. Except for Pennsylvania (where a strong Quaker element objected to war on religious grounds), every English-speaking colony required free, able bodied adult males to join their local military company and to provide their own weapons, ammunition, and basic field equipment. Regular unpaid training meetings—where training might be tough or casual, depending upon the current danger— provided basic skills, including an innovative emphasis on individual marksmanship. When it came to firing a musket, not every American was a Daniel Boone, but by the eighteenth century familiarity with, and possession of, firearms was more widespread in the English colonies than in almost any other place on earth.

In contrast to Europe, where the standing national army became all-important and local forces withered away, the American militia system remained vigorous. Although rarely mobilized in full strength, the network of local companies became a training agency and manpower pool from which full-time Provincial forces were raised. These Provincials enlisted for specific campaigns or provided garrisons in time of crisis for a network of small forts to protect key ports or frontier settlements.

A special category of Provincials represented colonial America's other original contribution to military science— the rangers. First appearing about 1675 as a type of scout to provide early warning of impending Indian attack by "ranging" or patrolling between forts, they (and their French-Canadian counterparts, the coureurs du bois) became masters of camouflage and woodcraft. Later their mission expanded when Capt. Benjamin Church of Massachusetts organized a mixed force of rangers and friendly Indians to conduct long-range raids during an Indian uprising called King Philip's War.

During the French and Indian War, the rangers reached a new plateau in importance. Robert Rogers of New Hampshire ultimately organized a force of about a dozen companies which accompanied the various British columns

in the conquest of Canada. Their most daring achievement came in mid-September 1759 after General Jeffrey Amherst had captured Fort Carillon (Ticonderoga). Rogers personally led a strike force of about two hundred rangers on a deep raid designed to break the will of the last remaining pro-French Indians. Moving mostly at night, the column slipped through enemy lines and destroyed the village of St. Francis on the St. Lawrence River a hundred miles west of Quebec. The men then broke into small teams, often led by NCOs, and conducted a remarkable overland withdrawal to the New Hampshire frontier.

With such experiences behind him, the American soldier became markedly different from his European counterpart. His full-time service in any campaign became a matter of individual choice. Lacking the brutal discipline of continental Europe, Provincial leaders had to persuade militiamen to enlist and then they had to keep their confidence. Officers responsible for enforcing training and weaponsowning requirements knew they would meet their troops again as neighbors, as would their NCOs, who were responsible for the immediate supervision of the privates.

In the Old World, the noncommissioned officer emerged at the same time as the concept of a permanent, or standing, army. With an officer corps drawn from the ranks of the aristocracy and privates from the lower classes, an intermediary group was required to bridge the social gap. Poorly paid, often unwilling troops needed constant supervision, and the new group of NCOs became the enforcers of discipline. Those duties carried greater weight in camp or garrison because actual combat remained relatively rarefew nations could afford the appalling casualty rates. Although no level of organization officially existed below the company, common practice divided the enlisted men into "messes" consisting of an NCO and eight or ten privates who ate and slept together the origin of the modern squad.

Weapons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were crude by modern standards. Poorly made and woefully inaccurate, the early matchlock and the later flintlock musket were effective only when fired at close range by large masses of troops standing shoulder to shoulder. Most nations raised their armies by contracting with captains and colonels to organize separate companies and regiments, uniform and equip them to a rough standard, and then recruit necessary replacements. When preparing for combat, the units would be grouped into brigades, battalions, and platoons, a process that often left the privates in a situation where they had to take orders from officers who were relative strangers. Under these conditions, sergeants and corporals exercised little independent authority. Their primary responsibility was to keep the men in line and force them to obey orders.

This use of the NCO in continental Europe peaked in the eighteenth century in the Prussian Army of Frederick the Great. During the Seven Years War in particular, relatively small Prussia held off the combined arms of three great powers-Russia, Austria, and France. Although he lost several battles, Frederick was a military genius, which

accounted in part for his success. But contemporaries were quick to point to his NCO corps as a secret weapon. Frederick knew that he would normally have to fight against superior numbers, but he realized that quality and determination frequently can triumph over quantity. He therefore set about training his regiments to a higher standard than did his neighbors, using sergeants and corporals to ensure absolute obedience. Frederick made no bones about it-he demanded that his privates fear their own NCOs more than the enemy.

American colonists, looking more to English practices, quickly made noncommissioned officers responsible for most of the training provided to new soldiers. But training was not based on large-scale units. Militia regiments existed as early as 1636, but they seldom could assemble in a single location for training. Instead, a town or village normally formed a single company, subdivided into squads patterned after the European messes. Although the fact that neighbors composed a squad helped to narrow the gap between NCO and private, the NCO had more immediate responsibility, and more opportunity than in Europe, for independent action in training and administration. Those enhanced powers inevitably translated into more responsibility on the battlefield, a trend reinforced by the need to adjust to the heavy woods and the hit-and-run tactics of Indians. Since large formations simply stood no chance of chasing and catching raiders, small units became the American norm. The result during the French and Indian War was the formation of ranger companies by Major Rogers.

A combination of factors, including the relative lack of rigid class lines in the New World, affected the evolution of a new kind of military organization in the colonies. Freed from the need to maintain large standing forces, with more economic and social freedom at a local level than in Europe, Americans quickly abandoned blind obedience as a foundation for their militia system. Instead, they created a new