Don Stivers Service on the LineThe Mexican War, through relatively short in duration, proved a testing ground for men, tactics, and weapons that still affect military planners to this day. Names of American lieutenants and captains art Veracruz, and Cerro Gordo would appear in the rosters of general offices fifteen years later in the Civil War. Comrades at Chapultepec and Mexico City would become enemies at Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg, and Petersburg.
Most importantly, linked with the artillery arm would be an ancient weapon of terror that would, in the near future, become the delivery system for the ultimate weapon of destruction and the key to modern strategic warfare for the nations: the rocket.
In March of 1847, after an amphibious landing, Major General Winfield Scott's American forces laid siege of the Mexican port of Veracruz. Along with the traditional artillery marched the Rocket and Howitzer battery.
Don Stivers' painting, commissioned by the Ordnance Corps Association at the famous Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, depicts in dramatic fashion a vision into the future. In the foreground, silent, rests the artillery; in the distance, rockets deliver fire into he besieged city of Veracruz. In the forefront of the battle were the army's ordnance men. As well as performing their traditional role of maintaining, storing and issuing weapons and ammunition to the combat soldiers, they themselves served 'on the line,' under fire in the Rocket and Howitzer Battery throughout the War with Mexico.