Major Howze Training

One of the events at the National Cavalry Competition is the Major Howze event. It is a cavalry mobility test in which the team completes a seven mile course at a trot and engages a number of saber targets at the end. The event is named after Major Howze who led a surprise cavalry attack on Poncho Villa in Mexico in 1916. The standard trot speed for the cavarly was about six miles per hour but Howze led his attack force at slightly better than seven miles per hour during the last three hours of his night ride into Mexico. The event scores each team on their speed, quietness, and ability to maintain formation. They are also scored on the number of targets they hit at the end. The most important part of preparing for the event is conditioning the horses for an hour-long trot. Fortunately, the regular training schedule of a mounted ceremonial unit takes care of most of the conditioning. We have practiced this event a couple of times on courses of between four and five miles and the horses have had no trouble with it. Today, we practice on a 4.9 mile course which the team finished in 34 minutes. That is a pretty good trot pace of 8.65 miles per hour. At the end the troopers engaged the enemy "village" and took out five of eight targets. The photos below show some of the action.

The enemy "vilage"


One of the villagers talking smack


The cavalrymen approaching the village


The troopers forming their attack


The attack


The body count

Line Officer Saddle Cloths

I finally found a new vendor for saddle cloths. Our previous vendor stopped making them which put us in a bind as seemingly no one else in the country offered them. The cloths, as seen in the masthead photo, are blue with a yellow border. They are made of wool felt according the specifications from the Indian War era. Line officers cloths have a regimental number sewn into the rear corners. Our previous vendor was not able to put the regimental numbers on so I was pleased to find a new vendor that did. The vendor's name is Coon Creek Old West and is located in Tucson. They have a number of other cavalry items that are hard to find such as the Indian Wars Period cavalry canteen. The owner, Leta, is a nice lady and easy to work with. The regimental numbers on the cloth we ordered were a little too small according to our 1885 specs so she arranged to enlarge them to the proper size on our next order and then sent me some replacement numbers for the cloth I had already ordered. She also makes the field grade and general officer saddle cloths. If you need this hard to find item, this is the place to go.

Linking Horses

The classic image of the cavalry is of mounted men clashing with their enemies on horseback. The truth is the cavalry usually dismounted when they fought. The purpose of the horses was to get them to the battle, not necessarily to provide a combat platform. The question is, what do you do with the horses after you dismounted to fight? The Army had a tactic for this in which they would link three horses together and have the fourth man lead them away. Remington illustrated this with his painting titled "Dismounted the Fourth Trooper Moving the Led Horses". The painted shows the horses being moved out at the gallop while the dismounted soldiers form a skirmish line. It is a dramatic painting and an excellent illustration of a little known tactic. However, the reality is more difficult than the painting illustrates. Horses don't necessarily like being linked together and they can easily snap the half-inch wide link strap connecting them together. The procedure of linking horses must be practiced. I have seen first hand what happens when you don't practice it. It isn't pretty. However, once the horses get used to the concept of being led this way and you have an experienced trooper leading them, it is an effective tactic. We, however, do not use the prescribed method of linking the horses from the bit ring. If horses start pulling against each other they can pull the bit right their mouths causing lots of damage in the process. Instead, we link the strap from halter to halter. That way, the worst you will suffer is a broken link strap. The key is practice. Neither troopers or horses will be able to pull this off without lots of practice.

Horse Hunting

Buying a new horse is a time consuming and frustrating process. With our herd aging (all out horses are between 11 and 20 years old) we need to start looking for some new acquisitions. Our non-profit support group, the Fort Huachuca Cavalry Association, ran "horse wanted" ad in the local paper. The requirements for cavalry horses are somewhat detailed so the ad pointed readers to their web site which outlined the requirements. The ad started out slow but by the second week we were getting a good number of calls. A good number in the sense that we were getting more calls than we could handle. Debbie followed up on the calls to inquire about the horses offered and found that they all met the initial requirements. Displaying the requirements on the web site cut out a lot of the calls from people wanting to sell mares or paints or physically unsound horses. Now the project is not so much eliminating the impossible but choosing among the best. We have examined up to four horses so far and have come up with two possibles. Two were eliminated already--one during our temperament check (fear of gunfire) and one during the vet exam (arthritis). We checked out another horse that passed the vet exam but we think it is a little small and its conformation isn't all that good so we are holding off on that one. We looked at another on Friday that looked very promising but since the vet is out of town this week, we have to hold off on the physical exam. It's nice to have some actual choices and the ad process worked very well. We were fortunate that the newspaper publisher, Sierra Vista Herald, ran the ad for free in thanks for our service to the community. Now that's community support.

