The Staff Ride

The The Staff Ride in its present form was first proposed by COL Arthur Wagner about the turn of the century, and initially executed in 1906 by MAJ Eben Swift, who led 12 Leavenworth students on a two-week ride from Chattanooga to Atlanta. For the next four years the Staff Ride was an integral part of the Leavenworth curriculum as students returned to study Sherman's campaigns or visited battlefields in the east-all of it on horseback. One of the Leavenworth instructors on these early Staff Rides was CAPT M.F. Steele, author of a well-known text on American Campaigns. "We rode about 30 miles yesterday," Steele wrote his wife near Dalton, Georgia, "stopping at various historical positions, finding the old earthworks and battle positions ... all of which were notable objects in the campaign. ... All morning we have had discussion of the features of the campaign. ... After getting some lunch and taking a nap I had to study my 'spiel.' I have to discuss [GEN Joseph E.] Johnston's withdrawal from this position ... this evening. We have a big tent, which these devils call the "hot air tent," in which every evening we have our discussion, a different man having the main discussion each evening."

This was the technique. Student officers and instructors discussed the application of principles to the battle and to the terrain, for with the recent introduction of the applicatory method of instruction at Leavenworth it was now believed that principles were best learned by their application rather than through abstract study. The study of military theory alone was no longer considered sufficient. As MAJ Eben Swift, senior instructor in military art and assistant commandant at the Staff School at Leavenworth from 1904 to 1906, put it, "full success" of the applicatory system "depends upon the number of examples considered and upon the variety and manner in which principles are applied." Beginning with Map Problems, the class progressed to the Kriegspeil, Tactical Rides, Maneuvers, and finally-as the capstone course-to the Historical Staff Ride.

The time was ripe. Congress had already passed legislation in the 1890's creating National Military Parks at Chickamauga, Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Vicksburg to commemorate the deeds of the volunteer armies, North and South, but also "for historical and professional study" by army officers. And, the Army had been at work since the end of Lincoln's first administration collecting and editing the correspondence, orders, reports and returns of the Union and Confederate armies. The first volume of The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies was published in 1880 and the last of the 128 volumes appeared twenty years later. By the end of the century, therefore, the Army had the tools it needed to assimilate the Civil War experience in the professional education of officers.

When Major Swift was assigned to the Army War College in 1906, he introduced the Historical Staff Ride. Initially students and instructors made day-long trips from Washington to nearby battlefields to analyze tactical problems and work them out on the ground, but beginning in 1909 the entire staff devoted the last month of the course to a staff ride over the battlefields of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Grant's 1864 campaign, and the Shenandoah Valley. When Antietam and Gettysburg were added in 1912, the Staff Ride involved some 600 miles-on horseback!

Students were supported most of the way by a cavalry detachment from Fort Myers who took care of the horses, served as orderlies, and manned the wagon train, and at night they camped on private property. Each officer previously had been assigned to research some phase of a particular battle or campaign "for careful analytical study," and after his presentation the class would consider the action and how it might be fought under modern conditions. The emphasis was on organization, scouting and reconnaissance, the exercise of command, marches, deployments, the attack and defense, supply, and losses.

The following entry from the Diary of the 1911 Staff Ride illustrates the technique:

15 May. Camp broken at Chancellorsville at 0600; officers left at 0655 and rode to ..... Fairview, on a line of old gun pits, where Captain John H. Wholley, 2d Infantry, discussed the Confederate attack on Hooker at Chancellorsville, which Major Frederick P. Reynolds, Medical Department, reviewed the operations of the medical department in the... campaign and explained how the Medical Department of the present day would perform its functions in a battle under modern conditions. Party then proceeded to campaign on Wilderness Run.

These early tours were combined history and staff rides, for on three occasions during the four weeks, as the class moved from one battlefield to the next, an officer from the General Staff would arrive with a problem to be worked en route. Presenting a general situation, he would give the necessary, military situation, identify the LOG base, send out recon parties, and then ask the different groups to function as the staff of the BLUE commander and present his estimate of the situation, orders and instructions. Following the critique of the various solutions the General Staff Officer returned to Washington while the class moved on to the next battlefield.

Staff Rides were an important part of the curriculum. John A. Lejuene recalled especially the discussions that made the experience his student year (1910) "of immense value to us professionally," while MG Hunter Liggett, then president of the War College, asserted that "no officer who took these staff rides failed to appreciate their immense advantages.... The students needed the trip to send them back to their troops physically and mentally fit after the long winter grind in school."

