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Two weeks ago the "1st Section" and the Liberty Rifles teamed together to recreated a section of horse drawn artillery of Knaps Pennsylvania Battery at the Battle of Cedar Mountain. During the battle Knaps Battery went through over 980 rounds of ammunition and ended up leaving one caisson on the field.
We had two four up teams pulling a 3 inch Ordnance Rifle (driven by John Nolan and myself) and a 10 pound Parrot ( driven by Mike Jones and Bill Thomas), Kevin Oyarzo was mounted as the commanding 1stLt, Chris Bopp was mounted as 2nd gun's Chief of Piece, and the 1st Maine provided mounted Bugler and guidon bearer with Ken Doyan, Caleb Horton, and Andrew German. Special thanks to Mike Schiebe for all the work he put into organizing the weekend.
Some lessons learned from the weekend.
1) It is vital for the Chief of Section and Chief of Pieces to be mounted. Drivers have enough on their hands the way it is. Having mounted COS and COP allows the drivers to maintain focus on their teams and not the employment and spacing of the guns.
2) Gun drill exactly by the book is safely and easily executed. Modern "safety considerations" are unnecessary. The manual was written with safety already considered.
3) Artillerymen were not fat and out of shape. It was evident by the amount of running these detachments did all weekend.
Below is a video of the section ably led by our 1stLt taking the high ground in order to go into Battery.
The next event for 1st Section will be the Fredericksburg Slaughterpen Farm event December 9-10. Participation in the section is invitation only. For an invite contact Kevin Oyarzo, Craig Schneider, Jeffrey Baldwin, or myself.
We had two four up teams pulling a 3 inch Ordnance Rifle (driven by John Nolan and myself) and a 10 pound Parrot ( driven by Mike Jones and Bill Thomas), Kevin Oyarzo was mounted as the commanding 1stLt, Chris Bopp was mounted as 2nd gun's Chief of Piece, and the 1st Maine provided mounted Bugler and guidon bearer with Ken Doyan, Caleb Horton, and Andrew German. Special thanks to Mike Schiebe for all the work he put into organizing the weekend.
Some lessons learned from the weekend.
1) It is vital for the Chief of Section and Chief of Pieces to be mounted. Drivers have enough on their hands the way it is. Having mounted COS and COP allows the drivers to maintain focus on their teams and not the employment and spacing of the guns.
2) Gun drill exactly by the book is safely and easily executed. Modern "safety considerations" are unnecessary. The manual was written with safety already considered.
3) Artillerymen were not fat and out of shape. It was evident by the amount of running these detachments did all weekend.
Below is a video of the section ably led by our 1stLt taking the high ground in order to go into Battery.
The next event for 1st Section will be the Fredericksburg Slaughterpen Farm event December 9-10. Participation in the section is invitation only. For an invite contact Kevin Oyarzo, Craig Schneider, Jeffrey Baldwin, or myself.