New Hampshire Man Left in a 91 Ford Ranger and Never Seen Again
Robert Rogers and the Early on Ranger Warriors
Posted on March 27, 2013By Chris McNab
Along the frontiers of the northern American colonies, where most of the battles of the French and Indian War (1754–63) took place, "Rangers" proved indispensable adjuncts to the master regular and provincial armies, both equally partisan warriors and as scouts. They were essentially backwoodsmen—hunters, trappers, militiamen, and Indian fighters—used to operating independently rather than in regimented ranks of soldiery, living off the land and relying on their knowledge of terrain and gun to go along them alive. The very qualities that many commanders despised in the Rangers—field attire that often resembled that of "savage" Indians; unconventional tactics; their occasional obstreperousness; their democratic recruiting standards that allowed blacks and Indians into their ranks—are what helped make them uniquely balletic at fighting their formidable Canadian and Indian wilderness foes, in all kinds of weather conditions and environments.
Battles with Native American warriors in the early 17th century had demonstrated the virtual uselessness of European armor, pikes, cavalry, and maneuvers in the dense New World forests. Although New England militia units had proven themselves courageous and adjustable during the horrific baptism of fire with local tribes known as Male monarch Philip'south War (1676–77), it was not until the early 1700s that the colonists could produce frontiersmen capable of penetrating deep into uncharted Indian territory. In 1709, for case, Helm Benjamin Wright took 14 Rangers on a 400-mile (640km) round trip past canoe, up the Connecticut River, across the Green Mountains, and to the northern end of Lake Champlain, along the mode fighting four skirmishes with Indians.
A private in Helm John Lovewell's New England Ranger Visitor, 1725. In his clothing and equipment, this individual exemplifies the hybrid European/Indian limerick of Lovewell's men. Annotation the Indian toboggan, usually fabricated of 2 planks of green spruce, birch, or elm woods that were lashed together with rawhide. Paradigm credit: Gary Zaboly/Osprey Publishing. Caption credit: America's Elite past Chris McNab.
The "Indian hunters" under Massachusetts' Captain John Lovewell were among the most effective of the early on Rangers. Their long, difficult-fought battle at Lovewell's Pond on May 9, 1725, against Pigwacket Abenakis under the bearskin-robed war main Paugus, became a watershed effect in New England frontier history. Its story was told around hearths and campfires for decades, and its example informed future Rangers that Indian warriors were not e'er invincible in the wood.
When the 3rd war for control of Northward America broke out in 1744 (commonly called Rex George'southward War, after George II), several veterans of Lovewell'southward fight raised their ain Ranger companies and passed on their valuable field knowledge. Amidst the recruits who joined one company assigned to scout the upper Merrimack River valley effectually Rumford (later Hold), New Hampshire, was the teenager Robert Rogers.
Incessant French and Indian inroads turned the war of 1744–48 into a largely defensive i for the northern colonies. Log stockades and blockhouses protected refugee frontier families; Rumford itself had 12 such "garrison houses." When not on patrol or pursuing enemy raiders, Rangers acted as armed guards for workers in the field. Bells and cannon from the forts sounded warnings when the enemy was detected in the vicinity.
At the first of the last French and Indian War, each newly raised provincial regiment generally included one or two Ranger companies: men lightly dressed and equipped to serve as quick-reaction strike forces as well every bit scouts and intelligence gatherers. The Duke of Cumberland, Captain General of the British Army, not only encouraged their raising but also advised that some regular troops would have to reinvent themselves along Ranger lines before wilderness campaigns could be won.
Nevertheless, it was not until after the shocking 1757 fall of Fort William Henry that plans were finally accelerated to weigh the large numbers of Canadian and Indian partisans. Enlightened redcoat generals such as Brigadier George Augustus Howe, older brother of William, recognized that the woods war could non be won without Rangers. Howe was so firmly convinced of this that in 1758 he persuaded Major-General James Abercromby to revamp his entire army into the epitome of the Rangers, clothes-wise, artillery-wise, and drill-wise. Major-General Jeffrey Amherst, who would orchestrate the eventual conquest of Canada, championed Major Robert Rogers and the formation of a Ranger corps every bit before long as he became the new commander-in-primary in late 1758. "I shall e'er cheerfully receive Your stance in relation to the Service you are Engaged in," he promised Rogers. In the summertime of 1759, Amherst's faith in the Rangers was rewarded when, in the procedure of laying siege to Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, they again proved themselves the only unit in the ground forces sufficiently skilled to deal with the enemy's bushfighters. Even the general's vaunted Louisbourg lite infantry received Amherst's wrath afterward ii dark attacks past Indians had resulted in xviii of their number killed and wounded, generally from friendly fire.
