Army Rifle Team
Army Rifle Team
Tom Trevor has the original of this print. There is a copy hanging in
the Custer Battlefield Museum.
The photo is probably from 1883 or 1884, there are no marksman bars or
sharpshooter crosses which did not come out until 84. There are many
soldiers wearing 1st style marksman collar buttons that came out in
1881. One
soldier, third row from bottom center has 3 pairs, hence the 1883 date,
one
pair per year. There is the cartridge box on the far left, two soldiers
with "white" cartridge belts, cartridge belt over the leg of one of the
front soldiers, four to five Black Americans, and a "wire stand" at the
front of the picture. Tony Beck states the wire brackets are the
following: "The wire devices in the foreground of the second photo look
a lot like trigger weights. The I.G.s in the North South Skirmish
Association use devices that look almost exactly like those to check for a
minimum 3 pound trigger pull on our muskets. Given how competitive the old
Army matches were, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to have found more than a
few 1 pound triggers in the ranks. The line officers were probably testing
for triggers lighter than regulation."