The 1913 Ride was the last of these combined history and staff rides. A crisis on the Mexican Border in 1914 caused the Staff Ride to be canceled as students were sent back to their regiments, and crises caused by the sinking of the Lusitania, Poncho Villa's raid into New Mexico in 1916, and the American entry into World War I on April 6, 1917, caused the War College to dismiss its students before it was time for the capstone course. Probably the only Historical Staff Ride over Civil War battlefields conducted by the Army during the war was a detailed tour of McClellan's Peninsular Campaign conducted by instructors of the Electrical Engineering Course at Fort Monroe in 1918. Half a century later GEN Lyman L. Lemnitzer remembered that the experience had been "one of the most satisfying things at Fort Monroe."

The Staff Ride returned to the War College soon after the war. In the spring of 1920 the War College class once again set off this time in motor cars to Fredericksburg and the battlefields around Richmond. It was no coincidence that trenches and breastworks had dominated these particular battles, and in a sense the experience combined features of both the old Staff Ride and the Historical Staff Ride. At Cold Harbor, for example, students used the facts of history to determine their Estimate of the Situation, Plan of Action, and Decision-a thought process already familiar to those who had commanded or served on staffs in France. COL Andrew Throne, the British assistant military attaché who had been invited to participate, described the experience as "the most interesting days I have spent in this country." The next year 107 officers and 28 Cadillac touring cars (these were the days before Jack Anderson!) returned to the Virginia battlefields, but there were not sufficient funds to include Antietam and Gettysburg.

In 1922, American units stationed in Germany had conducted Staff Rides over the recent battlefields and the 1870 battlefields around Metz, and GEN John J. Pershing suggested that War College students participate with French counterparts in a staff ride to the Meuse-Argonne region. A feasibility study by COL Oliver L. Spaulding, director of the Historical Section of the War Plans Division (which had recently been assigned to the War College), reported the proposal "practical but undesirable." Spaulding believed there would be greater benefit from studying an American campaign "here on its own ground."

There seems, however, to have been little interest in staff rides anywhere for the next decade. Indeed, to judge from the index of the course at the War College, there was very little interest in the Civil War. Trips to the vicinity of Gettysburg were essentially Field Exercises based upon the "Gettysburg-Antietam General Map," on ground selected because it was "excellent terrain," available, and for its "historic interest." The only connection between the Field Exercise and the old Historical Staff Ride was the occasional lecture on the battle of Gettysburg delivered on the site.

In 1927 the Historical Section, Army War College which was essentially a research organization and not a teaching department was directed to make a study of battlefields in the United States, and in 1934 the Secretary of Interior requested assistance from the Historical Section in preparing maps and documentation for the new National Military Parks at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Wilderness/Spotsylvania. The maps prepared by this section aided the Park Service in marking the old battle lines and perhaps stimulated renewed interest in staff rides, for in March 1935, MG Malin Craig a graduate of both the 1910 and 1920 courses, revived the Historical Staff Ride.

The technique was essentially that used when Craig was a student. Each student would be assigned responsibility for some phase of a battle or campaign. As GEN Maxwell Taylor recalled, the student "would be charged with really becoming an expert on a given battle." He was urged to read the "orders actually issued, messages sent and returns made" in the Official Records and cautioned that the commanders' Reports, "made after the event and frequently from memory," needed to be supported by other evidence. Students worked in pairs, one reconstructing events from the Confederate perspective and the other focusing upon the Union commander.

When the research was completed each went out to reconnoiter the ground. Here, too, the Guidance was specific.

Use the first stop on arrival at the battlefields to thoroughly orient yourself on the terrain features as related to the actual forces employed. Trace on the ground the routes, zones of action and defensive positions of the units you will talk about. Then select the points where you will present and prepare a detailed time schedule showing routes the class will take, time of travel, of embussing and debussing and of actual presentation.

In contrast to the presentations given in earlier Staff Rides, students were instructed to deal "principally from the view points of the higher command army, theater, and GHQ and ... stress principally those features of the military art that are applicable today and will be applicable tomorrow."

Only so much of the detailed battlefield tactics should be presented as is necessary to properly complete the larger picture and to sustain the interest of the listeners. And here the stress should be primarily on those elements that are still important in battle ... leadership and the psychology of men in combat.