Before the twelvemonth was out, Rogers had burned the Abenaki village of Odanak, on the distant St Francis River, its warriors the long-time scourge of the New England frontier. In 1760, after the Rangers had spearheaded the expulsion of French troops from the Richelieu River valley, Amherst sent Rogers and his men to conduct the news of Montreal's surrender to the French outposts lying about ane,000 miles (1,600km) to the w. He sent them because they were the only soldiers in his 17,000-human army able to accomplish the task.
Captain Robert Rogers' Ranger corps became the primary model for the eventual transformation of the regular and provincial army in that region. Colonial irregulars aside from Rogers' men likewise contributed to the success of British arms during the war: provincial units such as Israel Putnam's Connecticut Rangers, companies of Stockbridge Mahican and Connecticut Mohegan Indians, Joseph Gorham'due south and George Scott'southward Nova Scotia Rangers, and dwelling-based companies such as Captain Hezekiah Dunn's, on the New Bailiwick of jersey frontier. During Pontiac'south War (1763–64), Ranger companies led by such captains every bit Thomas Cresap and James Smith mustered to defend Maryland and Pennsylvania edge towns and valleys.
A delineation of Rogers' Rangers, every bit they would have been seen c.1760. The green uniforms in themselves were something of a revolution, as they constituted an early on form of camouflage and were an indication of the value the Rangers placed on concealability. Image credit: National Athenaeum. Caption credit: America's Aristocracy by Chris McNab.
Recruitment, Training, and Enlistment
Rogers' Rangers, the well-nigh famous, active, and influential colonial partisan body of the French and Indian War, never enjoyed the long-term establishment of a British regular regiment, with its permanent officer core, nor were they classed as a regiment or a battalion as the annually raised provincial troops were. In fact, at its peak Rogers' command was only a collection, or corps, of curt-term, independently raised Ranger companies. Technically, "Rogers' Rangers" were the men serving in the single company he commanded. By courtesy, the championship was extended to the other Ranger companies (excepting provincial units) with the Hudson valley/Lake George ground forces, since he was the senior Ranger officer there.
Rogers first captained Ranger Visitor Number One of Colonel Joseph Blanchard's New Hampshire Regiment in the 1755 Lake George campaign. Thirty-two hardy souls volunteered to remain with him at Fort William Henry that winter to continue scouting and raiding the enemy forts in the north, despite the lack of bounty or bacon money.
Near the beginning of the spring of 1756, reports of Rogers' success in the field prompted Massachusetts' Governor-Full general William Shirley (then temporary commander of British forces) to award him "the command of an contained company of Rangers," to consist of 60 privates, three sergeants, an ensign, and two lieutenants. Robert's brother, Richard, would be his first lieutenant. No longer on a provincial, footing, Rogers' Rangers would exist paid and fed out of the purple war chest and answerable to British commanders. Although non on a permanent institution, Ranger officers would receive near the same pay every bit redcoat officers, while Ranger privates would earn twice as much equally their provincial counterparts, who were themselves paid college wages than the regulars. (Captain Joseph Gorham's older Ranger visitor, based in Nova Scotia, enjoyed a royal commission, and thus a permanency denied those units serving in the Hudson valley.) Rogers was ordered past Shirley "to enlist none but such as were used to traveling and hunting, and in whose courage and allegiance I could confide."
Because the men of Rogers' ain company, and of those additional companies his veteran officers were assigned to raise, were more often than not frontier-bred, the amount of basic preparation they had to undergo was not as protracted as that endured by the average redcoat recruit. A typical Derryfield farmer, for example, would have entered the Ranger service as an already expert tracker and hunter. He was probably able to construct a bark or brush lean-to in less than an hr, find direction in the darkest woods, brand rope from the inner bark of certain copse, and survive for days on a scanty trail diet.
The typical New Hampshire recruit could also "shoot amazingly well," as Captain Henry Pringle of the 27th Foot observed. Based at Fort Edward and a volunteer in 1 of Rogers' biggest scouting excursions, Pringle wrote in December 1757 of 1 Ranger officer who, "the other twenty-four hours, at iv shots with four balls, killed a caryatid of Deer, a Pheasant, and a pair of wild ducks – the latter he killed at 1 Shot." In fact, many New England troops, co-ordinate to an eyewitness in Nova Scotia, could "load their firelocks upon their dorsum, and and then turn upon their bellies, and accept aim at their enemies: there are no improve marksmen in the world, for their whole delight is shooting at marks for wages."
