then disappear before an effective response could be organized. With no intertribal coordination and no systematic recruiting to replace casualties, Indians traditionally shunned set-piece battles, fighting at night or staging true ambushes. Their courage and preference for close battle cost them dearly against long-range rifles.

The Army took years to find a way to employ its advantages of firepower and discipline. Constant pressure gradually neutralized surprise tactics by wresting the initiative from the Indians, while the cumulative impact of casualties, losses of property and livestock, and slaughter of the buffalo wore the tribes down. Such warfare demanded high proficiency in basic military skills, especially marksmanship. Massive battles in the Civil War had placed a premium on artillery and sheer numbers of rounds fired, rather than individual accuracy. Out on the plains and deserts of the West units initially found themselves blazing away until their ammunition was nearly gone, then watching in frustration as most of the enemy escaped. The basic marksmanship problem was worsened by the fact that many of the recruits joining the Army in the 1870s were recently arrived

immigrants from Europe, men who lacked experience with firearms. Budget restrictions prevented the Army from buying ammunition for frequent rifle practice, even had time been available for it, since so much of a soldier's day had to be spent on growing food, maintaining the buildings of his post, and caring for animals and equipment.

In the aftermath of Custer's stunning 1876 disaster at the Little Big Horn, changes were instituted. New regulations mandated that each soldier fire twenty rounds per month at targets set up at ranges of from 100 to 1,000 yards. Cavalrymen fired the carbine from a stationary position and the revolver while mounted, first at a walk, then a trot, and finally at the gallop. Officers and troops alike came to take pride in their new skills and soon formed teams for competitions between posts. The American soldier's international reputation for outstanding marksmanship dates from this period. More importantly for the men involved, the increased attention to training began to pay off in improved combat effectiveness against hostile tribes.

Noncommissioned officers on the frontier assumed positions of responsibility that went beyond the important roles that they had long filled. In addition to the familiar company-level positions and regimental-level NCO staff, a new category of assignments appeared. Post staff NCOS-the ordnance and quartermaster corps sergeants-emerged. Assignment to such a position was not part of a normal career pattern. NCOs interested in becoming a post ordnance sergeant had to have served at least eight years in the Army, four as an NCO; those interested in the post quartermaster sergeant duty had to have already completed at least four years in uniform. Applications, which had to be handwritten as a proof of literacy, were passed up the chain of command to The Adjutant General, who made the assignments.

The main purpose in appointing post NCOS was to ensure property accountability in a widely scattered Army. Secondary purposes were to reward long and faithful service among the NCO corps and to encourage junior enlisted men to remain with the colors by holding out the chance for advancement beyond the company level. Charged with responsibility for government property at his post, each ordnance sergeant quickly became one of its most respected soldiers. He had to be honest as well as experienced, for the opportunity to make an illegal profit at government expense was always present.

His responsibility extended beyond the weaponry and ammunition implied by his title. He also had to keep each unit assigned to the post well supplied with all required equipment and clothing, assisted by the quartermaster sergeant. When a cavalry unit was present, the ordnance sergeant added all equipment related to horses and riding to his inventory. Post NCOs came to provide continuity in an environment made fluid by the mission of the Army in the West. Companies and regiments changed stations, but the post NCOs stayed. Beyond that, as they developed new skills and qualifications in an increasingly complex military system, they became forerunners of a whole family of specialists who later contributed to the development of the Army.

The rise in the status of NCOs in the West grew directly out of the nature of the fighting they encountered. Besides keeping unit records, overseeing daily fatigue details, and supervising training, sergeants and corporals often served as small unit leaders without immediate supervision by officers. In the dusty expanses of the Plains or southwestern mesas, merely finding a hostile force could become a major undertaking, requiring patrols that lasted for weeks and covered hundreds of miles. To conduct patrols properly, infantry and cavalry squads and platoons often had to search independently and then reconcentrate promptly. NCOs, of

course, led these squads and platoons, occasionally accompanied by a lone officer. If the reconnaissance confronted a hostile band, they then had to become combat leaders. Courage, skill, and brains were all requirements of the job. Just giving commands to their men was a problem in some units, where up to a quarter of the soldiers spoke little or no English. While American general officers thought about great battles of future wars, crucial innovations in practice were emerging from the warfare on the Plains. Gradually, the increasing use of heliostats and the telegraph for signaling, and the railroad for shifting and concentrating forces, made the Plains garrisons less isolated.

