The Revolutionary War Drill Manual was written by Major General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben in 1778 and 1779, during the American Revolution. Commissioned to train troops at Valley Forge, Steuben formed a model drill company of 100 men, who were to in turn train others, thus causing the new drill procedures to be eventually taught to the entire army. He and published his drill instructions in a manual that was widely distributed throughout the Continental Army.
Originally entitled "Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States," it became commonly known as the army's "blue book."
It remained the official U.S. military guide until 1812.
Famous quotes containing the words war, drill and/or manual:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“Swift blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.”
—Stephen Crane (1871–1900)
“If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)