The heavy emphasis on marksmanship in Rogers' corps, and the issuance of rifled carbines to many of the men, paid off in their frequent success against the Canadians and Indians. (Marksmanship remains among the most important of all Ranger legacies, one that continues to be stressed in the training of today's high-tech special forces.) Even in Rogers' just big-scale defeat, the battle on Snowshoes of March 13, 1758, the sharpshooting of his heavily outnumbered Rangers held off the encircling enemy for 90 minutes. Over two dozen Indians alone were killed and wounded, among the expressionless ane of their war chiefs. This was an unusually loftier casualty rate for the stealthy Native Americans ("who are not accustomed to lose," said Montcalm of the battle). So enraged were the Indians that they summarily executed a like number of Rangers who had surrendered on the promise of good quarter.
Learning how to operate watercraft on the northern lakes and streams was another crucial skill for every Ranger. Birchbark canoes and bateaux (rowing vessels made for transporting goods) were used in Rogers' earliest forays on Lake George. In 1756, these were swapped for newly arrived whaleboats made of light cedar planking. Designed for speed, they had keels, round bottoms, and sharp ends, allowing for a quick change of management and agile handling even on choppy waters. Blankets could be rigged as improvised sails.
Boosted things the new recruit had to acquire, or at least to perfect, included: how to build a raft; how to ford a rapid river without a raft or boat; how to portage a whaleboat over a mountain range; how to "log" a position in the forest as a makeshift bastion; how to blueprint and sew a pair of moccasins; how to utter bird and animal calls equally "individual signals" in the wood; and sometimes how to light and hurl a grenade.
Tactics and Campaigning
Because the modus operandi of Rangers remained unknown to the bulk of the regular regular army, Rogers was ordered in 1757 to pen a compendium of "rules, or programme of discipline," for those "Gentlemen Officers" who wanted to learn Ranger methods. To ensure that the lessons were properly understood, 50 regular volunteers from eight regiments formed a special company to fall under Rogers' tutelage. His job was to instruct them in "our methods of marching, retreating, ambushing, fighting, &c." Many of these rules, totaling 28 in number, were essentially derived from old Indian tactics and techniques, and were well known to New England frontiersmen.
Rangers conduct a perimeter defence, La Barbue Creek, 1757. The Indian tactic of two men defending a tree, with one of them firing while the other reloads, had been sensibly adopted by many white borderland soldiers. I of the foreground Rangers spits a musket ball into the barrel of his musket, which speeded up the loading procedure (every bit many equally six to eight bullets could exist held in the oral fissure). Image credit: Gary Zaboly/Osprey Publishing. Explanation Credit: America'south Elite by Chris McNab.
Rule 2, for instance, specified that if your scouting political party was small, "march in a single file, keeping at such a altitude from each other as to forestall one shot from killing ii men." Rule 5 recommended that a party leaving enemy land should return home past a different route, to avoid existence ambushed on its own tracks. Rule X warned that if the enemy was most to overwhelm you, "allow the whole body disperse, and every one take a different road to the place of rendezvous appointed for the evening."
Other rules required that even the most proficient recruit had to undergo special training in bush-fighting tactics. If 300–400 Rangers were marching "with a blueprint to assail the enemy," noted Dominion VI, "divide your political party into three columns … and let the columns march in single files, the columns to the right and left keeping at twenty yards [20m] altitude or more from that of the center," with proper guards in forepart, rear, and on the flanks. If attacked in front end, "course a front of your 3 columns or chief body with the advanced guard, keeping out your flanking parties … to prevent the enemy from pursuing hard on either of your wings, or surrounding you, which is the usual method of the savages."
Rule 7 advised the Rangers to "autumn, or squat down," if forced to take the enemy'due south first fire, and "then ascent and discharge at them." Dominion IX suggested that "if y'all are obliged to retreat, let the front of your whole party fire and fall back, till the rear hath done the same, making for the all-time ground you can, by this means you will oblige the, enemy to pursue you, if they exercise it at all, in the face up of a constant fire."
Nearly of Rogers' activities during the war consisted not of battles and skirmishes but of lightning raids, pursuits, and other special operations. Equally General Shirley's 1756 orders stated, Rogers was "to use my best endeavors to distress the French and their allies, past sacking, called-for, and destroying their houses, barns, billet, canoes, battoes, &c."The "&c" included slaughtering the enemy's herds of cattle and horses, ambushing and destroying his provision sleighs, setting burn down to his fields of grain and piles of cordwood, sneaking into the ditches of his forts to make observations, and seizing prisoners for interrogation.
