Preacherman
Member
Paul Kirchner, of the API List, recently posted this very interesting article. It's from a 1903 issue of the Cavalry Journal, by a cavalry officer involved in the fight against the Moros. It contains some interesting comments on speed of weapon accessibility, as well as "stopping power" considerations.
The Revolver and Its Holster
By Captain F. C. Marshall, Fifteenth Cavalry
The discussions on the Borchardt-Luger pistol, in the January number of
the JOURNAL seems to indicate an almost universal dislike among cavalry
officers to small caliber pistols. This has always been my view, and
was never better illustrated than last week, here at Jolo.
Very recently occurred the first Feast of the Hadjis of this year
(there are two each year), and a larger crop of fanatics than usual
resulted. These fanatics are called by various names-- "juramentados,"
"run-amucks," madmen. Their idea is to die killing others. They are the
absolute limit of desperate homicides. On the 8th of March, one of
these juramentados started his bloody career in the cockpit of Tullei,
a small suburb of Jolo, in the height of its Sunday operations. His
first victim was a Filipino, whom he killed, then a Chinaman, on whom
he inflicted a frightful wound; then he cut a Moro, and another Moro.
Then the barongs of the crowd around were out and his career closed. It
was over in a very few seconds.
The second killing occurred on March 10th, two days later, when a party
of engineer soldiers, with a guard of the Fifteenth Cavalry, was
superintending the work of a party of native laborers in a stone quarry
three miles from Jolo, near the coast of Datto Kalbi, one of the
principal chiefs of the Jolo Moros. A trail much used by the Moros
passing up and down the coast, passes near this quarry. About 9 o'clock
a single Moro came along this path. As soon as he appeared the guard
and engineers jumped to their feet; they were awaiting the explosion of
a blast, and the Moro yelled out, "Bagai," meaning " friend." 'Then he
leveled his piece at the group and pulled the trigger. The weapon, an
old percussion cap musket, missed fire. He threw it down, drew his
barong, and jumped for the crowd. The guard fired at him; the
engineers, who were unarmed, started to run. One man, a private of
Company G, Corps of Engineers, stumbled on a log and fell. Before the
Moro could reach him he had been hit twice-once in the groin and once
over the heart- by revolver shots, but the witnesses say he did not
slacken speed perceptibly, rushed at the fallen soldier and cut him
dreadfully. The first blow cut down the soldier's back, cutting through
all nine ribs on the left side of the backbone, through the lungs and
to the breastbone; another took off his hand at the wrist; a third his
leg below the knee; a fourth split his other hand to the wrist. By this
time the Moro had seven wounds, and became hors du combat--and high
time, too.
On the 12th came the third visitation. This time the Jolo market was
the scene at seven o’clock in the morning, Three Moros, with their
barongs hidden under the folds of their sarongs, bearing loads of
native produce to sell, entered the market, which, since the cholera
scare, has been held in a cocoanut grove near the village of Jolo. On
getting into the thick of the crowd they threw down their loads, drew
their barongs and started. They killed three Moros, one East Indian,
and wounded a Filipino and his Moro wife, before the crowd scattered.
Captain Eltinge and Lieutenant Partridge, Fifteenth Cavalry, with a
detachment of eleven men of Troop III of that regiment, were just
leaving their stables for target practice. Hearing the commotion, they
rushed to the market and were at once charged by the three Moros most
desperately. Of course the cavalrymen being mounted, could easily keep
out of the way and could shoot the men down at their leisure, but it
was noticed that the stopping effect of the bullets was very small, and
only when hit by bullets that entered the skull did the men stop their
desperate attempt to get at the soldiers. The last Moro to die, while
on his knees, threw his barong at a mounted man, fully twenty feet
away, striking him in the pit of the stomach with--most
fortunately--the hilt.
Another thing noticed in these and other juramentado attacks at Jolo,
is that the holsters are too small and the revolvers in consequence too
hard to draw quickly. Nothing could be more rapid than the way a Moro
gets into action. His barong or kris slips in or out of its scabbard
like oil. It is nicely placed to his hand, and the swing of drawing it
plunges it into his victim. To oppose such abnormal quickness the
revolver should slip out readily too, and its bullet should be
sufficiently heavy to stop the advance of the person receiving it,
instead of merely inflicting a wound that is fatal only after bleeding
to death or after peritonitis has set in.
I do not think that cavalry officers have laid sufficient stress on the
defect I mention in the holster, in their reports. Every officer I have
spoken to on the subject agrees with me that the defect is grave and
should by all means be remedied.
The experiences of the past few years in the Philippines. where a fight
is a touch and go; where the enemy makes his attack so viciously and
his retreat so soon, fractions of seconds in getting into action mean,
many times, valuable lives saved, and increased punishment inflicted on
an enemy. In my own experience, both hands are usually necessary to get
my revolver quickly out and ready. The holster should be deep and
large, with the flap easily secured and easily opened --all of which
our present holster is not. The revolver should carry a heavy bullet.
That should be the first consideration.
