Riding Cavalry (Long)

I thought endurance riders might be interested in reading what riding "cavalry" was truly like. Mounted troops lived in the saddle for days, weeks, months and years, depending upon how long a conflict lasted, and assuming they did not become casualties. This snippet is taken from "The Cavalry of World War II by Janusz Piekalkiewicz, Orbis Publishing (1976):

" This letter from a cavalryman in Germany's 1st Mounted Regiment shows the difference between the life of a cavalryman and that of a soldier in any other arm of the services, perhaps better than any straight description - and it is representative of all the cavalrymen of World War II.

' .... You don't seem to have any idea of what our operations on horse-back are like. They expect the same daily output from us as they do from the motorized troops .... if a motorized unit travels 150 kilometres, it takes them maybe from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon. When they reach their destination for the day, they can park their cars and that's that. But if we cover 90 kilometres, we need 14 to 16 hours - and that means from four in the morning to ten at night. Then at the end of all that, we have to look after the horses, which takes at least an hour, and at night be on stable watch for another one or two hours. An infantryman nowadays can march maybe 50 kilometres in a day. If he's given a 20 minute break, he lies down on the grass verge and takes it easy. But the cavalryman has to water his horse, fetching the water from as far as 200 metres away. In the infantry, two hours' rest are two hours' rest; but we need an hour and a quarter for the horse, what with unsaddling and saddling up again, fetching the animal water, food and so on. And if we want to eat, we still have to hold the horse. What's more, if we travel 90 kilometres, we'll probably ride for only 40 - we have to lead the horse the rest of the way .... which means that on top of what the infantry does, we still have 40 kilometres in the saddle, and that's no trifle either.

'The infantryman's feet may ache, but so do the cavalryman's - for he's had to walk 50 kilometres too, in boots made for riding, not marching. It's not only his feet that hurt, though - his shoulders and hips are bashed about by his rifle, his buttocks feel as if they're in shreds, and after a ride lasting several days he feels as if he's got no bones left in his body. The infantry soldier's free to walk as he wants, whereas the horseman always has to lead his mount when he's on foot. After a while he has to pull it because it's had enough. Then he has to halt, because it's stumbling forward. When an infantryman has a rest, he can get his own things in order. But for the cavalryman, first he's got to look after the horse's gear and saddle - he has to leave his own things to do in his own free time! What about an airman? He's in great danger for hours maybe, though one might wonder if it's really any more dangerous than elsewhere in the forces. But every day he goes back to his old furnished home - whereas we have to be eternal gypsies. As cavalrymen we're never billeted in towns, only in villages. We always avoid big cities. What's a detour of five kilometres matter? The horse does what you ask of him. For cavalrymen, the roughest country tracks are good enough...'."

This book is full of photographs and pithy descriptions of the life of cavalrymen on operations, with many excerpts from personal diaries, etc. Mounted units fought in the armies of almost all the combatant nations, and from France to the Philippines, from Finland to East Africa, and above all on the plains of Soviet Russia, cavalry proved itself to be a useful and often indispensable branch of the armed forces. The following quote indicates the extent to which cavalry was used by the German and Russian armies. .... "Compared with World War I, nearly twice the number of horses - 2.75 million of them including mules - went into the field of battle for the Fuhrer and the German Fatherland. The Red Army, true to its cavalry tradition, sent a good 3.5 million horses into the war."

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