The Sixty-Ninth

Historians have never really paid the due attention required to a certain, and nearly anonymous, US Army captain by the name of Woodbury Cane. This is despite the fact that we have ample evidence of his contributions in the presidential library of his personal friend, Theodore Roosevelt. Cane was not some military genius, nor was he some extraordinarily brave hero that rushed enemy guns and sacrificed himself for his men. I could go so far as to suggest that this is why no one has paid him very much attention but, I think it most likely, that his true contribution to world history is just so obvious that it looked perfectly normal and, hence, was forgotten for just that reason. It was simply taken for granted.

Cane’s primary contribution to the war was the very un-heroic act of being at the right place and time while he happened to know someone worth knowing. If you will recall, Cane rejoined the US Army for reasons known only to himself, was not very well received, served on the Canadian Front, and along with a good number of other soldiers who were considered a problem by their commanders, was sent to New Mexico in what was little more than a political dodge by General Shafter and the War Department. This move was to have unforeseeable consequences that would prove to be a game changer. While it is true that Cane was only one of many involved in the subsequent developments in Albuquerque and not even a primary player at that, there is still the issue that without his pen, nothing would have ever came of it.

The men that had been moved to New Mexico, from Canada, had not arrived in time to be integrated into the command structure of the department when the serious fighting took place between the US, Mexico, and the CSA. It was largely over and done with before any of them were even assigned barracks. Just before General Pershing was reassigned by the new President Roosevelt, he had only just gotten around to figuring out what to do with these men. The war had kept him busy and they had been over looked by the General’s staff. Since Pershing left before he could do anything, these men were forgotten about once again, despite the fact that there were a substantial number of them, all doing nothing or, doing nothing official.

The reality was that none of these men had taken a vacation but, this was all of their own initiative. While most of these men had been thought of as problems while serving in Canada, the truth was that a large majority of them were just like Cane. The majority of them were not derelicts even if it is clear that there were a few. Most of them seemed to have been men who fell into the category of being too bright for their bosses and, as a result, were generally feared as potential replacements by those very same commanders who were more than happy to get rid of them.

Of course, that was only the ring leaders. Men like that tend to gather a group of core supporters and, fortunately, those supporters were all transferred as well. Once they were in New Mexico, and virtually ignored, they suddenly had a chance to compare notes, form their own improvised command structure, and begin doing things that they wanted to do. Most of this activity revolved around ‘fixing’ what was wrong with the prosecution of the war, and not on the level that Generals are used to dealing with. All of these men were seasoned veterans and they all had ideas. They all knew that, sooner or later, someone would remember them and more fighting would follow. Collectively they vowed to do it right this time.

Cane and his conspirators had some unexpected help from the most unlikely of sources, that being Confederate General Jesse James. Many of the survivors of the ill fated Roswell Garrison, that was crushed by James, wound up in Albuquerque and before it was over with, Cane and his fellow officers had interviewed every single one of them. While no one in the Confederacy had thought to even question how James had done the impossible, and very few in the US as well, Cane and his conspiracy took an active interest. They actually drew up a time line, on a school chalk board, and pieced together the events of the battle. They figured out what James had taken nearly three decades to develop and incorporated many of these idea’s into their own plans.

All of this would have come to nothing had it not been for Cane and his correspondence with Theodore Roosevelt. By the time that Theodore became president, he was already aware of what was going on out in Albuquerque and he hardily approved. One of his first orders, directly concerning the war, was to have these men turned into an official command. The war department did not even protest and seems to have ignored the order as much as they could. They did not see the utility in doing this but, they did not see the harm either. General Shafter personally shrugged the order off and passed the buck until a minor functionary on his staff had them dust off the regimental standards of a deactivated unit from the Canadian Front. The excess soldiers in New Mexico would become the 69^th New York Infantry, even if most of them were not even from New York. That was the last time that anyone at the War Department would pay them any attention until late summer of 1901. They were considered so unimportant that no one even thought to assign them a regimental commander.

That was just fine by the men on the ground who had already formed their own chain of command, largely by the force of personalities. These men began to train and develop new tactics that, today, have become almost standard in small unit drills even if, in truth, many of these techniques were not invented in Albuquerque nor were they even modern. A good number of these tactics had simply fallen into disuse over the past century as technology had changed. The collective army heads of the world had thought that such things were now antiquated given the new weapon systems. What the 69^th did was incorporate the new with the old and, just like James, developed tactics that were both effective and quite lethal.

This was not all that happened in New Mexico and the repercussions would spill out and begin to impact other things like ripples in a pond. Again, this was largely thanks to Woodbury Cane and his letter writing campaign with a man who had the power to literally grant wishes. One of these requests, by Cane, resulted in an unexpected visit from a man by the name of John Browning. He was a firearms inventor and had been one of the main driving forces behind the revolutionary US Army battle rifles, however, by the time of the war, Browning had fallen on hard times. Ironically, and fortunately for Cane, Browning’s problems were similar to that of the men he visited in New Mexico.

