This old horse gun was a big, ugly thing that required an outsized trigger guard to accommodate the gloved finger of a cavalryman, but it had been a supremely effective weapon in conquering the American Indian. Ever since the 1840s the standard Army sidearm had been the. Like so many modernization plans, the idea had looked good on paper. The failure of American arms in the Philippines was the result of an attempt to modernize Army ordnance. Not for the first time nor for the last, soldiers from an industrialized nation went to war in a primitive country and found that their sophisticated weaponry was inadequate. Two corpses lying near each other-a Moro with six bullets in his chest and a mutilated trooper still holding an empty. The scene described in after-action reports to Manila and Washington was often the same. A soldier had only a few seconds to stop his onrushing attacker or be killed. During the nightmarish warfare that marked the Philippine Insurrection of 1899, a favorite tactic of Moro fanatics was to work themselves up into a religious frenzy, get within twenty yards of an American unit, and then rush in brandishing double-edged swords and bolos.
I N COMMON with all good jungle fighters, the Moros liked to work close up.
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