Horse mastership was an area where the regular British mounted force was also grossly deficient. Here, even the regular cavalry were deficient, though again the colonial units were considered very capable. Marquess Anglesey, premier historian of the British cavalry, notes that, “a cursory look at most of the continental cavalry of the time and at the native cavalry of India is enough to show that their horse mastership was greatly superior to that of the British regulars. It was universally agreed, too, that the men of the British artillery, both field and horse, were generally good horse masters—infinitely better than the cavalry or mounted infantry.” This trait of the British cavalry had not changed since the Napoleonic era. Throughout the regular and yeomanry cavalry forces there was a cultural stigma associated with dismounting and resting the horse’s back. British cavalry felt that dismounting reduced them to status of infantry. Yeomanry would sit on their horses for a half hour during halts unless directly ordered to dismount.55
The veterinary surgeon of the 6th Dragoons kept very detailed records of the horses assigned during the regiment’s wartime service. The regiment lost 3,750 horses during the war, while the unit traveled 6,116 miles. The regiment lost a horse for every three and a half miles traveled. As if to make a bad situation worse, it wasn’t just horses that were lost. Some British cavalry did not even remove the tack when a horse became unserviceable on campaign. The yeomanry units were the worst. One yeoman cavalry unit was issued 610 horses, and after a short 14-mile march to their cantonment, lost 40 to the hospital and had to destroy another 35. They also left the 75 sets of saddles with the dead and disabled horses.56
The number of horses lost in the Boer War was in many ways unprecedented, especially since the British could not claim, with 21 professional regiments in service, that their cavalry were complete novices. The horse losses, however, did not represent some particular under-appreciation of animals by the British. Rather, the horse losses represented the overall gross inefficiency of the late-nineteenth-century British army in staff procedures and organization in the field. The British army that deployed to South Africa was administratively unable to deal with the massive resources assembled to prosecute the war. Not only were horse casualties excessive, but the British lost 13,589 men to disease while only losing 8,600 to combat. Even more depressing, over 20,000 Boer women and children, under British care in the concentration camp system, died from diseases related to malnourishment and unsanitary conditions. Thus, the appalling record of horse care in the British mounted forces reflected the general incompetence of the British army in planning and executing the staff operations necessary for large-scale operations.
The British mounted operations in the Boer War were ultimately successful, when combined with other tactics, in bringing the Boers to the negotiating table. The Boers ceased hostilities on terms well short of their political objective of independence. On the other hand, the Boer combatants and politicians returned to pretty much the antebellum status quo despite more than two years of very intense fighting, and huge costs in lives and resources to the home government. Boer combatants were not prosecuted after the war. The reason for this was that the Boers were successful in making the war too costly for the British government to sustain indefinitely. At the end of the war 250,000 British troops, including an 80,000-man mounted force, were required to prosecute the war against 20,000 Boer commandos. The British could not match the Boers tactically without a very large field army, and the British government was unwilling to sustain such a large force in the field indefinitely. The Boers’ military successes, directly attributable to their superior employment of mounted forces, allowed Boer politicians to obtain acceptable conditions for ending the conflict through negotiation.
Occurring on opposite sides of the globe, and involving completely different cultures, the American Plains Indian Wars and the Boer War offer interesting similarities, as well as important contrasts in the use of mounted forces. The terrain, size of the area of operations, and general nature of the conflict were in many ways similar. The most striking similarity was the importance of the horse and mounted forces in both conflicts. Superior horsemanship and horse mastership were major factors that enabled a small unconventional mounted force to wage an effective guerrilla campaign against a much better resourced conventional army.
Both wars also demonstrated that a highly mobile enemy could only be effectively opposed by a force of near or equal mobility. In both cases the infantry and artillery arms functioned in a wholly supportive role. Almost exclusively, mounted forces prosecuted the decisive actions of the wars. The mounted operations in the American West and South Africa demonstrated that mounted forces could be employed very effectively in unconventional warfare—if they were versatile and were capable of mounted and dismounted combat. Both conflicts demonstrated, as the American Civil War portended, that the future of cavalry was tied to the mounted rifleman: an effective combat system characterized by tactical lethality, and tactical and operational mobility.
In both wars, conventional troops were at a disadvantage because they could not match the enemy in fieldcraft. Both conventional armies overcame this disadvantage in similar ways. The U.S. army enlisted Indian scouts; the British army recruited Boers and also augmented their regular cavalry with colonial cavalry that matched up well against the Boer’s fieldcraft and horsemanship.
The wars also demonstrated some markedly different approaches to the military problem of highly mobile hostile guerrillas. The U.S. army effectively opposed the Indians with a relatively small cavalry force that it was able to concentrate systematically on individual enemy forces, thus achieving local superiority. The British approach was to employ large numbers of professionals and an even larger number of volunteer forces. Neither force could match the mobility of its foes, but the Americans, with a solid cadre of experienced professional leaders, were ultimately able to negate the mobility advantage of the Indian to the point that over time it was not decisive. One significant difference in these two approaches was in the length of the war. The British conflict was shorter than the American’s, but the results were less decisive. The Americans were able to sustain a longer war by employing a small professional force, which required fewer resources, cost less, and attracted less public scrutiny and debate.