In the twentieth century, technology dramatically changed the cavalry, as it did warfare in general. The noncommissioned officer corps coped with the new inventions, just as it had taken other developments in stride. The use of machine guns in World War I severely limited the combat role of horse cavalry. Small numbers of mounted soldiers did perform reconnaissance, liaison, and courier service in France, but the large-scale introduction of motor vehicles and tanks changed the scale, the pace, and the form of warfare. Army leadership in general turned out to be more willing to plan changes for the cavalry than Congress was to provide funding, but by 1932 the branch had its first mechanized cavalry regiment equipped with light tanks and armored cars. Large-scale cavalry training continued well into World War II, although most cavalrymen fought as infantry, or in cavalry reconnaissance squadrons—troops that performed vital roles in screening the flanks of

corps and divisions-or in the armored divisions and separate tank battalions of the combined arms team. A decade later, the introduction of assault and troopcarrying helicopters would extend that cavalry mission to the sky. NCOS met this new challenge by becoming the commanders of individual tanks and armored cars and mastering the technical skills to maintain the fleets of new war machines, just as they had led patrols and cared for horses and saddles.

It was the noncommissioned officer corps that in many ways provided the glue that held the branch together during the wrenching changes from horses to the internal combustion engine. When technology changes, the sergeants and corporals found, many functions continue, whether soldiers are mounted on chargers, tanks, or helicopters. Reconnaissance, screening, and raiding can be performed by armored vehicles and helicopters, shock action by main battle tanks and attack aircraft. In each case the fundamental techniques of leading and supervising troops on a day-to-day basis do not change.

Whether on horseback or in a turret, the cavalry NCO carries a great deal of responsibility. He must make quick decisions about deployment of forces on all types of terrain while remaining ready to respond quickly to mechanical breakdowns or the actions of hostile forces. He remains the immediate link between the officer and the private, translating planning into action. The Army on the western plains was an Army in transition, an Army preparing for a vastly expanded role in the twentieth century, although it did not know it at the time. Fittingly, NCOs helped to pioneer and achieve that transition.

The year's summer encampment promised to be an important test of how well the noncommissioned officers of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia (MVM) Ambulance Corps had trained their troops during the preceding year. Skills taught during the weekly armory drills would have to be demonstrated under realistic field conditions. Any mistakes would bring disgrace to the unit, and there would be plenty of watchful eyes-surgeons, field officers, and the "brass" from state headquarters including the Governor in his role as commander in chief of the Commonwealth's troops. Each rifle company, artillery battery, or cavalry troop went through the same scrutiny, but the members of the Ambulance Corps felt special pressure to excel. After all, they were the first permanent medical unit in the entire Army.

The sergeant decided to run his men through their paces one more time. Their special equipment and training were designed to enable them to treat and speedily evacuate battlefield casualties, thereby improving the chances of survival among the troops in the combat arms. This was a serious responsibility, and the NCO knew that his job was to make sure that each private realized it. This afternoon he had positioned an ambulance in the middle of the South Framingham fields where the MVM trained each summer, with one soldier playing the role of a casualty. The crew knew that their task would be to reach him, provide first aid, and then move him by stretcher and ambulance to the designated field hospital site. "Imagine that you are under fire," the doctor told them, "and make sure to do it just like we taught you.''

Formation of the Ambulance Corps represented another step in the accelerating specialization and professionalism of American society in the late nineteenth century. The Army joined this trend in spite of severely limited peacetime budgets. Just as doctors and lawyers developed their professional organizations and career training, career officers and NCOs in their own ways sought to upgrade their standards and adjust to new ideas and growing technological complexity. Engineers and artillerymen, for example, tried to adapt to a stream of inventions that changed the way in which the seacoasts were protected, rebuilding fortifications and introducing heavy artillery and telegraphic and telephonic communications to create an early indirect fire control system. Driving the change was the realization

that the United States might one day have to face up-to-date foreign armies in the field, as the Army had done in the past.

The requirement for new skills was first reflected in the addition of individual specialists to combat units and post garrisons. In time, however, entire units were created with unique missions. Since the time of the Revolution the Army had set up such organizations in wartime, but now it considered permanent units necessary to enhance its capability to deter foreign aggression. The combination of technical developments and broadening awareness provoked reexamination of many longaccepted dogmas. A growing number of Army branches began to publish journals, discussing issues and spreading innovations among widely scattered units. Yet

budget restrictions prevented the Regular Army from pursuing many promising leads. Hence the former state militias now increasingly known as the National Guard-took the lead. Using state-appropriated funds and drawing on civilian skills, these citizen-soldiers, for example, created the first true Signal Corps unit (in New York in the 1870s) and the earliest permanent division organization (in Pennsylvania in 1878). The trend continued in the early twentieth century with the creation of the Army Reserve, which had as one of its original missions the responsibility of maintaining a reservoir of technical specialists.