At each stop the "Union" and "Confederate" presenters would give only such information as was known to the commander at the time, for "only thus can the class get a true perspective for judging the actions of these commanders and a correct viewpoint for learning the worthwhile lessons of the campaign."

As members of the class in civilian clothing (most photographs show them wearing white, long-sleeved shirts and tropical hats) sat on folding chairs scrutinizing special maps produced for the occasion, the "empressario" (Taylor's word) stood by the sound truck and asked the listener what he would do in similar circumstances. The Guidance was specific on this point: "it is not desirable to have the question answered by any of the listeners. Some will know the answer, but all who do not will ask themselves ... 'Now just what Would I do'?" At the scheduled time the bus horns would sound three blasts and the class would re-embark and proceed to the next stop.

This was the format for every staff ride from 1935 to 1939, which was the last conducted at the War College before World War II. By this time the class comprised 110 officers traveling in three air-conditioned buses and accompanied by a sound truck, a reconnaissance car, and a light truck to carry materials for map boards, mounts for photos, and mimeographed lectures to be issued to each student at each battle. The trip involved 923 miles from Gettysburg through the Shenandoah Valley to Yorktown, studying not only the battles but the influence of logistics upon the conception and execution of the operations.

The Infantry Journal in September 1939 contains a delightful piece entitled "Bill Busher Goes to College." As the year at the War College progressed and 'Major Busher' was about to end his student year, his spirit released of responsibilities, soared higher and higher as the time approached for his final clearance and embarkation upon the historical ride. That tour was the grand finale: a deluxe exposition on military history. And the entire trip turned out to be just like the busses the class and instructors rode in-not only streamlined but air-conditioned as well.

For nine days Bill and his school fellows traveled about in solid comfort. They ate in air-cooled dining rooms, had their baggage carried in and out of hotels, were dished out ice water at every halt, and handed folding chairs to rest on during the talks. All they had to do was sit and listen. And some of them kicked at doing that! "Which only goes to show we're soldiers in spite of our education," Bill remarked.

This was not the reason there was no Staff Ride in 1940. In his Oral History GEN Maxwell Taylor relates how "tremendously interested" he was in his assignment (Second Manassas) as he "toured every hill top in the area" and prepared his presentation.

The class was about ready to move out into the field for these visits when Hitler ... launched a blitzkrieg in Europe, and rushed through France with Panzers and aircraft. Somebody got cold feet at the War Department saying, "Why, we would look silly studying the battles of the Civil War when obviously the kind of war that General Grant and General Lee fought doesn't exist anymore, we're going to be criticized," and hence they called off the whole business. I thought it was stupid then and I think it is even more stupid as I look back on it in retrospect.

This time it was many years before the Staff Ride reappeared. When the Army War College was moved to Carlisle Barracks in 1951, it became traditional for the entire class to visit Gettysburg, but this was a far cry from requiring the entire class to spend weeks in preparation for a Staff Ride serving as the capstone course in the curriculum. Beginning in 1968, the Summer ROTC Workshop at the US Military Academy included a visit each year to the battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg. At Gettysburg the participants were treated to the normal tour led by a commercial guide, but at Antietam the experience was essentially that of the old Staff Ride minus the detailed preparation. In the mid-1980's the National War College began to conduct something approximating a Staff Ride each fall at Antietam on a strictly volunteer basis, and in the spring of 1983, the Staff Ride was reinstituted - at Leavenworth an elective course and the Army War College as a volunteer activity.

It is a growing activity. In 1986 the Center of Military History identified about 300 staff rides that were conducted or in the planning stage, here or in Europe. This is probably a conservative estimate, for each year students, faculty and staff at the War College normally lead about half this many to battlefields like Gettysburg, Antietam, South Mountain, the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Shenandoah Valley, and even the Atlanta campaign. The groups range from ROTC detachments to the Secretary of the Army and his Staff. We have conducted the entire classes of the National War College, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the Marine Staff College, and TRADOC-the list is endless. How far will this go? How long will it last? No one knows.

"Perspectives in Military History" Lecture Series

Each month throughout the academic year, except December, the Army Historical and Education Center (AHEC) presents a distinguished speaker on a military history topic. The lectures are presented in the AHEC facility located on Army Heritage Drive. The building will be open at 6:50 p.m.; the lecture begins promptly at 7:15 p.m. The talk is followed by an informal question and answer period and an opportunity to meet the speaker.

The schedule for the academic year will be published at a later date.