The Americans also demonstrated that a professional mounted force could achieve remarkable mobility without the huge loss of horses that characterized British operations. The soundness of American horses on campaign was mainly attributed to superior leadership, recognition that the horse was a valuable asset, and—in the case of the American West—an irreplaceable commodity. American troopers were not more knowledgeable than the British, but American leaders placed more emphasis on horse management and closely supervised horse care. At the rate of horse wastage in the Boer War, an American cavalry regiment would have been completely dismounted after the first three weeks of an Indian campaign. Horse wastage on the scale of the Boer War, although almost equaled in the American Civil War, would have been operationally disastrous given the conditions and the resources available during the Plains Indian Wars.
Finally, both the Plains Indian Wars and the Boer War demonstrated that the marriage of firepower and mobility was the most important military characteristic of cavalry. Combining magazine rifles and horses allowed cavalry to quickly move long distances and be militarily significant when they arrived. Shock tactics, though not without a place in the evolving modern role of cavalry, could not overcome a prepared infantryman, while cavalry firepower married to rapid maneuver could do so.
Unfortunately, much of what was—or could have been—learned from the American and British experiences was largely ignored by the large cavalry forces of the world. Many countries continued to pursue organizations, doctrine, and tactics more reminiscent of a Napoleonic battlefield than a modern one. The British cavalry, however, learned from their experience and came away from the war with a sound appreciation for horsemanship, horse mastership, and marksma
nship. They would use the experience gained in the Boer War to field the most capable and successful mounted force in World War I.
Chapter Ten
THE LAST CHARGE
Do they remember? Well, they are only horses! The troopship and Egypt’s sands lie between them and the paddocks they knew. Perhaps when they stand dozing with slack head-ropes, vagrant pictures flit through their minds. Who can tell? These are the veterans. —FRANK DALBY DAVISON, The Wells of Beersheba: A Light Horse Legend
Cavalry forces entering the twentieth century did not know they were approaching the end of an era. World War I would be a rude awakening. Cavalry had incredible difficulty operating against enemies entrenched behind wire and equipped with machine guns, rifles, and artillery support. In addition, motorized transportation made its first appearance on the battlefield in World War I and hinted at technology that could match or exceed the mobility of horsepower. Still, on the eastern front, and in the Middle East, cavalry had some notable successes. In addition, though wheeled and tracked transport made its debut, it did not demonstrate a capability for replacing cavalry. Thus, in many ways cavalry was no more obsolete at the end of World War I than infantry, which also proved unable to operate against the new incredibly powerful defensive systems. During the interwar years, between World Wars I and II the pace of technological advance increased. Motorized and mechanized technologies increased dramatically, and armies and cavalry forces around the world studied them closely. By the beginning of World War II, most countries were seriously considering abandoning their cavalry arms. The opening campaigns of the war—Poland in 1939, and the defeat of France in 1940—convinced several armies that the time to end the 3,000-year relationship between man and war horse had come. But large formations of war horses and riders took the field one last time in a conflict that also included jet aircraft and nuclear weapons.
CAVALRY IN WORLD WAR I
Cavalry on World War I’s western front was important during the initial war of maneuver, as the Germans and French launched their offensives. However, neither cavalry force demonstrated an ability to take advantage of the horse’s mobility. Timidity existed in the French and German cavalry, which may have been a reflection of their clearly subordinate role in operations, as well as a lack of confidence in their troops, tactics, and weapons. Both high commands also shared some blame for not understanding the potential and capabilities of their cavalry forces. Neither force trained or equipped its cavalry to fight dismounted.
In contrast to the Germans and French, the cavalry division of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was a well-trained, well-led, experienced professional force. Soldiers were accustomed to dismounted action and were expert marksman. Most of the middle- and senior-grade officers were veterans of the Boer War and prepared units, troopers, and horses well for rigorous campaigning. The British employed their cavalry with confidence and decisiveness. Despite their small size, they made a solid contribution to the success of the BEF: blunting the German offensive at its most critical point. In encounters with enemy cavalry, they consistently bested their German counterparts despite fighting outnumbered.
The maneuver phase of the war was over by October 1914. From that point on, the impact of mounted forces on the western front was negligible. The Germans transferred most of the major German cavalry formations to the eastern front. British cavalry were eventually withdrawn from the trenches and formed into a cavalry corps that became part of the BEF reserve for the remainder of the war. French cavalry, like the British, were withdrawn from the front line. The British used their mounted units as a highly mobile reserve which would ride to a threatened portion of the front and then dismount and fight as infantry. The British transferred two complete cavalry divisions to Palestine and converted some regiments into machine-gun troops. However, they retained three divisions in France until the end of the war. The French dismounted some cavalry regiments and used them as infantry. The remaining mounted units served as a reserve.
The eastern front was a much different war than the war in the west. Though cavalry used many of the same tactics, the front was much larger, and the consequent greater dispersal of the troops made for more opportunities for maneuver. Cavalry, both German and Russian, played an important role on the eastern front. Its reconnaissance and security capabilities were in constant demand to find the enemy and follow him. In defense, cavalry provided vital security for infantry forces as they retreated to new positions. Cavalry was used on the flanks to prevent attacking armies from being surprised in these vulnerable areas, and to ensure the enemy did not infiltrate around defending forces.
