After a brief deliberation, a few guidelines were set forth, and MacArthur gave Parker the authority to establish a new Gatling Gun Detachment.įifth Corps officially authorized Parker’s detachment on May 27, assigning him two sergeants and 10 privates. Somehow he was able to sell McArthur on the “moral effects” of such a unit’s presence in the field. Explaining the overlooked tactical possibilities of the Gatling, Parker offered to attend to the details of organizing his proposed unit. Unsurprisingly, he was passed from one skeptically unenthusiastic officer to the next, until he was granted an audience with Colonel Arthur MacArthur (father of World War II legend Douglas MacArthur), who happened to be in temporary command. To advance his plan, Parker proceeded up the customary chain of command. He envisioned a mobile unit with the capability of supplying concentrated and controlled fire in a variety of offensive and defensive applications. Now, in Tampa, Parker conceived a plan to organize a special body of Gatling gun-equipped troops. Rapid-fire guns were nice to have protecting one’s position from assault, but in their all too brief history of actual combat they had yet to be offensively deployed.įor months before the war, Parker had written letters to the highest levels of the War Department, advancing his theory concerning the machine gun’s possibilities. In 1898, this was quite a radical thought. He reached the conclusion that a new policy incorporating machine guns was needed to take the place of artillery at battle ranges closer than 1,500 yards. Looking ahead to Cuba, Parker considered the steamy, overgrown, up-and-down jungles of the semi-tropics and the logistical unfeasibility of getting bulky guns into action. At the time, the world’s armies still relied upon draft animals to haul and position the big guns-something not always possible given time, terrain, and mobility constraints. He agreed with the prevailing military wisdom of supporting an infantry charge with artillery. Parker invested his idle hours in thinking and planning. Everyone had ample time to waste or use, according to his whim. He joined the 25th Infantry Regiment at Tampa, Fla., on April 26, 1898, waiting impatiently with the rest of the invading Fifth Corps for the embarkation order to Cuba. “Gatling Gun Parker”Īs a second lieutenant, young Parker paid his dues at obscure posts and continued his military education as a student officer. Ambitious and gifted, he applied himself to the study of law while still at the academy and was admitted to the Missouri bar in February 1896. Four years later he graduated 49th of 62 with the class of 1892. Wanting a taste of Army life, Parker turned the paper over to his partner, passed the entrance examination to West Point, and entered the United States Military Academy as a cadet in June 1888. He grew up on a farm, but at a young age he went to work for a printing company as a “devil,” or errand boy, and soon was publishing his own weekly newspaper in Calhoun, Mo. John Henry Parker had visions of Gatling guns cranking in his head, and he had a plan to make that vision work. Not to be denied his part in the victory that lay ahead was a plucky, assertive young Army lieutenant who would take his destiny into his own hands. So many wanted to enlist that not all could be accommodated, and grown men shed real tears of disappointment at recruiting booths across the country. For two generations, dormant patriots had been denied the experience of combat, and there was a great hunger for the sting and glory of battle. A northwest breeze wafted it into the particularly keen and receptive nostrils of every red-blooded male of military age in the United States. Along with the news of the American battleship Maine’s suspicious sinking in Havana harbor in February 1898 came the unmistakable scent of war.