Bighorn Battlefield Photos

I just finished reading a book titled, "Where Custer Fell: Photographs of the Little Bighorn Battlefield Then and Now." In the book the authors compare modern day photographs to photos taken in the years after the battle. The earliest photos were taken a year after the battle--a fact I was completely unaware of. The authors use the photographs to show changes that have occurred to the battle site but also to illustrate the battle itself. In many cases a veteran of the battle would revisit the battleground and have a photo taken of himself describing the action in a particular location. Thus, the photos provide a visual record of a battle participant's testimony that has often gotten confused in written accounts. The book also provides some interesting photographic accounts of where the original grave markers were and how some of them have moved or disappeared or were placed incorrectly. You have to be a Custer-buff to enjoy something like this and it helps if you've actually been to the battlefield. Anyway, I have included a photo I took myself at the battlefield a few years ago. It is a photo of a stray Indian pony I found up on Weir Point. The view is to the north with the visitor center in the distance (marked by the trees on the ridge) and the Custer Monument which is on the hill to the right of the visitor center. It was from Weir Point that the remnants of Reno's and Benteen's battalions witnessed the final destruction of Custer's command.

Jumping Practice

As we get ready for the National Cavalry Competition in September, we have realized that we need to brush up on the fundamentals of riding. Most of what we do in the cavalry is pretty basic, just spurring horses and pulling triggers but competition riding requires a little more skill. At the core of everything we do in competition is jumping. Jumping a horse over an obstacle seems pretty simple on the surface. Just point the horse at the obstacle and hang on as he effortlessly sails over the vertical. In reality it is the most complex form of riding. Both the rider and the horse need to set themselves up just right to clear the jump. If jumping one obstacle wasn't complicated enough, jumping several in succession can be a real challenge. Now add a few pistol targets and saber targets to the course and now we're talking some fun. The horse is the key, of course. The horse has to overcome his fear of the obstacle and also has to put up with the rider when he's jumping over it. The rider has to control his horse to the obstacle and then control his body so it doesn't hinder what the horse is doing. The problem with jumping is that the rider tends to over think the problem. He's thinking about controlling his horse's stride so his horse can set himself up for the jump, controlling the horse to the obstacle to prevent a run out or refusal, keeping his chin up, getting into a two-point stance at the right moment, releasing the bit at the exact right moment, positioning his weight so he is neither behind or ahead of the saddle, and by golly, not sitting down too damn early. The rider can get so wrapped up in getting all these things right that he invariably forgets some critical element and misses the jump. The only way to prevent over thinking the jump is to practice the individual parts of the jump so neither the rider nor the horse have to think about them to do them correctly. Once the techniques are down the rider can start to do them without concentrating on them. Then the rider can work on putting it all together in a complete package. Most of the little things can be practiced on ground poles and low jumps. Using the ground poles allows the rider to practice for longer periods of time without wearing out the horse. Jumping is hard on them and should be kept to a minimum. Having an experienced rider on the ground is important too. This person needs to watch both horse and rider to see where the mistakes are being made. It is hard for a rider to detect them on his own without an observer. However, as complex as jumping is, it is also the most rewarding experience as the rider and horse must really be in tune with one another to do it correctly.

Charging

It is hard to describe the thrill of riding a horse in a pistol charge. The link to the video from Fort Huachuca is of the Garrison change of command ceremony last month. At the end of the video you can see B Troop conducting its charge across Brown parade field. I'm on the horse closest to the camera. Just prior to the charge, the Troop had executed a counter column movement. I was just coming up to the skirmish line when the charge was ordered and the cannon went off. You can hear the cannon boom and then see my horse, Cochise, jump from zero to 40 mph in less than a second. We quickly caught up to the line and began to pass it. Because Cochise is so fast I have to delay his departure slightly so he doesn't pass the other horses before we pass by the crowd. Needless to say, this kind of activity is very exciting to watch but is absolutely mind-blowing to participate in.
http://trooptube.tv/videos/2667