When the big armies under Johnson, Abercromby, Forbes, Wolfe, Amherst, Bouquet, and others marched into enemy territory, Rangers acted equally advanced and flank guards, oft engaging and repulsing the kind of partisan attacks that had destroyed Braddock'southward force. One imperative in bush-league fighting was camouflage; for Rogers' men, greenish attire was a constant throughout the war. Other Anglo-American irregulars, like Gage's 80thursday Light Infantry and Putnam'due south Connecticut Rangers, wore brownish. Some, like Bradstreet's armed bateau men and Dunn's New Jersey Rangers, wore gray. A few Ranger companies in Nova Scotia wore nighttime blue or blackness.
Green may accept been their color of choice, only Rogers' men never enjoyed a consistent uniform pattern throughout their five-yr career, as the regulars and some provincial regiments did. On campaign with Rogers in Nova Scotia in July 1757, a Derryfield farmer-turned-Ranger would accept been dressed in "no particular compatible," co-ordinate to observer Helm John Knox of the 46th, who added that each Ranger wore his "cloaths curt." This probably signified a diverseness of coats, jackets, waistcoats, or just shirts, all deliberately trimmed to brand them lighter. In the field, the Rangers often resembled Indians, exhibiting a "cut-throat, savage appearance," as one author at Louisbourg recorded in 1758.
Among the many perils facing a Ranger assigned to a wintertime scout in the Adirondack Mountains were temperatures sometimes reaching 40 degrees beneath zero, snowblindness, bleeding feet, hypothermia, frostbite, gangrene, and lost fingers, toes, and noses. Deep slush often layered the frozen lakes, and sometimes a homo would fall through a hole in the ice. Rogers routinely sent back those who began limping or complaining during the outset days on the trail. Things but got more onerous as they neared the enemy forts: fireless camps had to exist endured, unless they found a depression on a high ridge where a deep pigsty could be scooped out with snowshoes to accommodate a pocket-sized burn down. Around this were arrayed shelters of pine boughs, each containing "mattresses" of evergreen branches overlaid with bearskins. Wrapped in their blankets like human cocoons, the Rangers would dangle their feet over the flames or coals to spend a tolerably comfy night.
Guarding the Ranger camp in no-man's land or enemy country required sentry parties numbering six men each, "two of whom must be constantly warning," noted Rogers, "and when relieved by their fellows, it should exist done without racket." When dawn broke, the unabridged detachment was awakened, "that beingness the time when the savages chuse to autumn upon their enemies." Before setting out again, the area around the campsite was probed for enemy tracks.
Drawing provisions, bedding, and actress wearable on mitt-sleds prevented the menfrom called-for likewise many calories and exuding dangerously excessive sweat. Expert snowshoers, they could nimbly climb "over several large mountains" in one twenty-four hour period, every bit provincial Jeduthan Baldwin did on a trek with Rogers in March 1756. Aside from additional warm habiliment such every bit flannel under jackets, woolen socks, shoepack liners, fur caps, and thick mittens, the marching winter Rangers wore their blankets wrapped, belted, and sometimes hooded around them, much as the Indians did.
Battling the French and Indians in snow that was often chest-deep could be lethal for a Ranger with a broken snowshoe. Ironically, the green clothing worn by Rogers' men proved a liability when they had a white slope of snow behind them. According to Captain Pringle, during the 1758 battle on Snowshoes, Rogers' servant was forced to lay "aside his greenish jacket in the field, as I did likewise my furred Cap, which became a mark to the enemy, and probably was the crusade of a slight wound in my face." Pringle, "unaccustomed to Snow-Shoes," found himself unable to join the surviving Rangers in their retreat at boxing'south end. He and two other men endured vii days of wandering the white forest before surrendering to the French.
Given the nature of their operations, the Rangers had to exist particularly disciplined with their rations. On a winter trek in 1759, Ranger sutler James Gordon wrote, "I had a pound or two of staff of life, a dozen crackers, almost two [pounds of] fresh pork and a quart of brandy." Henry Pringle survived his post-boxing ordeal in the woods by subsisting on "a small Bologna sausage, and a petty ginger … water, & the bark & berries of trees." Also eaten was the Indians' favorite trail food, parched corn – corn that had been parched and then pounded into flour. Information technology was in upshot an appetite suppressant: a spoonful of information technology, followed past a beverage of water, expanded in the stomach, making the traveler experience as though he had consumed a big meal.