The main problem that Browning had was that he was just too ahead of his time. It also did not help matters any that he also happened to be a Mormon, most of whom were looked on with a great deal of suspicion after the American 61. Even so, Browning was just too good at his job to be ignored and that was how he wound up working for Winchester until, barely a year before the war, he had a falling out with the company over some of his designs. Winchester had too much invested in their lever action technology and Browning had an idea for a system that would not only render it obsolete but, the bolt action rifle as well. Today we refer to this system as the gas blow back, which, channels the excess gasses from the barrel to push back the bolt of the weapon. This eliminates the need to cock after firing and is the method by which truly rapid fire can be achieved. It was not entirely new in 1901 as the system had already been successfully employed in machineguns but, Browning was ready to take his innovation to the next logical step. He was quite alone in this desire.

Things had gotten so bad for Browning that, just before the war, he was shopping for companies that might wish to manufacture his patented shotgun design. The only taker he could find was a company in Belgium but, the war had put an end to that deal. Cane and Roosevelt offered Browning an opportunity that he jumped at with both feet. The 69^th was looking for a rapid fire weapon that could be used to clear trenches. Browning had a design that just might fit the bill and he simply called it, the Browning Automatic Rifle.

The BAR was not exactly a machinegun but, it was not a battle rifle either. It had a high rate of fire but, a limited magazine capacity which could not really be increased because to do so would mean eventually melting down the barrel. Indeed, the barrel problem had been the main obstacle in developing a truly man portable light machine gun, something that would eventually be solved by the Germans with the simple and practical solution of just changing barrels when one got too hot. The BAR was never intended to be this so, was not exactly a problem that Browning had put much thought into. What the BAR did become was the forerunner to a class of small arms known collectively as the “assault rifle.”

Cane and his fellow junior officers were impressed with the prototype that they eagerly test fired. It seemed to be the perfect weapon to fit their needs. Cane wasted no time reporting this to Roosevelt who was equally eager to pursue the manufacture of this weapon. Unfortunately, not a single BAR would ever reach the 69^th, nor any other army unit. The mass production of the weapon called for an entirely new industrial process that no factory in the world was set up for. This did not stop Browning who would go on, with support from the White House, to produce a small quantity of his revolutionary weapon, and almost all by hand. It would prove crucial elsewhere but, that is for later.

The 69^th had it’s finger in a few pies that went beyond small arms. Another technological development they inadvertently ushered in was a weapon system that was so simple, logical, and straight forward that it is a wonder no one had thought of it before then. In many ways it was easily comparable to the tactics they would put into use because the weapon itself was anything but new. The hand grenade had been around for centuries but, again, due to technological developments it had fallen into disuse. Grenades, or any hand thrown bombs, prior to this war had been largely home made devises and improvised. The only truly mass produced bombs used hand lit fuses to detonate the explosive. These weapons were not practical on the modern battlefield nor was the modern industrial complex set up to manufacture them.

When the 69^th examined the tactics of the Confederate Foreign Legion, one of their primary observations was the use of dynamite to neutralize strong points. As it was discovered, James and his Missouri rebels had hand thrown bundles of dynamite into machinegun nests. They did not use standard fuses though. A burning fuse was simply not reliable enough to do the job. James and his men had wired the explosives to electric detonators. The drawback to this tactic is obvious since the dynamite has to be rigged with a wire which, in turn, degrades the range an accuracy of the man who has to throw it. It also requires time to set up and the carrying of bulky equipment.

Fortunately for Cane, one of the many things that Roosevelt became introduced too, once becoming president, was a horde of inventors who were clamoring to get money for their ideas. Several of these inventions proved to have working plans for a practical hand grenade. Roosevelt sent many of them to New Mexico and it was found that the most practical of these was a design based on yet another tried and true technology that had fallen by the wayside, the percussion cap.

The idea was both simple and eloquent. A spring driven hammer was held in place by a spoon. Once the spoon was released, the hammer would strike the ignition cap which would set off a short fuse. This in turn would detonate the explosive which was encased in a metal shell. It was not a perfect solution but, it was a workable one. It also had the advantage of being easy to produce. The US had more explosive compounds than it knew what to do with. Stamp machines could easily be tooled to make the spoons. Springs were a common part of many consumer goods and, last but not least, the metal shell was little more than a round metal ball, easily manufactured. The primer cap was even easier since there were still gun manufacturers who were making them for civilian weapons. The first crates of these new weapons reached New Mexico by March of 1901.

The President would travel to Albuquerque that same month and personally view a demonstration of the grenades in use, as well as the new tactics being employed. Roosevelt was so impressed that when he returned to Washington, his first order of business was to order Shafter to expand the program that Cane had been working on. Shafter was rather reluctant to devote any resources or manpower to something that he had almost completely forgotten about. Roosevelt would hear none of the protests from his military and he got his way. By August, the US would have 12 specially trained ‘Bull Moose’ battalions, organized into three regiments, and ready for deployment. As events would prove, this would not come at a more critical juncture.