[70] Prince Kraft points out how great a price a German officer pays for the swagger of belonging to a cavalry regiment. He enlarges on the trials to health entailed thereby, the long work in the riding school, with the shakes and jars given to the bowels and spine, which in many cases have sown the seeds of chronic illness, even during their first year of service as lieutenants, owing to which some of them have been invalided before their time. Then he goes on to point out the expenses entailed by good chargers and their upkeep. Finally, he says that in the German cavalry in no regiment can an officer live unless he can afford to pay £100 a year out of his own pocket, and so he reckons that a cavalry officer before he has twenty years’ service has expended £2000, that is, has sacrificed that sum to the Fatherland.
[71] The French rightly lay stress on ability to cross an intricate country. Their Service de la cavalerie en campagne, p. 191, says: “To ride hard across country and particularly over a steeplechase course is an excellent preparation for reconnaissance work. An officer accustomed to long gallops, not only at ordinary, but also at racing pace, may defy pursuit by one who has not had the same experience of leaping, and especially of leaping at full speed, and of the powers of his horse.”
Our British cavalry officers had justly a great reputation for their abilities in this respect in the Peninsular War.
[72] After a sharp fight one day in South Africa, a colonial officer remarked to his column commander, “We did not think there would be anything on to-day, because you were wearing your slacks and riding the black horse!” The column commander felt, though he did not acknowledge, the justice of the remark.
[73] In Before Port Arthur in a Torpedo Boat the Japanese officer reflects: “Is there any situation which can happen for which I and my men have not been practised?”
[74] Cf. Langlois, Lessons from Two Recent Wars, p. 144: “The manner in which troops are to be employed in the different situations which arise must be left to the initiative of those in command in every degree of rank.”
[75] Germany’s Swelled Head, p. 165.
[76] Note the strong measures which Lasalle, one of Napoleon’s best cavalry leaders, is said to have taken at Pultusk in 1807. His brigade was about to attack the Russian artillery, and about 2 P.M. had hardly advanced twenty paces before the cry of “Halt!” was heard and at once passed down the line without any one knowing where it had started. The two regiments turned and began to retire at a gallop, though the Russian guns had not fired a shot. Rallied after seven or eight minutes and brought back, their brigadier-general, in a furious rage, kept them in line until midnight under the enemy’s fire. So heavy was this that the general had two horses killed under him. Men and horses fell at every minute, but it is said not a man stirred, nor was a murmur heard.—Picard.
[77] On one occasion in the operations in South Africa, 1899–1902, a troop, ordered to gallop a kopje, halted at 700 yards from it, dismounted, and began to shoot; a troop of a rival corps was at once sent to gallop through them and did what they had been told to do—took the kopje; a salutary and effective lesson.
Another time a squadron attacking was held up by wire whilst under fire, and began to come back; another squadron was led at a gallop through them. The irresolute squadron at once turned and followed them. The art is to loose the support at the right moment and with due emphasis.