Our Cavalry

by Michael Frederic Rimington

It is also a matter of easy demonstration and universal agreement that the cavalry which dominates in the first great cavalry struggle has already gained an enormous advantage for its side.

What is the logical outcome? It is, that unless (1) our cavalry force is redundant, or (2) there are difficulties in feeding our independent cavalry, or (3) the enemy’s cavalry is very weak, or (4) our cavalry comprises squadrons, which we cannot, from reasons of want of training or armament, oppose to the enemy’s cavalry, we shall see every available squadron taken from the protective cavalry and handed over to the independent cavalry. Intelligence comes before security.[51] Meanwhile the protective rôle will be carried out by divisional mounted troops, cyclists, and infantry detachments (see sec. 92, F.S.R.).

Ceteris paribus, the first advantage will be with the side which can put the greatest number of squadrons into the corps of independent cavalry, and, in view of this, a fact plainly spoken of and counted upon in all strategical conceptions of future campaigns on the Continent, the preponderance of well-trained squadrons is clearly the object to be aimed at.

Generally speaking, the ideas which are promulgated as to the rôle for the weaker cavalry, by which a cavalry, worse trained, worse armed, and proportionately less in numbers will compensate for these shortcomings by superior tactics, are purely Utopian. This “fond thing vainly invented” may interest or beguile the mind of the unfortunate tax-payer, but does not belong to the regions of plain military common sense, which, in its preparation for war, has no place for chance work, and must have no weak link in the chain.

Let those with whom the wish is master of the thought read General von Bernardi’s most recent statement in Cavalry in Peace and War, p. 356, where speaking of the German force of trained cavalry, enormous as it already is, he says:

I have repeatedly stated that I consider our cavalry to be of itself too weak. The more I study modern warfare, the more convinced do I feel that the value of the arm, when handled according to modern ideas, has increased.

Let us remember that cavalry cannot be improvised, and that even squadrons of the best class of mounted rifles, formed entirely of natural horsemen and fairly good shots, are very heavily penalized, apart from their armament and training, unless they have professional brigade, regimental, and squadron leaders, and know how to work with horse artillery. They cannot be expected to face trained and properly organized cavalry brigades on anything like equal terms. At the same time, if reliance is placed on numbers, one is at once faced (i.) by the forage supply and its carriage, (ii.) by the enormous item of expense in remounting, already referred to in the chapter on “The horse.”

The outcome is that one arrives at this plain and simple proposition.[52] Only the most highly trained cavalry soldier is worth a horse and food for his horse when a nation is engaged against an enemy of modern continental type. This point is undoubtedly grasped on the Continent, where the proposal to use cyclists as a reserve of riflemen with cavalry is generally accepted.

Every one, practically, can now ride and look after a bicycle, and given passable roads, cyclists can travel farther and faster than horses, and carry more days’ reserve rations. In war in a civilized and well-roaded country they cannot fail to be a most useful adjunct to cavalry: (1) as a reserve of rifles, (2) as despatch-riders, (3) as an accessory in outpost and reconnoitring duty.

It is not the scheme of this book to enter into the question of training other than regular cavalry, nor to enter into any discussion as to the precise value in war of hastily raised mounted troops; since in doing so one might say something which had the appearance of discouraging the volunteer; whereas there is no question that the spirit, which animated for instance those yeomanry and colonial troops who came out early in the operations in South Africa, 1899–1902, is a great national and imperial asset.