laststandonzombieisland

No, not the Q Lazzarus song made infamous by Ted Levine, we are talking about the Army’s latest initiative to divest itself of equines, something it has been doing in slow motion since 1917 despite a few half-hearted returns.

It could be argued that 1916 was the height of the U.S. Army’s post-Civil War (when the Union Army fielded 6 regular army and 266 volunteer cavalry regiments as well as 170 unattached squadrons) horse cavalry. At the time, during Pershing’s Punitive Expedition into Northern Mexico to chase Villa, the Army had 17 regiments of regulars– with the 16th and 17th Cavalry Regiments only organized in Texas in July 1916.

U.S. 5th Cav in Mexico, 1916

Add to this “practically all the serviceable cavalry” from the mobilized National Guard that included three cavalry regiments, 13 separate squadrons, and 22 separate cavalry troops, a force that required the immediate purchase on the open market of 1,861 cavalry horses by quartermasters to take to the field as most units were called up with less than half their stables full.

One Guard cavalry unit had no horses on call-up day except one privately owned mount, and in another that had 92 state-owned horses, only 23 passed inspection by a U.S. Cavalry remount officer.

“Making cavalry horses out of outlaws!”

While nearly 2 million Doughboys went “Over There” in the Great War, few were horse soldiers (just the 6th and 15th Cavalry Regiments arrived in France in March 1918, and were later sent to the trenches dismounted).

Instead, cavalry units were either repurposed into supply trains and artillery units or left to watch the border; the latter regiments organized into the short-lived 15th Cavalry Division.

At the same time, the Army went all-in on mechanization and established its first dedicated tank units.

The great cavalry farce of the 1920s-1930s

By the 1920s, the walk away from horses continued, and three regiments of regulars (15th, 16th, and 17th) were disbanded, as the regular cavalry increasingly became motorized (the 1st and 13th U.S. Cavalry were the first to hand in their horses, starting in 1932). In the Philippines, the 26th Cavalry regiment (Philippine Scouts), made up generally of Filipinos and Filipino-Americans, with a few seconded Regular Army officers and NCOs, was established in 1922 using horses and equipment left behind when the segreated 9th Cavalry shipped back home.

The interwar role of horse cavalry was increasingly transferred to the National Guard and Army Reserve.

However, it was a force largely just on paper, allowing much smaller “regiments” than those typically seen in an infantry format to exist (1,090 officers and men vs 3,500 by 1918 TOE, numbers even smaller by later standards).

Florida National Guard summer camp officer with 1902 pattern sword fooling on horseback, Jacksonville, 1930 time frame. 

This saw the creation out of whole cloth of 20 NG horse cav regiments between 1921 and 1927: the 101st and 121st Cavalry Regiments in New York, 102nd Cavalry in New Jersey, the 103rd and 104th Cavalry in Pennsylvania, 105th Cavalry (Wisconsin), 106th Cavalry (Illinois), 107th Cavalry (Ohio), 108th Cavary (Georgia), 109th Cavalry (Tennessee), the 110th Cavalry in Massachusetts, the 112th and 124th Cavalry Regiments in Texas, 113th Cavalry (Iowa), 114th Cavalry (Kansas), 115th Cavalry (Wyoming), 116th Cavalry (Idaho), 117th (Colorado/New Mexico, never fully formed), 122nd (Connecticut and Rhode Island), and 123rd (Kentucky).

In 1927, each cavalry regiment at the time, when fully staffed and ready for service, included four lettered 123-man troops led by captains, organized into two numbered 248-man squadrons led by a major, plus a regimental headquarters, machinegun, medical, and service troops for 39 officers and 710 men including ferriers and veteranirians. Add to this 810 horses, 64 mules, three cars, three 1 1/2 ton trucks, a motorcycle (with side car), 38 assorted wagons, 10 M1917 water cooled MGs, 24 M1918 machine rifles (BARs), 501 M1903 Springfield rifles (with bayonets), 724 M1911 pistols, 16 M1903 medical bolos, and, of course, 425 Patton-style M1913 cavalry sabers.

These optimistically formed four NG Cavalry divisions, the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, and 24th.

At the division level, there was a 103-man light tank company with 18 M1917 (Renault FT) tanks and 7 truck-pulled 37mm guns as well as an 89-man armored car company with 12 M1/M2 armored Scout cars, and a 520-man battalion of 12 horse-drawn 75mm field guns (in three batteries) and seven AAA MGs. While authorized, few divisions actually had these exotic bits of kit other than the Regular Army’s 1st and 2nd Cavalry Divisions, which each housed four active Cavalry regiments.

The 3rd Cavalry Division was openly just a “paper” division with its support units in the Reserve and never in its 19-year interwar history drilled as a unit.

`Troop A, 1st Squadron, 108th Cavalry Regiment, Georgia National Guard at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga. in 1930

It should be noted, however, that the TOE for each NG cavalry troop in peacetime would be just 65 officers and men (against the fully-manned wartime authorization of 123) but had only 32 horses, enough for training, yet still requiring a massive influx of trained horse flesh in wartime, followed by a good 6 months to a year of unit training before they could be deployed.

Further, these regiments were slowly reformatted as hybrid horse-mechanized units, with elements of both, with horse (and trooper) numbers dropping while traditional items like the saber were abandoned after 1934.

