blend in which talent and competence mattered most. Leadership became a positive influence, not something enforced through brutal discipline.

From the very beginning, the notion that every citizen was expected to serve in the military if needed helped keep the armed forces clearly subordinate to civilian authorities. At the practical level, the local orientation of unit organization allowed the military to grow from the bottom up,

guaranteeing that noncommissioned officers would form the backbone of any force. In fact, the practice begun during the colonial days of picking natural leaders to serve as NCOs still has an influence on how we train professional soldiers. And the passage of centuries has only confirmed the importance of the noncommissioned officer as small unit leader, from the frozen wilderness of Lake Champlain in Rogers' day to the jungles of Vietnam in our own.

The quartermaster sergeant was caught up in the hustle and bustle of packing up his regiment's camp and loading the gear into wagons. To an outsider, the scene appeared one of total confusion, but not to the experienced eyes of veteran Continental Army noncommissioned officers. They knew that each man followed a careful script, that no task would be left undone to create problems down the road. Precision came from the routine itself, from a drill that defined specific tasks, allocated responsibilities, provided supervisors to correct any mistakes instantly, and, most important, was repeated each and every time that the Army moved.

While uniforms might appear worse for wear, the regiments' weapons and equipment were immaculate a fundamental change since the opening days of the Revolution. Thanks to training begun at Valley Forge by George Washington and his Inspector General, Baron Frederick von Steuben, officers and NCOS had standardized instructions and a sense of how each man fitted into the smooth functioning of the whole. One example of the improvement came from the "camp color men." Every day a dozen or so privates reported to the regimental quartermaster and his assistant, the quartermaster sergeant. In

camp, this detail performed duties ranging from digging latrines to collecting firewood; on the march, they packed and unpacked the baggage wagons. Their nickname came from the small pennants, camp colors, used to mark both the wagons and the outlines of the camp. This systematic approach ensured that essential housekeeping functions were performed routinely without interfering with other important duties.

This morning General Washington broke camp shortly after dawn, pushing hard to cover as many miles as possible. For over a week, several American divisions and a French expeditionary force had been marching south from New York. Rumor had it that the units were on their way to a place called Yorktown in far-off Virginia. While the quartermaster rode ahead to mark out a new site, the sergeant supervised the detail and the baggage wagons. He knew that doing his job professionally would never lead to glory, but also that without his efforts the regiment would never reach its destination in shape to fight, a point he kept trying to make to the privates. The beautiful Indian summer weather and a compliment from Baron von Steuben himself made this particular morning special-and raised hopes that perhaps the campaign would end with a victory.

The War of Independence began on 19 April 1775 at Lexington, Massachusetts, in a fight that the British had hoped to avoid. The British had sent a large garrison to Massachusetts after the Boston Tea Party to enforce the authority of the Royal governor. The angry citizens had countered by increasing militia training and gathering

military supplies. The British column of regular light infantry that entered Lexington was on its way to destroy one such stockpile in nearby Concord. The Redcoats were met by the local militia company, commanded by a veteran of Rogers' Rangers, drawn up on the Common—a grassy open space. When the British attempted to disperse the

citizen-soldiers, shots rang out, starting what proved to be the second longest war in American history.

By evening the British had been mauled and driven back into Boston, besieged by nearly 20,000 colonists. All four New England colonial governments reacted by replacing their militia and Minutemen with armies recruited to serve until the end of the year. At almost the same time, the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and quietly began creating a nation. On 14 June 1775, it assumed control of the existing military forces and established the regular Continental Army. To symbolize unity among all colonies, north and south, Congress promptly set about recruiting ten (later thirteen) companies of riflemen from the middle colonies and named a Virginian, George Washington, as commander in chief.

Over the next two years the growing Continental Army would experience both triumphs and defeats. Although it came to include regiments drawn from all thirteen colonies and Canada, it was plagued early in the war by instability, caused by relying on units recruited for only a single year at a time. That practice had been adequate during the French and Indian War, when the enemy remained on distant frontiers. It was also consistent with the colonists' deepseated fear that professional, or standing, armies of the European kind posed a greater danger to civil liberties than any foreign invasion. Many Americans believed that militia units serving for limited periods would be sufficient to win independence, since militiamen could easily be mobilized to reinforce Washington and his generals whenever a crisis threatened. But Washington wanted a regular force as well. In the end both the militia and the regular Continental Army proved vital to victory.

The Revolutionary forces quickly gained control over the countryside, dispersing attempts by those Americans still loyal to the King to assert themselves. Washington's units also succeeded in driving the British from Boston. Unfortunately, an American invasion of Canada ended in disaster, and in the summer and fall of 1776 a massive Royal fleet and army inflicted a string of humiliating defeats on Washington in New York. The largest expedition dispatched across a major ocean before the twentieth century, the British army mauled the continentals and militia attempting to defend Manhattan and Long Island. On Christmas Day 1776 the Revolution seemed to be on its last legs. The British and their Hessian auxiliaries had settled down in snug winter quarters to lay plans for the final conquest. Washington's remaining troops were huddled in rude camps, suffering the bitter cold.

But at dawn on 26 December the tide of the war turned back in the Americans' favor. The continentals suddenly struck across the Delaware River at a Hessian brigade in garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, destroying it as a fighting force while suffering only four casualties. Buoyed by that success the same troops, reinforced by Pennsylvania

militiamen, slipped around the enraged British a week later and smashed a second brigade at Princeton, forcing the British to pull back.

Those twin victories, small though they were, along with the heartening words of Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, restored morale and enabled the Continental Congress to carry out a major recruiting effort. In a bold departure from earlier practices, the nation's leaders decided to match the British regulars with trained regulars of their own. They approved enlistments for the duration of the war, rather than for a fixed term. They also increased the Continental Army to a balanced force of over one hundred regiments of infantry, cavalry, and artillery, backed by technical specialists in military police, ordnance, and quartermaster units and by a sophisticated command and staff organization.

The Army did not achieve immediate success when it took to the field for the 1777 campaign. The new recruits lacked time for anything more than rudimentary training before operations began. Moreover, their weapons, imported from Europe, had to be routed to them through a complicated series of distribution points. In Pennsylvania, Washington fought hard against a British army brought by sea from New York to attack Philadelphia, but he could not prevent the loss of that city, then the nation's capital. In northern New York State, other Continental units, reinforced by large militia contingents, took advantage of favorable terrain in early fall and inflicted a serious setback on British invasion plans by capturing General "Gentleman Johnny" Burgoyne's army at Saratoga. In each case, some regiments performed well while others failed the test of battle.

Most of the Continental Army massed at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for the winter of 1777-1778, far enough from Philadelphia for safety, yet close enough to prevent the British from venturing into the countryside. Washington used the pause in active operations caused by the cold weather to institute a major reform of the continentals. For the first time in the war he had time to standardize training programs. Taking advantage of European volunteers, especially Steuben, who had learned his trade in Frederick the Great's Prussia, the Americans crafted a coherent tactical doctrine which blended the ideas from the Old World with tried-and-true colonial experience.

Steuben, despite his German origins, agreed with Washington and the other leaders that the Army should follow the new French emphasis on flexibility and initiative and add to them the traditional American reliance on marksmanship. As Inspector General, he set about developing a comprehensive system to teach that doctrine to the troops assembled in snowbound huts at Valley Forge. Since the flintlock musket of the era lacked rifling and a rear sight, it was ineffective at ranges beyond one hundred yards. It also had a practical rate of fire of no more than three or four rounds per minute. To employ it efficiently, men had to be