Cooke's Cavalry Tactics

CSA Cavalry Saddle ( a Jennifer) - Civil War One Era - Available from Border States Leatherworks

Rugged, Well-Made & Brand New Cavalry Saddles on the Market

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1904 McClellan Cavalry Saddle - World War One Era - Available from Border States Leatherworks

"Unfortunately, in WWII, We chose to eliminate our horsed branch and rely on an all mechanized army, as our horses could no longer keep up with advancing tanks. Where once we could range the continent on horseback, we could now not expect a full, “40 miles per day on Beans and Hay.” What had happened? Where went the magnificent cavalry that could move 100 miles in a day? Politics and Polo is what happened. The cavalry died simply from under use and ossification of the intellect. A horse, like any other athlete must be kept continually in training or it will grow soft. Keep them in shape and their feats border on the fantastic.

This writer has seen both mules and Spanish mustangs cover extreme distances, out west. The “secret” is no more than constant exercise. One old mule hostler told me that it takes “about half a year” to properly condition an animal. That was the secret of both Gengis and later, Sitting Bull, hard hooved horses kept in shape while the U.S. cavalry doped off in stables and barracks. We lost our horsed cavalry to attitude, not the infernal combustion engine." 

"Turn on your net access, use any good search engine, such as Google, and simply type in, endurance horse racing. It is that simple. 100 mile races are being run all the time, and the times vary between 10 and 12 hours for the distance covered. Nor are the animals being driven to exhaustion, as their times do not count unless the attending vetrenarian certifies the mount as “fit to continue.” As it happens, some of the best times are turned in by adopted Spanish Mustangs, almost fresh off the range, and therein lies a tale. For it was the endurance and hardiness of those animals that .....

When the horrendous events of Sept 11 hit, I was right in the middle of a wild horse round up in the Pryor mountains of Montana/Wyoming, in the midst of a research project for a book on the western cavalry. What I wanted to know was just how those so-called “Indian ponies” unshod and range fed, for the nomads kept no hayfields, could regularly run the shoes off well-bred cavalry mounts. What I found out not only bears on our interpretation of western history, it has possibilities for the future of guerrilla war. For, as Prince General Golitzen believed, only the Americans and Russians can do this. The trail led straight back to the Spanish conquest of the Southwest and those Spanish Knights with their big chargers. "

"On the other side of the coin, when the going is good (roads) and the mechanized forces speed up, the cavalry simply loads into stock transports. This was all worked out in the Army maneuvers in 1938 and 1940. They took commercial semi-trailers of a size to take one 8 man cavalry squad, men, animals and equipment, militarized them, and kept up with fully mechanized forces on highways. When the going got rough, the vehicles slowed down but the mounted troops just de-trucked and kept the pace of the march up. They even figured that the horse troops were better at breaking ambushes and road blocks. The horses just went around the roadblock and hit it from behind.

Both our cavalry and the Russian Cossacks figured out how to mesh with automotive forces but because we had oceans to cross, our cavalry got left out of history.....For a time. Maybe now is the time to bring them back, first as border patrol and then as terrorist hunters. We have many light weapons that are supposed to be man portable but are really at the outer edge of what a man can carry. The old rule of thumb for horse packing used to be that an animal shouldn’t be expected to carry more than one quarter of its own weight....Now figure out those 80-100 LB rucksacks. You can, however, take a 1000 LB horse and load quit a bit of military impedimenta on it. I go back to the old army and the 40 pound pack, plus rifle and 100 rounds. If you limit the ruck to say, 50 lbs, one pack horse or mule could support the packs of four men, plus the tack, of course. Looked at another way, How much ammo for a 90mm recoilless or an 81mm mortar could that animal move, let alone long range communications and night vision gear. "

"This means, of course, that if we adopt horse mounted patrols on our borders, the wild mustangs just became a national asset. We’d also need to bring Icelandic horses and the Florida Cracker, and rebuild our national stud ranches, but it could be done fairly quickly, give us a capability that all other nations have lost ......."

--  Ralph Zumbro