Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880–1918

[Skipman]

Stumbled on this ...essay?

Doctrine and the Cavalry 1880–1918

" By the time I got there the whole mass of cavalry was in line, and it so coincided that the

alarm had already been sounded by the trumpeters. My mount, of course, being a cavalry

charger, became imbued with the excitement of the time and the electric atmosphere – he

joined in.

The strength of a charge is in the straightness of the line. Once the alarm had sounded

– draw swords. At that very moment the charge sounded. It was like riding into hell. The

guns boomed, batteries, smoke everywhere. Matter of fact, half the time you were blinded

by the smoke of the guns, and not only the shells exploding, the guns themselves, we were

up amongst them!

Anyway, right through that line they broke. Germans, Bulgarians, Turks, it didn’t

matter who they were, they were smashed, sundered, slaughtered. It was carnage,

absolutely.

Sword: slash – slash – slash – slash, see? Then someone appears, [sword] over the

horse’s head, dig in, out again – then that one appears over there, you simply reverse it [the

sword], twist your wrist and slice at him! – and then that side! And of course everybody’s

doing the same thing, you see, so you have to be careful you’re not wounding your nextdoor

neighbour "

Mike

[Ian Riley]

Mike

It appears to be, verbatim, the first chapter of Professor Stephen Badsey's book, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry, 1880-1918, published by Ashgate in 2008 as part of the academic yet readable 'Birmingham Studies in First World War History', the series editor for which is Dr John Bourne.

Badsey does describe the passage that you quote as 'impressionistic' and acknowledges that the source could not quite remember (in 1985) exactly where this charge took place!

There is an interesting analysis that follows of accounts ('recall' versus 'record') of the cavalry charge at High Wood in 1916 and of accounts of charges during the Battle of Amiens in 1918

Ian

[Guest]

Thanks Ian. I wasn't at all sure where it came from. I hope it's of use to someone.

Cheers Mike

[Nepper]

The full text is available on Google books http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=bdvBgUlO2qgC

[Robert Dunlop]

Interesting description of the book on the Google link:

"Entropic Creation is the first English-language book to consider the cultural and religious responses to the second law of thermodynamics, from around 1860 to 1920. According to the second law of thermodynamics, as formulated by the German physicist Rudolf Clausius, the entropy of any closed system will inevitably increase in time, meaning that the system will decay and eventually end in a dead state of equilibrium. Application of the law to the entire universe, first proposed in the 1850s, led to the prediction of a future 'heat death', where all life has ceased and all organization dissolved. In the late 1860s it was pointed out that, as a consequence of the heat death scenario, the universe can have existed only for a finite period of time. According to the 'entropic creation argument', thermodynamics warrants the conclusion that the world once begun or was created. It is these two scenarios, allegedly consequences of the science of thermodynamics, which form the core of this book. The heat death and the claim of cosmic creation were widely discussed in the period 1870 to 1920, with participants in the..."

Robert

[Nepper]

I saw that too. Perhaps the book doesn't want to be read so it's disguising itself :-)

[JimSmithson]

"any closed system will inevitably increase in time, meaning that the system will decay and eventually end in a dead state of equilibrium"

good description of cavalry though

Jim

[Ian Riley]

The full text is available on Google books http://books.google....id=bdvBgUlO2qgC

Is it? I am only seeing a preview version with every fifth page or so missing. The question is only academic interest; the book is sitting on my towering 'pending reading' pile

Ian