Wyoming National Guard’s 115th Cavalry Regiment in its final format, circa 1940, with jeeps, motorcycles, and trucks augmenting the regimental band and horse soldiers. 

At the same time, the Army Reserve amazingly had 24 horse cavalry regiments, numbered 301st through 324th, in six divisions (!) numbered the 61st through 66th. With somehow even fewer horses on hand than the NG units, these regiments typically had to borrow NG horses, those from CMMG or ROTC units, or trek to the U.S. 3rd Cavalry’s stables at Fort Myers in the summer to train.

Reagan’s military service began with the U.S. Army Reserve via at-home Army Extension courses in 1935. He was a private in the Iowa-based 322nd Cavalry Regiment before being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Officers Reserve Corps. He was later assigned to the 323rd Cavalry Regiment in California and in 1942 requested a transfer to the USAAF, where he helped produce 400 training films in the 1st Motion Picture Unit.

While it was estimated that the Army would need over 200,000 horses immediately in wartime if all 44 Guard and Reserve horse cav regiments and their 10 divisional organizations were fully-fleshed out, the service typically only procured between 1,500 and 2,500 new horses every year in the 1930s, including use for both active and reserve cavalry and artillery, and at the end of the 1941 fiscal year the remount depots only had 28,000 horses on hand.

By the fall of 1940, with the Guard federalized, of the existing 19 NG cavalry regiments, 7 were reorganized into mechanized regiments, 6 were converted to field artillery, and 4 to coastal artillery.

Only two, the Texas 112th and 124th, were given a reprieve as horse cavalry and would be brigaded together as the 56th Cavalry Brigade, which survived until March 1944 when they put their horses to pasture and became the 56th Cavalry Reconnaissance Troop, Mechanized, bound for the CBI theatre.

The regular Army’s 3rd Cavalry Regiment led its horses away in February 1942, and the 1st Cavalry Division was de-horsed by May 1943, followed by the 2d Cavalry Division ten months later.

Likewise, the massive Army Reserve “cavalry” force saw its 24 regiments melt away by 1942 when they were hollowed out by having their assigned personnel called to active duty and reassigned to Regular Army and federalized National Guard units. The empty unit shells were typically reclassified into Signal Aircraft Warning (radar) battalions and Tank Destroyer battalions (notably the 62nd, 63rd, 65th, 66th, 70th, 71st, and 75th), then rebuilt with new personnel.

Most of the “U.S” branded horses were “loaned” to the USCG, who took 3,900 for WWII beach patrol work, while over 7,000 went overseas as military aid to allies.

The Constabulary

While there was a short resurgence of small horse-mounted recon detachments formed in divisions in 1944-45, notably with the 10th Mountain, who experienced possibly the final U.S. Army mounted cavalry charge, the 35,000-strong U.S. Constabulary force in occupied Germany from 1946-52 included much use of horses.

Organized into 10 regiments, the circa 1946 TOE of each allowed for a horse platoon with 30 horses to patrol difficult terrain.

Even afterward, the Army’s Berlin Garrison was authorized 56 horses for the use of the force there as late as 1958.

“One of the famous Constabulary regiment horse patrols”

Short-lived resurgence

The Army’s last dedicated pack horse unit, the 35th QM Pack Co., was deactivated at Fort Carson, Colorado, in the spring of 1957.

Since then, the Army has continued whittling down its horse inventory with a short reprieve post 9/11 such as in the famous use of local ponies by the 5th SFG’s ODA 595 when it operated with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and the fleeting Special Operations Forces Horsemanship Course at Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center in California.

Man don’t those white horses glow at night! Green Berets from 3rd Special Forces Group (Airborne) ride horses to travel through rough terrain during a site reconnaissance training exercise on March 1, 2016 in Nevada. (U.S. Army photo by 3rd SFG (A) Combat Camera)

Plus, there was a steady resurgence post-Vietnam of ceremonial horse detachments on posts with a history going back to the Old West days.

The 11th ACR’s “Black Horse” Detachment at Fort Irwin

About that.

The Army last week announced that it was “streamlining its Military Working Equid program to align more resources with warfighting capability and readiness. MWEs include horses, mules, and donkeys owned by the Department of Defense and housed on Army installations.”

This means that, of its current seven horse detachments– often staffed by volunteers on collateral duty– just two will remain.

Starting in July 2025, the Army will sunset ownership, operation, and materiel support of MWE programs at Fort Irwin, California; Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Fort Riley, Kansas; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; and Fort Hood, Texas.

However, MWE programs will continue with The Old Guard Caisson units at the Military District of Washington and at Joint Base San Antonio, Texas.

“This initiative will save the Army $2 million annually and will allow the funds and Soldiers dedicated to MWE programs to be redirected to readiness and warfighting priorities.

An estimated 141 current Army horses will be moved out to new homes.

“Installation commanders will have one year to transfer, facilitate adoption, or donate the MWEs to vetted owners according to federal law. The Army Surgeon General’s MWE Task Force, comprised of equine veterinarian experts, will provide oversight to ensure the MWEs go to appropriate owners.”

Of note, the Caisson Platoon just resumed limited operations at Arlington last month.