Conditions in the Middle Eastern theater also offered opportunities for maneuver solutions to the tactical problems that faced the combatants. However, for the first two years of the war, it was a low-priority theater, and both sides were content to remain on the defensive. This changed with the arrival of British General Sir Edmund Allenby, a cavalryman. His solution to the stalemate on the Mediterranean coast was to take advantage of the mobility advantage he had in the Desert Mounted Corps’s four cavalry divisions. With these forces he broke the deadlock with a daring cavalry attack on Beersheba in October 1917. This successful attack broke the Turkish line and contributed to the quick capture of Jerusalem. In the summer of 1918 Allenby resumed the offensive, once again led by his cavalry divisions, and destroyed three Turkish armies and occupied Damascus. The success of Allenby’s cavalry-led offensive prompted Turkey’s withdrawal from the war.
Organization
In the opening months of the war the total cavalry forces in the field, counting all the combatants, was over a half a million horses and men. To fight World War I Russia fielded perhaps the largest cavalry force ever assembled. The peacetime strength of Russian cavalry was impressive: 106 regiments manned by over 100,000 troops. The peacetime strength of the Russian army was approximately 1.4 million troops, thus the cavalry, for all its size, was less than 10 percent of the force. Upon mobilization, more than 140 additional Cossack regiments activated, bringing the strength of Russian cavalry to approximately 250,000 men and horses.1
At the beginning of World War I a standard Russian cavalry division had four regiments of different types: one regiment each of uhlans, dragoons, hussars, and cos-sacks. The regiments were identical except for their uniforms, which still reflected the traditional cavalry type. A Russian cavalry regiment consisted of six squadrons. Each squadron had two companies and totaled 150 men and horses. The six squadrons gave the regiment a total strength of 900 men, and with supporting troops, the total was over 1,000. Two regiments made up a brigade, and two brigades a division. Horse artillery and other attachments gave a Russian cavalry division a strength of over 5,000 men and horses. Each cavalry division included a machine-gun section of eight Maxim machine guns.2
The French organized for war in the tradition of previous conflicts. They moved into the first combat operations in brightly colored uniforms and shining metal helmets.3 Their organization did not differ much from the organization of French cavalry in the Napoleonic period or in the Franco-Prussian War. The French divided cavalry into four types: cuirassiers, dragoons, hussars, and chasseurs. Only the cuirassiers had an appreciable functional difference, remaining as heavy cavalry and prepared to execute the classic cavalry charge. All the others were general purpose cavalry.
There was a total of 93 regiments in the French cavalry arm. This gave France a total cavalry strength of approximately 75,000. Seven of the 10 cavalry divisions supported the five French field armies. Three divisions, including the heavy division with the bulk of the cuirassiers, made up a general headquarters (GHQ) cavalry reserve. As the war continued, conditions forced France to begin to dismount its cavalry. Ultimately four of the 10 divisions dismounted. A national shortage of horses influenced this decision as well as tactical considerations.4 The balance of the remaining cavalry divisions formed a second cavalry corps used as a reserve.
At the beginning of World War I, German cava
lry also organized much as it had in the Franco-Prussian War: broadly divided into cavalry to support infantry divisions and independent cavalry divisions. Usually one cavalry regiment was assigned to each infantry division. The German army formed 4 cavalry corps in the opening stages of the operations on the western front. At the beginning of operations the four cavalry corps operated under the command of supreme headquarters and were in effect separate cavalry organizations. But, by the middle of August 1914, the high command subordinated each to an army headquarters. In total, the Germans formed 11 cavalry divisions, each with 3 brigades of 2 regiments each, for a total of 6 regiments in a division.5 At its height, the German cavalry forces numbered about 126,000 men. As the war progressed, the need for infantry to man the trenches also drove the Germans to dismount large numbers of cavalry. In August 1916, the Germans converted one-third of their regiments, 53 of 157, to dismounted cavalry regiments.6
Cossacks
Much of the cavalry strength of Russia as it entered World War I was in the form of Cossack cavalry. The Cossacks were a unique military culture that had no equivalent in any other country. Cossacks had been a central feature of Russian cavalry since the seventeenth century, and an important part of Russian society since the reign of the great sixteenth-century and Muscovite Prince, Ivan the Terrible.
The word Cossack (Kazak) derived from the Turkish work Quazak meaning “adventurer.”7 The Cossacks descended from people who lived in the great expanses of the steppe east of the more civilized agricultural and urban communities of northern Russia and the western Ukraine. The original inhabitants of this no-man’s-land were roving bands of Mongols who had lost their association with the Mongol khans. These nomads subsisted by raiding Mongols, Turks, as well as Europeans. Although originally primarily Asian, the Cossack ranks were swelled by immigration from European Russia. The only requirements for new members to join the Cossacks was that the new comer be able to ride and perform military service. Over time, the Cossacks also became Christian, and new members had to embrace the Russian Orthodox faith.
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