[Illustration: AUTOMATIC PISTOL, CALIBER .45, MODEL 1911.] CHAPTER XI. PISTOLS AND REVOLVERS. The American pistol was one of the great successes of the war. For several years before the war came the Ordnance Department had been collaborating with private manufacturers to develop the automatic pistol; but none of our officers realized until the supreme test came what an effective weapon the Colt .45 would be in the hand-to-hand fighting of the trenches. In our isolation we had suspected, perhaps, that the bayonet and such new weapons as the modern hand grenade had encroached upon the field of the pistol and revolver. We were soon to discover our mistake. In the hands of a determined American soldier the pistol proved to be a weapon of great execution, and it was properly feared by the German troops. We had long been a nation of pistol shooters, we Americans, but not until the year 1911 did we develop a pistol of the accuracy and rapidity of fire demanded by our ordnance experts. The nations of Europe had neglected this valuable arm almost altogether, regarding it principally as a military ornament which only officers should carry. The result of Europe's neglect was that the small-caliber revolvers of the Germans and even of the French and English were toys in comparison with the big Colts that armed the American soldiers. America owed the Colt .45 to the experiences of our fighters in the Philippines, and to the inventive genius of John Browning of machine-gun fame. In the earlier Philippine campaigns our troops used a .38-caliber pistol. Our soldiers observed that when the tough tribesmen were hit with these bullets and even seriously wounded they frequently kept on fighting for some time. What was needed was a hand weapon that would put the adversary out of fighting the instant he was hit, whether fatally or not. We therefore increased the caliber of the automatic pistol to .45 and slowed down the bullet so that it tore flesh instead of making a clean perforation. These improvements gave the missile the impact of a sledge hammer, and a man hit went down every time. Moreover, in this development great improvement had been made in the accuracy of the weapon, the 1911 Colt being the straightest-shooting pistol ever produced in this country. Even the best of the older automatics and revolvers were accurate only in the hands of expert marksmen. But any average soldier with average training can hit what he shoots at with a Colt. The improvements in the automatic features brought it to the stage where it could be fired by a practiced man 21 times in 12 seconds. In this operation the recoil of each discharge ejects the empty shell and loads in a fresh one.