Obtaining food from the enemy helped sustain Rangers on their return home. Slaughtered cattle herds at Ticonderoga and Crown Betoken provided tongues ("a very corking refreshment," noted Rogers). David Perry and several other Rangers of Helm Moses Hazen'southward company raided a French house near Quebec in 1759, finding "plenty of pickled Salmon, which was quite a rarity to most of us." In some other house they dined on "hasty-pudding." At St Francis, Rogers' men packed corn for the long march dorsum, but after 8 days, he wrote, their "provisions grew scarce." For some reason game was likewise scarce in the northern New England wilderness during the fall of 1759, and the Rangers' survival skills underwent severe tests fifty-fifty as they were being pursued by a vengeful enemy. Now and so they found an owl, partridge, or muskrat to shoot, but much of the time they dined on amphibians, mushrooms, beech leaves, and tree bark. Volunteer Robert Kirk of the 77th Highland Regiment wrote that "nosotros were obliged to scrape nether the snow for acorns, and even to eat our shoes and belts, and broil our powder-horns and thought information technology delicious eating."
Things grew so drastic that some Rangers roasted Abenaki bounty scalps for the little circles of mankind they held. One small party of Rangers and light infantry was ambushed and almost entirely destroyed by the French and Indians. When other Rangers discovered the bodies, "on them, appropriately, they fell like Cannibals, and devoured part of them raw," stuffing the remaining flesh, including heads, into their packs. One Ranger afterwards confessed that he and his starving comrades "inappreciably deserved the name of man beings."
Other Campaign Challenges
"We are in a almost damnable state," wrote a lieutenant of the 55th Foot at Lake George in 1758, "fit only for wolves, and its native savages." In such a demanding environment the Rangers were constantly being pushed to their physical and psychological limits, especially when captives of the enemy. Teenager Thomas Brownish, haemorrhage profusely from three bullet holes later Rogers' January 1757 battle virtually Ticonderoga, "concluded, if possible, to clamber into the Woods and there dice of my Wounds." Taken prisoner by Indians, who frequently threatened his life, he was forced to dance around a fellow Ranger who was being slowly tortured at a stake. Recovering from his wounds, Brown was later traded to a Canadian merchant, with whom he "fared no improve than a Slave," before making his escape. Captain State of israel Putnam himself was once saved from a burning stake by the concluding-minute intervention of a Canadian officer. Ranger William Moore had the heart of a slain comrade forced into his mouth. Later, he had some 200 pino splints stuck into his trunk, each 1 most to be set afire by his captors, when a woman of the tribe announced she would adopt him. Two captured Indian Rangers were shackled with irons and shipped to France, where they were sold into "extreme hard labor."
Tasks that might appear Herculean to others were strictly routine for the Rangers. In July 1756, Rogers and his men chopped open a six-mile (10km) path across the forested mountains between Lake George and Woods Creek, then hauled five armed whaleboats over information technology to make a raid on French shipping on Lake Champlain. On their march to St Francis, the Rangers sloshed for nine days through a bog in which they "could scarcely become a Dry Place to sleep on." Rogers himself is said to have escaped pursuing Indians after his March 1758 battle by sliding down a smooth mountain gradient well-nigh 700ft (210m) long. His four-month mission to Detroit and back in 1760 covered over one,600 miles (2,500km), 1 of the most remarkable expeditions in all American history.
At campaign's end, of course, there were rewards to be enjoyed. In late Baronial 1758, Rogers gave his company "a barrell of Vino treat," and afterward a large bonfire was lit, the men "played circular it" in celebration of recent British victories. Every bit the Richelieu Valley was being swept of French troops in 1760, provincial captain Samuel Jenks wrote with delight, "Our Rangers … inform us the ladys are very kind in the neighbourhood, which seems we shall fare better when we git into the thick setled parts of the land." Natural wonders previously unseen past any British soldiers, including Niagara Falls, awaited the 200 Rangers who followed Rogers that year to lay claim to Canada's Bang-up Lakes country for England, and to win the friendship of some of the very tribes they had and then often fought.
Excellent marksmanship, bated from scoutcraft and daring, is what fabricated the best Rangers. Former hunters and trappers most of them, they understood how a unmarried well-aimed shot might alter the course of a skirmish or battle in the wood. Robert Rogers instructed his companies to practice firing at marks so frequently that at least one British commander, Lieutenant-Colonel William Haviland, scolded him, considering it an "extravagance in Ammunition." Image credit: Gary Zaboly/Osprey Publishing. Caption credit: America's Elite by Chris McNab.
Copyright Osprey Publishing.
Reprinted with permission from Osprey Publishing.
CHRIS MCNAB is an author and editor specializing in military history and military engineering science. To date he has published more than xl books, including America's Elite: US Special Forces from the American Revolution to the Nowadays 24-hour interval. He is the contributing editor of Hitler'due south Armies: A History of the German Armed services 1939–45 and Armies of the Napoleonic Wars. Chris has as well written extensively for major encyclopedia series, magazines and newspapers.
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