Practical Field Exercises in Minor Tactics and Strategy, for Use of the Regular Army and the Militia (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Practical Field Exercises in Minor Tactics and Strategy, for Use of the Regular Army and the Militia

The author's interest in the subject of practical field instruction in tactics dates from 1884, when he spent a year in Europe studying at the Royal School of Mines, Freiberg, Saxony, visiting the principal military schools of Germany, Austria, France, and England, and attending the French maneuvers. Incidentally he saw much of the European methods of military field instruction, and was impressed with their practical character and great value to the army.

His first work on the subject was a paper read before the Military Association of the Pacific in June, 1885, entitled Practical Problems in Minor Tactics and Strategy. In 1886, after reporting for duty at the Military Academy, West Point, New York, he delivered a number of lectures on the subject to the officers of that post, and had three field exercises, attended by a number of resident officers besides several interested visitors, among the latter the present Brigadier-General J. P. Sanger, and the present Chief of Artillery, General W. F. Randolph, Artillery Corps. In the spiring of 1887 he had similar exercises with the class of officers at Willett's Point, New York, by invitation of Colonel King, commanding the Engineer School there; and in the summer of 1888, at the request of General Merritt, the Department Commander, he had a similar course of exercises and lectures at Forts Leavenworth, Riley, and Reno.

In 1886 his collection of problems was printed at the Artillery School, Fort Monroe, Virginia, and adopted as a text-book there. In 1888 this collection, revised and enlarged, was published, under the title Practical Instruction in Minor Tactics and Strategy, by D. Appleton & Company, New York. That edition having become exhausted, it became necessary, owing to the increasing demand for such a work, to issue another, but as the subject of Tactics has greatly changed in the past fifteen years, it was deemed best to re-write the entire work.

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