As a rule great things are expected of cavalry in the first week of a campaign; these great things are often to be carried out at all costs—all costs in this case meaning in many instances half the horses overridden and a crop of sore backs[100] and incipient injuries incurred which the cavalry will not get over for months after. There is also another difficult matter to cope with in the cavalry; it is as follows:—
The ordinary soldier has no idea of the limit of his horse’s capacity for work such as that soon gained by the hunting man or traveller on horseback. In peace-time he will not once in one thousand times be given a task which can possibly injure or cause him to override his horse; further, the latter invariably gets back to his stable, gets the best of food and a rest, or goes to the sick lines if he is evidently out of sorts; the responsibility of overriding his horse is thus not fixed, and the man escapes any punishment. As the man is riding a Government horse and not his own animal, he does not suffer pecuniarily.
We believe that enough has been shown to warrant our saying that the cavalry of an army where (1) a good system of campaigning horse-management[101] has been instilled into the individual, and where (2) the officers, from those who order the task to those who superintend it, have the knowledge to do so with a sense of the horse’s capacity as affected by work, food, and drink, weight carried, nature of terrain, will, at the end of one month’s work, possibly have lost 15 per cent of its horses; whereas in the cavalry where these matters are not understood, only 15 per cent of the horses will remain available. What was the case in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia? A statement called for by the emperor at Witebsk on the 29th July, twenty-five days after the river Niemen had been crossed, gave the loss as follows: Murat’s cavalry[102] reduced from 22,000 to 14,000 horses, the cavalry of army corps by half, Latour Maubourg’s from 10,000 to 6000. Later, on the 9th November, only 1900 horses were left to this immense force of cavalry. The loss by fatigue in the campaign of Ulm, lasting little more than a fortnight, was less, 46 per regiment. One campaign resulted in a victory within eighteen days, whereas the other went on long enough to bring the loss and criminal waste of horses home to those responsible. In campaigns brought to a close in a few days by desperate though successful strategy, these matters, like many matters which occur in small campaigns against natives, never come to notice.
This subject has been gone into at some length under the training of the man, because without his co-operation in the individual care of his horse no cavalry general can hope to be successful. His best-laid schemes “gang aft agley.” The cavalry soldier should feel that he will get a horse, good, bad, or indifferent, accordingly as he shows himself a good, bad, or indifferent horseman and horsemaster, and should be made perfectly aware that he will be punished with the greatest severity for every act of carelessness, neglect, or ill-treatment of his horse. Whilst, on the other hand, a well-cared-for horse should be a certain passport to the good graces of his leader. A squadron leader, careless of this mode of procedure, never has good and well-cared-for horses on service.
A very successful way of teaching the soldier to care for his horse is to let it form part of the test before he passes from the recruit stage to that of the trained soldier, that he should by himself ride his horse to a place 70 to 100 miles away, report on some bridge or other topographical feature, and return, enough money being given him for the subsistence of himself and his horse for the necessary number of days—the condition of the latter being carefully scrutinized on his return.
Other forms of long-distance rides and patrols (as distinct from long-distance races, a cruel form of competition with which no horse-lover can have any sympathy) are most useful, as they teach the men how to regulate their paces, spare their horses, and judge distance by time and pace.
Often arrangements have been made to take some N.C.O.’s out with the regimental pack of hounds, local pack, or on a drag-hunt or paper-chase; all these forms of instruction teach the men to ride fast in a reasoned fashion and not in the Johnny Gilpin and “making the running” style of the amateur horseman or horsewoman, and to think properly of their horse, and not as the old lady, who said to the coachman, when he had reported the brougham horse was lame, “He is a horse and he must go.”
That the care of the horse is the weak link in the cavalry chain, and the most difficult one in which to give such instruction as may render it strong and reliable, is clear. Every day we get fewer men accustomed before they are recruited, to work with horses, and the use of the horse as a means of locomotion, by all ranks in Great Britain, is quickly dying out. Strong measures are needed to counteract our daily growing ignorance of horsemastership.[103]
(C) Shooting and Fire Discipline
The cavalry are now armed with a rifle equal to that of the infantry, and can hold their own in rifle-shooting. The greatest interest is taken in this exercise; tests similar in all respects to those in vogue in the infantry are exacted before the man is entitled to get his full rate of pay. Practically all officers and many N.C.O.’s of cavalry now possess Hythe certificates,[104] and there is no reason why fire discipline in the cavalry should not be equal to that in the infantry. In many cavalry regiments it undoubtedly is so. In others there is too much talking and the Jack ashore kind of behaviour, which renders difficult the control of the larger parties. If the officers recognize that good fire discipline is essential in order to kill their enemy, they will take more trouble to instil it. As our cavalry are undoubtedly the best shooting cavalry in the world, it is a pity to spoil the ship for this ha’porth of tar (fire discipline).