A field that changed dramatically was the initial care and evacuation of the wounded. Caring for casualties has always been a major problem in war. In the American Revolution, the recovery of casualties fell to the regimental quartermaster sergeant with a work party composed of fifers and drummers. No wounded man could call for a medic, for the trained medic and litter bearer did not yet exist. In the Civil War, two-thirds of the wounded died. Initial treatment came from a regimental surgeon in an often improvised aid station, but two men were needed to move each wounded soldier there. As a result, many casualties were left untended for considerable periods on the battlefield. Commanders risked defeat if they diverted too many able-bodied fighters from the line to recover the wounded, whose chances were slim anyway.

The massive casualty figures of the Civil War highlighted a continuing problem in military medicine: how to move battlefield casualties to regimental surgeons without worsening their condition. Under policies in effect at the beginning of that war, each regimental surgeon was to be assisted by a maximum of 25 enlisted men: 15 bandsmen and no more than 10 men detailed from line companies, but no medical specialist. Problems quickly became apparent. The quality of personnel was often poor, because commanders did not send their best men to act as nurses, orderlies, pharmacists, and litter bearers. Those who went often lacked motivation as well as training. The detailed "hospital attendants" had to split their time between retrieving new battlefield casualties and caring for those already at the temporary facility. Ambulances were lacking; although testing began in 1859, the Army had not yet adopted a standard design when the war broke out. Often the rough, springless wagons pressed into service to fill that gap. had civilian teamsters, not soldiers, as drivers.

Dr. Jonathan Letterman, an Army surgeon, made the first attempt to create a system of treatment and evacuation. When he became medical director of the Army of the Potomac in the summer of 1862, he centralized a large ambulance force-he used 200 men at the battle of Antietam in September-all under the

control of officers or NCOs. A captain took charge of an army corps' vehicles, with a first lieutenant at the division level, and a sergeant commanding the two ambulances assigned to each regiment, each with a driver, plus two men and two stretchers. Another Letterman innovation welcomed by surgeons came from assigning better men to the ambulance crews, soldiers detailed from line regiments who had demonstrated that they were "active and efficient." Once in the new ambulance corps, they stayed with it and trained regularly. With the Army able to provide better treatment and more efficient evacuation for its wounded, an increasing proportion of the wounded were able to return to duty.

The Letterman system remained limited to the Army of the Potomac until March 1864. Tested in fierce battles, it finally became the basis for a new Army-wide ambulance service. Each regiment was allowed between one and three ambulances. Two additional ambulances accompanied each corps headquarters, while two Army. freight wagons supported each division's ambulance train. Field experience through the rest of the war showed that the only major problem with the Letterman ambulance corps was the chronic shortage of vehicles.

Unfortunately for the future of Army medical care, the Ambulance Corps with its now trained NCOs and enlisted men disbanded at the end of the Civil War. Low peacetime strength levels (no more than 25,000 regulars served at any one time for most of the rest of the century) forced the War Department to concentrate on policing Indians and settlers in the western territories, not on preparing for a major conventional war. Much of what the Army had learned in medical treatment and evacuation during the Civil War was forgotten. Critical specialties were eliminated, including nurses, medical storekeepers (druggists), and the ambulance men who provided initial treatment in the field. The only enlisted medical specialists retained were hospital stewards.

A comeback began on 14 May 1885, when the Massachusetts legislature created the Ambulance Corps, Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. Each of the militia's two brigades received permission to form a unit of 1 officer, 2 sergeants, and 13 privates. The officer in charge had to be a trained physician able to pass the test as a medical officer in the Regular Army and to recruit and train his own enlisted men. Samuel B. Clarke, M.D., enlisted thirteen medical students in time to have his unit participate in its first summer camp" two months later. The second ambulance unit completed organization in 1887. Wearing infantry uniforms and red crosses, Clarke's men carried modified cartridge boxes with medical supplies, special knives in lieu of weapons, and collapsible stretchers. In camp they not only trained but also demonstrated their immediate value to others by treating a variety of heat casualties. The Massachusetts