“The incontrovertible fact remains that the rifleman is the heart and soul of the infantry team, and, in fact, of the combined ground arms team,” he said. “All of the other elements have but one mission—to support and assist the rifleman to move forward and seize and hold his assigned objective.

“The very weight of this support serves to emphasize the basic fundamental remains that it is the rifleman who, in the final analysis, carries the fight to the enemy and clinches the decision…None of this in any way minimizes the importance of the rifleman. Those who support him behind the lines and on the battlefield itself help to soften up the enemy, but it still remains for him to deliver the knockout blow.

“Remember, too, that in the fluid type of warfare being fought today there is no fixed front line,” General Church cautioned. “Infiltrating attacks in the rear areas require that cooks, supply and administrative personnel, and command post personnel take precautions for their own security, and they are frequently forced to fight as riflemen for their own defense. Infantrymen who make up the gun screws for mortars and machine guns and recoilless rifles defend themselves and their gun positions as riflemen if an attacking enemy reaches them.”

After all the kudos to the rifleman as the ‘heart and soul’ of the infantry, the question still remains: Is accurately aimed rifle fire and marksmanship training still important in warfare? Perhaps, it might be suggested, the rifleman can be just as effective by shooting helter-skelter with a ‘burp’ gun. Why bother with rifle marksmanship?

Both Generals Church and Collins, who have seen war closeup, are not ready to surrender the traditional American concept of rifle marksmanship.

“It cannot be denied,” said General Church, “that there are those who advocate a de-emphasis on training in rifle marksmanship. It is our unequivocal conviction that such thinking is wrong. The Infantry School, which is responsible for the formulation of Infantry doctrine throughout our Army, has not reduced the time or the emphasis given to this type of training.”

General Collins stressed in his talk with me that he has always been concerned with the waste of ammunition in warfare and in the tremendous cost of moving ammunition supplies to the front. He believes in frugality of ammunition use, of making ammunition count.

That’s why General Collins is adamant in his opposition to what he considers is the European tendency toward automatic weapons to replace the rifle. General Collins said that he favors switching, when conditions permit, to a lightweight version of the Garand rifle, with certain improvements, but his is solidly against suggestions that the Garand be made ‘solely’ a fully automatic rifle.

“My personal view,” General Collins told me, “is that we need a lightweight rifle that can be used for semiautomatic fire or, when required, full automatic fire. I am personally quite skeptical about making all weapons fully automatic. Automatic shoulder weapons waste too much ammunition. Of course, we need a Browning automatic rifle with each squad, but to arm every man with a fully automatic rifle would be foolhardy.

“From my experience in combat and from years as a weapons instructor, I would say that you can get more hits with a semiautomatic rifle than with a full automatic. I am confident that the automatic wastes ammunition. And it’s difficult enough to get ammunition to the front without wasting it.”

General Collins conceded that there is a special need for the ‘burp’ gun but he stressed that every soldier should not be armed with one. He said ‘there’s not use spraying the woods’ when aimed, accurate fire at a clump of bushes concealing the enemy would do the trick.

He said that the soldiers he has talked with in combat areas want the M-1 Garand rifle. They must have more striking power, not less, he said. They would lose hitting capability with an automatic rifle, he added.

The adoption of a rifle that can be fired fully automatically appears to contradict General Collins’ attitude favoring the more accurate fire of the semiautomatic Garand. If the semiautomatic rifle has greater hitting effectiveness and saves ammunition, the question arises, why have it turned into an automatic? It’s obvious that troops with a rifle that can be fired semiautomatically or fully automatically will have a great tendency to switch the selector to full automatic—turning it into a ‘burp’ gun, the very thing General Collins deplores.

From my personal observation in the Pentagon, I have decided that General Collins still objects to an automatic rifle for the foot solider but has been influenced to keep the door open for such a development in the future. It should be evident that if the Army turns to a shoulder weapon which can be fired automatically, accurate marksmanship will have to yield to the natural tendency with such weapons for helter-skelter spraying and a high waste of ammunition.

I also talked with General Collins about the values of civilian marksmanship and the part that could be played by civilian rifle clubs in supplying the Army with ready-trained marksmen. He replied that the Army likes to get well-trained rifle marksmen. He said youths coming from rifle clubs who already know how to shoot accurately could be used more readily as coaches in the Army training system.

“What I am afraid of is that people may get the idea that rifle clubs could be a substitute for universal military training,” General Collins commented when it was suggested that the rifle clubs in the United States could be tied into a system of marksmanship training for youths before they go into the Army, or for reservists on inactive status.

“What we need most is a system of universal military training,” General Collins declared. “When young men pass into UMT, that’s where we will teach them to shoot. We can do that in a relatively short time. The whole method of instruction in marksmanship has been worked out to perfection over a period of years. We can teach marksmanship effectively through UMT.”

General Collins make it clear that rifle marksmanship is merely one of many courses of instruction that the UMT trainee must learn and that marksmanship cannot be emphasized at the sacrifice of other vital training.

“Very frankly,” he said, “we are not going to spent too much money on this one aspect of training. We must weight our expenses carefully. We can’t spend as much as we have in the past.”

General Collins said he favored continuance of the civilian marksmanship program, and that the Army, to a limited extent, help finance this program. He conceded that early training in rifle marksmanship would help youths preparing for the Army. He emphasized, however, that the Army feels it can take a youth who has never fired a rifle before and train him quickly to become an effective rifleman.